Artists! Make Money Online by Using Your Drawings to Bring in Some Extra Cash

Pencil drawings, rose drawings, skull drawings or anything else you can draw can make money for you online.

It's been ten years since I decided to see if I could make some money online with my pencil drawings. Hey, drawing is fun but making money with your drawings is a blast!

A great place to start is Ebay.com. That's where I started and I still do very well there. If you have never sold anything on Ebay, go to there and click on their site map. You will find all kinds of help about registering, selling, creating cool auction and a lot more.

It's free to register with Ebay but they will ask you to submit a credit card if you want to be a seller. That's because Ebay charges a small fee for every auction you list.

Ebay will ask you to create a user name. Don't use your email address. Think of a catchy name that describes your specialty. Maybe you specialize in rose drawings and your name is Karen. "roses by karen" or "Karen's Rose Drawings" would work. Even something like "roses in pencil".

If you draw many different things, that's ok too. "Cool Drawings" or "Drawings Galore".

Here's something else you can do before you decide what subjects to draw. Go to Ebay. When you get there, click on the "Advanced Search" link along the top of the screen. You will then see a box titled "enter keyword or item number". In this box type the word "drawing" or "pencil drawing".

Just below this you will see a small box that says "show completed listings only". Check this box and click on "search". This will take you to all of the completed auctions on Ebay that had the word "drawing" in the title. There will be many pages of drawing auctions. Now you will be able to get an idea of what type of drawings have sold and which ones did not.

This will give you some good information on what subjects to draw. See what's popular.

Try different words in the search box. Try "dogs". Or narrow it down to "Doberman" or "Doberman drawing".

If drawing people are your specialty, type in Clay Aiken. He is a popular subject on Ebay. See if any drawings of him sold. Try lots of different people and subjects.

Here's a great tool to find out what folks are searching for online. It's called keyword discovery. Type in a word or phrase and you can see how many times that word or phrase was searched for in the past month.

This is a great way to decide what to draw. Draw subjects that people are looking for online.

Another cool way to make money with your art and drawings is to take advantage of Café Press. This website will put your drawings on all kinds of neat products.

Suppose you draw dogs. You have a great drawing of a German Shepherd. Café press will put that drawing on dozens of different products for you to sell.

They allow you to set up an online store for free. Or you can upgrade to their premium shop for a measly $4.99 a month. You choose the products you want to sell.

Let's take your German Shepherd drawing for an example. You might decide to put that drawing on ten different products and add them to your online shop. You put your drawing on a coffee mug, tee shirt, a sleeveless shirt, a sweat shirt, mouse pad, beer mug, calendar, ceramic coasters, baseball cap and a clock. There are dozens of other product you could choose but let's stick with ten for now.

With that one German Shepherd drawing, you now have ten products to sell from your Café Press shop.

Ok, that's pretty good. But what if you add two more drawings to those same ten products. You now have 30 products to sell. Get the picture? The more drawings you have the more products you can sell.

Here's how it works. You fill your shop with your products. Café Press helps you do that. It's easy. They have a set price for each item. The way you make money is to mark the price up.

For example, they will charge you $14.99 for one of their high quality tee shirts. You add your drawing to it and list it in your shop for any price you want. If you want to make $5.00 per shirt, make your price $19.99.

When a customer purchases a product from your shop, Café Press will make print your drawing on the item and ship it directly to your customer. Then, every month, they will mail you a check for your profit.

You fill your shop with products and Café Press does the rest.

Another way to make some quick cash is to sell reproduction prints of your drawings. I do this on Ebay all the time. Every time you draw something, scan it, assuming you have a scanner, and save it. Get yourself some heavy, card stock paper and print your drawing. Even if you only get five or six bucks for a print, all it cost you was the paper and ink.

One more thing. Try to do what you do best and let others do the rest. Draw what you are good at or what you enjoy drawing. For me, dog portraits have always been my specialty. Maybe you enjoy drawing cats or people. Cars or light houses.

Find something you know a lot about or just enjoy drawing and concentrate on that for awhile. Find your "niche". Whatever it is, after awhile you will become "recognizable" for your drawings.

I have discovered that there are two things most people will do anything for. Their kids and their pets. Use this. Draw pets and draw kids.

Add a "personalization" to your drawings and prints. If you have a café Press shop, add personalization to your products. Someone might buy a coffee mug with your German Shepherd on it, but if you add the dog's name to it, they will really love it.

If you really want to make money online, you are going to have to draw, draw, and draw some more.

My personalized dog portraits have been big sellers for me for years. But I am constantly adding different breeds or different portraits of some breeds I have already done.

Always be putting new things up for bid. You can continue to sell your older items too. It just seems that you can tell when an item has "run it's course".