Sharing Your Creative Expertise
If you’re an artist, your main focus is likely creating beautiful artwork and selling it to collectors. But have you thought about another valuable offering that you could share with the world? Your artistic experience and know-how can help other artists—and sharing your expertise can be a very rewarding experience for you, too!
Why You Should Consider Sharing Your Creative Expertise
These are a few reasons why you should consider sharing your creative expertise:
You will gain wider exposure and establish yourself as an expert (don’t let that word scare you) and a leader.
You can make extra income to make your art career more profitable.
The artists that learn from you are your true fans and are likely to also collect your artwork.
Inspiring and helping other artists is profoundly satisfying. You’ll also develop a deeper understanding of your art practice, materials, and processes by teaching others.
How to Share Your Creative Expertise
You may be thinking, “Sounds great! But how do I go about it?” There are many ways you can share your expertise, and I suggest you consider which methods align with your personality, goals, and availability. Here are some ideas:
You can create free content that shares tips and tricks and share it on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, or blog posts. This content can work for you over time, drawing interested people to you and your content. This free content will give them a taste of your personality and teaching style while building trust in you.
Later, you can offer paid courses or a membership to the people who love your free content. These paid offers can go deeper than the free content and provide a more supportive experience. These paid offers may involve FaceTime with you over Zoom in addition to prerecorded content. Some courses can be evergreen moneymakers that you can “set and forget.” People pay to take the course and require little to no interaction with you. I personally do a balance of evergreen courses and intensive/interactive courses. Courses can be inexpensive quickies (less than $100) or months-long intensives (over $1,000). Memberships are an ongoing commitment but can bring in a helpful stream of income every month.
If it suits you, you could offer creative coaching. Many artists want one-on-one or small group coaching where they can get support for their artistic development, learn to market their work, and have all their questions answered. I have found coaching to be very rewarding.
You can create and host paid workshops and classes in your community if that interests you. Places to inquire about this include your local artisan organizations, maker spaces, art centers, and community centers.
Digital products such as PDF tutorials, workbooks, and ebooks are a good way to share your knowledge without creating a course or membership. It’s important to create a value-packed document that is also beautifully designed (I use Canva for mine) and full of helpful photographs to accompany the text instructions. These products could be project-specific or a skill you are confident about sharing, such as how to prep a canvas for painting or best practices for hanging artwork.
When considering sharing your expertise, keep in mind that the things that are no big deal to you are a real stumbling block for someone else out there. Do you have a great method for photographing your artwork? Share it! From how you organize your studio, clean your brushes, and create your art, you have more knowledge to share than you realize. I hope that you’re inspired to share your creative expertise with the world!
Thank you for joining me on this artistic journey! If you’d like to stay updated on new releases and special offers, make sure to subscribe to my emails from my website; www.carylfineart.com or follow me and use my bio link on Instagram @ www.instagram.com/carylfineart