or…
“Show me the money!”
Of course it is a good idea to decide if working towards licensing your art will give you the income results you are looking for, right? Unfortunately, I don’t have a definitive way to answer this question.
Every business will have different results so I can safely say between $0 and millions.
Of course I’m often asked for a better, more “standard” range than that. Well… I don’t know.
While people looking for a traditional job can go online and see statistics about average salaries, most artists who license their work are in business for themselves, so these statistics don’t exist. Add to that the fact that two artists could bring in identical royalties and have very different expenses based on how they run their businesses, that what they actually “make” would be quite different.
According to License! Global Magazine, the art licensing industry as a whole (art, tv, movie, entertainment, sports…) accounts for $187.2 billion worldwide. (April 2010 source: http://digital.licensemag.com/nxtbooks/advanstar/license0410/#/40)
The fact of the matter is, how well you can do depends on how well your art fits the market, how well you market your art and how patient and consistent you are. One thing we can agree on, this isn’t ‘quick & easy’ money.
But there is money to be made, I just can’t tell you how much your share will be.
– Tara Reed
P.S. To learn more about the business side of art licensing, I recommend you take a look at the eBook, “How to Find, Interact and Work with Manufacturers Who License Art.”
Dear Tara, thank you so much for all your amazing work it will help so many artists get where they want to go! Here in Québec, I have started talking about art licensing and one example I like to give is this one: I started my career in 92 as a stylist and wallpaper designer, in 97, I started working freelance. At the time, I could get between 800,00$ to 1200,00$ for a wallpaper border design and of course I did not have the rights to the work- I was selling it flat fee. When we started showing our work in 2002 at the Surtex, a company came up and licensed a wallpaper border. This design has earned more than 15 000,00$ alone and it’s still selling. This is why it’s great to license, it is an investment and if your manufacturer has success-You will too!
Charlene –
That is awesome! And thank you for “sharing with the group” as we like to say in the US… I must say I now wish my style was more applicable to wallpaper…:) Keep up the good work, I’m doing a happy dance in your honor!
Tara
Thanks for adding more fuel to my art fire 😉 Love your tweets.
Zero to a Million is about right. 🙂
Yup! I’m looking to move myself as FAR from the “Zero” end of the scale as possible!