Artist blogs on WordPress are a popular way to share your skills and knowledge with the world and make some money along the way. But how to start an art blog? Well, it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Everyone can start their own art blog—no experience required. Just follow these 9 easy steps and you will have an amazing art blog that makes money!
Do you think art blogs are not profitable anymore because everyone is just watching 10-second videos on TikTok and YouTube Shorts?
Well, think twice, my friend! (◕‿◕)
Starting an art blog is still a great way to make money with your creative skills and expertise.
Blogging is a proven strategy to reach more people, drive traffic to your website, and in turn, make money selling art and monetizing your blog.
It’s a fact that artists who run a blog are more likely to be successful than those who don’t.
So, if you haven’t started an art blog yet, it’s about time to do so! You have no experience in art blogging?
Don’t worry. I’m here to help you start building your blog from A to Z. I’ll walk you through all the steps necessary to set up your blog—
- from choosing the right blogging platform, domain name and web hosting,
- to customizing your blog’s design and branding,
- to writing content that sells, and
- attracting an audience interested in your blog content.
Why am I the right person to give you advice?
Well, I’ve created this massive art blog you’re on right now all on my own—from scratch. I know what works and what doesn’t. I can help you avoid the mistakes beginners tend to make and streamline your blogging process right from the start.
Sounds good? Let’s get into it!
How do I start my own art blog—with no experience?
Starting your own art blog without any prior experience in blogging or website building is absolutely possible!
As you are here, I assume you are an artist and you’ve been creating art for a while. You’ve learned the skills necessary for the type of art you make and you have some knowledge about your favorite genre of art.
Then, you probably also like to speak about your art or discuss artwork with your friends and fellow creatives.
This is basically what you’ll do on your art blog, too. For example, you can create tutorials teaching new artists the skills you’ve learned over the years. Your can review products and services related to your art and recommend what’s good.
You can write about common artist struggles in your niche and give advice on how to tackle them. You can give insights into your creative process, explain your art, and critique others’ artwork. The possibilities are endless.
From the techy side, starting an art blog isn't hard either.
You don’t need any coding skills or experience in web design. Nowadays, you can find so many beautiful premade website templates that you just need to fill with your own content. And getting a new website up and running isn’t rocket science either. But more on that later on in this post.
Do art blogs actually make money?
Whether you have a personal art blog, an art painting blog, a fine art blog or a digital art blog, every art blog has the potential to make money.
There are heaps of possibilities to monetize your blog. Let me quickly give you some examples.
First of all, you can use your posts to attract buyers for your art. If you want to sell physical prints of your art, you might be interested in the print size that sells the most.
But you can also offer digital files of your work for sale, and other downloads and printables. The return on investment on digital products tends to be quite high, and if you have tailored your art blog to push your product, you can enjoy a solid income for years.
- FREE eGuide to the Best Selling Printables
Apart from that, many new bloggers rely on selling services during their first year or two of blogging. If you are skilled in graphic design, photo editing or art commissions, you can offer those services right on your blog, too.
These are just a few examples. More ways to make money with your art blog later on in this post.
But now, without further ado, here’s how to start an art blog in 9 steps!
How to start an art blog that makes money in 9 steps
STEP 1: Find your art niche.
Before even getting started, it is important that you narrow down your art niche. That means you decide what topics you want to blog about.
Why is that important? Well, writing about too broad of a range of subjects will result in a number of problems.
First of all, it will be much harder to draw in an audience that is interested in your content. People come to your blog for a specific reason. For instance, because they want to learn about photography. If you also blog about lifestyle topics on your photography site, you will only spread your efforts thin. In return, it will also be more difficult to make money with your blog.
But not only people will be confused about what to actually expect from your blog, Google will be, too! The market-leading search engine determines the “authority” of a website according to how many relevant and helpful content it believes to find there. If it cannot find a consistent thread across your blog content, you will lose valuable ranking criteria.
Last but not least, blogging about too many unrelated topics will make it difficult to sort your content into categories. As a rule of thumb, your blog shouldn’t have more than five or six categories. Everything above that gets quickly overwhelming for your visitors.
How do you find the perfect niche for your art blog?
A good starting point is the type of art you create. Whatever your artistic genre, you will always have particular abilities and skills that set your work apart from others.
A blog is the perfect place to share that knowledge and help other artists learn from your experience.
Other questions you can ask yourself to niche down your blog include:
- What inspires you to create art?
- Do you wish to sell your art through your blog?
- Will the blog be exclusively about your art or do you want to write about, interview and feature other artists, too?
- What topics related to your art can you speak about over and over again without getting bored?
Make a list about possible blog topics and see how they fit together. For more help, check out the 66+ Best Art Niche Ideas For Blogging To Start A Profitable Art Blog and download your FREE eGuide to take home!
- FREE eGuide to the Best Art Niche Ideas For Blogging
STEP 2: Choose a blogging platform.
Step no. 2 is to choose the right platform for your blog. There are lots of website building platforms out there, such as Squarespace, Wix and Weebly. They are great website builders for artists, no doubt.
But when it comes to starting your own art blog, I highly recommend using WordPress.org.
WordPress is a free content management system, with lots of free plugins and themes. It offers the best functionality in the market and gives you the greatest creative freedom possible.
But what’s more, your WordPress blog will only belong to yourself. When you create a website on Wix or Weebly, for example, your site technically belongs to those companies.
Those platforms will always come with limitations—not only to web design possibilities. Once you decide to monetize your blog, you might not be able to run ads profitably and you might encounter restrictions on using affiliate links.
Trust me, starting your art blog on a third-party platform and then moving it to a self-hosted WordPress blog is a hassle. Don’t do it.
Even though it might take some time to get your head around how WordPress works, it’s worth the effort. WordPress has one of the largest support communities with the most helpful online tutorials. Plus, I have a free guide for you on how to make an artist website with WordPress in 5 easy steps!
STEP 3: Get web hosting.
As I mentioned above, WordPress itself is completely free. The only thing you’ll need to pay for is hosting—and a domain name.
Web hosting for WordPress isn’t expensive. You’ll find hosting options for as little as a couple of dollars per month.
When your blog is new, I suggest starting with a shared hosting platform. You don’t need all the frills that larger, longer-established WordPress blogs need in terms of support, security, and management.
Great and affordable hosting providers for your WordPress site are Hostinger and Bluehost. Many artists have their WordPress blogs hosted there—including myself on Hostinger.
For more details and other options, check out the best web hosting for artists with WordPress sites.
STEP 4: Pick a domain name.
When you register on a web hosting platform, you will have to choose a domain name for your blog.
If possible, you should choose a .com domain.
You can use your artist name for your domain name, or your real name. This gives you the flexibility to blog about various topics and maybe even switch niches down the road, if you need to.
Another option is to choose a domain name relevant to your art niche right from the get-go. You can include keywords in the name that might make it easier for your site to rank in Google.
In any case, your domain name should be memorable and not contain hyphens and numbers. That just complicates things.
Also make sure to not use intentionally misspelled words just because your preferred domain name is already taken. And, don’t use names that can easily cause misunderstandings!
STEP 5: Select a theme.
Once you got web hosting and a domain name, all it takes is one click to set up WordPress in the back end. With that done, it’s time to select a theme for your art blog.
A theme accounts for the look and feel of your website and is crucially important. Remember the saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover”? However, almost everyone will judge your art blog by their first impression!
Having an appealing and professional-looking theme is especially important for art bloggers. It will improve user-experience and increase website visitor retention.
There’s a vast selection of WordPress themes out there that can quickly become overwhelming. To find the right theme for your art blog, you should pay attention to a number of things:
- The theme should be updated regularly to make sure it conforms to the latest WordPress version and plugins. It should also be kept safe against the latest malware attacks.
- The theme should be fully responsive, making sure that your website looks as good on mobile devices as it does on desktop computers.
- The theme’s navigation should be clear and straightforward.
- The theme shouldn’t be too code-heavy because that would just slow down your website.
- The theme should have enough flexibility to use different plugins and add eCommerce functionality, if needed.
If you are just getting started, I suggest choosing a free theme that you can upgrade later on.
Some of the best and most performing eCommerce-ready WordPress themes for artists are:
STEP 6: Get your branding on point.
Now, with your favorite WordPress theme up and running, it’s time to customize it and create a branding for your art blog.
Successful branding makes your blog immediately recognizable and memorable. Look around: every company has its own branding. This is achieved by a number of things:
• Logo
The perhaps most important brand element is your logo. People tend to retain visuals better than text. A catchy logo increases the chance that blog visitors will remember your brand for a long time after seeing it.
Since you are an artist, creating a logo for your blog should be a piece of cake. You can use your artist name, your signature, or a typical visual element of your art.
• Color
The second most important brand element is color. Choose two to four colors that you’ll use in your logo and consistently throughout your website.
Another thing to consider is link color. Hyperlinks on your blog should be immediately recognizable as links—without having to hover the mouse over them first.
Here’s how to choose the best hyperlink colors for your artist website.
• Fonts
Select one main font for your blog posts. The font should be easily readable, big enough (around 18 to 20 px), with sufficient line height in between (around 1,6 to 1,8 em). Fonts without serifs are usually easier to read than fonts with serifs.
Then, you can pick a second cursive or scripted font, to make certain passages or words stand out. However, make sure to use it wisely, because scripted fonts are harder to read. Also keep in mind that not everyone might have installed Google fonts in their browser!
STEP 7: Optimize your blog for SEO.
If you want to start an art blog that makes money, then you’ll need to optimize it for SEO. There’s no way around it.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and there are a couple of things you can do to help your posts rank in Google’s search results.
First of all, there are some WordPress settings you should pay attention to.
• Tagline
Besides the site title, the tagline basically sums up what your website is about. Mention shortly and precisely the main topics of your artist website. Be sure to include relevant keywords in both site title and tagline.
You can change the site title and tagline by going to your WordPress dashboard, and then to Settings > General.
As my artist website is about digital art and photography, my site title reflects that.
In the tagline, I’m specifying what exactly people can expect to find on my site. At this point in time, my tagline reads:
“Everything for digital artists and photographers – Lots of inspiration, tutorials, art news, product reviews and free art resources.”
Of course, you can change your site title and tagline down the line as your content evolves over time.
• Slug
The slug is the URL that follows after the .com (or other extension) of your domain name.
My domain name is ginangiela.com and the slug of the page you’re on right now is “how-to-start-an-art-blog.” Both together look like ginangiela.com/how-to-start-an-art-blog/. The last yellow part is the slug.
The slug should always contain the keywords or keyphrase you want that specific blog post to focus on.
By default, all your WordPress slugs will look really ugly. They’re just numbers that will obviously not help you rank your posts in search engines.
To change the link settings, you go again to Settings in your WordPress dashboard, and then to Permalinks. Over there, make sure to select a slug type that shows the post name.
There are several options that include the day and month of when your post was published, or simply show the plain name of the post in the slug. I’ve simply selected “Post name” for my art blog.
• Keyword Research
Imagine you write about something and nobody is interested in it. To not let that happen to your blog posts, it’s important to do keyword research.
You need to know what key words and phrases people actually type into search engines like Google to be able to create posts people are interested in reading.
To find out if people are searching for a specific topic you have in mind, you can simple enter the search term into Google and see what comes up.
For example, if you are planning to write a post about the “best web hosting for art blogs,” you would simply type that into Google. If that query is actually being searched for, Google will list a number of related questions in the search results.
These are the questions people factually type in when they are looking for that topic. You can focus your blog post on any of those questions.
Another possibility is to use Google's auto-complete function. Start by typing in a keyword and see what comes up in the suggestions. This is again what users are actually searching for.
However, it may not be a good idea for a new blog to just pick the first keywords that are coming up. Why not? Because the keywords that come up first tend to be the most competitive ones.
Lots of blogs will already target those keywords. The longer those blogs have been around, the more “authority” they will be given by Google—and the harder it will be for a new blog to rank.
For that reason, you should target less-competitive terms—especially at the beginning of your blogging journey. The best way to find those terms is by using a keyword research tool like Ahrefs.
Ahrefs will show you which keywords are easy to rank for and which are highly competitive (those are the ones you should avoid when your blog is still new).
• Post Optimization
Once you’ve researched the keywords for your post, it’s time to create the actual post content—and optimize that for SEO, too!
Apart from using the relevant keywords in your post title and throughout the article, there are a couple more things you can do to help your post rank in the search results:
- Make sure your blog content is easily readable. Keep sentences short and to the point. Avoid using complicated sentence structures and hard to understand jargon.
- Break up long paragraphs into smaller sections and include subheadings. This makes it easier for your readers to scan the content.
- Use bullet points and numbered lists to structure and highlight important information.
- Make sure the first paragraph or introduction of your blog post contains the relevant keywords and captures the reader’s attention.
- Lastly, use visuals to pep your posts. Reading long texts can quickly become boring. To break up the monotony, include images and videos (not more than one video per page to not slow down your website).
To check whether your blog post conforms with SEO guidelines, you can use free WordPress plugins like YoastSEO and RankMath. Those show you how good your content is already optimized and what you still need to work on.
STEP 8: Attract blog traffic.
Now that your content is optimized for SEO, it’s time to attract some blog traffic. Yes, you heard me right. You must proactively attract traffic, because you cannot expect to just get visitors when starting an art blog! Unfortunately, that won’t happen.
When you launch a new website, it will take some time for it to get indexed by search engines. Some search engine experts refer to this period as “Google Sandbox.”
Although Google doesn’t reveal that such a filter even exists, many experts in the field like Ahref itself note that newly created websites don’t rank well in the search results, because Google wants to evaluate their quality first and prevent spam.
On average, a new website will take 6 to 12 months to rank well in the search. Now, you might ask yourself, how to start an art blog that makes money, if you don't get any traffic?
Fortunately, you don’t have to sit and wait until Google is finally more benevolent to your website. There are some things you can do to help your blog get traffic (apart from Google):
- Network with other art bloggers, influencers, gallery owners and collectors to extend your reach.
- Write posts in online art forums, on LinkedIn or Medium to build backlinks to your blog.
- Write guest posts on other blogs related to art or offer other bloggers the opportunity to create guest posts on your blog.
- Use social media to get the word out about your art blog. Here are some tips for artists using those platforms:
- Create a YouTube channel and share art-related videos, while directing watchers back to your art blog.
STEP 9: Monetize your blog.
Now, this post is about how to start an art blog that makes money. So, the last crucial step is to monetize your blog. Here are some ways to do that:
• Art Prints
The first thing that comes to mind when making money with art is probably selling prints. You can offer your artwork on different type of prints, including photographic prints, canvas prints, and Giclee prints.
Further reading:
• Affiliate Marketing
Another popular method to make money blogging is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing means you promote someone else’s product or service and earn a commission on each sale or lead you generate.
The advantage of affiliate marketing is that you, as the affiliate marketer, don’t need to take care of product development and customer support. The company that sells the product is responsible for that. That makes affiliate marketing one of the best passive income ideas for artists.
There are lots of affiliate programs for the art niche. Depending on your sub-niche, you can find affiliates for art software like Photoshop, or for art supplies, for example, from Dick Blick.
Here are some popular affiliate networks that feature art-related products and services:
• Display Ads
Displaying ads on your blog is another way to generate a passive income. Every time a visitor views or clicks on an ad on your blog, you are getting paid.
Google AdSense is a popular ad network, but they only pay around $3 to $8 per thousand visitors. Ezoic, Raptive and Mediavine are better options, but they have high traffic requirements to join.
As a baseline, it’s usually better to wait until you reach around 50,000 monthly visitors before applying to an ad network. Otherwise, ads will only drive visitors away from your content and your earnings are minimal.
• eBooks, Printables & Other Downloads
There are a variety of low-support digital products that you can promote and sell through your art blog. These include eBooks, printables and other downloadable files.
The good thing is that you only have to create those products once and then you can sell them over and over again!
- FREE eGuide to the Best Selling Printables
• Print-on-Demand
Selling print-on-demand products is another convenient way to make money with your art blog. You can offer your artwork on an endless range of products, including prints, t-shirts, mugs, phone cases, notebooks, stationery, and so on.
Good print-on-demand services take care of everything. Once someone buys your product, the PoD provider will manufacture the product, package and ship it—you don’t need to do anything!
Recommended PoD platforms for art products are:
• Online Courses
Once you have acquired advanced artistic skills in your field, you can help other artists to learn them. Online courses are typically videos, written tutorials, quizzes, and other assignments.
People wanting to learn a skill look for programs that provide them an organized learning structure, saving them the effort of searching up every single piece of information individually.
While courses are more time-consuming to create, they are as rewarding as eBooks and other digital products. After all, you only need to record a course once, and then you can sell it for an infinite number of times!
If you don’t want to host those courses on your WordPress site, you can upload them to platforms like Thinkific or Teachable.
• Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are usually reviews of a product or service that you write for a company. The company pays you for publishing that piece of content because it draws attention to their offerings.
Make sure to let your readers know at the beginning of the article that it’s a sponsored post. Also, make sure the company knows that you’ll provide an honest review that’s not influenceable by the company!
• Email Marketing
Email marketing can include sponsored newsletters (similar to sponsored blog posts) and affiliate marketing. Once you’ve built a large base of newsletter subscribers, you can start recommending art-related supplies, products and services using affiliate links.
Likewise, you can inform your art-interested readers about the latest tools of the trade in form of a sponsored email!
The prerequisite for sending marketing emails is having a base of subscribers. For that purpose, you should have at least one email opt-in on your website.
Here are some easy-to-install WordPress newsletter opt-in plugins that are free to use up to a 1,000 subscribers:
To incentivize website visitors to sign up for your email list, it’s a good idea to offer them something for free in return, a so-called lead magnet. To know what works, you can download the FREE eGuide to the Best Lead Magnet Ideas for Artists!
- FREE eGuide to the Best Lead Magnet Ideas for Artists
• Coaching & Consulting Services
To forge personal connections with your audience and share your valuable expertise, you can offer one-on-one coaching sessions over Zoom or Skype. If you have long-years of experience in some artistic skill, clients are willing to pay high rates to learn from you personally.
Offering coaching and consulting services is something you can already do when you start an art blog. It’s great to get to know your readers and find out what they are interested in the most. In return, you can blog about those topics and attract more visitors to your site!
∗∗∗
My last—and most important—tip for you on how to start an art blog is to actually get started. Stop procrastinating and stop worrying. Just get started creating content for your blog—even if you have no experience yet!
Blogging is a journey and you will see what works and what doesn’t along the way. Your blog will evolve just like you will evolve as an artist. That’s totally normal. You can still tweak things down the line, vary your content or add another sub-niche.
But, to make money with your art blog, you need to get started. So, start now—what are you waiting for! (ᴖ‿ᴖ)
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Thank you SO much for this Angie!
Really interesting read & something I have been pondering for awhile but seem a little overwhelming on where and how to start. But its given me the kick I need to go home after work today & start building up a proper blog as I’d love to be working for myself one day too.
Hi Shiva, that’s really great to hear! Blogging has so many benefits: allows to express yourself freely, speak about your art, rank your website in search engines and get your artwork seen. And much more. I wish you all the best on your blogging journey and keep going. You can make it! ♥︎
Kind of funny that this is the blog post I opened today! I’m currently working on my first post in over 3 months. I usually try to post at least weekly, but sometimes it’s difficult for me to blog. Family, friends, chores, etc. always seem to keep me busy. Thank you for the reminder to just get started and keep going!
Great that you are back to blogging, Paula! I think the most important thing about blogging is consistency. Even if you manage to “only” post one blog in a week or in two weeks–do that. Just keep going! ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
Thank you Angie, I need just this nudge today to write more content for my blog.
That’s great, Tracy, keep it up!
Thank you so much for reviewing the concept of blogging. I was concerned that social media rendered it obsolete.
I admit that with the surge of Instagram I had begun putting most of my attention there and had actually stopped blogging for over a year.
But I do see benefits to blogging. I’m going to give it a go again!
I believe blogging is so much more beneficial than social media. Social media sites change their algorithms sooo often, you never know how it’ll affect your account. Plus, my recent “Social Art Dilemma” on Instagram was a really great learning for me that showed me that we cannot rely on third-party platforms to post our art. We need a platform of our own!
It’s great that you are getting into blogging again. I think it’s one of the best things you can do as an artist!