How I made $500 selling paintings when I suck at painting🎨(ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SELLING)

so I'm definitely not a painter as you can see but how did I make 500 selling for paintings and I was even debating whether or not I should make this video because I feel like this is such a small side gig thing that I was trying to do but I know a lot of you are curious about how I started my creative business and this is one of the things I did so I do want to share it with you even though I feel like this is totally not the main thing I was doing it was just like a kind of like an experiment so in this video I'm going to talk about how you can sell paintings and more specifically I'm going to talk about my process for selling home paintings and how you can potentially turn this into a side business too and you don't have to be the best at painting like I'm not the best I'm just I don't know I don't think I'm even like average I think I'm like okay at painting I can get by so I have six tips for you the first tip is to start off by practicing and offering your paintings for free and for me I offered the paintings for free to Realtors who were in Vancouver which is where I live this is the exact message I sent to some Realtors and so I did three of these free paintings in total and after I did the paintings I asked these Realtors if they can share on their social media because then like usually Realtors have a lot of other Realtors following them so then the other Realtors will see the painting and maybe they are going to reach out and it is kind of what happened with one of them I think yeah so I did a free painting for one realtor and then I think another realtor saw my painting and then actually asked that Realtor if she can get in contact with me so that was actually really cool so the more exposure you get and also this is good just to practice if you're gonna practice anyways you might as well give it away and get some exposure right the second tip I have for you is to use a painting method that you feel comfortable with and where you think it can look decent so for me I am not the best at paint painting but I can like sketch decently so what I did is I would take the pictures of the paintings and then I would like um basically print them out and then I would trace a picture of the photo and then use my Micron pen and Micron is a pen where the ink just doesn't bleed it's like some archival I don't know the exact term but it just like if you paint over the black pen it doesn't bleed so Micron is the pen I used and then I would like do like a sketch of like the form of the house and then I would just like color it in with watercolor and my style of painting is kind of like it kind of looks I guess it's more like an urban paint Urban sketch I don't know yet I don't know if that's the right term but it's it's supposed to look kind of messy and not super duper neat messy is kind of like the look that I was going for the next tip I have for you has to do with your mindset so a lot of the times when you're just starting off doing art or starting something creative you might doubt that the thing you create actually has value so my tip for you is to really believe in what you create and know that it does have value and I know this is really hard to believe because I honestly thought my paintings were just kind of they were okay but then when I sent it to the Realtors they were all like wow this is amazing or like I showed some of my friends and they're like oh my God I didn't know you could paint yourself talented um so one thing you can do is to like show it to some people and most of the time like I feel like for the average person who isn't an artist or who is not a painter like your painting will actually be very good you're probably you probably think you are um not as good as you are but you are probably better than what you think you are my next tip for you is to start a social media page I recommend Instagram to start off or maybe Tick Tock to show off like what you do I guess it can also be just sharing on your personal Facebook page so this is kind of like you building a portfolio of everything you can do so for me I my main thing is calligraphy but I did share the paintings on my calligraphy account it is Art related so like it doesn't make sense for me to create like a painting Instagram um but yeah just like sharing it really really helps because when you share things other people can like re-share and it's kind of it's a great place just to have everything together where people can see like what you do and it's also another way for people to inquire about what you can do for them next tip I have for you is on pricing so I did three paintings for free and then when I actually got an inquiry to do like a paid painting I charged a hundred dollars for a eight by ten size painting and I felt like 100 I was very comfortable with a hundred dollars because I know that for realtors who are giving like a gift when somebody buys a home or sells a home like they'll usually buy some kind of gift I think a lot of Realtors give champagne so like a hundred dollars is kind of like a good value for a gift and you might be looking at like for example Etsy you might see some really cheap custom home paintings like people would do it people will do it for like twenty dollars and I know you might think oh well if people are offering it on Etsy for twenty dollars why would anyone pay a hundred dollars for it but the reason why people want you to do the painting is because like there could be a lot of factors you could be local it could be through a referral you could be in their Network maybe they just like you or they like your personality or they just like like your style so even though like there could be such a huge range for what people will price their paintings and even as low as twenty dollars charge what you feel is comfortable for you at the moment but I would if it's like a eight by ten painting I would probably start off at a hundred dollars because think about all the time you're gonna take to do the painting you need to maybe make a draft then you have to for me I have to do the Micron like black ink then I have to do the watercolor painting so it takes me like three hours to do the whole thing that's like thirty dollars an hour and it might even take longer I have to meet up with the client you have to prepare I don't know so like it's gonna take a couple of hours and if you're charging twenty dollars thirty dollars you're making like nothing it's like nothing for your time so that's why I started off at a hundred dollars it probably took me like three to four hours per painting um and I thought that was like a reasonable amount for the time that I was putting in I did do so I did four paintings that were paid and I increased the price with each painting so the four paintings I did the first one for a hundred dollars the second one I also did for a hundred dollars the third one I did was a hundred and sixty five dollars and the fourth one I did was a hundred eight