I have blogged about using social media (especially instagram) to advertise your skills, talents, and create portfolio.  They are also easy ways to suss out what is marketable and what isn’t.  But what would be the next step once you have some artistic validation of your work, whether its crafts, art pieces, or photography?  Have you considered actually monetizing some of your work with minimum effort?

Fiverr is a great app that takes on a lot of service based skills, especially coding, but equally important graphic skills such as logo creation, marketing posters, or designing banners and getting paid for them in return.  Another big and trendy skill set is professional writing and you can use Fiverr for that.  You can offer your services to right specific ebook, blogs, or support drop shipping owners by creating a range of product descriptions.  This brings me to the next online tool.

Writers.work.com is a tool and a resource to get a range of writing jobs from editing to reviewing reports for various companies and industries.  You can choose remote wok or part time or even based on hourly rates (they also offer jobs that pay by the word).  Obviously you will have to have some experience for some of these, and much like any other job they will want to see sample work or a portfolio before they hire you – but there are the odd postings that will give you a good try as a new writer in the industry (obviously for less pay until you build your portfolio).

You can use online stores to showcase your talent is another great option.  Selling prints, photos, or handicrafts through Etsy or an online store like shopify can really help monetize your work and help you create a great fan base.  This along with social media ads to attract them to your online business and to create a name brand for yourself will go a long way to establishing you as a true marketable artist or creator.  Don’t have expectations of immediate riches though, this is the long haul type of effort – and make take a year or more to get any consistent interest let alone profits.  So make sure you do it for fun to start, with good effort, so that you are not completely frustrated if it takes too long.

In the end, as long as you have confidence in your creative work and skills, that is truly what matters.  That authenticity and stubbornness will yield results eventually – the more you believe in yourself the more likely that is at some point.