How to make more money as an artist, designer or creative
You are a creative, adding colour, humour or insight to our lives and you have a talent unique to you. The time you have given to perfecting your craft, be it graphic design, painting, photography or whatever field you find yourself in, has been an investment on your part.
If you want to know how to make more money as an artist, designer or other creative, then you are in the right place. Here we’ll cover how you can earn more, protect your work and gain more control and who can use it and how.
Creatives need legal templates that match their needs. Here’s a list of solutions we’ve designed with creatives in mind:
In an era where creatives often find themselves undervalued, underpaid, or even undermined by developing technology, ensuring you are protected and being financially compensated for your work is more important than ever.
Unless you are fortunate enough to already have a platform with a large following, it can be hard to earn the sort of money you deserve for your talents. It can be tempting to sell work just to make some money, but without the right terms of purchase attached to the sale, other people are free to make money from your creations. Many times without you ever even knowing about it! For example, finding your design on t-shirts, being sold as a set of prints, or a range of other products online or around the world.
Here we'll explain how you can use what you've created to earn money over and over again with confidence.
The value of your skill in the age of AI
There is no doubt that AI tools like PicassoAI, MidJourney and countless others are becoming increasingly prevalent in a range of markets and are starting to threaten certain areas of the creative market. You may have already begun incorporating AI technologies into your work, perhaps you have been watching on in fear or maybe you are keen to investigate how you might use these technologies yourself.
Wherever you sit on the spectrum, and whether you incorporate AI into what you create or not, there is no better time to protect your work. Especially if you’re interested in being able to sell it over and over again.
The first step in how to make more money as an artist, designer, photographer or other creative is to ensure you always include a Copyright Licence Agreement. A legal agreement specifically designed for creatives like you to control how they use your work by having them agree to your terms at the point of purchase.
But don’t I automatically have copyright as the original creator?
In Australia, Copyright laws are designed to help creatives like yourself to protect your work and maintain control over how it is used. Yes, you as the creator have automatic copyright protection over the manifestation of your creative ideas. But, do you want the seller to own the work and use it as they please or are there certain parameters you want placed around its use?
You need to stay in the drivers seat and be clear on how you permit your work to be used, or not used. This is item by item. Some items you may wish to sell only once for personal use, others you may wish to make available for anyone in the world to buy and use in certain ways.
As an aside, it’s important to note here that copyright laws do not protect ideas, for example if you have an idea for a film but don’t get around to writing the screenplay. If someone else was to hear your idea and is able to put in the time, talent and tenacity to actually write the script and produce it, then you can not claim ownership over the idea. The manifestation of the idea is what our copyright laws protect.
While copyright laws automatically apply to your finished work, there are considerations that need to be given to how you want your work to be used, particularly if you are selling it.
Do you want the buyer to own the work and use it as they please or are there certain parameters you want placed around its use?
The t-shirt example mentioned above is a really common one online and unless you have something in place to protect yourself at the time you sell your work, the buyer has a fair amount of freedom in how they can use it. Copyright laws will not necessarily protect you in this situation but a Copyright Licencing Agreement can.
Putting in place a Copyright Licence Agreement at the point of sale, wherever you sell it, can mitigate issues like these and enable you to make additional money from your work, rather than someone else.
If I sell my work on large marketplaces I’m protected, right?
Many creatives who sell on bigger online marketplace platforms like Etsy, CreativeMarket or RedBubble and others, often fall into the trap of believing that the site’s terms and conditions paired with copyright laws will protect their work. This is not the case. In fact, it rarely is on the smaller marketplaces either.
These sites have terms and conditions that are largely focused on protecting them as the owner of the platform or marketplace. They do not necessarily cover the specific sales conditions of the products you sell. That’s up to you to provide. If you sell on any third-party platform, you need to have your own additional terms added in and in fact you will see places where you need to do that in your product listings on these sites.
Only that way can you have any avenue of recourse if someone uses your designs without the right permissions. Without providing clear and specific conditions of sale including how your artwork can be used, reproduced, whether it can be onsold etc, they are largely free to use your work and earn money from something you’ve created.
Ready to take control over how your work is used?
A Copyright Licencing Agreement can cover you for a range of sales agreements.
You can elect to sell your designs/images/artwork etc:
For commercial use
For personal use
With exclusive or non-exclusive rights
With an attribution clause; or
Other limitations determined by you.
There is no one correct answer as how you decide your work can be used depends on many factors. We will unpack each of these below. Whichever you decide is relevant to each sale (and yes, each sale you make can take on different conditions), a Copyright Licensing Agreement will make the conditions explicitly clear.
You may wish to offer some work for buyers to use for commercial and others for personal purposes. Here’s a brief rundown of how the two permission types are different.
Selling your works for commercial use
If you want to allow people to use some of your designs or allow them to incorporate your artwork into a design for another product for them to on-sell. A commercial use licence might be what you wish to allow people to have. You might specify that they can use a work to create greeting cards, wall prints, bedding, tshirts, mugs or in a piece of jewellery for example, for them to on-sell.
Importantly, you should always charge a higher price for this level of usability, as you are, in essence, providing the purchaser with a product to continue to make money from.
If you wish to offer your works for commercial use, you will require a customised Licencing Agreement from a lawyer who specialises in agreements of a commercial nature, unlike personal use where you can use our legal template and customise for each product.
Selling your works for personal use
You may wish to sell the exact same work for a lower price with a ‘Personal Use’ licence. This gives the purchaser the ability to use your creative works only for themselves. That could mean hanging a print of your work on their wall, using a graphic for their desktop background or incorporating it into a film that is only viewed by them in their home.
In this case, the buyer does not own rights to your work, may not share it and may not make money from it. A Copyright Licence Agreement of this kind protects you as the artist from having people view or consume your work without your permission and to retain the ability to continue to be the sole person to make money from your work.
You may allow them to use it on a website, in their social media, in a presentation or in a school project for example. They will not be able to on-sell it in any way.
What to know about exclusive and non-exclusive rights
If you elect to sell your work to one person and they are the only person able to purchase that design, image, song, artwork, then you may wish to offer what is legally known as ‘exclusive rights’. This means that you are not then able to sell the same product to another buyer. This might be the sort of agreement that occurs when a business owner engages a graphic designer to design a business logo that they will then become the copyright owner of, even though the graphic designer was the original creator of the work.
Non-exclusive rights mean that the purchaser can use the work but the creator maintains the owner of the copyright and can therefore continue to use or sell the work to others in a non-exclusive sale.
Attribution clauses
Regardless of whether you are selling your creative works for commercial or personal use, exclusive or non-exclusive use, one important element to consider is what attribution you are given when it is used. Sadly, most of us have probably been to one of those presentations or seminars where a person has used someone else’s art and they have not provided any credit. You and I know that they didn’t spend their preparation time creating those components themselves and yet do not acknowledge the original artist. Artist attribution is important to many of you so by including it in your Copyright Licencing Agreement, you can stipulate that requirement. It can also help artists be discovered by others so don’t overlook the value of having this clause in place.
Is a Copyright Licencing Agreement right for me?
In short, if you are a creative person selling your work then, yes. Online marketplaces are not in the business of protecting your rights. So, to ensure you can establish how you want your works to be used, credited and if you want to put any restrictions in place, then it is essential.
If you’ve been on the journey of how to make more money as an artist, designer or other creative for some time. This is the first step. The very next design, photograph, artwork or creation you sell or make available for sale, should include the terms of how they can use your work.
Whether you sell your works via your own website or others, this type of Agreement is the best way to ensure both you and the buyer are aware of the conditions of the purchase.
A Copyright Licencing Agreement can help speak for you in terms of making your conditions clear and saying what you need to communicate, which is that your time, your talent and your creativity are yours to use and earn from, as you require.
And the best part? You can create versions of this same template, specific to each of your works you make available for sale.
Something you create this year, could be the piece that sells well over and over again. You’ll want to make sure you can protect your work from being monetised by others or, alternatively, ensure you’re paid very well for their ability to do that.
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Five must-haves for your graphic design service agreement
If you want to offer a licence for buyers to use in certain circumstances, such as on social media or a website, in school projects or to print for themselves or for other personal uses (non-exclusively), then consider our template solution. You can create copies of this same template, and make them specific to each of your works you have available for sale. Take a look at our Copyright Licencing Agreement Template here.
If you are looking for a Commercial Use Licensing Agreement, you will require a customised licencing agreement. Reach out to our team for more information here.
In reading this article from Ready to Boss Legal (Article), you have not asked us to provide legal advice to you and this Article should not be used in substitution for legal advice. This Article contains information only and Ready to Boss Legal is providing general information only and not acting as your lawyer in providing this Article or other information to you.