83 upvotes, 4 direct replies (showing 4)
View submission: I'm considering doing NSFW (furry?) art for money. Tips?
OK, first piece of advice, simply only make what you are comfortable with. I'd even go as far as to say (if this is stuff you yourself are also into, which helps the quality of your porn btw) if you wouldn't jerk off to it, don't accept requests to draw it. This will make life easier for you.
And more importantly (again, because your work makes me think that you work at a higher level) if you ever want to do industry work of any kind in the future, even if you're not sure yet, work under an alt and do not link any of you main accounts to it.
While we all know now that the likes of Rebecca Sugar, Chris Sanders, Osama Tezuka, and too many more to count have done porn before, during, and after their tenures with their respective big-companies, when your getting your foot in the door for something like that, especially in 2020, they will check EVERYTHING. It's way easier to deal with once you've already proved your value and are doing work with these companies. Hide your shit.
Now, with that being said, here's how your gonna make money.
First thing you're gonna wanna do is, of course, make a few pieces of example work. Again, create situations that are erotic to you (or at least that are comfortable with you, as you may not necessarily be into furry porn but just wanna make bank).
Then, you wanna figure out a unique sounding alt that will rank easily on Google, particularly on Google Images (put your alt and tags in the metadata of all the art you make before it even gets uploaded anywhere, this will save you and porn-seekers some headache later). Even if your not using an alt, quiet frankly, I think Sony-Shock simply won't rank you very well for somewhat obvious reasons. Be creative. Hell, even using a username generator and searching to see if it comes up frequently is a good idea (the less frequent the better, obvi.)
Point being, be easy to find. When people wanna jerk off, there not really in the mood to become Sherlock (unless they absolutely adore your work, but more on that in a while, right now where getting you started).
As of January 2020, Twitter and Rule34 and gonna be your best fucking friends. Get really comfortable with using Twitter, and make sure you upload and tag everything you make to Rule34 as soon as it's ready to post.
You don't have to be Jack Dorsey, btw. I recommend starting here and taking notes.
Basically, be easy to find on twitter, follow other porn artists and engage with them (genuinely, only follow those who you admire and enjoy and you'll eventually attract their audience), tag your posts (especially at first, as ugly as hashtags are, they're there for a reason), and link them to your preferred method of crowdfund (more on that shortly). Make sure you upload high-image quality.
You like making animated gifs? Even fucking better. People love that shit. If you're up for it, have at least a gif for like, every 5 or 6 still images to keep your porn log interesting for your audience. Further down the line, you can even commission an animator to animate gifs out of a short storyboard of your stills that you can resell on your preferred site (don't worry about all that in the beginning, though).
You can still totally thrive with just still artworks, though, if you don't do gifs or have no interest in doing them (if you are interested but never have, now is a great time to start experimenting).
Pin your commission rates uptop. Anywhere you post your porn, be it Pornhub, Imgur, Rule34, Reddit, somehow put your twitter handle in the image and link somewhere in or below your posts back to your twitter.
Now that you got your initial web presence set up (sans Patreon or whatever you'll use, we're almost there I promise), start by doing just a few discount or pro-bono porn commissions for furries with a lot of followers (just DM them and offer; your in a nice spot because I can tell you that if there's two things that people will almost never turn down for free/cheap, it's food and porn). For you, assuming 1% of your audience will buy a full out commission, your goal here is to try to reach at least 10,000 of someone else's followers so that 1000 follow you, and 10 of those pay you for a commission. Try to give free/cheap porn to accounts with 10k followers or more. Be bold and aim high.
Now that you've done a little free grunt work, time to get paid.
Be easy to contact, and make sure you always get a retainer of at least 40% upfront before you do a damn thing. This will dissuade people from fucking you over. Be available to contact on Twitter, Insta, and FurAffinity (where you can use the same methods as above to sell commissions btw, with the exception that Instagram doesn't like full on porn, so you have to tease a bit on there instead and link back to your twitter/patreon).
Put your commission rates out and clear for all to see to make ordering them that much easier.
Once you get that first 1% to buy from you, it'll be easier. Keep building up with hustle and eventually people will come to you. The first sales are the hardest.
Now, we get to Patreon. Not all of your followers/potentials can pay for a full on commission, and also, you may just wanna draw the porn and stuff you feel like drawing. Maybe said audience wants original content from your brain. This is where Patreon and its' tiers come in super handy.
Have a $1, $5, $10, and $20 tiers, each offering a bit more.
If you have 100 patreons, and 50% give a buck, 25% give two, 13% give $10, and 12% give $20, that's an additional $470 an month in your pocket on top of commissions (that pays rent in a lot of towns in my state).
Link this Patreon everywhere, including in your images under your twitter handle. If you grind a little and make good porn, I know you can get those first 10 , and if you can get that first 10 sales, I'm very confident you can make a decent living in the longrun from this.
In conclusion, be accessible, put your porn anywhere it's welcomed, and be easy to pay/request.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to PM me. I hope this wasn't all too incoherent, as I'm a bit tired today.
Good luck out there Sony.
Comment by Mxxnlxghtxwl at 20/01/2020 at 10:10 UTC
26 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'm not interested in doing furry art myself but i thank you so much for your detailed explanation, it helps understanding the business concept a lot and is applicable on other art as well. thanks for putting your time in this explanation, i appreciate it!
Comment by Sony-Shock at 20/01/2020 at 18:15 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Wow! You sounded so relaxed about writing the answer later than I expected something useful, but smaller. This blows me away! I went straight into saving it. Thank you very, very much! It will also help with my regular account even.
Just a minor thing because it makes me a little salty, just let me put it out of my system: 'Sony-Shock' is pretty simple to find, I'll have you know! It does get a bit mixed with Play Staton controllers, but Google brings me up!
Yet again, that's probably due to having 15 years of background on the internet, but it's there...!
But again, that's just a minor thing I wanted to get out of my chest. I know exactly the flaws of the name~ I am likely going to use a whole new pseudonym which is a completely made up set of words (and they roll off the rongue very well too).
Comment by tocilog at 20/01/2020 at 16:12 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Have you tried websites like Fiverr? What do you think of it?
Comment by ForteAD at 09/10/2022 at 20:40 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This has been super helpful. Thanks so much for such a chill, detailed, and helpful post ^^