10 Best Ways To Make Money With Calligraphy (How To Be A Full Time Calligrapher!)
When I was just starting out about two years ago in my calligraphy business, I thought to myself, “Oh my gosh, there are so many ways to make money as a calligrapher!”
In today’s blog, I'll be sharing 10 ways to make money with calligraphy and which one you should choose!
I'll share these tips from the easiest ways to make money with calligraphy to some ways that might be a bit harder, as I understand that calligraphers come in at all sorts of abilities and strengths, ranging from beginner to more advanced.
1. Greeting Cards
The easiest way to get started in your calligraphy business is to sell greeting cards. Why? Everyone needs greeting cards! It's not a big purchase, and you can charge anywhere between $4 to $30 depending on its complexity and the supplies you use. There are so many different occasions to use greeting cards, such as holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, and graduations.
Simply put, people need to buy greeting cards all year round.
If you haven’t looked into my other blog post about greeting cards, I would definitely recommend that you check it out! I go into a lot more detail regarding how you should design your cards, how to price them, and how you can start selling them in this video here:
2. Custom Commissioned Work
This category includes everything from home decor, personalized gifts, personalized quotes, or any product where you can write a person’s name or anything they request. Doing custom commission work is great because you don’t need to put up an online shop. You can just take requests from family and friends as they come and start selling them to strangers later on.
3. Day of Wedding Services
I lumped a lot of things in this category such as place cards, table cards, escort cards, menus, wedding signage, welcome signs, table favours, mirror signs, and vow books, and anything else that someone may need on the day of their wedding.
Many calligraphers actually start their business doing wedding services because it’s a huge industry. If you're wondering, “Well, how can I find wedding clients?” You can start by building a portfolio with wedding-related items such as place cards and welcome signs and post them on your social media or website.
4. Wedding Invitations
I didn't include this in the wedding services category as wedding invitations by themselves is in a huge market of its own. Wedding invitations will require you to know some graphic design as you will most likely be making a digital design to print out in bulk. You probably won’t be creating these invitations by hand, unless the bride requests you to and is willing to pay extra for your time.
If you're starting out, you probably won’t be able to charge that much. You can start off small and post some samples on your portfolio, and brides can contact you when they need your services. As you gain more experience, you can always increase your prices.
5. Signage
This is a huge industry that is not just limited to weddings. You can create signage for business events, brand activations, restaurants, cafés, and menus. If you're just starting out with signage and don’t know what materials you should use, you can go on YouTube and find some tutorials.
For example, some materials you can use are paint pens that work on different types of surfaces such as glass, chalkboards, or plastic.
6. Services for Small Businesses
The sixth way to make money as a calligrapher is to offer services for small businesses in your city. A lot of the time, calligraphers don’t think that their customers can be other businesses. As we are consuming things as a consumer, we forget that we can offer things to local businesses.
These businesses include individual accountants, realtors, local shops, local cafés, local restaurants, home decor shops, insurance brokers, and high end hair salons. The great thing about selling your services to businesses is that they can justify their spending as a business expense, while the general public will probably ask themselves if this is the best use of their money.
7. Teach Workshops
Another way to make money with calligraphy is to teach workshops. When I was running my business as a side hustle, I started selling greeting cards and hosting workshops. The more workshops I hosted, the more I realized that I could turn this into a full time career.
With workshops, you get to meet people from your city, make new friends, and even get yourself a few more followers on Instagram!
You can set the event, sell tickets, and simply find a system that works for you. If you're looking for ways to make your business more interactive and meet new people – then workshops are perfect for you!
Workshops are a great way for people to come to trust you and later on, they may invest in some of your business' other services or products. This is a way you can grow your business exponentially and help you generate a steady income if you are hosting a number of workshops per month.
With the pandemic going on, I've been hosting all my workshops on Zoom. You don’t have to wait until the pandemic ends to start teaching people. You can start by inviting some of your friends to a Zoom call and branch out from there.
When you teach calligraphy online, your whole market is the entire world, while teaching in-person limits you to people in your city.
8. On-Site Calligraphy
You've probably seen those really nice photos of calligraphers doing on-site or live calligraphy for big name brands or luxury stores. It’s super cool and makes you look pretty legit as a calligrapher. The first thing you should do, if you're looking to do onsite calligraphy, is creating a website for yourself.
It's really helpful for you to have a website because a lot of companies won’t typically look through Instagram to find someone to do calligraphy on-site. The first thing they're going to do is type “Vancouver Calligrapher” in Google and go from there. Not only is it important for you to have a website, you must also have good SEO.
9. Make Products With A Cutting Machine
The ninth way to make money as a calligrapher is to make products with a cutting machine. This requires you to do digital calligraphy, but then, you can print out a lot of different things and customize them to your customer’s requests.
You can also start your own shop with the products you make on a website or Etsy. Having a printing or cutting machine helps to really systemize your whole business. A lot of people who have a Cricut machine make products such as decals or vinyls they can place on items such as cups or bags.
Once you make an investment into this kind of machine, you can do a whole lot! Although handmade items are always really nice, having a product that is polished and refined can take your calligraphy business up a notch!
10. Digital Calligraphy
The final way you can make money with calligraphy is through digital lettering. When I say digital calligraphy, I am lumping a whole lot of services together such as greeting cards, wedding invitations, and graphics. You can also do a whole lot in the world of graphic design and art licensing.
Art licensing is when a company pays you to license your art on different products. When you see a cup or journal that has calligraphy on it, that’s because a big name company hired a calligrapher to license their design to them so that they are able to print a large amount of copies.
These are 10 ways for a calligrapher to make money. While there are other ways, these are just some of the most common ones.
If you're a little overwhelmed with the amount of ideas you can try, don’t worry! I understand how you feel and I know that you could do several of those things.
What I've done and what I've told my clients to do is to pick 1 or 2 of these ways to start off with and build a system that works best for you. Once you get comfortable, you can try out something else.
If you’re looking for more guidance on how to start a calligraphy business, check out my 6,000+ word article How To Build a Calligraphy Business from Scratch, or my other blog post that outlines 6 Easy Ways to Start Making Money with Calligraphy.
If you found this helpful, you’re going to find a lot more resources in my free Facebook group for calligraphers, where I’ve done more than 15 trainings on topics related to growing a calligraphy business. Join today and get these 15 free in-depth trainings!
I’d love to hear what you thought about this blog post in the comments! Was it helpful? Do you have any questions?