In the first part of our creator interview with Cristina Gómez, she talked about how her mental health struggles made her become a freelance illustrator, and how she overcame her insecurities in the beginning and is now happy to work on both private commissions and sponsorship content.
In this second part of the interview, she digs into the reality of social media and managing income channels, how she fights self-doubt as an artist, and how she tries to find balance in her life, all while accepting the natural cycle of failure and learning, and trying to stay true to herself.
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On juggling social media and income channels, and the importance of staying authentic along the way
Petra: You offer coaching, you have the shop, the Domestika course, you offer workshops, just to mention a few. How did the ideas for these come to you?
Cristina: For example, I decided to start coaching because of Patreon. My patrons were looking for feedback from me. It’s a smaller community where I feel like I have the confidence to share my knowledge and tips, and eventually, I decided to open this up and create a coaching product that I offer to people outside Patreon. So now, you don’t need to be my patron to get a coaching session from me, show me your drawing and get feedback for it. As for the Domestika course, for instance, they contacted me to do the course.
Petra: And which one of these is the most popular and financially successful for you?
Cristina: Right now, I think it’s the client work, the commissions, and the illustrations I’m doing for publishers. Following that, Patreon, and the workshops. The coaching is very sporadic, but I like doing it and I can do it because I have other sources of income to keep me balanced financially.
Petra: It seems like a good idea to develop more channels from a financial perspective then, at least once you have the experience, the time, energy, and all the needed resources to manage them.
Cristina:
I like to say an illustrator must have an active and passive income.
For example, make brushes, sell digital prints, and sell digital products. Do something that you only need to do once and keep receiving money for it continuously. In my case, I have some brush sets that I sell that don’t make me rich but I get some extra money from it each month. In case I don’t have that many commissions coming in from Instagram, let’s say, I can still pay the bills thanks to my other products.
Petra: Do you have a strategy for your product offering to have that financial balance, too?
Cristina: At the beginning, I didn’t have a strategy. But after joining the Domestika community, for instance, I learned more about the business side of illustration and how I can apply marketing techniques for commissions, like cross-selling and upscaling. So now if you want, you can have an illustration framed which brings in extra money for me from the same commission.
Petra: When it comes to pricing, do you think that you have higher or lower prices than other illustrators?
Cristina: I’m not very expensive compared to others, I think. I feel comfortable with my pricing right now, and when I feel comfortable, I might raise my prices again.
Petra: I think that must be key, feeling comfortable with the pricing that you have, because otherwise, you can’t sell yourself that confidently and authentically.
Cristina: Exactly.
Petra: Do you do financial planning or reviews?
Cristina: I look back every month and see how this last month has been going in my Excel sheet. I look at all the income I receive channel by channel, my Gumroad page, my Patreon, client work, and so on, and I look at which ones seem to work or what I need to put more effort into. If my brushes haven’t been selling well at that moment, I start thinking of creating a new brush pack to refresh my offering or make a bundle perhaps from the existing ones, and resell the same thing packaged differently. Based on these observations, I plan the next month’s strategy.
Petra: How much time do you spend on each of these channels and creating content for them?
Cristina: I don’t track the time but a lot of hours a day. I sit down at the desk at 8am, then have a very quick lunch later, and then keep working until 8pm. I learned to think ahead and to try to be smart when working and doing many things at the same time. I know I need to record most of my drawing processes because they may be necessary for a piece of content for a certain platform later, whether that’s Patreon or YouTube. Of course, with video recording comes also the editing part. Then writing and scheduling social media posts. It’s a lot of work, it’s insane.
Petra: Where do you have the most active and engaged followers and community, and do you think that would be the platform that you would recommend for other visual artists and illustrators to definitely have and start there?
Cristina: In my case, Instagram is the most active platform that I have. But I’m not sure if I would recommend it to new people if I have to be honest. Social media has changed a lot. Recently, I had less time to post on Instagram and the algorithm clearly punishes me for it. I lose followers every day. So, like we said, for somebody who is only starting out, it’s okay to pick one channel as a focus point, but try to be present on other channels as soon as possible, too, because if one of them fails or is flopping at the moment, they will still have followers somewhere else, too. Just pay attention to the fact that the different channels work differently.
Petra: Is it hard to keep up with platform trends for you?
Cristina: I mainly discover new features because I see other people using them, and I follow the creators’ account on Instagram. But I don’t have the time to check Instagram as often as I used to, so I miss a lot of things.
Petra: Do you have channels that you tried, but completely abandoned because it didn’t work?
Cristina: Yes, I completely abandoned tweeting. I tried it but didn’t stick with it. I also stopped doing live streams but I’m currently thinking that I should do them again. We’ll see.
Petra: Previously you mentioned Gumroad which is popular among creators. How does that work out for you?
Cristina: I make very good sales every time I launch something there but it’s not exactly a constant stream of income even though I have sales there every month. On Gumroad, you need to upload another product or relaunch something for the sales to go up again.
Petra: Is it sort of like a channel for passive income then?
Cristina: Exactly. I think that most of my passive income comes from Gumroad right now.
Petra: Is there any other hardware or software that you use that helps your business significantly?
Cristina: For me, Canva is the Bible of the tools to do everything. I can edit videos and create posts and I even design my invoices there. I’m a subscriber now. For the low price you pay, it’s really worth it.
Petra: Are there any special metrics that you track for your business?
Cristina: I use Metricool’s free plan where you can link all your platforms from your social media profiles to your website, and you can see a lot of statistics about their performance. In a glimpse, you can see how many followers you have, how many you lose over a certain period, how many likes your videos receive, and how many people visit your website. It’s really interesting to have everything on the same page and see how things are going. I’m not too good at interpreting the numbers, but at least I can see which things seem to be failing, and what I have to pay attention to.
Petra: What would be the number one marketing or promotion tip or advice that you would give someone who works in illustration?
Cristina:
I think that the best promotion you can do is to be yourself, and show who you are because people can resonate with you.
For example, I used to be a graphic designer but decided to become an illustrator because of my mental health. People can resonate with that. They will probably start following your work and connect with you in some ways. If you are a false person, people will reject you.
If I started marketing myself as a superstar illustrator with a big office and lots of projects and talking about making huge amounts of money every month, it would be difficult to resonate with me.
Besides this, of course, do the usual, try and post every day, stay in the community, share your experiences, be open, and be kind.
Petra: What about sales? Any sales tip?
Cristina: First, don’t have very high expectations. It happened to me before many times. For instance, you can have high expectations about your shop launch, then comes the day and you only have one or two sales, and then you decide that you don’t want to sell anymore. But that’s not the point.
To have success, you have to try a lot of times until you find the product that works for you and the audience you can connect with.
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On the art of illustration, staying motivated, battling self-doubt, and balancing life
Petra: What is your process of illustration? Where do you start and can you describe that moment where you feel like, okay, now I’m finished, and this is ready?
Cristina: Well, this is the hardest question for an artist. When is your art finished? I would say never. Probably the only thing that makes me finish a drawing is when I look at the time and see that, oh my God, I have been here for three hours and I have to leave it now as it is, otherwise, it becomes a never-ending story. The creation process and the sharing of the work have also changed. I don’t spend as much time on something I put on Instagram versus a lot more on something that I want to sell. I talked to other artists as well and they have realized the same. We have to simplify the processes and optimize.
Petra: What does a typical day look like for you? Do you have any routines?
Cristina: It’s all based on whether I feel like drawing that day or not. If I don’t, I will do administration or organize posts for social media, and any other task that doesn’t demand creativity. This way, my daily routines depend on how I’m feeling that day.
Petra: Do you have any other rule for prioritizing your tasks?
Cristina: Due dates make me prioritize, of course, but for the rest, I’ll just organize the tasks as I go. I’m not so good at organizing and time management, so I’m not the best person to give any advice here.
Petra: But it sounds to me that you do some for the day then, even if it’s based on a feeling, and long-term ones too, like deciding to focus more on a certain product or even a channel, as you mentioned.
Cristina: Yes. For example, at some point, I decided that I wanted to focus more on YouTube because Instagram was working very poorly for me. So I kept Instagram but didn’t put too much energy there, and instead, I tried to monetize my YouTube channel. As I mentioned, I want to do more live streams there, too and I’ll see if those work well or not.
Petra: When you say that Instagram hasn’t been working that well, do you mean from a financial perspective, or is it more about the follower count or the engagement, or both?
Cristina: I mean the system of how the income arrives to me. Instagram used to be the door to everything. People found me, connected and resonated with me, bought something from me, or joined my Patreon. But at the moment, people simply don’t land on my Instagram profile, and I haven’t had too many new followers for a long time now, and I’m losing the existing ones, too. This also means that I don’t have new people joining my Patreon, either, or not as many as before. I can see that the fewer followers and less engagement on Instagram affect the rest of the system. This is when you actually have to act like a business owner and figure out how to have people find your other platforms, like your website. This is where you’re reminded that you have to turn your hobby into a business.
Petra: Do you do anything special to keep your work-life balance?
Cristina: Well, I’m very, very bad at this.
Work can absorb me because I really love what I do. Sometimes I don’t know when to stop. I can keep drawing, drawing, and drawing, then it’s suddenly midnight. I’m not very good at balancing but I try.
For instance, I’ve recently started studying at a college, and I had to find the time to study. So I grabbed my calendar and blocked hours for my work and for studying, even when I had to eat. Otherwise, I can’t find the time and it becomes a very bad circle of working and sleeping, working and sleeping.
Petra: How do you stay motivated during a workday, and where do you get inspiration from?
Cristina: Oh, yes, you can lose motivation super fast… What I do, for example, is that when I wake up, normally I stay in bed for 15-30 minutes and scroll through Instagram to see the news and what people have been sharing. FOMO strikes me every morning because I have been sleeping for eight hours and I have lost track of what’s been happening. But the main point is that I’m there to watch other people’s passion and motivation which is always contagious and makes me go: ‘Oh, okay, I’m going to wake up, I’m going to draw, I’m going to do this and that…’. Or I see someone sharing their print, so it makes me think, I’m going to work on a print today. I often get my motivation from others on Instagram this way. During the day, I also watch a lot of YouTube videos of people creating. For instance, Disney has a channel where their artists explain how they work, and this is also the kind of thing that keeps me motivated.
Petra: Have you ever had a challenge that affected your professional life and how did you overcome it?
Cristina: For some projects, my first feeling is that I can’t do it because it’s super overwhelming or it’s something new that I didn’t do before like when I had to do character design for a card game. I tend to have this fear of not being able to do the task or doing it wrong because I’m very much a perfectionist, and it’s a bad thing. After the first thought though I think, ‘Okay, they asked you to do this because they have faith that you can do this and they like your work’. Then I just take little steps and break the process down and make it more adjustable for the coming weeks when I am going to work on it.
Self-doubt is something that an artist deals with every day. I have days when I don’t know how to draw and I don’t know why. I can draw anything that day and it’s going to look bad. On these occasions, it’s not so much about feeling that I’m a bad illustrator but feeling that I’m not evolving, I’m not growing as an artist, that I’m getting behind and everyone else is doing better than me.
I usually watch a tutorial, learn something new, and just find something to keep me inspired. It’s super easy to get lost, you know, and lose your confidence. It’s especially tricky with social media. People sometimes think that what they do is not good enough because it wasn’t successful on Instagram when that’s not the truth.
Petra: How do you feel when something doesn’t work for you?
Cristina: I don’t like to be negative. What I try to do is analyze the situation and ask why is this not working. If I simply accept that this didn’t work, close this episode of my life, and move on, I won’t learn anything. You need to learn from your mistakes. Never get down with failure. Failure is something you have to deal with and you have to know how to deal with it. You can’t stop, you have to continue trying.
Petra: Looking at it from the other side, have you had an experience where a customer’s positive feedback had an impact on your journey as a creator and your business?
Cristina: This happens to me every single day in some way. Right now, I have my Domestika course, and people leaving comments on it letting me know that they love the course, how I teach, and what they’re learning there. Or, the first time I opened my webshop, focusing on prints and stickers, I had some sales and I loved seeing people getting the packages.
Because when you create something that you really love and you can spread this love in any way, it makes you feel so happy. You have to remember these things especially when things are not working out or you’re feeling a little bit down. This is value. I don’t care if Instagram doesn’t show my work to people. This is value.
Petra: Finally, a special TC’D question for all creators we interview. How would you describe a creator?
Cristina: I think that a creator is a very underrated person. A creator has to do a lot of work when most people only see the end result or the person itself online, which is something to keep in mind. We, creators, create because we want to share something with the world, we like to inspire people and remind those who are just starting their journey that they are not alone. We are not only artists but we share a part of ourselves with our creations.
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Featured image by Cristina Gómez
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