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Be a Successful Professional Miniature Painter For Only $5

By Hellfire Hobbies | February 17th, 2017 | Categories: Miniature Wargaming Editorials

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Everybody is getting in commission painting these days, and you need an edge if you want to succeed. Enter this $5 guide to earning a living doing it right!

It’s true, everybody is getting in commission painting these days. Your mom, at least 2 gamers in every store, even Jacques, that weird French dude with the beret and flimsy mustache.

Maybe you want to step in the game yourself.

Here’s a preview of my soon to be best seller on Amazon:

How to Become a Successful Professional Miniature Painter

The good thing about everybody trying to become a commission painter is that most of them are doing it badly. But not you, no-uh, no sir. Because here are 3 of the biggest pitfalls painters fall for.

3- Knowing your limits.

This is hard, because it requires brutal honesty.  It requires you to admit to someone you can’t do something and worst of all, admitting it to yourself.

If you’ve never painted an army of your own, don’t assume you can do it for someone else.  If you’ve never actually placed in a painting competition, don’t assume you can paint award quality models.  These are 2 extreme opposites, and there’s a lot of stuff in between you may or may not be able to do.

Not knowing how, or learning how is perfectly fine, you can’t expect to master everything.  Lying about it, to yourself or to customer, is a highway towards a brick road.  Lying to customers lead to a bad reputation, clients never returning and lying to yourself leads you to overcharge for models or missing out opportunities that are more suited towards the skills you currently have.  Don’t use this as an excuse to stop improving.

Brutal honesty is where success is at.

trucker robbieb

2- Trying to become a YouTube star.

Someone started spreading the word that miniature painters on YouTube could get filthy rich.  Oh the humanity!  You trade your dream job of painting models in your underwear and being your own boss for making YouTube videos and hoping that ad sense doesn’t change their policies on you.  The only way to make money off YouTube is publish more videos, because they will all pay you 0.002 cents per view or less. YouTube is a great way to bring clients to your painting shop.  Painting models to bring people to your YouTube account is a serious waste of time.

1- I don’t do this for the money.

Well, tough luck, because you know who works for money?  The Landlord, the cable company, the grocery store, they all work for money, so you kinda need it in your life.

As much as it’s art, it is your job. And getting a paycheck is how you make a living. Loving what you do and working in your passion field is not an excuse to not get paid or make decent living. Most chefs I know love to cook and love food. They also love getting their money every month. I know a lot of trainers that love to work out, they won’t train you for free just because they love it.

This article is part of a much larger and much more in depth book by yours truly.

max dubois hellfire painting

It goes into much more detail (and seriousness) and if you enjoy this article which overviews some part of the reason people fail,  I hope you buy it in triplicate from amazon here.  The book not only covers the pitfalls of commission painting, but more importantly methods which you can take to be successful from day one.

How to Become a Successful Professional Miniature Painter

About the Author: Hellfire Hobbies

Max Dubois is a hobby enthusiast from Quebec. Max produces a lot of hobby ressources that you can find on his own blog as well as well as on Spikey Bits. He is always ready to talk shop with other enthusiasts, whether it's about, painting, playing or drinking, no matter your skill level in either those activities. You can also find some of his work on amazon kindle, where he sells hobby e-books for a dollar!