If you have an art or creative business, it is important to track certain metrics to better understand how your business is doing. Knowing the numbers can give you an idea of where to improve and where to focus your energy on. Below are three metrics I track as an illustrator each month:

Expenditures and Revenue to Track Sales
Social Media and Organic Traffic to Track Audience Growth
Little and Big Highlights

If you see your art or creative ventures as a hobby, then tracking these metrics aren’t super important. However, if your art is a business or is transitioning from a hobby to a business, it is essential to track metrics, particularly expenditures and revenue, to see if you are making a profit or not.

The numbers can give you a clear picture of how much you actually spend on your products and how much you actually gain, rather than a ball park number. Also, looking at each month as a whole, including the work and opportunities you get, can give you an idea of where you are spending your effort and time. This way, you have real answers to questions like why you don’t feel like you aren’t making a profit or why you feel stretched thin every month.

As a disclaimer, every art and creative business is different - this has been my way of tracking metrics as an illustrator. You can apply some of these metrics to your business however you like. I am simply showing you my way, but feel free to use or adjust to help fit into your own business. Do your own research to see what other methods are out there as well.

Let’s dive in!

Expenditures and Revenue To Track Sales

Out of the three metrics I will talk about, tracking your expenditures and revenue will be the most important one in your art business. What this means is tracking EVERY DOLLAR AMOUNT that you spend on in your business and tracking everything you make on a monthly basis. Examples include:

Expenditures

Adobe Creative Cloud subscription
Annual website fee
Packaging material (e.g. envelopes, plastic wrap, shipping labels)
Product materials (e.g. stickers and cards)
Vendor booth (e.g. table runner, tablecloth, stands)

Revenue

Sales from market events, website, Etsy, etc.
Art commissions or projects
Affiliate marketing

When starting an art business, expenses will likely be high upfront since you will need to spend a small chunk to build inventory, products, booth setup, website, etc. Once you have things in place in the beginning, it is important to make decisions that can potentially lead to sales next. This means actively looking for opportunities to become a vendor, sharing your art commission services, increasing organic search traffic to your shop, or reaching out to potential clients.

I think one of the biggest mistake we make is our inherent grind to make new products every season and not focusing on doing things that will make you money. As a creative myself, I totally get it! We enjoy the creative process very much and like to stay in the habit of simply creating things we and our audience enjoys. But if your art is a business, the reality is that more time will be needed to spend on marketing and selling your products and/or services - this is how it will become a business and not a hobby anymore.

After the initial start-up fees and you see the numbers, you can then get a general sense of expenses that will incur every month. Tracking the expenditure numbers can prepare you on how much you need to make up each month before you can even make a profit.

Also, this does not count any annual subscription fees (e.g. website subscription), P.O. box fee, and taxes. It is key to keep note of when and how much these fees are so you can prepare for them and are not blindsided by any unexpected payments. This way, at the end of the year, you can get an idea of total expenditures needed for your art business.

There are ways to help reduce expenditure costs. One way is buy products and/or packaging in bulk from a direct manufacturing company and not directly from websites like Amazon. Also, keep each material as low as possible, ideally as low as $0.05 USD or less per piece. For example, if you sold one sticker on Etsy, a breakdown of the entire costs could be:

Sticker = $0.75 cents
Thank you card = $0.20
Flat envelope = $1.75
Logo sticker = $0.25
Etsy Shipping label = $4.00

…this means your total expense might be $6.95! This means you will lose over $4.00 if you sold ONE sticker on Etsy, not accounting for Etsy’s transaction and processing fees. This is why it is important to buy in bulk and each material as low as possible, so you can get some profit out of any online transaction. A deep review of your expenditures of your products can give you a picture of where you can lower your costs to maximize your returns.

A couple of more ideas to help reduce costs:

Instead of a logo sticker, consider buying a custom stamp so you pay one whole amount upfront and use a stamp for a long time
Keep track of discounts and sales that occur from the materials/inventory you buy every year. Businesses tend to have consistent sale times, so you know exactly when to re-order when they do!

Along with tracking your expenses, be sure to track any revenue coming in. If there is no or little revenue coming in, then that means more effort and focus is needed to bring in sales. As the numbers between expenditures and revenue becomes more balanced, then you are on track to gaining monthly profits. The idea is that your revenue sources will expand as you grow your art business, leading you to more steady income coming into your art business.

In an essence, the expenditures and revenue numbers are available to you, but may currently be in a mixed bag of information (e.g. credit card statements and Etsy monthly statements). As any business owner, it is important to collect and review them holistically, whether that be you or an accountant you hire.

Knowing the real numbers can give you a clear picture of where you are financially in your business. It can also be powerful to know what the actual numbers are for your own sake and mentality. It not only can give you peace of mind, but also gives you control of where and how to take your business. Even if the numbers are negative, you can then plan on focusing your efforts into making money and sales.

Social Media and Organic Traffic Growth

Social Media Following and Stats

A secondary metric I like to track is my growth online: social media and organic website traffic. Tracking follower and subscriber count every month across all your social media platforms is simple way to see the growth in your audience. While there will be ups and downs with these numbers (and, honestly, not my favorite numbers to track), it helps to see your overall growth in your social media from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

I know that it is important to track social media follower and subscriber count, but what I have discovered what’s more important is to positively impact my audience in person or through my content online. Building relationships with people, from customers to other fellow artists, has been important to both my growth and sales. The networking and referral opportunities can lead to new, exciting art projects and jobs. The hope is that you become the go-to person for opportunities and that they keep coming back to you for more!

In terms of online content, if you show up consistently and provide value, whether it’s educational or entertainment, then you will generally grow your social media following.

On top of tracking your social media following, allocate time to review your social media stats too to determine if they are positive or negative. Now, many things affect the data and are a lot of the times not in your control, but I think it’s good to know where you stand because this will affect your content’s performance. If your stats are leaning towards to more negative values, then you may consider increasing your Instagram reel and post count for a couple of weeks. Then, as they become more positive, you can focus on other things.

With regards to your social media following and stats, it is up to you how you want to proceed. If you want to focus on increasing your following, then have a strategy in place to make valuable content for your audience. It will be even better if they can lead to more sales or email subscribers. If you want to solely focus on making sales and not too much on increasing your social media following, then that is ok too. If you have time to balance both, then great!

Whether you do one thing or the other or both, just know that results can happen based on how much effort you put into something. The caveat with this is that with social media, a huge following is not always guaranteed even if you post 4-6 times a week. Though, I think the practice of posting regularly and making content can improve your skills in becoming more efficient with filming and editing. So, while you may not get a huge following after consistently posting online, you will have an improved content creation process, which can be very useful in the long run for your art business.

Organic Traffic Growth

While organic website traffic isn’t a huge must in an art business, I think it can help lead to unique opportunities and sales, which is why I have been tracking this metric ever since I started ChubCatArt in 2020. On top of having a presence in your local community, I think it is important for people on the Internet to have the capability to find you, your work, and your products/services online.

Creating that opportunity for a complete stranger, whether that be a potential customer or client, to find you across the nation or globe using a search engine is a cost-effective way to market your art business. Search engines drive over 60% of all website traffic. This is not a complete surprise, since over 5 billion searches are performed every day!

Because I want a piece of that pie, I do take organic online traffic somewhat seriously and occasionally find little ways to optimize my SEO (search engine optimization) traffic to my website. I am not a SEO expert by any means, but I have several strategies to help keep my website’s Google search ranking in the top 25 and to generally have positive visits, click rates, and impressions:

Have 3-4 freebies in place on your website that can help someone with a specific struggle or a gap in a niche. Be sure that you have a strategy that has allowed you to overcome this struggle or can help fill in a gap. It also helps if you also have a template or list in your download. This will not only lead to more email subscribers, but help keep your website “clickable” and let the search engine know that your site is valuable and trustworthy.
Have a Pinterest business account with both videos and posts with links that lead to your websites (e.g. blog or shop). This is one of the main drivers to my website or Etsy shop!
Update your website every few weeks. This can be as simple as adding a photo or updating a sentence on a page. It can also be in the form of a blog post for my ambitious writers out there. This allows your website to rank higher because someone is regularly updating it (rather than leaving it high and dry and hasn’t been updated since 2020). This will let the search engine know that your site is relevant for any related and present day search queries.
Have a Contact Form in place. On top of the freebie, I think having a contact form on your website where others can submit a request can also be beneficial not just for the search engine, but for you too. I have received client requests and opportunities from my contact form, so it can be worthwhile to have this set up. While an email address is good to have on your website, this method can be an easy and convenient way for someone interested in working with you to reach you.

In case you want to learn more about how to rank in the top 20 on the Google search engine, below is a video tutorial.

There are several free tools to track your website’s traffic and performance:

Built-in analytics data from your website’s platform (e.g. the Analytics tab in Squarespace)
Google Search Console - To track your website’s performance on Google’s search engine
Semrush Site Audit - To track your website’s health (e.g. broken links and page issues/errors). They provide a brief summary report of my website’s health every month.

I don’t spend too much time in reviewing all the technical data every month - the key takeaway of these tools are to get a sense of how your website is performing and to identify any major issues with your website. Again, the data is available to you, it is up to you on where to focus your time and effort in.

Track the Little and Big Wins

The last metric to track are the little and big wins every month. This is the most fun and enjoyable one because you get to note any positive thing that happened for the month. It can be as simple as “I did my third vendor event this month” or “someone reached out to me for this opportunity.” Even if nothing came out of an opportunity, I find it motivating to see that an opportunity still happened.

This is a vital metric to track for your mindset and your goals. There will be months where there will be no revenue and when minimal social media growth happens in your business - this is okay, because sometimes we take a break or we need to slow down in certain periods. Tracking the little and big wins is a way to see all the things you have accomplished throughout the year, which can be incredibly motivating during down times!

What I use to track my finances, social media growth, and milestones are an excel spreadsheet. I have different tabs for each month and have formulas in place so most of the effort is just entering new numbers. If you have receipts and online statements ready, I spend as little as 15 minutes at the end of each month to track my metrics. Sometimes, it helps to update the spreadsheet whenever you have an expense or revenue, so it won’t fall through the cracks if you forget.

The point of tracking these metrics is to get an overall perspective of how your art business is doing. Calculating rough estimates in your head and referencing your memory of your growth is not productive - in fact, not knowing the numbers can be detrimental to your business, especially if you feel you are financially struggling.

If you are running your own art business, metrics, such as budget, is important to be aware of (and for tax purposes too). The numbers can give you insight on where you can take your business next and can prepare you for both the opportunities and the challenges that might be ahead. Good luck on your creative endeavors!

Happy creating,