When it comes to side hustle ideas for artists I may have stumbled upon a new one.
I discovered Skool almost by accident. I’d signed up for a membership program about Pinterest marketing, hosted on the platform. That made me curious.
I did a search on the platform realized there were artists running their own side hustles, and some of them were doing brilliantly. I couldn’t quite believe how much money some of these guys were making.
So I decided to look into it properly, and this is what I found.
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What It Is Skool?
Skool is an all-in-one platform built for running online communities, and it’s grown fast among coaches, course creators, and creatives.
At its core sits a community feed that looks a bit like a private social network, where members post updates, share work, and reply to each other in threads.
Alongside that sits a course area, where you can upload video lessons, tutorials, or structured teaching material, organized into modules people work through at their own pace.
There’s also a built-in calendar for scheduling live events, whether that’s a group critique, a Q and A, or a live painting demonstration, and it automatically adjusts for everyone’s time zone.
And then there’s a gamification layer, points and levels that members earn by posting and engaging, which is designed to keep people coming back rather than just lurking.
All of it lives under one simple web address, and members can access it through a browser or a dedicated mobile app, so there’s no need to juggle separate tools for chat, courses, and payments.
Why It Might Be a Good Side Hustle for Artists
For artists and creatives specifically, the real appeal of Skool is how little stands between having an audience and actually monetizing them.
You don’t need to build a fancy website, wire up a separate payment system, or learn video hosting software, you can set a price, open the doors, and start charging for access to your process, feedback, and teaching within a day.
It also suits how artists naturally teach, through demonstration rather than dense written lessons, so recording yourself painting or drawing and talking through your decisions translates directly into paid content, without needing to become a scriptwriter or an editor first.
And because the community and the course sit in the same place, you can use engagement, comments, questions, requests, to figure out what your members actually want more of, then simply create it.
It’s not passive but if you are making the art anyway, why not get paid to create?
What Skool Doesn’t Do
Skool deliberately does one thing well, community and course delivery, which means it leaves out a lot of what other platforms bundle in.
There’s no built-in email marketing, so if you want to send newsletters or follow up messages to people who looked but didn’t join, you’ll need a separate email tool, and connecting the two isn’t always simple.
Design and branding are also minimal. You can add a logo and a banner image, but you can’t restyle the layout, change fonts, or make it feel meaningfully different from any other Skool community, it will always look and feel like Skool first, and your brand second.
There’s no custom web address either, so your community lives at a skool.com link rather than one of your own choosing.
If you’re picturing something closer to a formal online school, it’s worth knowing there are no quizzes, tests, or certificates, and no detailed way to track how individual students are progressing through material, so it suits ongoing teaching and conversation far better than structured, gradeable courses.
There’s also no dedicated portfolio or gallery area for artists specifically. Members share images within ordinary posts, so a large body of work isn’t curated or displayed anywhere, it simply lives scattered through the community feed.
And finally, Skool doesn’t help you get found in the first place. Not beyond the search features on the platform itself.
There’s no built-in advertising or promotion, so if you want to attract new members through Google ads, social media, or anything similar, that’s entirely on you to set up and pay for separately from the platform itself.
What Does Skool Cost?
Skool charges you, the creator, directly for the right to run a community on the platform.
There’s a Hobby plan at 9 dollars a month with a 10 percent fee taken from anything your members pay you, or a Pro plan at 99 dollars a month with a much smaller fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction. Both come with a 14 day free trial, so you can test the platform before committing to either.
Separately, once you’re set up, you decide what to charge your own members, and how to structure that.
You can bill monthly, which feels low commitment and is easier to sell, but means your income can shift every month as people join and leave freely.
You can also offer a yearly price, usually discounted compared to paying month by month, which gives members a reason to commit upfront and gives you a steadier, more predictable income.
You can also choose to tier your membership rather than charge one flat fee. Plenty of creators advertise an entry level price that gives limited access, then offer a paid upgrade for the fuller set of lessons, resources, or personal feedback.
Done well, this lets you capture people who are only curious at a low price point, while still charging your most committed members properly for the extra value.
Just be careful how you present it, since members who feel misled about what their initial payment covers are more likely to churn and leave a poor review.
Examples of Artists Making Money on Skool
Rather than just describing the platform in theory, I searched Skool for paid painting communities to see what real artists are actually earning.
These were the first 3 Paid Memberships at the time of writing:
- Di-Maccio Art Academy has over 5,100 members paying around 3 dollars a month. That works out to roughly 15,300 dollars a month in gross revenue, built on the back of a huge existing following, over 1.2 million, and the appeal of a headline claim, they’re known for the largest painting in the world.
- Corbellic Art Studio Elite takes the opposite approach. Just 322 members, but at 47 dollars a month, rated five stars across 19 reviews. That lands at roughly 15,134 dollars a month, almost identical income to Di-Maccio, but through premium pricing rather than scale.
- Sam’s Landscape Painting School is the strongest earner of the four. 596 members at 33 dollars a month works out to around 19,668 dollars a month, with a five star rating from 6 reviews, a solid middle ground of decent numbers and decent pricing.
I scrolled down a bit and saw this next one.
Animal Painting School sits closest to my own niche as a case study. 257 members at 19 dollars a month comes to roughly 4,883 dollars a month, nearly 59,000 dollars a year.
For that price, members get an ebook, two 90 minute monthly live streams, 12 image ready reference packs a month, group critique session recordings, and a tutorial library,
These four creators may well be among the bigger names in their niches. What they share is a focused, consistent offering at a price point their specific audience is happy to pay,
They are making a killing
Skool For Artists: Final Thoughts
Having gone through all of this, I’d say Skool is genuinely worth taking seriously.
You don’t need a huge or obvious talent, even a fairly obscure skill, painting a specific theme, a particular style, or a niche technique, can support a modest, low priced membership that adds up to a genuine side income, without ever needing to go full time.
The real barrier isn’t the platform itself, Skool makes setting up a community about as simple as it gets. The hard part is getting people interested in the first place.
That takes marketing, building an audience, and convincing strangers you’re membership is worth joining. That’s a completely different skill set.
So Skool.com is a great idea if you can market your offer.
Check out these related posts:
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- The Best Places to Sell ORIGINAL Art Online: Top 6 Picks
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- Is Print on Demand Worth it? The Pros and Cons of a POD Business
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Hi, I’m Kevin Hayler
I’ve been selling my wildlife art and traveling the world for over 20 years, and if that sounds too good to be true, I’ve done it all without social media, art school, or galleries!
I can show you how to do it. You’ll find a wealth of info on my site, about selling art, drawing tips, lifestyle, reviews, travel, my portfolio, and more. Enjoy