You don’t have to have amazing drawing skills or be a professional artist to make money with Procreate.
Procreate isn’t just a drawing tool.
Here are 15 creative ways to make money with Procreate. I bet you didn’t think of most of these ideas. Let’s go!
Read: 22 Hobbies that can make you an extra $2k/month
Table of Contents
What is procreate
Procreate is a drawing tool used by artists on their iPads. I would argue that it’s the best drawing app out there.
- Procreate is much cheaper than Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. It’ll cost you $30/month to use Adobe’s apps, that’s $360 per year and $1080 over 3 years! Procreate is a $10 one-time payment
- There isn’t as steep of a learning curve with Procreate. You can learn every basic feature in about 15 minutes and all the more advanced features in about 3–5+ hours compared to other professional tools like Illustrator which may take 50+ hours to learn
- Procreate is a professional tool that full-time artists and employed artists working for Fortune 500 companies use
Have you ever wondered how some artists could draw such straight lines? The secret isn’t super stable hands, it’s actually just streamline
- Procreate has a stabilizing feature called streamline that makes your drawing looks sleek. Something you can’t find with other paid or unpaid drawing apps
- Procreate allows you to fill the colors with a simple drag-and-drop feature without you having to fill the color in yourself (you could still do if you want to)
- There are also timelapse, masking, gaussian blur, liquify, alpha lock, clipping mask, flitch, bloom, motion blur, freeform, uniform, distort, warp, among many other features that are easy to learn and use
- Procreate works FAST. Many paid tools out there like Illustrator can be slow to export and even to do basic functions sometimes
- All the features you need as an artist is in Procreate. Adobe creative cloud gives you more features but most of those features aren’t used by anyone
- You can also use procreate to take notes if you want
- Anyone who gets bored easily can use Procreate to pass the time when you’re waiting for someone in the car or on the bus for instance
- You can use Procreate without an internet connection
Read: How to make money as an artist with these 19 unheard ways
Example arts made using Procreate
Now, I’m not the artist for the following art pieces but this is what you can do with Procreate.
The things you can do with Procreate are endless.
Read: 10 Easy items to make and sell on Etsy
How much is procreate
Procreate isn’t free. Currently, Procreate is selling in the App Store for $9.99. You paid once and never again unlike Adobe Creative Cloud where you have to pay every month. The cost can add up to an astronomical amount over time.
$9.99 is basically the price of one meal. This is an investment you won’t regret as an artist or as anyone interested in drawing and art.
Read: How to make money self-publishing books on Amazon’s KDP for free
Do you need an iPad and an Apple pencil to use procreate?
Procreate can only be used on Ipads for now. So yes, you do need an iPad.
You don’t necessarily need an apple pencil to use Procreate. You can use Procreate with a stylus pen (basically iPad pen) or just your finger.
Check iPad price here.
Check the Apple pencil price here.
Does Procreate only work with Apple pencil?
No, Procreate can work with any stylus pen(iPad pen). You can even just use your finger.
I find the apple pencil to be the best drawing tool for artists. Most artists end up upgrading to an Apple Pencil later so I would suggest you buy an Apple Pencil right from the start. Buy a second-hand apple pencil if you can’t afford the full price. Check apple pencil price here. Sometimes they do have discounts.
Apple pencil features:
- Apple pencil has a good pressure sensitivity so it’s easier to shade and sketch.
It feels more like drawing with a real pencil except you can easily undo a change, separate layers to draw beneath one, view your timelapse drawings, etc.
- Apple pencil has palm rejection so you can rest your palm on the iPad without it thinking it’s a stroke
- Apple pencil has no pen lag. It can detect your movement across the screen accurately without any lag
- It’s easy to replace the tip and not too expensive to do so
- You can draw 30 minutes with just 15 seconds of charging! You can charge an apple pencil by directly placing it on the side of the iPad
- Sturdy and moderate in weight
If you’re looking for alternatives to apple pencil, consider the following:
- Pressure sensitivity
- Charging ease
- Price
- Flimsy or sturdy
- Palm rejection
- Pen lag (sometimes it detects your pen moving across the screen slower than it should)
- Tip replacement
This is a good video to watch to help you decide which stylus pen to choose.
Read: How to become a content creator and make money this year
How to make money with procreate
You can make money with Procreate in the following ways.
1. Design fonts to sell on CreativeMarket using Procreate
This is something not many people would think of when using Procreate but you can easily:
- Download an alphabet template
- Fill it up using Procreate
- Export it in PNG
- Upload it into Caligraphr.com. It’ll automatically create a TTF file for you to download
- Sell on CreativeMarket or other marketplaces.
Read this article for a step-by-step guide to creating your own font for free and learn how you can make money with the fonts you created.
2. Draw comics using Procreate to post and gain a following
You can draw comics to post on Instagram using Procreate. Once you have enough followers you can:
- Sell your own merch
- Offer commission work
- Do affiliate marketing
- Accept sponsorship opportunities
- Do shout-outs
Read: 7 Things you need to stop doing if you’re broke
3. Sell icon designs made with Procreate on CreativeMarket
You can also use Procreate to create icons to sell on CreativeMarket or Gumroad.
This specific listing with 36 icons costs $6 but you can list your icons for any price you want.
Read: 10 Realistic ways to make a million dollar in 1–3 years
4. Make Pre-K Tracing workbook using Procreate to sell on Amazon KDP
It’s quite easy to make these tracing workbooks for kids. Tracing workbooks are used to teach kids how to write the alphabet. There are also workbooks to teach kids how to draw simple shapes and trace simple lines.
All you have to do is to:
- Draw a few lines and shapes in dotted lines (there are free dotted line brushes you can download on your Procreate)
- Upload the pages in PDF format
- Create a cover (you can hire someone on Fiverr to create a book cover for you)
- Input your author name
- Hit publish!
If you want to learn how to self-publish books for free on KDP, click here.
The books can be printed out as a physical book when someone orders them on Amazon.
You can create these tracing workbooks for free (except for the $10 spent on Procreate). Your royalty would be 75%.
If you don’t want the hassle of formatting and cover size, you can just create a few tracing pages to sell as printables on Etsy. Click here to learn what else you can easily make and sell on Etsy.
Read: 8 Reasons you should be your own boss
Read: Want to be your own boss? 11 Reasons to start a blog
5. Draw coloring pages using Procreate to sell on Etsy
With procreate, you can easily make and sell coloring pages. If you aren’t good at drawing, all you have to do is to:
- Download a stock image from Pixabay or Unsplash
- Trace over it using Procreate.
Like this:
3. And then you’ll upload the coloring pages onto Etsy under the title “Coloring printables”
Kids’ coloring pages will be easier to make on Etsy compared to adults’ coloring pages as coloring pages for adults tend to be more complicated than kids’ coloring pages.
Read: 50 Ways to make extra money today
6. Offer to draw people’s profile pictures in your style using Procreate
With Procreate, you can easily draw people in your own art style. People who like your art style would gladly pay you to do one for them.
You can create custom pictures for people and/or their pets.
It’s better for your art style to be simple and minimalist as how long it takes you to draw the pictures doesn’t really matter to the customers. What matters is they actually like the result.
If it takes you 10 minutes to create one and they like it, they won’t see anything wrong with paying either $20, $50, or even $100+ for it. Of course, don’t tell your customers that it only took you 10 minutes to create it, deliver the drawing between 1–3+ hours after ordering to avoid your customers thinking you didn’t put effort into their order.
Read: What are NFTs and all the basics you need to know
7. Illustrate children’s books using Procreate
You can either draw the illustrations yourself and sell the children’s illustration books yourself on KDP or, you can illustrate someone else’s book. I would recommend doing the latter as you can get paid right away from your work instead of waiting months only to maybe realize the book didn’t do well and you spent all that time for nothing.
Read: Make money on Fiverr with these 20 easy gigs
8. Design posters using Procreate to sell on Society6
You can easily create posters with Procreate. You can also utilize free tools such as Canva to make the posters as well. You’ll create a component of the poster using Procreate (ex. a character) and then upload it with the background blank from Procreate to Canva. Type in a few texts with Canva’s free fonts. You can also download free fonts to import into Procreate, type it up, make the background transparent, export, and then upload into Canva if Canva doesn’t have the font you want.
Take advantage of trends and catchy memorable phrases to put on the posters.
You design the poster however you like. It could be educational, entertaining, fun, quirky, silly, or solely for aesthetic purposes.
You’ll have to find a way to get people to see the product by marketing it on Instagram or TikTok for instance.
Read: Make money with a podcast. Everything you need to know.
9. Create designs using Procreate to sell on Redbubble
Once you have made a design, you can upload it on Redbuble. Redbubble has an active marketplace where your design can be searched up and bought without you promoting the product or leading people to a specific page. Of course, it would help to bring your own customers to your store on RedBubble.
You can make the background transparent before exporting out of Procreate into RedBubble.
Your designs can be printed on shirts, hoodies, phone cases, pillowcases, notebooks, tote bags, etc.
Read: How to make 65k/month selling slimes
10. Teach a course on Procreate
Once you get good at Procreate you can create a course to sell. You can do so on Udemy where they have a marketplace for people to search up different courses or, you can do so on Teachable, Thinkific, Skillshare, etc where you keep most if not all of the profit. But you’ll have to bring the customers there yourself from other platforms.
I recommend you to build up a brand and establish yourself as an authority figure in the art and Procreate a niche first before you create a course to sell because not many people would trust you enough to buy your course if no one knows who you are.
You can build your Procreate drawing art brand on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok first.
Read: 12 Most profitable YouTube niches
11. Create a YouTube channel of you using Procreate
Create a YouTube channel of yourself using Procreate to draw.
Art with Flo is a channel that does exactly that. She has courses to sell on how to draw with Procreate. She has almost half a million subscribers.
You can sell:
- Procreate brushes (yes you can create your own brush to sell)
- Courses
- Books
- Make money from Patreon
- Affiliate deals
- Sponsorships
- Sell merch with your own design on there
Read: How many articles do you need to blog full-time
12. Design greeting cards using Procreate
You can design greeting cards to sell. You have three options:
- Upload the design on print-on-demand stores like Zazzle where you can also choose to allow your designs printed on posters, hoodies, mugs, etc
- Print out the design yourself and sell the physical copy of the cards on Etsy
- Sell the pdf of your greeting card design on GumRoad or Etsy so people can download and print as many copies using their own chosen papers as they see fit
I’d suggest you try Zazzle first because to make greeting cards, you need to invest in the proper printer, paper, and maybe even fake gold leaves for paper engraving. It’s can cost a few hundred to start.
Read: 7 Smart ways to make time go by faster at work
13. Sell gifs made with Procreate
Believe it or not, you can use Procreate to make gifs to sell. In fact, it’s a real career. Some artists are paid $600 — $1500 for a single gif.
To make gifs, you’ll have to turn on animation assist. Each layer you created is a single frame. You can choose the duration of each frame.
When exporting, you can choose frame rates per second and then simply hit export. You can directly upload the file to sell on sites like Giphy.
You can also turn your Gif into an NFT. Check out this article to learn all the basics of NFT.
Read: Improve EQ with these 10 unique ways
14. Use Procreate to offer a logo animation service
Did you know you can animate logos quite easily with Procreate? You can spend a few hours (I’d say give it 20–50+ hours) to learn how to do logo animation as well as you can and then you can make money selling this skill.
Once you learned the skills, there are many ways to make money. You can post the results on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram to attract a following:
- Offer custom logo design service (self-promote)
- Teach people how to animate logos with a course
- Sell books
- Sell gifs
Read: 16 Things you can sell to make money as a teenager today
15. Make scissor workbooks using Procreate to sell on KDP
Take a look at scissor workbooks on Amazon. All these books are created to help children learn how to cut with scissors.
You can easily draw different shapes and lines for children to cut along. You’ll have to:
- Export the pages
- Upload them into Canva
- Download them as a PDF
- Upload them onto KDP
- Create the right size of the cover
If that seems like too much work to you and too complicated to do, you can:
- Draw shapes and lines in Procreate
- Export the pages as PNG files
- Use PNG2PDF.com to turn your pictures into a PDF
- Upload onto Etsy or Gumroad to sell
You don’t have to worry about the formatting and cover in that case.
Read: Secret guide on how to stop being a perfectionist
Final thought
There really is a lot of ways to make money with Procreate. I hope you learned something useful today so you can start creating another source of income. I publish a lot of articles teaching people how to make money on the internet, subscribe to the mailing list in the footer below so you’ll be the first to know when a new money-making idea comes out!
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