Growing My Art Business: My 90-Day Restructure | Rachael Robinson Art

I have decided that I needed to create a new chapter in my creative business, and I'm bringing you along for the journey. Over the next 90 days, I have set myself a challenge of restructuring my business, explore new income opportunities, redevelop old business roots and work towards my goal of £6000 in monthly revenue.

Whilst it is an ambitious goal, I believe there are incredible opportunities within my existing business that I haven’t either fully explored or poured enough time and energy into. I want to find out which areas carry the most potential, where my time is best spent and how I can build a more sustainable future doing what I love. I’m going to share the process honestly, including the things that work, those that don’t and the lessons I learn along the way.

The Journey as a professional artist

I have been running my art business, Rachael Robinson Art, officially since 2021, creating realistic wildlife and animal artwork using traditional drawing techniques for people all over the world. What started as a small drawing of a horse whilst I was on maternity leave, ramped up into a rapidly successful art business that allowed me to share my artwork with a wonderful community of people who began following my journey. Building a creative business has taught me a huge amount about drawing, running a website, marketing, social media and connecting with customers. Yet having an established business and an audience doesn’t automatically mean that every part of that business is working as well as it could, and that’s what I want to address over the next three months.

Why am I restructuring my art business?

Like many creatives, I have found that the business side of being an artist is incredibly challenging. I did not study business in school, college or university. I simply fell into this job during a pandemic and with a 6-week-old baby. Everything I have learnt has been on the job and a case of things working in some areas and stagnating in others.

Creating artwork is one thing but turning that into consistent sales is another. Everything I have ever launched from my tutorials, to live wedding paintings and even recently offering a little touch of photography now and then has been successful every time, nothing has failed yet I either lose momentum or it doesn’t seem to generate the income I desire quick enough. I have the most stunning original art pieces available to buy, fine art prints of my work, and a website where people can explore my collection. I know somewhere in this there is room for improvement on how I present my products, reach potential customers and convert that interest to sales – I just need to figure this out. I do not wish to keep doing things simply because they are what I have always done. I am looking honestly at my business, identifying what is working and making informed decisions about what needs to change. This means reviewing every aspect of my business and understanding all the areas where it has gone wrong rather than continuing to feel incredibly overwhelmed and adding more to my workload when it is likely, I do not need to do this. I want to grow my art business effectively and strive for that original goal I set in 2021, of being financially free.

My first goal: £6000 in monthly revenue within 90 days.

My target I have set myself for the next 90 days is to earn £6000 in monthly revenue. To be clear, this is a revenue target, not a take-home income target. This means that all business expenses, materials, production costs, website fees and tax all need to be accounted for. I also know that this means reaching that goal will take more than just posting regularly on social media or hoping that more people discover my website. I need to understand which activities lead to enquiries, customers and sales. I also need to break away from the feeling that I can only do this online. Whilst selling in general to the world seems like the better option, there is a huge potential of losing these sales in person as well.

For now, here are some of the main areas I will exploring

1.       Improving my sales of original artwork and fine art prints

I have a huge collection of wildlife drawings and prints that rarely get seen. These are a heart of my business I have chosen to ignore for many years and I want to look into how to make these probably my biggest seller. I will be reviewing my website to understand how my artwork is presented, how easy it is for my customers to browse my collection and whether my product pages give people the information they need to make a purchase. Ill be looking at the relationship between website visitors and actual sales. If people are visiting, browsing but not buying, I need to understand why rather than sending more traffic to the same pages. My aim is to make it easier for people who love my artwork to discover the right piece for them whether its an original drawing or a fine art print.

2.       Growing my live wedding painting business

Live wedding painting is another huge and new part of my creative business and it was something I was incredibly excited to launch at the end of 2025. I create paintings at weddings capturing a moment from the couple’s day in an original piece of artwork. It combines my traditional painting skills and experience of working live at a wedding venue. I want to focus on reaching more couples who are looking for something personal and lasting for their wedding day, as well as building relationships with wedding venues, planners and other suppliers. This means I will be reviewing how I promote my work, improve my outreach and finding more opportunities to connect with couples who may be interested in commissioning a live wedding painting.

3.       Potentially exploring photography as another income stream

Photography is a potentially new income area that I could develop. Many years ago, I used to work as a professional equine photographer and was highly recognised amongst horse shows and yards across the north west. After a number of years, I decided to hang up the lenses and chase a dream of working as a zookeeper I had since I was a little girl. In recent years, my love for photography has edged back into my life and when I set up my live wedding painting business, I purchased all the equipment I needed to capture the moments in whatever scenario I was given. With my eye for detail and ability to see beyond the subject in the frame, it’s a service I could look into further and explore. The goal is to not pursue every possible opportunity, it is to discover which services have genuine potential and fit into my working week. I already have an amazing portfolio of equine and wedding photography, it is something to look at.

4.       Discover why my tutorial programme stalled

In 2021, I launched my online animal drawing tutorial programme on patreon that taught people how to draw realistic animals in pencil. I created pre-recorded lessons that were broken down into hour long sessions that followed the drawing process from start to finish sharing everything I knew about creating realistic pencil drawings, allowing people to learn the techniques at their own pace which then led to them developing their own drawing skills.

For years, I launched a new tutorial every month, building a programme that helped people learn to draw realistic wildlife and animals. However, over time, I began to lose my spark for the programme because I struggled to understand how to market it effectively and bring in the audience I needed and wanted to grow this successfully. Although the feedback and results from those who joined were incredibly positive, I found that once people completed the tutorials and learnt the skills they wanted, they often moved on. I struggled to attract a constant stream of new members and encourage the existing members to stay and learn.

I have never closed this programme and it still costs the same as it did in 2021. For £10 per month, those that join today still have full access to everything I have every created. I want to explore why something that offered so much value to its members became an area of my business that I struggled to grow. I want to look at how I promote my only pencil drawing tutorials, reach people who to learn realistic animal drawing, and potentially give the programme a new lease of life. Rather than abandoning something I spent years creating and something that works, I want to understand whether there is still untapped potential in it.

5.       Make social media work harder and smarter for my business

Since 2021, I have spent a lot of time and energy building an audience around my life and artwork on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok, but my social media reach and engagement can change considerably overtime especially when the algorithms change and the demand for ad paying rises. I want to look beyond the likes and views to understand whether my content is helping people discover my work, visit my website and enquire about commissions or purchase my products. Ill be experimenting different types of content, sharing more of the process behind my work and documenting the business changes as they happen. Ill also be looking at how I can use my existing audience more effectively without making every post feel like it is another sales pitch.

6.       Following the process, not just the results

One of the biggest things I want to get from this challenge is a clear understanding of my business. I want to know where my time produces the best and quickest results, which income streams deserve more attention, and what changes could make the biggest difference to my business. Some experiments may lead to sales where others may not work at all. I may discover something I expected to be successful takes too much time for the return it generates and I hope to find areas to get rid of completely. This is all part of the process of fully discovering where my business is and needs to go. Ill be sharing updates from the studio, reviewing my website and products, exploring new opportunities, and looking at the numbers behind the business. I want to also be realistic about what growth looks like. Building a sustainable creative business takes time, and I don’t expect every change to produce immediate results. What I plan to do is make better informed decisions, measure the outcomes and keep adapting. I am not someone who sits still but equally I have never evaluated my business in this way and with all the different avenues I have available for a potential client, it has become overwhelming and this needs fully addressing in this way.

This is the beginning of restructuring my business in 90 days and I am excited to see what I can truly learn from it. If you are an artist, creative business owner or someone who has never tried to turn a passion into a living, I hope sharing the journey will be interesting and useful. I will be documenting the progress, the challenges, the successes for me and the setbacks as I work towards my goal of £6000 in monthly revenue.

Thank you for following my work, supporting my business. I look forward to sharing what happens next.

Day 1 starts here, let’s see what 90 days can do.