Starting out as an artist today has never been as easy, especially compared to what it was like in the dark age before social media existed. Yet, a lot of aspiring artists neglect using best practices and the social tools now readily available to us all.

Art school aside, there are some things you need to be doing if you expect a flourishing career as an artist. Practicing like crazy on your own at home or following a curriculum at school is not nearly enough.

Here are 5 steps to "make it in the industry":

1. Don't expect much at the beginning. Just make some art.

You're not going to get your best client work right away. Don't over think it. Don't wonder why you're not getting work. You need to make good work to get work. Set up portfolios on as many services as you can such as CG+, CGSociety, Behance, DeviantArt, Facebook (Fan Page), etc. Be everywhere, collect feedback, be seen - exposure is everything.

Make ideas you love and share it online. Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. It's as simple as that.

Your immediate goal should be getting a good foundation of work in your portfolio. You don't have clients to report to yet. Learn as much as you can. Experiment. It's freedom, embrace it.

2. The transition to money

You've made enough great art you care about. Nice! If you've been diligently exporting the ideas from your brain to the internet, someone would have reached out to you by now.

…If not, go back to step 1. OR go out of your way to find people who need help. It could be a family member, a friend, a friends' friend. Your dad's restaurant has a crappy sign that needs a face-lift. Your friend needs album art. Your Aunt needs a new logo for her strip club's website. Be ok with doing some work for free when you start. Do it really well, because these people will be your first referrals.

With that being said, an important tip: Don't do work for dirt cheap as a favor. It might seem like a good idea to make some money doing what you love, but it'll bite you in the ass. Do it for real money, or do it for free. Money attached to a project seems to give people an entitlement to squeeze as much work as they can out of you. If it's free, it's a favor. You can't be manipulated and you can walk away from it if it sucks. You have to watch your back.

3. Communication & Workflow

If you've been killing it, you'll have some referrals that converted over to people who want to work with you (for real money). This takes a while, don't feel discouraged if it doesn't happen right away, it never does. But chances are, you have a few emails outlining some projects.

DO NOT respond and tell them how "excited" & "over the moon" you are for the "great opportunity". You have to wear your business suit for this part (silly, I know). Don't do things to come off sounding like an amateur. Instead, ask for the brief in detail so you know the scope of the project. You're going to end up sending this same email a bunch of times. Automate the time-consuming steps, for example make a generic template to send back.

Communicating with clients is probably the most boring part of the freelance thing, but you have to get really good at it.

Organize all of your project files diligently. Make backups. Put it in Dropbox so you have it forever. Make sure you have freelance contracts in place before you begin work on significant projects. Always cover yourself or else you WILL get exploited in one way or another. They can be in plain English. It's really easy to find some base templates to help you get started: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/06/freelance-contracts-dos-and-donts/

Be very clear about how you'll charge for the project. Sometimes you have to develop an estimate. You need to get good at knowing how long it takes you to complete a project. Is it a fixed price, or an hourly rate? It's very common to ask for a security deposit to make sure you don't get stiffed with a client who bails on paying.

Be clear on what you'll deliver. It could look as simple as:

• 10 concepts
• 3 revisions
• Final art render
• Source files

If you have the first 3 parts down, the rest should be easy to digest.

4. Know your worth

You're growing! If you want to turn the freelance thing into full-time freelance, be more aggressive about your rates. Increase your rate periodically. You'll see some clients fall off the radar because of this. On the other hand, you'll notice higher bidding jobs start to come through if your rate increase is proportionate to your ability.

Learn to say no. You'll have to start turning down jobs that are more trouble than they are worth at this stage (Those jobs are for the new freelancers now!)

At this point you'll have likely been approached by studios to work in-house, it's worth thinking about it if you miss the social aspect of working! If you haven't, it's a good time to consider applying to various studios now that you have professional experience.

5. Establish & Maintain your presence

Your portfolio is a big part of your voice as an artist. Don't put EVERYTHING in there. Put your best foot forward and show your best work first. Be brutal and prune out the stuff that doesn't fit in. Only show the type of work you enjoy making, so it'll attract people who want that type of work.

At this point you probably also have a lot of content you can sell, why not open a Cubebrush store and start capitalizing on all the work you've done in the past? Having a store online is a fantastic way to have an easy, steady passive income. Share your techniques, assets, tools and turn your existing business into something that scales even better.

Keep updating your online portfolios and posting in other places. Reach out to artists & be involved with the art community online. It's a much smaller community than you think, it seems everybody ends up working with each other at one point in time. Keep a good reputation, share, be patient, dedicated and you'll be one of those people who say they never worked a day in their life, because they're doing what they love and making a living off of it.

What do you think? Have more tips you think fellow artists should hear about? Write them below!

-Marc & the Cubebrush team

This post was adapted from an article by Pasquale D'Silva