How To Build An Audience?

Hello there ^v^)/ your art is very lovely! I can't say much for deviantart since I'm very unknown there myself, but for tapas I've found that talking to smaller creators, joining in on contests, and joining in on live streams can be a good way to make friends and get your name out there! When you post can also have a role in it! There's a discord server for Tap that i'd be glad to share with you if you're interested! I hope you have a nice day!

 your art is pretty cute so I think there'll be a nice audience that would also like your art style. A lot of people seem to like cute art styles from what I've seen xD  I'm more or less in the same boat as you so I dunno how much help I could be ^^; But what I've heard is to leave comments on other people's art, and give helpful critiques to People who'd say they want it. I hope things will work out for you ~ ;v;

Socialize, socialize, socialize.

Do arttrades! Reach out to others, join discord servers and jump into conversations. Don't fret so much about getting popular right now, let your personality, views, and overall self attract people. If you fret too much you'll get extremely discouraged like I did a few years back. I also had to learn not to push so hard and hope/expect to get attention just to be let down. It's okay to crave it when you get practically nothing, but try to switch your views over slowly to making friends and connections.

I think your problem is that you're trying to build an audience on dA. It's a site that's really just dying out. Try branching out, different sites will be good depending on what you want to get. Instagram is an easy way to get a lot of followers, as long as you use hashtags properly, but people there aren't super interactive beyond liking the art. It's hard to get your art out there on twitter but people are more interactive (I've heard anyway, I don't use twitter often). Tumblr is another option, so is Pixiv, Art Station is you want to do more video-game related stuff, Mastodon.art is small but has a super supportive community, Furaffinity has good commissioners, ect. There are tons of other websites out there, don't go only with dA. Other than that, consistency is key and as you get better more people will pay attention to your art!

Another thing to do to get your art out there is things like requests and giveaways where one of the rules is sharing the event, it'll get more people to see your art!

Heyyy, I'm in a pretty similar boat myself, haha. So I don't have any advice, but good luck! May we both get there!

I agree with Niidles. I've been having more fun AND more luck using instagram to get followers and show off my art. Having said that, if you are on DA, use groups and tags to your advantage as well. Groups especially, if you can find ones that are suited for your art. I'm still working on this getting a follower thing myself lol I finally got myself a bit of a 'brand' so to speak, so I can keep consistent with things under one username across all art sites. Minus DA, but...I'll change that eventually. Having your art out there, having a consistent, recognizable name, and interacting are all keys to finding followers.

Good luck!! You art style is cute!

I see instagram as a suggestion- is there a way to make an alt account and NOT have all my friends find it through friend suggest? I made an alt account for non-art purposes and within a month everyone tried adding it and I had to kill the account off... I just don't want friends following me on personal accounts and wasn't sure if I was missing something?

Also, how do groups work on DA?

My best advise would be that one of the only ways to get popular is to just post content on whatever is trending or popular at the time. Sadly, no matter how good you are people don't usually like original content.

Conventions are another way to build an audience. You may have to pay for a table and make up for that by selling enough stuff, but if it's good and people like your stuff, it can get your name out there.

But really, getting your name known is only half the battle; whether or not people like your stuff is entirely another, and there's no hard science about that. You can be the best artist in the world, and nobody will care. You can draw stuff people don't care about, or people aren't interested in your style, for whatever reason. The sad thing is that on any website, especially DA, you will have to compete with people who draw fanart, and they're usually the ones taking attention away from the artists who choose to focus on original stuff.

Nein, nein, it's hard to promote yourself at deviantART

Try doing a share for share?? You promoted someone else in exchange of promoting you

Also, Facebook is a good eay to make audience as well (tho my page only have like 150 likes) because you can also invite your friends to like your page, but Facebook has an unbelievably terrible post reach sometimes

But yeah, you have to draw fan art of the current trends for now too 

maybe do free art if you're comfy with that, since i also got some audience on fb for doing so, but just do that if you're comfortable

I think the simplest way to reach people is to keep creating. It's very easy to get discouraged, but consistency is important. You'll notice that if you fall off the face of the planet for a few weeks in your creative sphere its harder to get back up again, so try to always have a steady stream of content.

This is also a good video/podcast for advice on getting noticed for content creators if you've got an hour and a half to kill.

Elllllie - Groups on DA are basically specific groups of people who enjoy certain things. Groups allow you to submit your art into them, and opens them up to a brand new audience that might not have seen it for the short moment its on the front page/by looking up tags.

I'm apart of a bunch of anthro/adoptable/OC/monster groups, and submit art of my characters there. It definitely increases the amount of views/favs my art gets, though it's not perfect.

As for the free art idea, I have a hard time personally agreeing with anyone spending their time/talent on giving away free art. It makes it so much harder to actually sell your art later on. It's one thing when you're a popular creator and are doing rewards for followers, but a whole other when you're trying to get your feet on the ground and have to devalue your art that much. Just my 2c.

I think some other people def touched on it but fanart can be a good easy draw - same with a lot of 'groups' such as CS/DA groups - for instance doing YCH or special comms for specific types of closed species which are popular already can get you a tiny bit of traction since it'll also be posted in those communities and tagged there a lot of the time, which can be a much shorter list of pages and people to look through than the larger 'commission' groups or general art stuff.
Streams I think can be nice - I know I've jumped into those and begun following artists that way. Sometimes PWYW stream comms specific to 'if you catch the stream' can be something I see artists do.
It's rough though and I hope you have good luck building an audience! Ultimately just the continuous output of art is really what's gonna get you people I think in the end - as someone who follows a lot of artists I tend to be more aware of the ones who are active both in their journals as well as in content production rather than the ones who drop something very very infrequently. You have a very cute style and I'm sure you'll find your audience!