It’s a Monday, but you can wake up as early (or as late) as you want.
You go for a calm walk or run outside, shower, pour yourself some tea, turn on some study music, pet your kitties, and slowly open your laptop.
You have the “difficult” decision for the rest of the day:
✨ Stay here in your cozy living room and work, drive to the library, or spend the day at your favorite coffee shop? ✨
This is only part of the magic of the artist advantage that is the Cozy Girl Job.
Let’s ditch the starving artist concept that we need a busy, nearly-minimum-wage job in order to be financially abundant. Here’s how to leverage your artistic skills to make money easily, cozily, and consistently. 🌈
| Explore these weird and wonderful tools for creatives to help you jumpstart and thrive in your Cozy Girl Job! |
🤷♀️ What is a Cozy Girl Job?: The Artist Advantage
A Cozy Girl Job is a job that creatives get before their dream artistic career. It’s 100% remote, likely in digital marketing (since we’re naturally skilled at it!) and lets us have a flexible schedule so we can work when we want but with consistent income. This can be a full-time job or a freelance job — it’s all about being remote, leaning into a skill you’re natural at, and having a consistent stream of income.
The artist advantage here is leaning into a highly-transferable skill as a creative. Digital marketing is a great career for artists because it’s already leaning into what they’re good at — visualizing things, creative writing, and collaboration.
You might need to teach yourself a little bit from YouTube University, but your artistic advantage can be solidifying that job so you have the freedom to explore your art without worrying about money.
Cozy Girl Jobs are all about leveraging your unique artistic skills in a way that’s valued in the marketplace. Monetizing creative skills can literally be the difference between slaving over a tiring service-based job (bartender, server, etc.) and turning it into a sustainable and lucrative career path.
Plus, the lessons you’ll learn from working in digital marketing can directly translate into how you market yourself when you’re an artist.
👩💻 Types of Cozy Girl Jobs
Leveraging this artist advantage can provide that beautiful combination of work-life balance and financial security.
📲 Social Media Manager
Create strategic reels, engage with followers, craft cute and branded captions, design aesthetic and on-brand visuals, and maybe even collaborate with the rest of the digital marketing team. Being a social media manager is perfect for artists who have a knack for visual storytelling and who knows the difference between a good Instagram reel and one that falls short (and knows how to execute it).
As a Social Media Manager, you may be responsible for:
- Creating and scheduling posts
- Analyzing engagement metrics
- Creating visual content as well via Canva
- Recording reels on-site, or (if you’re fully remote) making a shot list of what should be recorded
- Editing reels together to be engaging and – hopefully – viral!
The great thing about this role is that it’s in high demand. Almost every business needs a social media presence these days, and many business owners are super overwhelmed at the idea of doing it themselves! That means plenty of opportunities for you. 👏
Plus, you can often manage multiple accounts, increasing your earning potential.
If you’re new to this and want to learn more about this, I’d recommend watching this playlist from Latasha James, who talks about creating an income from social media management.
🎨 Remote Decorator
Yes — if you love interior design, you can literally design spaces without ever setting foot in them!
As a remote decorator, you’ll work with clients virtually to transform their spaces, creating a mood board for their space, showing them a floor layout of the space, and giving them a shopping list (or ordering the products yourself with a designer discount).
The best part is? You don’t have to be a certified designer to do this! Spoak is a membership I’ve absolutely loved that offers design courses for hobbyists, DIYers, or aspiring professional designers.
This job would involve:
- Creating a mood board to map out a creative vision
- Using software to show clients a room layout
- Sourcing furniture and working within client budgets and guidelines
- Working collaboratively with a client to execute the vision from screen to room
*Note: unlike social media, which is an ongoing potential for income, once you’re done with your interior design project, you’re typically not needed anymore. It’s important to see how you can compliment this love for interior design with something that can bring recurring revenue.
For example, maybe this is just part of an offering of an entire decorator package, and you’re working to build an entire brand on YouTube or a blog about design, which you can eventually earn affiliate income from. That’s a long-game, but could be a great way to complement your passion and transition it into a full-time creative career if you’re a designer.
✍️ Brand Stylist/Brand and Messaging Specialist
If you’ve got a knack for creating cohesive visual or message-based identities, then the role of Brand Stylist or Brand and Messaging Specialist might be right up your alley. This job is all about helping businesses present a consistent, attractive image across all their materials.
Think about the very beginnings of starting a big brand. You need visual branding, messaging, and the ability to distill this brand’s vision and message into a few words. Businesses need a professional to perfect their essence and have consistent visual branding and messaging that clearly speaks to their audience.
There are many different approaches and strategies that a Brand and Messaging Specialist can use. If you’re new to the game, watch this video on how to create a brand voice and messaging guide to see if it’s something you might be interested in offering clients.
This job may include:
- Having multiple 1:1 sessions with a client for “brand discovery”
- Working independently on offering 2-3 brand and messaging approaches for a client
- Having a logo designer and a graphic specialist to help you create graphics (if you don’t have experience doing that yourself)
*This is another job that isn’t recurring, but we want it to be. Being a Brand Stylist can be just one offering you have in a packaged program. You can also offer ongoing content creation (or social media management) for clients, which brings in recurring revenue.
💻 Virtual Assistant for Creative Businesses
This job is perfect for artists who also have a knack for organization and communication. As a Virtual Assistant (VA) for businesses, you’ll be supporting business owners in their work through staying organized and being detail-oriented.
This is great recurring income that you could offer packages for. Typically, VAs will do hourly, but sometimes they’ll do deliverable-based, depending on who the client is.
Your tasks could include:
- Managing and organizing emails
- Scheduling appointments
- Handling social media
- Assisting with project management
To fully utilize the artist advantage with this, see how you can learn from this business owner as you aspire to be a business owner (with your art) in the future and you’re building an artist brand. What do you love that they do? What would you do differently?
| Here are even more Cozy Girl Job examples for you to browse through. As a female singer-songwriter, I guarantee, there are at least a few you can resonate with, from one artist to another. 💐 |
🤸 How to Leverage Your Artistic Skills for a Cozy Girl Job
Now that we’ve covered some of the cozy girl jobs out there, let’s talk about how you can actually land one of these abundant jobs.
📝 1. Marketing Yourself: Create Your Own Portfolio (Even with 0 Clients!)
One of the most important steps in landing that Cozy Girl Job is creating a killer portfolio. “But what if I don’t have any clients yet?” Successful marketing for artists for your Cozy Girl Job (especially when you’re first starting out) means being super creative — and yes, it doesn’t mean you even need a single client yet.
Effective portfolio development begins with crafting diverse, high-quality projects that showcase your versatility and problem-solving skills… even if they’re for “fake” clients! Potential clients want to see what you’re capable of – not necessarily how many people you’ve worked with.
That’s where number 2 comes in…
💅 2. Make Things Beautiful: Offer Free/Inexpensive Trials to Showcase Your Artistic Skills
Once you’ve got your portfolio set up, it’s time to start attracting real clients.
The goal for when you’re first starting is not to make money — but to get some client testimonials and experience on a platform (if you’re using one) or with a process.
- A platform being job marketplaces, like Upwork, Contra, and Fiver
- A process being cold emailing, local networking, etc.
One great way to do this is by offering free or inexpensive trials of your services. This allows potential clients to see the value you can provide without a big upfront commitment!
You should not make this a regular thing. This is only for the beginning. Once you’ve gotten some great reviews, you should be charging a fair rate for your work — the last thing you want is for clients to take advantage of you and keep asking for free work. Unfortunately, there are some people out there who have no problem doing this!
For example, if you’re aiming to be a social media manager, you could offer to manage a company’s Instagram account for a week for free. If you’re a content creator, you might offer to write one blog post at a discounted rate. The goal is to get your foot in the door and wow them with your skills.
Specify exactly what you’ll deliver and in what timeframe. This shows professionalism and prevents you from being taken advantage of.
☁️ 3. Lean on Your Soft Skills: Be Friendly and Adaptable While You’re Still Building Your Hard Skills
When you’re still building the hard skills (the actual skills of your job like the social media management experience, the remote interior designer technique, etc.) lean in on your soft skills.
Soft skills are being friendly, adaptable, easy to work with, fast-working. This can often be just as important as your hard skills, and are super vital when you’re still learning those hard skills.
It’s okay if you’re still building your hard skills. Be honest about what you know and what you’re still learning. Many clients appreciate someone who’s eager to grow and improve. Some of the best people I’ve hired were people who were just getting started and went above and beyond for a good testimonial – and they got it!
💸 How to Sustain a Thriving Cozy Girl Job
Congratulations! You’ve landed your Cozy Girl Job. Now, how do you use this artist advantage to keep it thriving?
🤲 Find Retainer Clients (After You’ve Figured Out Your Ideal Roles)
Once you’ve got some experience under your belt and have figured out which types of work you enjoy most, it’s time to start looking for retainer clients. These are clients who pay you a set amount each month for ongoing work.
Retainer clients (or a full-time job!) is one of the biggest elements of a successful Cozy Girl Job. They provide steady income and allow you to build deeper relationships with your clients. There is usually an offering you can bring to clients on retainer even if your main offering and favorite thing is one-off projects. You can have a whole suite of offerings!
Also note: many people like to rag on full-time jobs, but I think they’re great if you can find one that’s remote, respects your time, and with people you love working with!
📃 Create Contracts
As you start working with more clients, it’s crucial to have solid contracts in place. A good contract protects both you and your client by clearly outlining the scope of work, payment terms, and other important details.
There are plenty of templates available online that you can customize for your needs from Etsy and even just by Google “[your industry] contract.”
🧖♀️ Create Healthy Boundaries (Hourly Rate, Retainer Rate, Working Hours, Vacations)
We’ve talked about boundaries when it comes to clients paying you, time-based boundaries, and contracts. But there are so many places in which boundaries should be exercised in your Cozy Girl Job.
I talk about boundaries more in this video about how to re-envision the idea of a “Plan B” in your artistic career 👇
Boundaries in a Cozy Girl Job includes:
- Setting fair rates (and not letting them be negotiated)
- Establishing clear working hours
- Having a mini-rule book (i.e., I don’t let clients speak to be this way, I require X notice if you need to cancel – this may all be in your contract)
Working from anywhere can make it feel like there are no boundaries, so you need to be solid in setting this for yourself.
😌 Be Your Own Abundant Artist & Join the YouTube Fam
This is just the beginning of your cozy girl job journey. If you want to dive deeper into the world of creative entrepreneurship, and tips and tricks to being a thoughtful, intentional and abundant artist, follow my YouTube channel!
Pricing artwork, networking for creatives, art business strategies — these can all feel overwhelming if you’re going at it alone. Remember that your artistic skills are valuable, you deserve to be paid well for them, and that you’re not alone in this journey. 🫶
