Marketplace Success Story: Naranbaatar Ganbold

Freelance artist Naranbaatar Ganbold from Mongolia started his journey 5 years ago after deciding to leave university and pursue a career in art. His decision was highly influenced by his growing interest in character design and illustration and artists such as James Zapata, Alex Negrea and Peter Mohrbacher.

After 8 months of studying art at home using books and tutorials, he received his first freelance job for a card game. Although it was a small commission, this experience was proof to him that he could do it and it encouraged him to keep going.

These days, Ganbold splits his time between his freelance work producing art for trading card games, board games and books and creating content for his tutorials that he sells on the ArtStation Marketplace.

On why he decided to start making tutorials, he explains that he himself used to purchase and learn a lot from tutorials by other artists and it was part of his self-taught training.

“Recently, people started asking me if I had a tutorial. That kind of gave me the confidence to post my first one. I wanted to have some kind of passive income to earn money between my freelance jobs so selling on ArtStation seemed to be the perfect fit.”

Without any expectations, he spent around 1-2 hours per day producing tutorial content. (He estimates one tutorial takes about one month). Since then, every single one of Ganbold’s products have successfully made it to the Trending page for weeks.

Visit Naranbaatar Ganbold’s ArtStation-powered Store > 

On gaining success as a seller, he shared his top 3 tips:

1) Try to figure out what people need. Create something you know will be useful.

“I try to create products that I wish I could have in the past. Basically I imagine myself as a beginner student and try to think of what I’d want. Using that mindset helps to get lot of answer to my questions while creating tutorial.”

2) Be active in the community to build a following.

“On ArtStation, you can build a following from your artwork before ever posting a product.
It helps get the word out because your followers receive notifications when you post a product.”

According to Ganbold, his portfolio doubles as a demonstration for his tutorials. He considers himself active in the community and posts his work often. The subject matter of what you see in his paintings overlaps with what you can learn in his tutorials.

3) Produce quality content.

“Put in your best effort and make it worth the buyer’s money so they’re more likely to purchase a product from you again.”

For more on his work, products and updates, follow Naranbaatar Ganbold on ArtStation.