Custom Illustrating Business

Custom Illustrating Business Success Stories [2025]

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Updated: April 17th, 2025

Many businesses use stock illustrations or images in their commercials. While stock illustrations provide a cheaper option, the visuals aren’t part of the product, so the brand message is diluted.

In a business world where more than 70% of social media and B2B marketers use visuals in their promotions, creating custom illustrations is highly on demand.

Ideally, custom illustration is an essential visual strategy helping businesses use clever, compelling visual content to effectively communicate with the target audience.

With major social media platforms dependent on visuals to create impressions, starting a custom illustrating business can be an opportunity to build a profitable business. Custom illustrations are a visual representation of any text and are considered art for beautifying elements.

To kickstart your custom illustration business, pursue a fine arts certification, where you will learn computer graphics, drawing, and painting skills. Then, identify your style, create a portfolio, then focus on building a client base.

In this list, you'll find real-world custom illustrating business success stories and very profitable examples of starting a custom illustrating business that makes money.

1. Avatoon ($56.4K/year)

Zoltán and his colleagues founded Avatoon.net after realizing the obscure market for custom hand-drawn avatars. They launched their website and attracted customers through an email campaign and ProductHunt feature, and have since focused on improving their SEO to attract organic traffic. With a majority of their clients being returning companies, they plan to spend more on SEO and introduce different art styles at different price points in the future.

How much money it makes: $56.4K/year
How much did it cost to start: $800
How many people on the team: 3

How We Started A $4.7K/Month Business Selling Custom Hand-Drawn Avatars

Avatoon.net founders share how they started a $4.7k/month business selling custom hand-drawn avatars and grew to an average of $5,000 per month with ~100 clients through SEO-focused marketing and serving returning companies.

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