Yes you can make money using Blender

The formula for success is simple:

Create large amounts of high quality product in the shortest amount of time and then tell potential customers about it.

The hard part is in the implementation. Creating high quality graphics and animation in Blender depends on your talent and imagination. Creating it quickly comes down to an efficient workflow. Telling customers about your product comes down to marketing. I am assuming you already have some basic Blender skills and want to make it more than just a hobby.

Talent and creativity

We are still waiting for the drug companies to invent the "talent pill" so until that day comes we will have to work with what we got. Study and practice are the best ways to develop your talent. The world around you is filled with inspiration. Learn to observe.

Don't marry a bad idea

This is important and deserves some special consideration. Artists tend to have a great deal of affection for their creations. This is natural. But sometimes what starts out as a great idea never fully comes together on the drawing board or 3D view in Blender. The more you work on it the more improbable it seems. At this point you have reached the point of diminishing returns: the work you put in from here on will never give you a satisfactory return on your investment. It's time to bail out. Put the project away and move on. You can always return to it later or even re-purpose some of its objects.

Workflow

If you're going to service a bunch of clients, sell models, sell renderings you need to be able to produce enough stock to generate a satisfactory revenue stream.

The general work flow is this:

Notice that I didn't include animation. Animation requires a great deal of time and lots of computer power. To create a 30 second commercial quality animation with just your computer and Blender will require months of modeling and animation work and days even weeks to render it all. I am trying to reach the average Blender user who wants to take their skills beyond those of the hobbyist or Blender enthusiast. If you want to get into serious commercial grade animation I suggest getting the 4 DVD set of Sintel. These contain all the production blend files as well as production level tutorials and resources.

Marketing

Getting your work in front of customers is key to earning revenue as an artist. Thanks to the web, there are a number of viable options.

Microstock

Microstock has turned out to be a great marketplace for artists and designers. I use Shutterstock which is the number one microstock site in the business. Shutterstock has a very high standard for image quality so don't be discouraged if you don't get accepted at first. They offer constructive criticism of your images so you can rework them and try again. My Blender images began selling the first day I uploaded them. I also have some stock at Fotolia just for a little extra visibility. Look at the others if you like and pay close attention to their contributor agreements especially their pricing structure. In general you can earn as little as 25 cents per download or more than $30 US. It all depends on the license that the client buys. 25 cents may not sound like much, but if your graphic is downloaded 1000 times, it will add up. I find the best approach is to have a large portfolio of images. This is a bit work, but it's a good strategy.

With Microstock you're trying to anticipate demand. You need to do a little research on market trends. I find if I do a search on "microstock trends" I get a good number of articles. Look at the different categories and see how they are selling. You don't always need to make complex graphics in Blender to be a best sellers. On Fotolia, I found an image of a paper clip (yes a paperclip) that had downloaded more than a 200 times. Not bad for an image that probably took 20 minutes to create. Remember, micro stock is used mainly by busy web designers, advertising graphic artist, publishers, and people making Power Point presentations. This is not the place to sell high-concept art work. If you have a really cool image of a guy fighting a dragon, this is not the place to sell it.

As always pay really close attention to copyright laws. They are their to protect your work as well as the work of others.

Sell your models

There's growing number of web sites that sell completed, high quality models. TurboSquid is one of the top sites in the 3D model market. A well built model exported to OBJ format can fetch well over $500 US. That's not a typo. You can search on Blender compatible files and browse the collection. These are extremely detailed, hi-poli models that get used in movies, television and video game production. When your talent and Blender skills develop and your ready to run with the big dogs, this is the place to go.

Give away your models

This may sound counter intuitive, but it's not. Blender Swap is a site where you can post your blend files to be download for free with a Creative Commons license. If you chose the Attribution option then anyone who uses your files, even commercially, must give you credit. This is like getting free advertising.

Social media

This may seem obvious, but let me be obvious. Get onto Twitter or FB or whatever social media and start chatting up your work. Network with other Blender users. Find out what they're doing. It's all good.

Showcase your work on your web site

You may already have several web sites. Are any of them targeted at showcasing your work? If not you may need to do a serious redesign. Or better yet, just create a whole new site and URL for your work. You need a site that does nothing but talk about your work. You are building your brand so think about the impression you want to make on potential customers. You can put your favorite songs and recipes on another site.