So you have "mad skilz" or even massive talent with "PaintShop Pro", "Photoshop" or "The GIMP"? Then this plan is for you.

Over the course of this article you will learn how to combine your skills with your strongest interests to generate an income.

You will become an independent artist answerable only to yourself and your fans.

You will also have a steady flow of wealth and if particularly good (and a little lucky) you might even e able to consider quitting you job or at least cutting down your hours.

Are you ready? Then read on.

The first thing you will need is a domain name. Make sure you choose a great domain name because a lot will rest on how easy it is to remember and how much of a visual image it creates.

For example - "cult of the jumping cow" is a great visual name and cultothejumpingcow.com might stick in the mind. However, it is a little on the long side but utterly useless if your topic is going to be about fast cars. The title, image it produces and very other part needs to match with your theme.

Your theme or "niche topic" can be anything you want. Spend a little time doing some research and pick a subject that is broad enough for you to write about but small enough for you to become famous in it. It should be a topic you care about and, ideally for this plan, one that has some visual elements.

If you find making a cartoon about your topic every week is something you could do then you have the best of both worlds. Your content is your art and little more needs to be said.

Take time to choose this one.

Once you have your topic and thus your domain under your belt (buy it before it goes) you are ready to take some time out to create some digital art.

At this stage you are simply looking at creating concept work. Getting a feel for the topic and playing with colours and styles. You don't even need to consider web design yet. Just design.

Slowly you will find that a clear logo or recurring theme becomes clear in your work. This iconic element is to be your brand in this plan. Work it until you are completely happy or you have had enough of working it (whatever happens first).

Save the graphic as a jpg or png file in a number of sizes and backgrounds.

Write down the six figure "hex number" of the colours you like best - the ones that work well with your designs.

Now you are ready to think web design.

But at this stage thinking is all you are going to want to do.

Before you can approach a web-designer (or attempt the design yourself) you will need to know what management system or template system you are going to be working with.

This is primarily dictated by the hosting package you choose. To be honest you are best off using Linux hosting with PHP and MySQL as there is the greatest range of free Site and Content Management Systems (known as CMS) for this set up.

Our post "Setting Up a Functional Web Site" covers this in more detail. Given the choice choose a simple blog system like NucleusCMS as this will lend itself most well to your needs.

So now you presumably have a host, a CMS, a niche and a domain name.

Good you are mostly ready.

You will now need to create the skin or theme (that word again) for your CMS. If you were feeling brave you might have chosen Drupal or TikiWiki in which case "good luck, you'll need it" or might have followed our advice and chosen NucluesCMS in which case the design should be easy to complete.

Once you have your skin, theme or whatever your system calls the look and feel it is time to think content.

It is the content that will draw visitors and the visitors will (if you treat them well) become readers or even fans and it is these people that will spend money with you.

As an artist you want to focus on making every fifth post extremely visual. In this way 20% of you content is imagery while 80% is text that things like Google and yahoo can get to grips with.

Of the remaining post one in four (or another 20%) should be text about your images. This gives you just 60% to talk about your topic directly.

So out of five posts you should find: one image, one about your images and three about your topic.

Now you want to focus on money.

Do not be tempted to run adverts or sponsored posts unless someone offers you top dollar to do so and by top dollar I mean a month's wages in one hit.

Your earnings are going to come from a number of things.

1. First you can offer with an about page your services as a digital artist. This will yield a lower number of
customers but with a high payout.

2. Secondarily to this you can offer themed products that carry your images. Cafepress (tell them lordmatt sent you) will set you back about $60 a year for a pro shop. Experiment with the different products and find out what sells best for you. The ones that sell well keep the one's that sell badly and earn you not a lot - drop.

3. If source two works out well for you then you can consider having the products printed yourself. The yield is much higher although you need to set up your own shop. However the risk is also greater. You need to layout a lot more to start with so it's up to you when you think you are ready for that.

4. If your art is funny or mature content you can consider creating a pay for members area. Little else has a chance of getting a cult following so this is an altogether unlikely source.

This is going to take about a year or two to take off but if you want to ramp up the work and the results there is a stronger plan.

As before but this time choose three niche subjects with some overlap.

instead of hosting purchase a virtual server where you can host lots of domains one of which will be your trademark site.

It is up to you if the trademark site is a blog or a shop. I recommend both. This way there is a blog you write about the blogs and graphics you are doing else where. A sort of meta-blog and a nexus for everything else.

With your central blog and three secondary niche topics you will be producing around two to three posts every day and this is going to eat up your time. Don't launch them all at once but start with the central one and then as you get each one ready after that you have something to "blog about".

Do a web search of "pro blogging" and among all the silliness that people write will be some quality advice. Use it.

The advantage of doing things this way is that your shop (cafepress or other) will build up a stock of image related product a little more quickly and will have a lot more range. Too much maybe.

If your poor shop is over loaded with products consider running a second shop but only if the product split easily down the lines of style and target audience.

This multi sited approach also works well for offers of work so make sure that you make it easy for people to offer you work and be sure to point your readers back to the things that make you money (your shop and your profile).

Good luck.