>>7676104
I wonder if it ever was? Maybe a couple of years ago. But as many anons have pointed out here, no. I think it is still the fastest and lowest barrier to entry way to get money for art compared to other methods that typically take a lot more time or have higher skill requirements, but it's not exactly stable. For one, your clients are generally gonna be private consumers, not large companies. So unless their suspiciously rich, you're probably not gonna get paid full professional rates. That being said, I'm not sure if there really is a most profitable option for the average drawfag. If you want art to be profitable, you really would have to put a ton of time and effort into skill building, career building, etc. for it to work. You can't really be average in that case, you'd have to aim for a comparable skill level to most pro artists.

>>7677513
As this anon said, there are many ways you could potentially make profit with art but for many of these methods, you do actually have to put in a lot of work to make these feasible, and even if you do make it, you have to maintain your career. I think that a lot of people want easy paths to monetizing art but if that's the case, you're probably better off doing something else for a career. I don't say this to be discouraging, I just want people to understand that this career path is not as easy as they often think it is, and that it does on some level require some amount of sacrifice.