Real Artists Don't Starve

Real Artists Don’t Starve debunks all myths around the starving artist and shows you you can, will and deserve to make a living from your creative work.

All artists initially see their art as something sacred. It’s natural to idolize the process and as a consequence, we want it to have nothing to do with money – at first. But the more you practice and enjoy the time you spend creating, the more attractive the thought of making a living from your art becomes.

With that, the problems begin: where money wants to be earned, marketing efforts must be made. What most artists get hung up on is that they treat it like an undesired, necessary activity. Here’s how to to approach marketing your art instead: View it as practice in public.

You don’t have to bombard your audience with ads or half-assed products and services. Just share your work. Put it out there. Benjamin Hardy wrote on Medium to build a fanbase. Russ released a song a week on Soundcloud. Youtubers make videos.

This isn’t just a way to build a platform way before you need it, but it also helps you improve much faster, because you get a crucial component of high performance that’s missing when you’re alone in your room: feedback.

Make yourself comfortable on platform where people can follow you and then continue to do your thing.

Most art nowadays hands itself to doing freelance work in it. A writer might take a copywriting gig, a musician might play on a birthday party and athletes can work for local sports teams on the side. There are two common pitfalls new artists fall for when taking their first steps in the paid realm: Not charging at all. Charging once for giving up lifetime returns. Whenever someone emails me asking for an article contribution with the promise of “great exposure” and tells me it’s “a good opportunity,” I instantly know it isn’t. Demand hard numbers. How many pairs of eyes are we talking about? Unless it’s an extremely good opportunity, Jeff suggests you never work for free. A huge part of turning your passion into your paycheck is convincing yourself that your work is worth it. Consistently charging for it is a good first step to accomplish that. Another spoke the market will try to put in your wheel is to get you to give up the rights to your art. Ghost writing, white label solutions, the rights to a novel or movie script, they all fall into this category. However attractive the lump sum, it’s never enough. Keep your art in your hand and your money in your pocket. You’ll never regret it from a psychological perspective…