My entire life I was steered away from being an artist, & very much toward some of the other fields
I have an affinity for & told in very clear terms that being an artist was something I should never
do as more than a hobby...ironically for legal/tax purposes that can actually be very good advice,
particularly if you have an issue with having to deal with zoning or lease agreements, business
licensing, and numerous other expenses. Tax code and legal issues aside, what they really meant was don't ever plan
on making a full time living from being an artist, and certainly not one you can actually live on
without doing something else in life.
We all know some artists hit the jackpot, we all also know some never see a penny, and then there
are those that end up somewhere in between. Which is why being the total geek...
For anyone who's shocked there's a ton of dead giveaway's in the
shop & gallery.
For everyone else who either wasn't shocked, or has recovered from that I've got a little math for
them. Let's say I spend $10.00 or so on art supplies, I then take 10, 15, or even 20 hours to make
something that I can sell for $60.00.
Item sold = $60.00 - $10.00 for supplies
I come away with $50.00 profit/10-20 hours = $2.50 - $5.00 per hour depending on how much time I spent.
Okay fine, I'm glad I've got that $50.00 more, but when anyone actually does the math then it gets very
obvious very quickly to anyone who knows what it costs to live can already probably figure out that you
can't live on that alone, much less have any quality of life or get rich.
Don't get me wrong, if you enjoy doing artwork as a hobby, and for
whatever reason wake up one day needing to �simplify� for whatever reason and have the option to take the
time and turn your supplies into items you can sell, & then sell them (particularly if you enjoy doing so)
I'd be the first to say you'd be stupid not to. Again you paid something for those supplies, and if they
are the kind of thing that doesn't lose quality for laying around not being used, then you might as well
get back at least what you paid for them in the process, or better yet more.
I also know people who are disabled, and disabled for life at that and that $50.00 profit I described in the
math equation above would be nothing short of a miracle to them despite the other obvious math problems involved
because what nobody ever thinks about with the disabled is first they end up with fewer opportunities for them
to make any money, often the opportunities they do get take significantly more out of themselves emotionally,
physically, & sometimes even pursing them involves expenses someone without a disability wouldn't get stuck with
in the first place, & then you have more expenses all together. So not shockingly while I'm the first to say
art should not be subsidized by the government, I'm also the first person
to say if someone who's to disabled to work anyway can make even a couple dollars here and there by monetizing
a hobby that they enjoy, and is proven to have health benefits (which arts and crafts do) then that is something
that should be encouraged because the alternative is worse.
The other thing not to make any mistake about is that there are numerous types of art and numerous ways to
make money from it. For example I've heard of people who have sold a graphic as a logo that they were paid
a fixed amount for, & made some money one time, but if they'd instead gotten the royalties from it's long
term usage they'd have more money than they knew what to do with because it was used millions of times.
So a picture sold = $100.00 once Vs. A picture sold = $10.00 up
front + $1.00 per use * 1,000,000 uses literately makes their graphic a $1,000,000 idea,
actually $1,000,010 idea but as I understand most people usually start wondering who's counting right about now.
& that's just with the actual end result of a given persons art project, in today's
high tech economy there are numerous overtures that can help an artist avoid starving...Says the artist pretending they aren't secretly screaming please buy
something from my shop at the readers while blogging in relation to art...a fact that is more true than ever in
today's high tech world.
Another thing to consider is as simple as this I'd be drawing pictures anyway as a
hobby, I decided I might as well display them in a manner that could result in some cash flow. Other people might
knit, or bead, or paint, write, sculpt, etc. anyway money or no money, if they want to put themselves in a position to make some money
even if it's less than what they spent, they might as well leave themselves better off for doing something they
enjoy. However there is a huge difference between not making much on something you'd be doing anyway just for fun,
and not making that much on something where you're primary goal is money.
However regardless of which arts & crafts a person is engaging in, and the question of if the person doing the arts & crafts
is doing so with the intent of selling their artwork, or just having fun then decides for
some other reason to sell something then part of the point I was making above is that understanding very basic business
principals is important for any artist that would care to avoid or at least limit starvation.
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