So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?
February 3, 2024 11:04 AM Subscribe
Everyone’s a sellout now Vox article describing the challenge for artists, writers, musicians who just want to practice their craft: Sorry, you need to be a highly-promoted brand first.
Author John Scalzi has some excellent points about this, from his decades of experience as an artist balancing the acts of creating and the acts of promoting: Don’t Call It a Sellout:
For myself, between running a tiny unprofitable record label for several years in the late 90s and having just watched The Sparks Brothers, I have a lot of feelings about how complicated it is to navigate how to make a living with your art (but one uncomplicated feeling I have is: artists should be well compensated).
As with so many complex topics, I find myself asking: what would this look like in the world I want to live in, and how do we get closer to that ideal?
posted by kristi at 1:10 PM on February 3 [14 favorites]
There is another to me more insidious aspect of “selling out” as an epithet, which is that for decades now it’s suggested that understanding the business of your creativity was somehow a bad thing, and something to be wary of. In my own field, this has meant decades of watching predatorial creeps lurk around every part of the publishing chain to take advantage of writers, who internalize this nonsense and end up saying things like “no one does this for the money” like that’s somehow a virtue, instead of evidence of a broken system.The whole thing is worth reading.
For myself, between running a tiny unprofitable record label for several years in the late 90s and having just watched The Sparks Brothers, I have a lot of feelings about how complicated it is to navigate how to make a living with your art (but one uncomplicated feeling I have is: artists should be well compensated).
As with so many complex topics, I find myself asking: what would this look like in the world I want to live in, and how do we get closer to that ideal?
posted by kristi at 1:10 PM on February 3 [14 favorites]
Because self-promotion sucks.
Years ago I wrote a fantasy book. Then (because I am slow on the uptake) I spent a few months learning what it would take to give it a shot at getting published.
The thought of spending that much time on self-promotion filled me with nope. I self-published, let the book go down the memory hole, and never looked back.
And, because I am a very lucky person, that was a little sad but really just fine. Because for me it was all just a lark, unconnected to the way I earn my living.
posted by gurple at 1:34 PM on February 3 [10 favorites]
Years ago I wrote a fantasy book. Then (because I am slow on the uptake) I spent a few months learning what it would take to give it a shot at getting published.
The thought of spending that much time on self-promotion filled me with nope. I self-published, let the book go down the memory hole, and never looked back.
And, because I am a very lucky person, that was a little sad but really just fine. Because for me it was all just a lark, unconnected to the way I earn my living.
posted by gurple at 1:34 PM on February 3 [10 favorites]
The thing that basically murdered art as a way to make a living for me is that if you're extremely talented at art but not that good at promotion you get nothing, but if you're not that good at art but extremely talented at promotion you can be a success. It's like. Fuck that. Fuck it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:01 PM on February 3 [40 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:01 PM on February 3 [40 favorites]
And what if you’re good at neither?
posted by Melismata at 2:04 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 2:04 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]
It’s been fascinating to watch this happen slowly over the past decade or two as the precariousness of the neoliberal governing order has brought such widespread economic and spiritual degradation across all classes but the very very rich.
When college graduates cannot find decent housing and resort to spinning living in your car as a fun lifestyle choice, hustling your “personal brand” on any media channel available to you is nothing if not entirely rational, because the alternative is too grim to consciously contemplate.
posted by rhymedirective at 2:05 PM on February 3 [9 favorites]
When college graduates cannot find decent housing and resort to spinning living in your car as a fun lifestyle choice, hustling your “personal brand” on any media channel available to you is nothing if not entirely rational, because the alternative is too grim to consciously contemplate.
posted by rhymedirective at 2:05 PM on February 3 [9 favorites]
Because self-promotion sucks.
I utterly failed as a freelancer because I just sucked at promoting myself, drumming-up business, and simply coming-up with a reason why anyone should hire me over any other artist. So, yeah.
There’s no way in hell I could survive/navigate today’s social media hellscape. One kind of wonders how many great artists, musicians, writers, etc. are simply walking away from their love because they simply cannot with YouTube, Insta, TikTok, etc.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:38 PM on February 3 [11 favorites]
I utterly failed as a freelancer because I just sucked at promoting myself, drumming-up business, and simply coming-up with a reason why anyone should hire me over any other artist. So, yeah.
There’s no way in hell I could survive/navigate today’s social media hellscape. One kind of wonders how many great artists, musicians, writers, etc. are simply walking away from their love because they simply cannot with YouTube, Insta, TikTok, etc.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:38 PM on February 3 [11 favorites]
Great article. A friend from art school was one of the early success stories when Instagram was new. He got grants to do his very serious social documentary project, and then his off-main account with photos of his dog got several million followers and a book deal. IG flew him out for a series of meetings with their higher ups where he basically told them they had the opportunity to make IG the app for serious photography and art, that it would only take their quarterly office kombucha budget to make life changing funding available to artists who were already using their platform, which would in turn increase their app's value as a place for quality content and attract more artists (and advertisers).
More than a decade since then, they obviously didn't listen & we see how that turned out. IG is a wasteland of algorithmically tuned sludge that no one asked for, and many artists have convinced themselves the only way to compete in this environment is to get down in the muck and become their own broadcast personality or video editor no matter what their actual craft or practice is, in the hopes they can parlay that audience into "something" better. Meanwhile these platforms are already planning to yank the rug out from everyone who "pivoted" to short form video.
In my own career, I regularly get hired by international brands as a "technician" to work alongside and help younger artists, who usually have their entire business or practice based on virality or social, to help complete a commercial commission. Usually this is by far the largest paycheck these artists have ever dreamed of collecting for their work. I always tell them that social is like building your house on a foundation of sand, and to have a sustainable career as an independent creative person is about first and foremost the work, and secondly building relationships with people who value it. That stuff happens outside the spotlight of social media. Your follower count might be high but how many relationships do you have with clients/patrons who will actually hire you to do shit? That's always been the reality of being an artist. If building an audience is crucial to your practice, then do it in a way where you connect with them directly and not on Meta or TikTok's terms.
posted by bradbane at 2:39 PM on February 3 [16 favorites]
More than a decade since then, they obviously didn't listen & we see how that turned out. IG is a wasteland of algorithmically tuned sludge that no one asked for, and many artists have convinced themselves the only way to compete in this environment is to get down in the muck and become their own broadcast personality or video editor no matter what their actual craft or practice is, in the hopes they can parlay that audience into "something" better. Meanwhile these platforms are already planning to yank the rug out from everyone who "pivoted" to short form video.
In my own career, I regularly get hired by international brands as a "technician" to work alongside and help younger artists, who usually have their entire business or practice based on virality or social, to help complete a commercial commission. Usually this is by far the largest paycheck these artists have ever dreamed of collecting for their work. I always tell them that social is like building your house on a foundation of sand, and to have a sustainable career as an independent creative person is about first and foremost the work, and secondly building relationships with people who value it. That stuff happens outside the spotlight of social media. Your follower count might be high but how many relationships do you have with clients/patrons who will actually hire you to do shit? That's always been the reality of being an artist. If building an audience is crucial to your practice, then do it in a way where you connect with them directly and not on Meta or TikTok's terms.
posted by bradbane at 2:39 PM on February 3 [16 favorites]
This quote from Dave Grohl, while slightly off topic, seems appropriate:
"When I think about kids watching a TV show like American Idol or The Voice, then they think, "Oh, OK, that's how you become a musician, you stand in line for eight fucking hours with 800 people at a convention center and... then you sing your heart out for someone and then they tell you it's not fucking good enough." Can you imagine?" he implores. "It's destroying the next generation of musicians! Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy and old fucking drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they'll suck, too. And then they'll fucking start playing and they'll have the best time they've ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they'll become Nirvana. Because that's exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some fucking old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don't need a fucking computer or the internet or The Voice or American Idol."
posted by zardoz at 3:45 PM on February 3 [31 favorites]
"When I think about kids watching a TV show like American Idol or The Voice, then they think, "Oh, OK, that's how you become a musician, you stand in line for eight fucking hours with 800 people at a convention center and... then you sing your heart out for someone and then they tell you it's not fucking good enough." Can you imagine?" he implores. "It's destroying the next generation of musicians! Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy and old fucking drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they'll suck, too. And then they'll fucking start playing and they'll have the best time they've ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they'll become Nirvana. Because that's exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some fucking old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don't need a fucking computer or the internet or The Voice or American Idol."
posted by zardoz at 3:45 PM on February 3 [31 favorites]
I feel like this article mixes up two things - one, the idea of selling out, and two, the problem of promotion in a digital age. And that’s fair, they do seem like they have a link. But I would also say that record companies, galleries, and other cultural institutions seem to have abandoned their artists to wander lost. And speaking of abandonment, much of the problem is caused by the post-90s collapse of cultural funding after the end of the Cold War. It turned out that once we (the west) crushed the other side we didn’t need no stinking culture, and funding could be cut.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:02 PM on February 3 [9 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 4:02 PM on February 3 [9 favorites]
And speaking of abandonment, much of the problem is caused by the post-90s collapse of cultural funding after the end of the Cold War. It turned out that once we (the west) crushed the other side we didn’t need no stinking culture, and funding could be cut.
Oh, but this assumes the funding was there BEFORE the 90s in the first place, and speaking as one who was there it wasn't necessarily so.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:12 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]
Oh, but this assumes the funding was there BEFORE the 90s in the first place, and speaking as one who was there it wasn't necessarily so.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:12 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]
The publisher of our first graphic novel allocated no promotional budget to the book. This remained true even when, as a small indie, they partnered with Simon & Schuster for distribution of the collected work. Nearly every single sale was the result of us promoting online, sending snail mail promo to comic book shop owners, etc.
Needless to say, for our second graphic novel, we've returned to Kickstarter and have no plans of courting a third-party publisher. Our crowdfunding efforts, and audience-buidling there, has yielded 10 times the income of what our indie publisher achieved. Without exaggeration.
If our team is going to be doing it all ourselves, you'd better believe we're keeping the profits to ourselves as well.
posted by jordantwodelta at 4:47 PM on February 3 [22 favorites]
Needless to say, for our second graphic novel, we've returned to Kickstarter and have no plans of courting a third-party publisher. Our crowdfunding efforts, and audience-buidling there, has yielded 10 times the income of what our indie publisher achieved. Without exaggeration.
If our team is going to be doing it all ourselves, you'd better believe we're keeping the profits to ourselves as well.
posted by jordantwodelta at 4:47 PM on February 3 [22 favorites]
I have tried to paint and draw, seriously, my whole adult life. I also occasionally take photos, make weird things, draw single panel cartoons, etc. I seem to have this tap that never quite turns off, but what I don't have is any ability to promote myself or the art I make.
So, this hits home to a certain extent. I'm not sure what I am trying to say here; maybe that it's an odd thing to have decided to make art central to my life 35 years ago without really realizing what that entailed in the long run or that there would be such a massive shift in how things were done that would primarily benefit the few. I mean, how could I?
So, I post on social media, make the odd sale, and after years of not engaging have started applying to galleries and doing other art world things again, and have a tiny following on social media. I feel completely out of step with this version of the art world, but then again, I've always felty completely out of step with whatever art world I have encountered.
I like Scalzi's response more than the original post, because the kind of whimper it ends with; we're all capitalists now, just felt like a cop out, even though I don't think that was the writer's exact intent.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 5:24 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
So, this hits home to a certain extent. I'm not sure what I am trying to say here; maybe that it's an odd thing to have decided to make art central to my life 35 years ago without really realizing what that entailed in the long run or that there would be such a massive shift in how things were done that would primarily benefit the few. I mean, how could I?
So, I post on social media, make the odd sale, and after years of not engaging have started applying to galleries and doing other art world things again, and have a tiny following on social media. I feel completely out of step with this version of the art world, but then again, I've always felty completely out of step with whatever art world I have encountered.
I like Scalzi's response more than the original post, because the kind of whimper it ends with; we're all capitalists now, just felt like a cop out, even though I don't think that was the writer's exact intent.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 5:24 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
I decided years ago, capitalism sucks, I'm just going to make music -- make albums as if they were for a label, but put zero effort into promotion, release everything for $0-or-more and see what happens. I have an unrelated full-time job with a healthy salary, and that's enough "selling out" for one lifetime.
I've released an average of 6 albums per year over the past 6 years on Bandcamp. Just this Friday I passed the $1000 revenue mark. If I thought of it terms of labor and wages this would be incredibly depressing. Instead I prefer to think of it as a labor of love; I'd have spent that time making music anyway, or playing video games or something if not. And that's $1000 that a small number of appreciative fans absolutely didn't have to pay but wanted to show their support.
posted by Foosnark at 6:10 PM on February 3 [11 favorites]
I've released an average of 6 albums per year over the past 6 years on Bandcamp. Just this Friday I passed the $1000 revenue mark. If I thought of it terms of labor and wages this would be incredibly depressing. Instead I prefer to think of it as a labor of love; I'd have spent that time making music anyway, or playing video games or something if not. And that's $1000 that a small number of appreciative fans absolutely didn't have to pay but wanted to show their support.
posted by Foosnark at 6:10 PM on February 3 [11 favorites]
What I've come to realize is that the creation of art isn't therapy, it's working out. You do it because if you don't do it you get sick. You literally get sick. If you do it, you function properly. If you stop doing it because it doesn't make money, you'll just get sick and die. With rare exceptions, it won't make money, and it making money has very little to do whether it's good.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:14 PM on February 3 [39 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:14 PM on February 3 [39 favorites]
Foosnark, that’s kind of my approach with writing except I don’t have a full time job bc I already worked full time for more than 40 years and like, if I die, I die.
I keep my subscription rates as low as they can possibly be and I only paywall original fiction. What I really wanted was the lowest barrier to access that would still keep me on the right side of “unpublished.” Haha! I thought, if maybe a couple hundred people give me a couple bucks a month, I might can make $1k/mo & I can live on that. It was working pretty well; I wad growing my subscriber base slowly but steadily.
Unfortunately, when I sold a story recently, a colleague told me I’d better delete all the drafts of that story, even though they were paywalled AND I have a total circulation of like 30, smaller than a lot of critique groups.
So now I have to decide between the artistic communism I believe in, or caving to the publishing capitalism that thinks 30 unique reads is a threat to exclusivity.
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:51 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
I keep my subscription rates as low as they can possibly be and I only paywall original fiction. What I really wanted was the lowest barrier to access that would still keep me on the right side of “unpublished.” Haha! I thought, if maybe a couple hundred people give me a couple bucks a month, I might can make $1k/mo & I can live on that. It was working pretty well; I wad growing my subscriber base slowly but steadily.
Unfortunately, when I sold a story recently, a colleague told me I’d better delete all the drafts of that story, even though they were paywalled AND I have a total circulation of like 30, smaller than a lot of critique groups.
So now I have to decide between the artistic communism I believe in, or caving to the publishing capitalism that thinks 30 unique reads is a threat to exclusivity.
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:51 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
What I've come to realize is that the creation of art isn't therapy, it's working out. You do it because if you don't do it you get sick. You literally get sick. If you do it, you function properly. If you stop doing it because it doesn't make money, you'll just get sick and die. With rare exceptions, it won't make money, and it making money has very little to do whether it's good.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:14 PM on February 3
By far the best thing I've read today.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:27 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:14 PM on February 3
By far the best thing I've read today.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:27 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]
Eh, if you're donating your notoriety whether in the form of your face, your name or your creative output to parasitic companies to further hollow-out and debase human experience in the name of a meal and a quick buck then you're not on the same side of the barricades as we and I will call you out as the enemy you are. These are human scum whose banal perfidy should not be excused.
Anyhoo, I've been watching a lot Jeopardy reruns on PlutoTV and the ads are getting to me. What were we talking about again?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 12:41 AM on February 4
Anyhoo, I've been watching a lot Jeopardy reruns on PlutoTV and the ads are getting to me. What were we talking about again?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 12:41 AM on February 4
to parasitic companies
That's one of the factors that isn't discussed a lot I think - the paths to self-promotion these days are mostly through major, billionaire-owned privacy-nightmare social media platforms that are simultaneously active amplifiers of content you might personally want not to contribute to in any way, like hate speech and disinformation. This doesn't only affect artists either - for my business I used to be able to just post ads on local boards whenever I needed. Today nobody goes to sites like that, and the only effective avenues left are social media platforms I don't actually want to participate in or help make more powerful.
Anyway, since publishers and distributors used to do most promotional work themselves and are now offloading it to the artists, surely that means they're paying artists a larger percentage of revenues, right? Seeing as the artists are creating more value, taking on a ton more work themselves, and minimizing the publishers' promotion costs, and seeing as the publishers are now offering less value to the artists...
posted by trig at 5:50 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]
That's one of the factors that isn't discussed a lot I think - the paths to self-promotion these days are mostly through major, billionaire-owned privacy-nightmare social media platforms that are simultaneously active amplifiers of content you might personally want not to contribute to in any way, like hate speech and disinformation. This doesn't only affect artists either - for my business I used to be able to just post ads on local boards whenever I needed. Today nobody goes to sites like that, and the only effective avenues left are social media platforms I don't actually want to participate in or help make more powerful.
In his essay collection The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman defines the term “sellout” not as someone who sells something in order to get rich, but someone who compromises their values to do so.For a lot of people putting on a publicly attractive performance of specific qualities in order to market ourselves feels like lying. To have to do it on social media, to a mass audience you have no control over or real knowledge of, feels even worse. Some people take naturally to masks, and can create and perform a crafted image without feeling like it's fake bullshit, but many can't. And I think in both groups you get people losing their sense of self to the image they have to perform (and, these days, perform constantly, with endless new performative content, and with constant feedback and dopamine cycles).
Instead of spending the majority of our time on self-promotion, perhaps more of us could be focusing on finding ways to form solidarity among artists or among disciplines, especially in fields where there is no single industry-wide union that protects individual creators. We can support independently owned media, we can make it more possible for artists to survive by fighting for a health care system that doesn’t rely on full-time employment, for affordable child care, and against companies that profit from stealing the work of unpaid or underpaid artists.Here's to studies on whether universal basic income reduces the overall amount of bullshit in the world.
Anyway, since publishers and distributors used to do most promotional work themselves and are now offloading it to the artists, surely that means they're paying artists a larger percentage of revenues, right? Seeing as the artists are creating more value, taking on a ton more work themselves, and minimizing the publishers' promotion costs, and seeing as the publishers are now offering less value to the artists...
posted by trig at 5:50 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]
Another perspective on "selling out" (a disclaimer that I have not seen this, but only heard through hearsay): In the Jonathan Larson piece Tick, Tick, Boom (a thinly-disguised autobiography), the main character "Jonathan" has a friend and former roommate named Michael, another creative who's now working in advertising. Jonathan periodically teases Michael for "selling out" periodically for the first part of the piece, and even sabotages the "focus group" Michael gets him into as a favor because he needs quick cash.
As I understand, Michael finally has a Come-to-Jesus talk with him - in which Michael points out that 1. he doesn't have a family supporting him financially the way Jonathan does, and 2. Michael is a gay man and it's the 1990s and so he has to watch out for his health, and that means making sure he has health insurance - and that means getting a job with benefits and making sure he has enough money for proper physical care, instead of toughing it out in a space with leaky windows and moldy ceilings like Jonathan is doing. Jonathan is able to keep up his boho lifestyle because he has privileges Michael doesn't have, so Jonathan better shut it.
"Being able to promote yourself" is just one privilege many would-be artists and creatives might not have. My own biggest reasons for dropping out of theater are more like Michael's - it pays like shit, so I'd also have to have a day job along with it, and over time I simply didn't have the time for two full-time jobs when only one of them paid me. I looked around at the other stage mangers I knew - and noticed that all of them were married to people who could be the primary breadwinner, while I was single. So that was that - I needed health insurance and an actual real-life income, and theater was never going to give me that and I couldn't do both. So I had to let theater go.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:21 AM on February 4 [8 favorites]
As I understand, Michael finally has a Come-to-Jesus talk with him - in which Michael points out that 1. he doesn't have a family supporting him financially the way Jonathan does, and 2. Michael is a gay man and it's the 1990s and so he has to watch out for his health, and that means making sure he has health insurance - and that means getting a job with benefits and making sure he has enough money for proper physical care, instead of toughing it out in a space with leaky windows and moldy ceilings like Jonathan is doing. Jonathan is able to keep up his boho lifestyle because he has privileges Michael doesn't have, so Jonathan better shut it.
"Being able to promote yourself" is just one privilege many would-be artists and creatives might not have. My own biggest reasons for dropping out of theater are more like Michael's - it pays like shit, so I'd also have to have a day job along with it, and over time I simply didn't have the time for two full-time jobs when only one of them paid me. I looked around at the other stage mangers I knew - and noticed that all of them were married to people who could be the primary breadwinner, while I was single. So that was that - I needed health insurance and an actual real-life income, and theater was never going to give me that and I couldn't do both. So I had to let theater go.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:21 AM on February 4 [8 favorites]
In general, everyone I know who has a career in the arts got there in part or in whole due to a generous grant from either the Mom and Dad Foundation or the Spouse with a Real Job Foundation. This country does not let you win if you don't at least check in with the full-time employment yoke. You don't have to be the one beholden, but you must at least be beholden adjacent.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:40 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:40 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]
As a South African writer of genre fiction, if it wasn't for social media and Amazon /Kobo and the rest of the self publishing platforms I'd never have got anything published or any readers.
I absolutely and utterly suck at self promotion and haven't done any for years, so I don't sell much at all, but it's still way better than nothing.
posted by Zumbador at 6:51 AM on February 4 [3 favorites]
I absolutely and utterly suck at self promotion and haven't done any for years, so I don't sell much at all, but it's still way better than nothing.
posted by Zumbador at 6:51 AM on February 4 [3 favorites]
I'm a writer, and I also lead writing workshops and do other related activities. I've really gotten comfortable with how I pursue this work for money by taking courses from Mark Silver at Heart of Business. He's got a spiritual bent—he's a Sufi—but I'm a Quaker, so it suits me. He focuses on how to do things ethically, even when you're taking advantage of typical marketing "tricks" like offering a lower rate for registration before a certain date, or when you're selling your services to a client. He's helped me get more comfortable with pricing my work at a sustainable level, with marketing myself. And he doesn't do hype or "this one quick trick." He's central to why I made more money from my writing workshops in 2023 than in my entire life before—one reason is that I service the LGBTQ community, and other communities that aren't rolling in bucks, and I've also bought into the idea over the years that my work isn't valuable in the marketplace. Now I offer my eight-week workshops at a price that truly nurtures my financial well-being, but I also offer "pay as led" options for accessibility's sake. In any given 6-person group, I usually have two people paying full price, three paying about half that, and one person who is paying very little or nothing. This works out really well. I like being able to invite people in who will benefit from the workshop but don't have the means to pay a lot for it—I also serve a lot of neurodiverse, trans, and disabled folks [lots of overlap there] who may be living on disability or otherwise struggling to hold down a job.
Anyway, I'm totally pitching Mark's services here, but also just expressing how amazing it is for me in my late 50s to finally have found a way to promote and sell my work that is good for me and good for the people who take my workshops. I'm one of those disabled neurodiverse people. My day job is part-time and pays crap. My ex stopped paying child support in July. And my workshops ended up amounting to about a fourth of my 2023 income. Thanks to Mark, and to another mentor, I have expectations that it will be even more in 2024.
posted by Well I never at 7:18 AM on February 4 [8 favorites]
Anyway, I'm totally pitching Mark's services here, but also just expressing how amazing it is for me in my late 50s to finally have found a way to promote and sell my work that is good for me and good for the people who take my workshops. I'm one of those disabled neurodiverse people. My day job is part-time and pays crap. My ex stopped paying child support in July. And my workshops ended up amounting to about a fourth of my 2023 income. Thanks to Mark, and to another mentor, I have expectations that it will be even more in 2024.
posted by Well I never at 7:18 AM on February 4 [8 favorites]
I'm pretty much disillusioned with social media and internet marketing in general.
I started a blog in 2005 posting the odd characters I sketched during meetings at work.
From 2013 to 2019 I posted a new image almost every day and, over time, what was originally robots morphed into illustrations of puns, portmanteaus and mondegreens.
I naively assumed that at some point I would start selling artwork. I've posted on Twitter, Facebook, IG and Reddit. I've probably made less than $500 over the last 19 years.
I think it's safe to say that marketing is not my strong suit.
I believe in my work, I love it, I won't stop, but I seriously doubt I'll ever make money off it.
posted by mmrtnt at 1:06 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
I started a blog in 2005 posting the odd characters I sketched during meetings at work.
From 2013 to 2019 I posted a new image almost every day and, over time, what was originally robots morphed into illustrations of puns, portmanteaus and mondegreens.
I naively assumed that at some point I would start selling artwork. I've posted on Twitter, Facebook, IG and Reddit. I've probably made less than $500 over the last 19 years.
I think it's safe to say that marketing is not my strong suit.
I believe in my work, I love it, I won't stop, but I seriously doubt I'll ever make money off it.
posted by mmrtnt at 1:06 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
I'm not going to criticise TikTok in particular as I don't want to harsh on anyone's yum or whatever.
The question I do want to pose is: how the actual hell did we get to this point? The internet arrived as a marvellous opportunity for everyone, whether artist, musician, author or any other creative field, to create their own stuff and put it out there outside the interference or control of corporations. But somehow it's actually now become even more difficult to get your stuff seen than it was before the internet.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:25 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
The question I do want to pose is: how the actual hell did we get to this point? The internet arrived as a marvellous opportunity for everyone, whether artist, musician, author or any other creative field, to create their own stuff and put it out there outside the interference or control of corporations. But somehow it's actually now become even more difficult to get your stuff seen than it was before the internet.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:25 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
Metafilter: a wasteland of algorithmically tuned sludge that no one asked for
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:30 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:30 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
But somehow it's actually now become even more difficult to get your stuff seen than it was before the internet.
The paradox of riches. Just too much choice that it all gets drowned out because people just do not have time to slog through all the dreck.
There was a small window where the gate keepers didn’t have control and the content wasn’t so massive that it looked like things would get better, but the market adapted and we are now at a place if your don’t have a massive market in budget you have to be an absolute earworm like “Old Town Road” to get enough people to notice for it to matter.
posted by jmauro at 6:04 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]
The paradox of riches. Just too much choice that it all gets drowned out because people just do not have time to slog through all the dreck.
There was a small window where the gate keepers didn’t have control and the content wasn’t so massive that it looked like things would get better, but the market adapted and we are now at a place if your don’t have a massive market in budget you have to be an absolute earworm like “Old Town Road” to get enough people to notice for it to matter.
posted by jmauro at 6:04 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]
I saw a recent Ryan George video last night about monetizing a hobby and thought about it immediately when I saw the title of this post.
posted by ceejaytee at 5:06 AM on February 5
posted by ceejaytee at 5:06 AM on February 5
The question I do want to pose is: how the actual hell did we get to this point?
People put too much stock in the 1000 True Fans and didn't account for:
A) Fame not equalling fortune - "oh you've got tons of followers, you're fine!" but none of those followers pay
B) The sheer amount of work to get people to notice your work to start with (part of why I haven't got super far into online content creation despite actually enjoying the creative process is that editing takes FOREVER)
C) Systems (even including government funding) assuming that your True Fans should be your first source of income, being reluctant to give you any kind of support unless you can prove that you won't need it
posted by creatrixtiara at 10:28 PM on February 5
People put too much stock in the 1000 True Fans and didn't account for:
A) Fame not equalling fortune - "oh you've got tons of followers, you're fine!" but none of those followers pay
B) The sheer amount of work to get people to notice your work to start with (part of why I haven't got super far into online content creation despite actually enjoying the creative process is that editing takes FOREVER)
C) Systems (even including government funding) assuming that your True Fans should be your first source of income, being reluctant to give you any kind of support unless you can prove that you won't need it
posted by creatrixtiara at 10:28 PM on February 5
"What I've come to realize is that the creation of art isn't therapy, it's working out. You do it because if you don't do it you get sick. You literally get sick." —kittensforbreakfast
Many, many years ago I was at a writer's conference and the person leading a workshop asked everyone to explain why they wanted to write. Answers varied from "because God has given me a message" to "I love telling stories" to "I want to entertain" to "there are issues that people need to learn about and I can bring them to light", and those were all fine answers.
But when it came time to give my answer, all I could really say was "Because if you go too long without writing, you burst into flames." Still hold to that.
posted by verb at 9:37 AM on February 6 [2 favorites]
Many, many years ago I was at a writer's conference and the person leading a workshop asked everyone to explain why they wanted to write. Answers varied from "because God has given me a message" to "I love telling stories" to "I want to entertain" to "there are issues that people need to learn about and I can bring them to light", and those were all fine answers.
But when it came time to give my answer, all I could really say was "Because if you go too long without writing, you burst into flames." Still hold to that.
posted by verb at 9:37 AM on February 6 [2 favorites]
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