The Complete Guide to Making a Living as an Artist/Creator — And Not Hate Your Life Meanwhile

Photo by Dillon Wanner on Unsplash

Table of Contents:

· 1000 True Fans? Niche Down? Help, It’s Not Enough!
· Method #1: Build a Library That’ll Work For You
· Method #2: Become an Authority, Make a Living Forever
· Method #3: Create Buzz With “Dev Logs”
· Conclusion: A Few Words on Your Journey

Perhaps the #1 issue with being forced to become a content machine first and an artist second, is the inevitable deterioration of both.

Because you spend so much time figuring out how to best package your art to appeal to an algorithm, you lose time to spend on your art.

When you spend less time on your art, the quality suffers.

When you spend more time on your art and less on your content, your followers notice a decline in “passion” and leave.

It seems like you lose no matter what you do.

On top of this, when you are deep in the trenches of content creation your thought patterns change. Your art becomes a means to an end. You view your art through a content lens:

“How can I make this as popular as possible?”

“How can I best clickbait this without ruining my reputation?”

“Will anybody even like this?”

It’s understandable but dangerous.

You take your square wooden block and jam it through the circular content hole so many times that you scrape away all the intricacies that make your art unique. You keep going until you’ve grinded down your art into the same easily digestible content dust that blows across the internet.

It’s not your fault.

You just want a piece of the content/fame/sales pie. And the big tech companies upstairs says you can have it if you submit to them.

So, how can you keep the integrity, time and passion for your art and still get your piece of the pie?

How do you quit the conventional path and become a full-time creator?

1000 True Fans? Niche Down? Help, It’s Not Enough!

If you’re not necessarily looking to get rich but want to live off your creations, this is the option for you.

But in conjunction with the rest of the methods detailed in this article, it could just as well make you millions.

Chances are you’ve heard of 1000 true fans.

It’s the concept that to sustain any career, you need 1000 people religiously consuming whatever you create so you can keep the lights on.

But if you swallow this concept whole you might find yourself coming up short. The author of the concept himself said it best:

The number 1,000 is not absolute. Its significance is in its rough order of magnitude — three orders less than a million. The actual number has to be adjusted for each person. If you are able to only earn $50 per year per true fan, then you need 2,000.

— Kevin Kelly

Imagine you pour your time and energy into writing a novel. You sell it for a reasonable price of $15 to your hungry following of 1000.

After doing some simple math:

15 x 1000 = $15,000

It’s not enough to live off for a year. Unless you publish novels often 1000 fans may not be enough.

Same goes for coding a video game or recording an album. So while 1000 true fans is a great concept, I would try to aim a little higher.

15 x 5000 = $75,000

Now I’m not American, but I’d imagine even you guys could live off of $75,000/year. According to Indeed.com, it’s the equivalent of an industrial engineer’s salary. I don’t know how accurate this is but it’s sounds livable.

There is another huge problem with the concept. Kevin Kelly explains:

Monetizing any product takes more than simply having 1000 true fans, even though on the surface, the math seems so simple… Having 1000 true fans or 100,000 fans doesn’t entitle you to anything. You still have to earn a customer’s loyalty, attention, trust, and money every day.

-Kevin Kelly

There is a difference between converting someone into a fan for the moment versus converting someone for life. You have to be incredible in somebody’s eyes in order for them to give you incredible support.

So, people try to prescribe you another remedy: niching down.

Serve a specific demographic and win big by going small.

What’s often missed in this conversation is this: to go deep, you have to go wide too.

It’s insanely difficult to catch the deep fish right off the bat.

Why? Because if you’re starting from zero, you’re a nobody.

In this vast online ocean, you’re a fisherman who has just set sail — and the fish are very busy watching cat videos.

You can make niche YouTube videos about your craft and grow that way. But the chances of the algorithm knowing exactly where to place you is slim at first.

That’s why it’s optimal to go for a 50/50 approach — you cast some nets wide, and some deep. If you’re smart you’ll find a way to promote your craft/art/project in the wide nets too.

Let’s stick with the YouTube example.

If you make a video doing a take on something happening in your space — a person who loves your craft might find that video and view your channel.

When they see you don’t only critique animated shows (or whatever), but you’re also deeply passionate about this other animated project they’re interested in (or become interested in) you get the chance to convert “stumble-upons” into fans.

Coincidentally this is why it’s vital these days to have a magnetic persona across everything you appear in.

You need to take every opportunity to carve out your own bubble and create a copycat-proof moat around your art/creations/content.

If you were running a more traditional business, this would be easier. Getting 5000 people to pay for commissions is easier than getting 5000 people care about your paintings.

But what if you’re a lone soul trying to make a living?

But how do you build 1000+ true fans as a content creator/artist?

No matter if you wish to build, 1000, 5000 or 1,000,000 fans…

Whether you want to make in-depth analyses on obscure TV shows, comission furry art or write a horror novel…

Here it is.

The three most powerful methods I’ve found to make a living as an artist online:

Method #1: Build a Library That’ll Work For You

Time-sensitive content is a flash of cash in the pan.

It comes as quickly as it goes. You can definitely go this route, but there’s a better way.

Certain works get remembered even inside the content treadmill. They get consumed again and again, often by the same people. This is what’s called evergreen content.

This is what I’m trying to do with Medium.

My philosophy is that if it’s not evergreen and/or actionable, I don’t write it. I might fail sometimes but that’s what I strive for.

Why? Because people always want to learn and do. More than they want to read random articles for the sake of reading random articles.

I don’t want to be mean-spirited, but let’s stay with the Medium example.

I see so many articles pop up that I’d never ever click and read, and that’s not because the topics are uninteresting.

It’s because one of these three:

1. The headline is pegged into an angle that’s drab.
2. It’s posing a discussion that is cliché.
3. The headline is vague and nobody understands why they should click.

It’s not that everything should be advice and instructions.

It’s just that if you are putting things out there in hopes to build an audience, a solid way to do so is helping people concretely in some way.

On Medium, I’m creating value by being evergreen (help people timelessly) and being actionable (help people by giving them something they can take with them and use).

By doing this, you’ll slowly build up a library that’ll work for you indefinitely. If you do it right this means that you can slow down your schedule and have more time to dedicate to art that resonates with you.

But ONLY making evergreen, tutorial-esque content won’t fulfill your dream of being a rogue artist or creator.

You want to show off your work, do you not?

That’s why you want to combine all three methods to create as much fruitful buzz around you as possible.

This next method is arguably the most powerful in terms of turning onlookers into die-hard fans:

Method #2: Become an Authority, Make a Living Forever

Quick and easy virality is alluring. The fast track to fame is just a couple of TikToks away. You know that if you just joined the content cycle, you could…

Well, join the content cycle. And that’s about it.

If you published low-effort TikToks every single day and then disappeared, you’d be replaced by the next hungry individual doing the same thing next morning. It’s the cruel truth of a digitally crowded world.

So, what’s the antidote?

Undeniable, long-form quality.

This means discarding the allure of the content creation grind, and creating something rich. Something comprehensive, something with impressive depth.

Write a book. Record an album. Quit uploading daily, come back every few weeks instead to wow your audience.

This does two things:

1. Ensures you always have something that can work for you passively, regardless of how the rules and algorithms change.
2. Establish you as someone with “authority” in the space. If you’re good enough, people will recommend others to look to you for whatever it is you do.

In addition to this and equally important— I want to introduce you to a concept called “Good vs. Bad Attention.” (I recommend you check out all his excellent advice threads on content creation here).

This was created by successful YouTuber elwono. In his own words:

Bad attention: When the content is dissociated from the creator and optimized to hit virality, very hard to keep. Basically Tiktok: funny cat videos, giveaways, flashy content…

Good attention is the opposite, but WAY HARDER to farm. Though once you have it, you have it for good. It’s when your content is tied to some form of identity. Pewdiepie, emma chamberlain, kurzgesagt in a nutshell.. all have some form of identity because they farmed a lot of GA.

He continues to mirror the point I made about virality being a bad crutch:

As a creator, you want to consolidate the good attention you have as much as possible because it’s perishable and strengthens your foundations to become less virality-dependant.

If you want to make a sustainable living as a creator, it’s all about building trust with your (future) audience.

You slowly build up good attention with every interesting piece you post that the algorithm can consolidate a new, tailored audience for.

Basically, all you have to care about it nourishing your momentum with well-produced pieces that don’t alienate the audience you already have by being too unrealted.

“But who’s going to consume it?” you might ask. “If I don’t have an audience, who will pay my bills?”

It’s true that the “self-publishing-into-the-void game” isn’t too profitable (or appealing).

If you want to live off your art, you’ll need a way to monetize it. “Build it and they will come” does not inside an overpopulated web.

Taking a bite out of the next method can help you with that:

Method #3: Create Buzz With “Dev Logs”

Let me introduce you to a phenomenon inside the indie game developer space.

Dev (developer) logs.

A dev log is essentially a hype-creation device.

By documenting the journey of your game coming together, you build excitement around the launch of your game.

The developer’s audience gets invested in seeing the game to its completion, watching the developer struggle and share their thoughts about the process.

It’s an excellent way for a no-name (or a big name!) indie developer to get their game bought the day it drops.

Game development has an edge in that it makes for visually interesting elements. But you can take this concept and run with it, no matter what you do.

If you’re a decent storyteller and know how to cut the fluff to make something interesting, that is a skill that will serve you well here.

So tell me, you say. “How can I best create my own “dev log?””

How can you encapsulate what you’re working on into a condensed, informative or entertaining way?

What medium would suit it best? Written, audio, or video?

Personally I think video lends itself the best to documentation. It’s an intimidating medium to learn, but I promise you don’t need to invest in a film degree to make your dev log. You just a need a little creativity.

There’s just one issue, and this is crucial:

Your dev log won’t take off if you market it as “Update #1579 — improving this tiny thing that nobody cares about or would ever search for”

I’m being a little sportive, but it’s to illustrate the point in a general manner.

When you’re a no-name, you need a reason for people to come to your dev log in the first place.

A simple but compelling approach is to center your dev logs around something you know other people are wanting and struggling to do.

Here’s an example from YouTuber DevDuck:

He titles all his videos in a way that would be both interesting and useful for people to watch. Here are few more titles from DevDuck & the indie dev community:

• “Building a BOSS for my 2D RPG”
• “Creating Procedurally Generated Caves in Godot | Dauphin Devlog #8”
• “How I Designed the Perfect Open World for my Dream RPG Game — Monster Tribe Devlog”
• “Creating 3D Environments Efficiently | Arcadian Rift Devlog #15”
• “A Day in the Life of a Game Developer with a Full Time Job”

The last one isn’t a pure dev log, but I added it to spark some more ideas on how you could help people through documentation.

In addition to being a great way of creating buzz around your art or craft, dev logs lend them selves well to creating that good attention.

If you can find a way to make a dev log around your project that entertains, educates and/or inspires viewers — that’s A LOT of good attention.

It also forges a great chance that the viewers will fall in love with you as a personality AND author/artist/game dev/etc.

Conclusion & A Few Words For Your Journey

Being able to live off one’s craft is a dream. But it doesn’t have to be a distant one.

It is possible to systematically phase out your day job and phase in your passions. But the cold truth is that it takes a long time for most people.

And trouble is that often when you do make it — you end up hating it.

The surrounding business, marketing and “personal branding” makes it exhausting.

Most artists just want to build their thing and for people to see it.

But it’s not that simple in a crowded world. The sooner you accept that, the quicker you can start finding methods (as outline in this post) that can propel you forward.

Entrepreneurship is essentially what you’re engaging in. And most entrepreneurs struggle with mental health, which is another reason you may end up despising your work.

But with the right strategy and a sound approach to content creation, the sky is the limit.

I hope this guide sparked some inspiration for your journey.

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