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Hi there, creative entrepreneur

artKarolina

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Hi everyone,

I decided to join the forum after lurking for a few weeks. I've been looking for a more serious entrepreneur forum for a while...

I'm a creative entrepreneur. Basically, someone who got an art degree but isn't a total idiot and realized I have to eat. I'm a co-owner of a video production company that's been active for 5 yrs approximately. I don't make a crazy amount of money, but I'm saving for a house so things are going well enough. We focus 100% on quality over quantity, whether we are shooting a social media ad video or a 1 hour special.

Other challenge I'm pursuing is the "impossible" - selling original art. Now I know artists are a dime a dozen and most don't have any track record (frankly the shame is most artists don't realize art is a business). I do. I've been selling art since I was 15, when I made my first $50. I paid my rent with art in university. I've probably sold around $10k in art through hustling (I'd have better numbers but teenager/university me didn't care about bookkeeping like entrepreneur me does now). It's truly a challenge because art is a luxury product (no one needs to own art like they need bread and butter or a car), it's hard to define a market, and it's hard gathering statistics on the market.

My ultimate goal is to be creative to make money to stay creative. I'd be amazing if I could be an artist millionaire but I mostly am happy to just have my art actually on walls and not piling in my studio.

As much as I don't have huge money to play with, eliquid's ad advice has already helped me, so thank you.
 
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Phikey

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Interesting stuff.
For your video production company, are you doing all the work or do you have a team below you?

I've always been the creative type too. I've been freelancing PPC for a while now and just starting to hire/outsource now. I love the 'creative' side of things (the ad copy writing, coming up with creative strategies, etc) but I've seen that to really see my agency grow I need to step back into a CEO role while others do the operations.

While I've been doing this, to feed my creative side, I've been picking up music making again so I still have an outlet.
 

artKarolina

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Interesting stuff.
For your video production company, are you doing all the work or do you have a team below you?

I've always been the creative type too. I've been freelancing PPC for a while now and just starting to hire/outsource now. I love the 'creative' side of things (the ad copy writing, coming up with creative strategies, etc) but I've seen that to really see my agency grow I need to step back into a CEO role while others do the operations.

While I've been doing this, to feed my creative side, I've been picking up music making again so I still have an outlet.

I work with my partner, and we hire people on a per-project contract basis. Usually that ends up being assistant production crew or something like VFX specialization. Never had employee salary overhead, though one day we want to hire a few people to do the "boring" work - data management, rough edits, social media, copy for our online presence. We're always going to be in charge of any major creative and business decisions, I think that's our greatest asset.

You'd be surprised. There's such a craving for new music and it's so much easier to get independently produced content out there. Go make music :)
 

lowtek

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Welcome to the forum. I've done some (very, very) basic video editing and can attest to what a pain it can be. Great work bucking the starving artist trend. We've seen quite a few folks through here recently that have made money with their artistic talents, and I think it's awesome.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Welcome aboard @artKarolina !

I've been selling art since I was 15, when I made my first $50. I paid my rent with art in university. I've probably sold around $10k in art through hustling (I'd have better numbers but teenager/university me didn't care about bookkeeping like entrepreneur me does now). It's truly a challenge because art is a luxury product (no one needs to own art like they need bread and butter or a car), it's hard to define a market, and it's hard gathering statistics on the market.

Impressive. Anything you can show?

The fact you won actual sales on your art is quite a validation, meaning you have to be pretty good!
 

artKarolina

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Thanks for the nice welcome :)

Welcome to the forum. I've done some (very, very) basic video editing and can attest to what a pain it can be. Great work bucking the starving artist trend. We've seen quite a few folks through here recently that have made money with their artistic talents, and I think it's awesome.

The starving artist is a romantic myth created through a theatre play in Paris (I forget the title right now but I think it had "Bohemian" in it). It became very chique to look like a poor artist tossed away by society. There's examples everywhere of successful artists, people just forget those famous painters, musicians, filmmakers, and authors all started somewhere. Michelangelo was one of the wealthiest painters, covertly.



Impressive. Anything you can show?

The fact you won actual sales on your art is quite a validation, meaning you have to be pretty good!


I have lots to show :) This is the first painting of an oil painting series I'm working on I'm hoping to have a solo show. I'm going for a cyborg + medicine theme, going for 10-12 paintings.

Gallery

And this is one of the most pricey pieces I've been commissioned to do in the past few years. It was for someone's birthday who works in the diving industry. Gallery

And here's my favourite pet portrait I've done to date. I loved working on this one, and funny I was sick as a dog doing it. Gallery

I do lots of different work. :)
 

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