Business Ideas For Starving Artists
I read a question by a “starving artist” a few weeks back on some site which I can’t remember. (It was probably some subreddit.)
He’s an artist and actor, and wants to be an entrepreneur. Sadly, this guy didn’t see my article on being a professional artist.
That said, I’m thankful for the guy, because there are a lot of starving artists out there who have skills and want to start businesses. In this article, I’m going to give my thoughts on the problem and give some quick solutions.
I won’t repeat what I wrote in the article I linked to about being a professional artist. This is going to look at the specific issue of “What does a starving artist do to not starve?”
Firstly… Look At Your Skills
All of us artists, creatives and students of humanities are god-damned useless. That’s what the STEM crowd want you to believe, at least.
In reality, whatever your discipline is there’s probably some skill in there that’s valuable. What I’d recommend you do is – assuming you’re actually close to starving – find the quickest commercial application for your discipline as you can.
- Writers can write online content
- Actors can do voice-overs and promo videos
- Artists can do graphic design
- Sculptors and other designers can do CAD prototypes or whatever
- Musicians can create jingles
You get the picture. These are all things that people pay for that you can do from your bedroom. It’s not glamourous and you’re not going to be sitting with Tom Cruise next week, but you’re starving, right?
Forget, Forget, Forget Your Fellow Starving Artists As A Market
I remember the most popular piece of advice this starving artist guy was given… “You know your market, so help other starving artists make money too!”
This is a terrible, terrible idea.
So terrible, I have to keep repeating words as well as underlining them to emphasise how terrible the idea is.
Let’s say you’re an actor. You can charge $100 for a few minutes of voiceover time on Fiverr. You hate it, because it’s all corporate and soul-destroying. So you want to create Etsy for actors or some other ludicrous scheme.
Forget this idea. It’s a big mistake.
As a writer turned sneaky salesman, one of the first things you learn is find a buying market. As a rule, you never want to target a broke audience. You don’t need an advanced mathematics degree to know why.
They have no money to spend, and that’s bad.
Leave saving the poor unfortunates for when you’ve got a ton of money to throw away. Let’s focus on not starving.
The above sentence sums up why this is a bad idea. You can’t expect to make money giving a platform to people who aren’t going to pay you – all you can do is waste money. A lot of money. Something like “Etsy for actors” would cost a ton of money to produce, police and market. You’re starving. Forget that.
Forget your audience of peers altogether. If they knew about which markets to target, they wouldn’t be broke. You need to find people who want your service, not people who are interested in providing the service.
Not All Businessmen Are Corporate Talking Heads
There’s this weird idea in the art-world that if you have a “real job” you’re a slave-to-the-man and if you’re an artist, you’re a Bohemian-let’s-live-without-money type.
In the real world, you can work with people who aren’t remotely like the stereotypical evil-square-80’s-businessman. In fact, if you’re supplying business-to-business, you’ll find that nearly everyone who runs a business isn’t like that at all.
I know a guy whose business is financial services. In an eighties coming-of-age film, you’d definitely think his job description was, “Evil villain who wants me to get a job!”
In reality, he’s the weirdest person I know. He motorbikes through the Indian Subcontinent and everything he owns fits in a laptop bag.
If you’re a starving artist who doesn’t want to starve, find businesses that need your services and have the money to pay you. Instead of becoming some corporate drone that can’t recognise themselves in the mirror, you’ll find that a) you enjoy not starving, and b) your art is better because it’s relevant to the world and you know it’s good because people pay for it.
Nobody Cares About Your God-Damned Art
If there’s one thing that sets non-creatives against creatives, it’s the incessant preaching by the minority of creatives. You know the ones…
- “Good art is about truth!”
- “You have to sacrifice for your art!”
- “It’s not about money”
- “Regular folks can’t understand… they don’t see what I see!”
- “[This popular thing] isn’t real art, not like [obscure thing]”
If you have that attitude, you need to lose it or you’ll be a starving artist for a long time. I received – and continue to receive – projects by people who hired me when I first started. The secret to success is simple: Provide a service to a high quality without whining. That formula hasn’t ever failed.
But you know a lot of artists can’t do that. They’re so blinkered by the artist archetype that they can’t just simply do the work.
Also, having hired some creatives before… they’ll use the above themes in their applications and excuses for their work being late or wrong or whatever.
You can’t do this.
Let’s take writing as an example. I once hired a writer to write a short story for me. I gave them a brief with a theme, character, setting and plot.
Guess what?
I got the first draft back, and the plot had changed. The setting had changed. The character had changed and the plot was altered to accommodate all of these changes.
I said to the writer, “Look, this isn’t what I asked for.”
I then got stuff about storyboarding, “the muse,” “being comfortable with writing” and “writing to my strengths.”
I paid them and never used the story. What was worse… they were three weeks late with delivery due to “illness”. (The story was about 5,000 words.)
I didn’t condemn the writer. I wasn’t rude. I gave easy and helpful guidelines and I would have answered any questions. In fact, if they’d have come to me and said, “Can I change these elements?” I probably would have said yes. If they’d come to me and said, “I’m really ill can we change the deadline?” I would have said yes.
Instead, what I got was unprofessional behaviour and an end-product I didn’t want and couldn’t use.
The upshot – I would never hire this person again nor recommend them.
“Staying true to their art” cost them tons of paydays in the future, when all they really had to do was type for a few hours.
When you’re a starving artist, this attitude will kill your business. Adopt a compromise attitude where the client’s desires comes first, and you will be better than 99% of all creatives that try freelancing.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a starving artist, this article should help you (though sorry for the tangent.)
Essentially:
- Think about your skills and how to apply them quickly to a commercial setting
- Forget your peers and don’t try and sell to them because they too are starving artists
- Don’t worry about working with other businesspeople – they aren’t corporate squares out to kill your creativity
- Tailor your art for your clients and don’t let an artistic temperament ruin your business chances
If you do those things, you’ll be more competitive than almost every other creative that puts themselves on the market.