We’ve seen way too many talented creatives quit because they couldn’t make it work financially. No doubt, the financial challenges of pursuing a creative or artistic career are daunting, but we felt there wasn’t enough discussion around how to make it work. So, we connected with artists and creatives who’ve been able to earn a full time living from their creative work and asked them to share their stories with our readers.

Andria Flores

I am living the dream—my dream. I love what I do as a freelance editor. It truly is my dream job. However, just like any dream, it can be nebulous at times, not a clearly defined path from beginning to end, and certainly something I don’t want to wake up from. Read more>>

Liaw Liaw

Yes, but it doesn’t happen on day one. It’s all about determination and consistency. It took months to years to build our reputation and earn trust and admirations from our clients. Our clients keep us inspired in our creations. We always strive for new ideas to impress our existing customers and attract new ones. Earning a full-time living is only possible by having a pool of loyal repeated customers who love your products and refer your services to all their friends and family. Read more>>

Jaime & Steve Geffner

There is a difference between being good at your craft and being a successful business owner. We learned that lesson the hard way. Like many other creative small business owners, we started our business because while working for other people, we realized that we were really good at something (in our case, producing, filming, and editing Read more>>

JOSE CARLOS VELAYARSE

It is very difficult at the beginning, many things can happen around you that don’t allow you to keep growing, I think the key to getting ahead with your artistic work is to be persistent and not be afraid to try many times. In the beginning, you will need a lot of work. But the day will come when you will get the results and no one will be able to stop you. All of us who dedicate ourselves to art must have that perseverance to make a living from our art. Read more>>

Andrea Garcia

Earning a full-time living from visual art is a definitely a lot of work. You have to experiment with different creative avenues to earn money. For example, I sell original paintings but I also sustain myself from performances, workshops, markets, or sometimes some random artistic side quest. Creating Loose Screws Studio has helped me approach my art gigs with a business mindset. Read more>>

Madelyn Van Trieste

In all honesty, the first couple years of freelancing were tough. I was in college at the time and trying to balance my work with school was more of a challenge than I anticipated. There were also a lot of jobs I got back then that were unpaid, since I was so new I did it for the experience and to add it to my resume. Read more>>

Brandon Wallace

Making a living wage as an artist can be a challenge. Few are hired frequently enough and at high enough rates to make it solely based on their work.. Even if they can, it can be feast or famine from year to year. Most artists will need some sort of day job, and my goal was to make that day job something that fed my art. Read more>>

Jason (Rif Raf Giraffe) Harrington

I have earned my living as a full time artist for the past 8 years. It was small steps over time that lead to the opportunity to support myself with my craft. I think being trained in a variety of media and educating myself on how to run a business are the major reasons why I have been successful. Read more>>

Genna Weiner

I have always known that design would be part of my life. I just wasn’t sure how. I went to school to study architecture and once out in the real world- I realized that being intimately involved in design on the daily, would not happen continuing down this path. I shifted to interior design knowing that I would be designing more and living in a more constant creative headspace. Read more>>

RonTavia Sanders

Initially, the plan was to design events as a side hustle while attending law school. It didn’t seem like the right time to jump back into school after being out a few years, so I became a Paralegal to prepare. I executed events on weekends while I prepared legal documents during the weekday. Fast forward to my current situation and I am now doing events full time. I love what I do and I’m so grateful that my clients have trusted me so much with their events that I was able to commit to it full time. Read more>>

Yanira Pedraza

I definitely wish i would’ve sped up and stayed consistent with what i know now. I’ve taken many breaks and deleted and restarted my social media or was trying to figure out what i wanted my instagram to be. Sometimes i wouldn’t even post because i was scared of what people would think but i found myself and im doing great now. So with what i know now i definitely make more of a income than i was before from when i started. Read more>>

Elaine Childress

I have absolutely been able to earn a modest full-time living from my creative work of refinishing furniture, interior decorating, as well as resale marketing of vintage and antique objects and home decor. The journey started small, out of necessity, and bloomed into full time work after several years of doing the same thing over and over. Day one started with refinishing my first piece of furniture (old dresser) and selling it on Craigslist (which still works today by the way). Read more>>

Itzy Martinez

I have been dancing since I’m 12 years old and I started teaching when I was 14, being paid at such a young age doing what I love the most, was just the beginning of discovering how unstoppable you can be when you trust on your passion, in your gift, of course it’s been a long process of learning the value of my job/how much my job costs, Read more>>

Michael Khamo

Thankfully, I have been able to make a living from my creative work. The biggest struggle was leaving my full-time job and making that jump into being my own boss. At the time when I left my job at the church, my wife and I just had a baby, and we had a mortgage to pay. The questions of “will I make enough every month to support my family and pay bills?” Read more>>

Eric W. Lee

In 2019, I left a full time job to freelance full time. Even though I had always imagined working for myself, it was no easy decision. I knew that I needed to save at least a few months of rent and living expenses. I needed to build a presence online, so that people would know my work or could easily find examples of it. I also knew that everything would fall on me. I would be the sole decision maker, business person, and creative mind and that was a lot to prepare for. But this was all worth it for what I was envisioning for myself. Read more>>

Kate Davis

Every aspiring freelancer/digital business owner has asked themselves the question, “can I really make a living doing this?”. It can be an intimidating thought, and to be honest, this could have been a lot tougher for me to do if I didn’t have a super supportive husband contributing to our family’s finances from day one. That said, I’ve been a this for 7+ years now, and I’ve learned A TON about business, and how to grow to be a profitable one, in that time. Read more>>

Chantel Williams

It is very true that successful business results do not happen overnight. As a full-time creative the operations are ongoing. Each day brings forth new mercies to do better and to be better. Having a strong supportive system at home and gaining peace and encouragement from immediate loved ones also plays a major role in the success story. I am beyond blessed to have been given the opportunity to experience this and more. Read more>>

Adam Pecora

It was a long route for me creating art as a full time job. I got an internship right out of college doing full-time graphic design for a minor league baseball team and I thought the sky was the limit from there. However, once the season concluded I found myself unable to find work in my field. Read more>>

Derron Ridley

To most, Art is an expensive painting on a canvas by a complete stranger. Lets be honest, you have no idea who the artist is that is responsible for the painting you just bought from Ross or At Home. it may have been something as simple as it is your favorite color. Doesn’t change the fact you wouldn’t know the artist even if they were standing behind you in the checkout line. Read more>>

Rustem Khakimov

For most of my life, I’ve been trying to make a living through my creative work. I’ve had a lot of different jobs, but I always come back to art. Before I became a tattoo artist, I was struggling to get by. I can remember a time when I had enough money to get to work, but not enough to get back home. But no matter what I did, I always tried my best and learned everything I could. Read more>>

Rosa Vo

Earning a full-time income doing what you love is a dream that many of us share. However, turning that dream into a reality can be a daunting task. I am here to share my own story of how I achieved this goal by designing and doing pottery, and I hope it will inspire others to pursue their own passions and dreams. Read more>>

Laurie Filipelli

Back in 2008 I was working f/t as a nonprofit education programs manager, training writers to teach workshops in public schools and overseeing programming in three districts. As a poet and educator, I absolutely loved getting kids excited about creative writing. “But when I had a kid of my own, I realized that working in the nonprofit sector without health insurance wasn’t sustainable. Read more>>

Kimera Morrell

I was stuck in an aimless mindset, making music every day expecting it to just happen for me. Waiting to be discovered, and waiting for the money to finally start flowing in. But it wasn’t happening. Until one day, a producer friend I wrote songs with asked me if he could pay me to record vocals on a song he had written. Read more>>

Jason Ragosta

Making a full-time living from creative work can be very challenging. There are many different paths and dimensions to how you can achieve a sustainable version of this lifestyle. For my personal journey, I was very fortunate to get an amazing job straight out of college. After two weeks of interning at Wreckless Abandon, a stop-motion animation company in East Granby, Connecticut, I was hired as a storyboard artist. From there I went on to do concept art and prop construction, as well as serving as the 1st Assistant Cameraman at the studio. Read more>>

Clare Armenante

This year is the first time I have been able to make a living solely as a performer. I joined the first National Tour of Hadestown in October of 2022 and I am on the road full time now. It has definitely been a journey to get here though. I was one of the many musicians that graduated from conservatory without work immediately lined up and with the idea drilled into me that I either had to win a major orchestra job or find a professional string quartet residency at a university to find any kind of success. Read more>>

Alan Demafiles

I started my journey freelancing in 2015 after having entertained the idea of going out on my own for years. However, the move wasn’t entirely of my own making and I was caught a little unprepared which made the transition that much harder. So to help buy a little runway, we downsized while I reached out to my immediate network for any potential leads/gigs. Read more>>

Tali Allen

With the exception of the maybe 2-3 years that I worked as an independent contractor, I have always held a full-time job. I may have had to sacrifice some of my creativity at times, but the full-time salary allowed me to explore a wide number of opportunities that weren’t based solely on the pay. It’s only by that exploration that I truly was able to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Read more>>

Christian Belton

Life has a way of giving us exactly what we ask for even when it happens in the most unexpected ways. It had always been my desire to work full-time in my art and creativity. I wasn’t sure exactly when that was going to happen. But I figured perhaps later in life after I finished working for a company for about 20-25 years I would be established and stable enough to venture out on my own and immerse myself into my art. Read more>>

Suede Silver

One time someone asked me what my biggest fear was, and I realized it was being stuck doing the same thing every day doing work I hated. Then the light bulb went off, that if I choose to never do that, then I have nothing to be afraid of. It sounds obvious but at the moment it was profound. So in my twenties I freelanced like hell and learned how to do anything I found interesting. I learned to shape surfboards, photography, film, graphic design, producing music, and more. Read more>>

Megan Thomas

I left my corporate job of 13 years due in late 2019. In doing so, I was able to live creatively, and publish my first book, My Dad by Angel Lee. The only way I was able to accomplish what I have so far is due to my supportive husband. Kyle believed in my vision and took on all the bills himself to give me the free time I needed to develop the family business. Read more>>

Noora Pohjanen

Everything started so fast in so I never did have time to sit down and really think it thru or make big goals or plans. One job led to another and now ten years later I can still work full-time as a designer. Which is crazy to even say out loud! Read more>>

Kyla Chambers

After graduating college, I started as a designer in the Architecture & Design Industry. During that time, I was first exposed to how many people it takes to deliver a successful project in the built environment. That was parallel to the start of my passion for photography. Early on, I knew at that I did not want to be a designer but I loved the design industry and it introduced me to some important networks and it was instrumental in introducing me to the craft of architectural + interior photography. Read more>>

Fred Sokolow

I’ve only had one non-musical job in my life, a part time job when I was in college, and I was fired for being a bad influence on the other workers, so I’m proud of my record! I started performing with bands in middle school (they called it Junior High then) and started playing paid gigs around the age of 20…bluegrass and rock…I also started teaching private lessons in college: Read more>>

Rich Gallego

I had a thirty year career in cancer research which ended when the lab I supervised failed to get a grant renewed. I had been wanting to paint full time for several years and the grant issue ended up being the impetus I needed to pursue my art full time. It’s been six years since then and I’m so glad I made the change! I love science but I find being an artist much more fulfilling. Read more>>