We think the world needs more artists, more creatives and more folks unwilling to spend their days as a cog in a giant corporate machine. We don’t necessarily dislike cogs or machines but we think the world clearly needs more artists and creatives and so we wanted to try to figure out how more artists can make it work financially since this is one of the major obstacles blocking so many artists and creatives from pursuing their art full time. So, we asked folks who have been able to make a full time living through their creative work, how they did it.

Daniel Sanzone

Yes! I’m definitely able to earn a full-time living from my creative business. It’s been quite a rollercoaster of feeling incredibly abundant and feeling like all of my capital and energy has been spent on keeping the ship upright. Read more>>

Cap Daniels

It’s magic, plain and simple. I’m not talking about sleight of hand or misdirection. Becoming a professional novelist is a function of hundreds of factors, but there’s that one little kernel that can’t be defined, identified, touched, or tasted: readers can feel it. And that’s the magic. Read more>>

Confucius Jones

I make a full time living from creative work after many many years of not being able to do so. What got me to this point is, of course, trial and error, and also just being consistent and smart. The biggest step in making that happen was radio which provided me a platform to expand my brand and creative ideas to a bigger audience. I honestly don’t believe there was much I could’ve done different besides maybe taken school more seriously. Read more>>

Laia Gore

I haven’t always been able to earn a living full time being a creative. When I first moved out of my parents house and down to St. Pete, I was doing photography on and off full time, depending on the time of year and customer flow. Read more>>

Tony Guerrero

I’ve always wanted to become an actor, it took me 10 years to achieve my first role, and the milestone to achieve it was a tough one , especially because the city I was living in didn’t have the film industry that predominates now,working firs in radio and sending thousands of auditions I was able to make it little by little Read more>>

Kandie Angel

I first started modeling back in June of 2008. For the past 15 years, I have been working as a self promoted model, who has been working day and night to get my name out there. I have done hundreds of shoots over the years, and the whole time, I was doing it as a single mother trying to keep my head above water. I have done underwater shoots, to live art drawing shoots, I have done fashion shows, runway, bikini, etc. I was married at the age of 20, so I never really experienced living on my own. In 2008, I was going through my first divorce, and moved in my very own place. That’s when I first started to pursue modeling. Read more>>

Gabby Huffman

I had a hard time turning my creative work into cash. I have been working on my content since January of 2022. Now I am finally in a spot where I am comfortable and making a good living off of doing campaigns and partnering with brands. Consistency is KEY! Especially when it comes to social media. You can post 1000 things in a month but it only takes one really great post to go viral and make a difference in your earnings and reach. Read more>>

IVEEN

Earning a full-time living in the music industry these days is pretty challenging especially if you’re just starting out. When I first started pursuing music as a solo act I had just moved back to Atlanta from a few years of touring with a Latin band out of Monterrey, Mexico. Read more>>

Denise Carson

I worked the entertainment industry for years chasing monetary gain. I created a pretty good career for myself but still experienced dark times. Once I realized that I was still empty no matter how much money I made. I started to ask questions about this thing called Purpose. Read more>>

Kayla Nord

I officially started my art business, Kayla Weber Art, in 2015 while I was still an art teacher. I would teach art all day to elementary students and then come home and paint all night, creating custom paintings for my coworkers, friends, and family! At this point, the money I was making from painting was just extra money, since I was teaching full time. There was never any pressure to support myself solely on art, so everything I made was a bonus. Read more>>

Linda Chido

I have never been able to consistently make a full time living from my art BUT, I’m hoping to change that. At the beginning of this month, I launched my new business/website – LINDA CHIDO ART. Instead of just being me and my art, the website is now the artworks of my whole family. Read more>>

Ed Jarusinsky

I have been fortunate enough to earn a full-time living as a musician for over 3 decades. The main ingredient is passion. I absolutely love what I do, and I’ve been obsessed with music since as long as I can remember. My real talent is that I wake up every single day and want to be better. Better than I was yesterday, and much better than I was a year ago. A better person, player, and teacher. It takes so much work to be great at anything, so it’s important to find something that you love. Read more>>

Luis Jorge Rios

My transition was from 10 years of military service into the entrepreneurial world. My entrepreneur skills took me into selling which led me to gather my net worth then I was able to reinvest. I invested my wealth and my time into producing movies. I was able to find a happy medium where I can have creative abilities and still be able to produce movies and distribute them around the world. Read more>>

Kimi Tortuga

Yes, I’ve been able to earn a more than decent living through my artistry. I have a saying: when you follow your dreams, the universe rewards you with abundance! While that has included material wealth such as stable income, housing, and beautiful clothing, it also means an abundance of joy and confidence in oneself and capacity for success. The leap of faith required to go full-time as an artist is enormous, but the rewards are immeasurable. Read more>>

Ferggie Coll

I have been living out of my passion for about 4 years, it has been the most challenging but greatest experience of my life! It started as a side hustle and it became real when I decided to leave the office world that was making me so unhappy at the time, I never felt I belonged. Read more>>

Manny Peralta

Making a full-time living from my creative work has been an amalgamation of consistency, and a whole lot of messing up, over and over again, rinsing and repeating, 1% improvement every..single…day. I think it’s been about 10 years in the making. It’s only been within the last couple months have I finally sat back and looked over my 10 years of creating videos, art, podcasts, failed t-shirt brands and solo music ventures and realized that my younger self would be so proud of the semi-old and content man I’ve become (insert laugh track here). Read more>>

Yossuana Aguilar

I remember a young Yossuana playing with her barbies for hours creating stimulating stories. It seemed as my creativity had not limits, nor a beginning nor an end. It just poured out of my veins all over my body, I was embodying a creative goddess throughout all of my childhood. I felt safe during these creative hours. Read more>>

Phil Silverberg

I’ve been living off of my creative work for a number of years now. Last year, I made the move to Nashville from New Jersey to take my creative work to a new market. The truth is that it has never been easy, but I’ve looked at each step in the process as a building block in my path. Read more>>

Minnelli Lucy

I first began as a scientific illustrator with a strong focus on painting botanical subjects before the long and intense path to specializing in orchids. The success that I have built up is due to having a very strong work ethic, maintaining my brand consistency, and keeping good client-work relationships. Read more>>

Nina Sonier| Nina Paul The Beauty Garden

Yes. Sure, I started out doing makeup in strip clubs for $25 to build my clientele. Then I started taking everyday clients and I still was charging $25 dollars and I was working non stop on the weekends., I had to in order to make that $25 dollars make sense lol. Eventually, I started incorporating hair with makeup and I would travel to every client. Read more>>

Paulo Gomes

Yes, I have been able to earn a full-time living as a musician. My journey started with teaching piano for young children in the music school during my early music studies. As I move to pursue my undergrad, I had to keep teaching from K-12 in addition to conduct community choirs and children’s choir, in Brazil. Read more>>

Rogerio Peixoto

Yes! Today I dedicate myself 100% to art, but it wasn’t always like this: Besides studying art, nowadays, I mainly study the art market and this certainly gives me more visibility, sales, quality and homogenization in the production of my pieces. An artist needs professional maturation to go to the next level and that only takes time, I don’t believe the process would have been faster if I had known this before. Read more>>

Donny Hammonds

I’ll try to condense this topic and be as brief as possible to cover the journey. I’ve been playing music since I was 12 yrs old ( I am now 46) I played in bands all thru my high school years and even after Graduation. I always had the dream of being a full time musician but never really thought that it’d be possible. I graduated high school and got a job like a young man should do and starting saving money to buy my first home. Read more>>