Earning that first dollar is incredibly special and a moment many never forget. We asked some very talented creatives from the community to tell u s the story of the first dollar they earned from their creative works.

Alexis Lawson.

The very first time I received any compensation from my work was when I decided to sell my poetry book The Beauty In My Bare Bones. When I decided to write the book I never thought that I was going to sell it. I pitched it in a contest and it didn’t get selected but I loved a good challenge. So I taught myself about self publishing and published it myself. Though this was the first time I received money for my work, the first time I considered myself a professionally paid artist was when my essay Bound To Remember was published in Midnight and Indigo early in 2021. Read more>>

Timothy Pitch

It’s as vivid as yesterday’s dinner: It was a hot July day in 1974. I walked into the main room of my local YMCA and there were about 100 kids of varying elementary school ages seated in just about every square foot of the room. I was “hired” to do a 30-40 minute magic show for them. I had only been studying and practicing magic for about a year at the time but felt confident enough to now do a full show. Read more>>

George Ryan

Apart from some show money my first real check from the music industry came when I had the single ‘Lifestyle’ placed on Kim’s Convenience, a hit tv-show on Netflix. You can hear it in the background when Janet Kim (Andrea Bang) goes to the club with her friends. It was definitely a big milestone – things weren’t going very well in my music career prior to that. Now I get hundreds of people who watch the show and Shazam my song. I saved a copy of the check and hung it on my wall in the studio. Read more>>

Tarmine Guichette

I remember a winter morning being inspired to photograph the morning scene of thick fog and trees. Imagine an overcast morning with an open field with a few trees here and there surrounded by a thick fog. There had just been an ice storm, so the trees were covered in a shell of ice. Almost making it look like the branches are covered in glass. I had taken a few close-up shots of juniper branches covered with ice and a few wide landscape shots. Read more>>

Nancy Gack

When I was in college pursuing a fine arts degree, my 3-D design professor was photographing one of my projects for his files. A friend of his saw my work and wanted to purchase it! It was incredibly meaningful to me that someone responded so favorably to something that I had made. Read more>>

Ja’Leeyna Dooley

Truth be told, the first time I ever earned money for my craft, was at a talent show when I was 15 years old. I had placed first & received the $1500 cash prize. But the very first time that I generating revenue from my own creative work that was released was when I was 18 from my first officially released EP and after about three months I started to see that the distribution account that I used to release, had money available to withdraw. Read more>>