Part 1: How Do You Actually Make Money Making Art?
There comes a point early in your journey where the novelty of being able to “make something” starts to fade, and a more grounded question starts tapping on your shoulder. It’s not the beginner excitement anymore. It’s not the satisfaction of learning a new tool or pulling off your first clean solder joint. It’s the more practical, unavoidable thought:
How do I actually make money from this?
That’s where I found myself. I had moved past the beginner phase. I wasn’t just tinkering or playing around with materials — I was fabricating jewelry. And in a strange way, the motions weren’t that different from building LEGO as a kid. Back then, my family would congratulate me for putting the pieces together — encouragement, pride, the usual childhood support. But now I was doing almost the same physical actions with materials that actually held intrinsic value, and instead of praise, people were willing to exchange money for the result. The motions were familiar, but the outcome belonged to a completely different world.
Realizing that was like being pushed away from the dock into open water. I had set sail; the question now was which direction I was going to choose and how I was going to steer. People had answers, of course. Everyone has advice for an artist, especially when they haven’t taken the journey themselves. Most of it wasn’t realistic.
The Celebrity Shortcut (The Myth of Being “Discovered”)
One suggestion people love to give new artists is the idea that you “just need to get a famous person to wear your art.” As if it’s a strategy you can consciously pursue.
What’s the play there?
Stand around downtown waiting for Michael Bublé to wander by in need of a ring?
Sprint at Jason Momoa on a red carpet and hope security takes a coffee break?
Or sit at a craft market and hope Jason Momoa decides to browse your booth between scented candles and crocheted hats?
It’s not a plan. It’s a lottery ticket.
Even back then, I knew that leaving my trajectory to coincidence wasn’t going to cut it. If the only way for your career to move forward is “maybe Jason Momoa appears,” you don’t have a plan — you have a wish.
So I looked for something I could actually control.
The Mountain: Choosing Skill Over Luck
If luck wasn’t the route, then the only logical path was skill. Real skill — not the “good for a beginner” level, not the “people say nice things at craft fairs” level. I wanted my work to be so solid that even jealous people couldn’t casually dismiss it.
I wanted the quality to be undeniable — strong enough that it shut down casual criticism, forced respect, and made even petty people admit the work was good.
That wasn’t a fantasy.
That was something I could build.
It felt like spotting a trail through dense trees. Not a beacon, not a light at the end of the tunnel — just a path. A long, steep, demanding path, but one that actually existed.
Every beginner sees that path as a mountain disappearing into the clouds. You can’t see the peak. You can’t see the timeline. But at least it’s a mountain with a path, not a slot machine. So I set my direction and started walking.
One Thing a Day: Creating Your Own Curriculum
Along the way, I met artists who built their progression through structure rather than mood. One photographer I knew took one photo every day for an entire year — not just snapping it, but editing it into a finished image.
Whatever your medium is, you can do your version of that. The point isn’t the object; the point is the discipline. At some level, you stop relying on school, classes, and tutorials and start giving yourself your own assignments.
Eventually you begin:
- setting your own homework,
- building your own progression,
- creating benchmarks that actually mean something,
- training yourself to follow through without anyone checking your work.
Improvement stops being accidental and starts being intentional. You stop waiting for someone to tell you what to practice. You start steering your own ship.
Experimentation: The Only Way to Find What Works For You
Skill building isn’t linear — it’s exploratory. As I progressed, I experimented through long phases: soldering-dominant periods, stretches focused on wax carving, etching, chasing and repoussé. Every technique taught me something, even if it didn’t stick long term.
Painting, for example, wasn’t for me. Painting with a brush felt foreign. There was no spark in the process; I felt indifferent to it. Spray cans, on the other hand, clicked immediately. I enjoyed learning how to control the flow of paint, working outdoors, moving freely, and the speed with which I could create. It wasn’t about being good at it — it was about enjoying the process. And that mattered.
You don’t find your lane by theorizing about it. You find it by trying things and paying attention to the ones that feel natural, energizing, or simply less forced. Those instincts matter more than people think.
From Wandering to Intention
If you keep going long enough, something shifts. You move from wandering — exploring tools, trying techniques, seeing what happens — into expression with intention.
This transition isn’t flashy, but it’s fundamental.
You begin planning.
You choose techniques deliberately.
Your pieces stop being experiments and start being expressions.
You’re no longer hoping something works; you’re directing the outcome.
This isn’t mastery. But it’s advancement. It’s the point where your hands understand what they’re doing well enough that your brain can start steering the creative process more deliberately.
Early Work Isn’t Failure — It’s Data
People love to dramatize their first attempts as disasters. I don’t see it that way. When I first tried stone inlay, the stones didn’t fit neatly into the frame. There were gaps. You could see the glue. The piece was rough — but it was also exactly what it needed to be.
Every new skill comes with faults. Michael Jordan didn’t walk out of the womb sinking three-pointers as a toddler. You show up, you finish the piece, you learn something, and you do it again. That’s the entire process.
Eventually, you finish with more control. Then with more confidence. Then with style and grace. That arc doesn’t happen without the awkward beginnings.
I kept those early inlay pieces, and I kept the later ones too. Jewelry is small, so you can store a lot of history in one drawer. My practice turned into a physical timeline — every mistake, improvement, and breakthrough visible side by side.
My system became simple: I keep the pieces I love and I sell the ones I don’t. The early attempts aren’t trash; they’re evidence that I showed up and kept going.
The Day I Realized I Didn’t Want to Be a Master
Here’s the part that isn’t romantic but is honest:
At some point, I realized I didn’t actually want to be a master. Not in the generational, world-shaping sense. I still wanted high-level skill and discipline, but the level of sacrifice required to reshape an entire field wasn’t in my deck of cards.
That level of mastery usually belongs to people who are either:
- otherworldly in their obsession, or
- raised in multi-generational craft families, where the shortcuts, techniques, and philosophies are passed down like inheritance.
I didn’t have that. I didn’t grow up with inherited technique, established reputation, or family guidance in the trade. And I was fine with that. I didn’t need to be a legend; I just needed to be excellent.
Expert level? Yes.
Master level? Maybe sometime near the end of my life, if I keep going — but not because I sacrificed everything else to chase it.
This Blog Isn’t for the .1%. It’s for the Rest of Us.
There are a small number of true masters in every field. They’re rare. They exist. But they’re not the point of this article.
This is for the 99.9% of artists who eventually reach the real question — the one behind all the practice, passion, and progression:
How do I actually make money with my skills?
Not:
“How do I become immortalized?”
Not:
“How do I get discovered?”
Something much more real:
- How do I keep making art without starving?
- How do I turn this into a sustainable life?
- How do I build income around a craft I actually love?
Every serious artist encounters that question eventually.
And asking it doesn’t diminish your art — it clarifies your direction.
Because once you know what you want and what you’re willing to sacrifice, everything else builds from there.
Part 2: When Skill Isn’t Enough — The Pivot Into Production and Business
Once you reach the point where your work is genuinely respectable — the point where you’re not embarrassed to put your pieces beside other artists — a new kind of problem appears. You’re no longer fumbling with basic technique. You’re no longer figuring out which end of the tool to hold. You’re decently skilled, your pieces are clean, and you understand your craft well enough to be taken seriously.
And that’s when the real uncertainty begins.
It’s not the “how do I solder this?” phase. It’s not the “what technique should I learn next?” phase. It’s the moment when competence forces a bigger question:
“Okay… now what?
What am I actually supposed to do with this skill?”
No one prepares you for this part. We all assume the hard part is learning the craft, but the truth is that the real crossroads appear once you’re good enough that people might buy your work — but not good enough that they’re fighting over it.
This middle zone is where most artists stall out, because they hold onto a quiet belief that eventually, someone else will step in and take over the hard part for them.
The Fantasy of the Rescuer
Most artists, at this stage, imagine that the missing puzzle piece is a person:
- someone with connections,
- someone with clients,
- someone already established in the market
- someone who “knows how to sell art.”
It sounds something like:
“If I could just find the right gallery…”
“If someone would just take me under their wing…”
“If someone else could handle the selling, I’d be set.”
This is the artist’s version of waiting for a knight in shining armor.
But unless you are a genuine master — a generational-level talent whose work creates its own gravity — no one is coming to rescue you. Stores might take a few pieces on consignment. A gallery might give you a corner. But the fantasy where a single well-connected person swoops in and scales your career for you? That belongs to the top fraction of one percent.
The other 99.9% of us have to do something less glamorous and far more honest:
we have to figure out business.
The Year That Taught Me the Truth
Before I ever touched business or production, I did what every new artist does:
I tried to sell the traditional way.
I did a full year of shows, craft fairs, weekend markets, and consignment agreements. I brought my displays, I set up my tables, I stood outside in the cold, and I did the rounds like everyone else.
And after a year of effort, I realized something uncomfortable but necessary:
My work blended in.
It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t embarrassing. But it wasn’t meaningfully better than the other local jewelry artists. There was nothing about it that forced people to pay attention. I could make sales — but I had no leverage.
And without leverage, you’re just another table in a long hallway of tables.
That was the moment I understood that selling wasn’t the problem.
My skill level was.
So I made a decision that changed everything:
I stepped away from selling and doubled down on development.
The Skill Pivot: Two Years of Intentional Growth
For nearly two years, I pushed my craft far beyond the local average. Not to become a master — that wasn’t the goal — but to outpace the competition by such a margin that the difference was obvious.
I chased techniques other people avoided. I worked almost daily. I refined every aspect of the craft I could get my hands on. And because of that, something else happened: the collection of finished rings at home kept growing. I wasn’t selling, and I certainly wasn’t wearing a hundred rings at once, so the pieces had nowhere to go. The pile kept increasing, becoming a physical reminder of a simple truth:
Skill without business is just inventory.
By the end of that period, my skill had surpassed the local standard significantly — and that gave me leverage for the first time.
But it also pushed me into the next stage of the journey, one almost every artist eventually has to face: the commercialization of craft.
Commercial Art Isn’t Romantic — But It Teaches You Everything
Before I went overseas, I took a job with another local jeweler. It was my first real view into the production-heavy, commercial side of the industry.
I was paid four dollars for each bracelet I hammered and one dollar per earring — two dollars per pair. If I pushed myself, I could make about four hundred dollars in a day. Not a bad number — until you consider the cost.
Not the financial cost — the creative one.
The work felt like manufacturing. It wasn’t art. It wasn’t expression. It wasn’t exploration or design. It was a repetitive task done at speed, and the more I did it, the less connected I felt to the reason I became an artist in the first place.
That job taught me something I needed to learn early:
If I didn’t steer my own direction, the industry would happily hand me a role I didn’t want — and it would pay me just enough to keep me there.
That realization pushed me toward a direction most artists avoid at first:
the business side.
Learning Business (The Part I Resented the Most)
I didn’t want to learn business.
No artist does.
But there comes a point where the math leaves you no choice.
I had over a hundred rings sitting in a bowl at home, and the number kept rising because I wasn’t selling during my skill-building period. I was producing constantly, and that production needed purpose. At some point, the inventory itself becomes a message:
“You need a system for this.”
Here’s what I eventually understood:
“Business” is just bookkeeping with implications.
It’s the structural backbone that keeps you from drowning in your own output.
Once I actually learned to track expenses, understand margins, and account for the real numbers behind the craft, something shifted. When the books finally turned green instead of red, bookkeeping stopped feeling like an obligation and started feeling like clarity.
That clarity became the gateway into production.
The Overseas Pivot: Where Everything Changed
When I went overseas, my entire understanding of the industry shifted in a single moment.
I discovered that I could hire a highly skilled goldsmith — someone extremely competent — for about two dollars an hour. In Canada, that same skill level would cost between fifty and ninety dollars an hour.
The materials cost the same everywhere.
The shipping and duties cost the same everywhere.
But the labor difference changed everything.
Suddenly, I had a way to:
- produce jewelry competitively on a global scale,
- charge Canadian retail prices,
- and still maintain margins that supported reinvestment into tools, materials, workspace, advertising, and growth.
It’s not about exploiting labor — it’s about understanding global economics and building something sustainable at home.
That margin became the engine that allowed the rest of the business to exist.
What Production Factories Promise — And What They’re Actually Saying
Factories often pitch their services in a deceptively simple way:
“Let us handle the production. You focus on design and sales.”
At the start, that’s exactly what most artists need.
Time to design.
Time to build a brand.
Time to develop sales channels.
If you grow large enough, something interesting happens: you end up circling back to the beginning. You return to designing full-time — the part you actually loved — except this time, you’re doing it from a position of strength. The business handles the execution behind you.
That isn’t a regression. It’s what scaling looks like.
Production Isn’t Selling Out — It’s Scale
Every creative discipline has two tiers:
- The painter has the original painting — and the prints.
- The musician has the live concert — and the downloads or streaming.
- The sculptor has the original piece — and the cast reproductions.
Jewelry is no different.
The original handmade pieces are the premium tier.
Production creates the accessible tier.
The goal isn’t to cheapen the art; it’s to reach more people without requiring you to handcraft every unit.
Designing for Production (The Professional Shift)
Designing for production isn’t “dumbing down.”
It’s understanding structure.
A production-ready design must:
- translate consistently across multiple units,
- maintain quality without improvisation,
- follow predictable workflow steps,
- and retain your artistic identity even when executed by other hands.
Some techniques belong only to originals.
Others translate beautifully to production.
Knowing the difference is part of becoming a professional.
The Sideways Move: Stones, Crystals, and Everything Learned Along the Way
Once I understood margins, sourcing, and production, expanding sideways felt natural. I began selling stones, crystals, display pieces, and even factory-made jewelry produced by others.
This wasn’t abandoning the art.
It was leveraging everything I had learned to create multiple income streams around the same core skill set. It made the business stronger, and it allowed the art to breathe.
The Bottleneck Every Artist Hits Eventually
As the business grew, another limit became impossible to ignore:
I couldn’t do everything myself.
I couldn’t talk to ten customers at once, wrap purchases, answer questions, handle the till, restock, and still have time to create. No one can. And at some point, the volume itself forces your hand.
Just as I had outsourced production, I began outsourcing sales.
I hired employees.
And learning how to manage that shift — how to protect profit, manage people, and build a system that grows — is the doorway to the final fork in the road.
Part 3: The Fork in the Road — Staying Small, Building Big, and the Artist Who Becomes an Entrepreneur
There comes a point, after all the practice and all the experimentation and all the improvements to your craft, when you realize the next limitation isn’t skill anymore — it’s capacity. There are only so many hours you can work, only so many customers you can talk to at once, and only so much output you can personally create, even at peak performance.
That moment usually arrives quietly.
You’re working harder than ever.
You’re producing more than ever.
Your sales are increasing.
And yet you feel like you’re always falling behind.
It’s the unmistakable signal that you’ve outgrown the “one-person show” model.
This is the moment every artist reaches if they stay in the game long enough. It’s also the moment where your future splits into two completely different paths.
The Realization: You Can No Longer Do It Alone
For me, the tipping point came when the storefront got too busy for one person to control. I couldn’t answer ten customers at once. I couldn’t help someone choose a piece while also processing a sale, wrapping another order, answering a question about stock, and trying to mentally track what needed to be restocked next.
The pace exceeded what a single human being can manage — and that’s the moment artists often misinterpret. They assume it’s a sign that they need to work harder, when in reality it’s a sign that they need to work differently.
There’s no shame in that.
It’s not a personal failing.
It’s simply math.
A single person can only run so much output through one pair of hands.
At some point, you have to bring in help.
That’s where employees enter the equation.
Hiring Help Isn’t Selling Out — It’s Scaling Your Reach
Hiring my first employee felt strange. I didn’t grow up imagining I’d have staff, a team, or a structure behind me. But the moment I brought someone in, my workload changed in a way I didn’t expect.
Employees create a buffer.
They absorb the draining interactions.
They filter the questions.
They handle the flow.
They allow you to focus on the parts of the business you’re actually meant to run.
They handle the parts of the process that drain your time and scatter your focus.
Suddenly, instead of getting overwhelmed by a rush of customers, I could focus on the conversation that mattered in front of me, knowing someone else was processing sales or wrapping purchases behind me.
And here’s what no one tells artists early on:
Your employees are not just people who “help out.”
They become the infrastructure that allows your art to exist at scale.
When you have someone else managing the till, answering repetitive questions, handling exchanges, and controlling the flow of customers, you’re no longer bogged down in the friction. You’re free to steer the business instead of drowning in it.
That’s the pivot point — the moment when you move from operator to owner.
Employees Aren’t an Expense — They’re an Asset
When I first started hiring, I saw wages as a subtraction from profit. Later I understood the truth:
Employees aren’t a cost.
They’re an investment that multiplies your ability to generate value.
Think of it this way:
Your stock doesn’t sell itself.
Your designs don’t move themselves.
Your storefront doesn’t run itself.
The product isn’t what makes money — the people who present, explain, and sell the product do.
Employees amplify your output.
They extend your reach.
They give the business more surface area to absorb customers.
And if you train them well, they become miniature versions of you — capable of representing the brand with consistency and care. Eventually, as the team grows, you even reach the point where employees train other employees, and that’s when the machine truly becomes self-sustaining.
That’s the moment the business begins to live beyond your hands.
The Two Paths: Plateau or Scale
Once the infrastructure begins forming around you — production, sales, staff, systems — you find yourself at a very clear fork in the road.
The first path is the one most artists choose:
1. Stay Small and Plateau (Intentionally)
This path is stable, respectable, and completely valid. Here, you:
- Keep your business small
- Maintain a manageable volume
- Sell enough to live comfortably
- Avoid the complexity of teams, HR, or large-scale systems
- Build a modest but functional income around your art
Many artists choose this route.
Some even thrive in it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a quiet, controllable life where you make your own pieces, sell them yourself, and maintain full ownership of your time.
But this path does have a ceiling.
It’s finite.
And there is no version of this route where you escape the plateau without taking on additional help, additional systems, or additional risk.
You have to be comfortable with the cap.
If you are — it’s a perfectly good choice.
But if you’re not…
Then you’re looking at the second path.
2. Build a Business and Let It Grow Bigger Than You
This is the path I eventually ended up on — not because I planned it, but because the momentum pulled me there.
On this path, you:
- Hire staff
- Outsource production
- Build a brand instead of just a portfolio
- Create systems that exist outside your hands
- Develop structure
- Build departments
- Scale beyond what a single person can execute
It’s not glamorous in the beginning.
It’s not romantic or artistic.
It’s work — but it’s also freedom.
Because if you build the business well enough, something strange and beautiful happens:
You no longer have to make art for money anymore.
You can make art for yourself again.
The Full Circle: Returning to Art on Your Own Terms
This is the irony no one sees coming:
Artists don’t build businesses to escape art.
They build businesses so they can eventually return to art without the weight of survival on their back.
If the business is running well — if your staff are trained, your systems are functioning, your brand is established, and your revenue is stable — you gain time freedom. You gain financial freedom. You gain the ability to make art without needing to sell it.
And when you don’t need to sell every piece?
Your creativity becomes honest again.
You keep the pieces you love.
You make the projects you want to make.
You explore again, but without the fear of “will this pay rent?”
The business becomes the engine.
Art becomes the expression again.
That is the full-circle moment every creative hopes for, even if they don’t realize it early on.
The Real Question: Which Path Fits Your Life?
The fork in the road isn’t a moral choice, and it’s not a measure of artistic integrity. It comes down to one thing:
Do you want to stay small and stable?
Or do you want to take on the weight of building something larger than yourself?
Staying small means accepting the plateau.
Scaling means trading simplicity for potential.
Neither is wrong.
But they are different lives.
What I want artists to understand is this:
- Staying small does not guarantee comfort — many artists sit below the plateau and struggle endlessly because they refuse to bring in help or build structure.
- Growing big does not guarantee chaos — with the right systems and people, it becomes the path to freedom.
But whichever path you choose, it must be chosen intentionally.
Because if you don’t choose at all, you end up in the worst-place-of-all:
not the plateau, not the business —
but the starving artist zone that sits under both, where you’re working tirelessly but never moving upward.
That is the one place you do not want to be.
So What’s the Point of These Three Blogs?
To show the full trajectory honestly:
- Part 1: Build skill until your work is undeniable.
- Part 2: Understand business so your skill has a place to go.
- Part 3: Decide intentionally whether you’re building a craft… or a company.
Most artists drift into these decisions reactively.
You don’t have to.
Choosing your path deliberately is how you build a life that fits you — not a life you stumble into.