intro and a question

[kadiera.livejournal.com]

I'm coming at this from a couple different directions so bear with me. :-)

First, the question: where does cyberfunded creativity end, and plain old selling your stuff online begin? I ask this, because I've been a part of an email list of artists trying to find ways to sell their work online for probably 7 or 8 years now, and a lot of interesting ideas have come out of that list. Some of the members have left the gallery world entirely; some never bothered to go there to start with. As always, some are more successful than others, but it's been interesting to see how it works out for people.

As background, I'm Janet Callahan. I started out in business as a traditional Native American beadwork artist (which resulted in average sales that didn't pay the webhosting bill!), and eventually moved into a few other things that took my business off in the direction of being a wholesale distributor of Pagan goods and a licensing company that prints fantasy & Pagan artwork for other artists. These days, I'm doing more writing - I'm not sure where I'm going with that exactly, but I've got one paid published article, one unpaid published article, and a handful of unpaid published poems to my name now, and a blog that I've finally gotten into the groove of posting to every couple of weeks. Traffic on my blog is increasing at a fairly substantial rate since I've gotten better at posting more frequently. :-)

I've largely moved on from thinking I'm going to pay my bills with my work, but have come back around to the idea of actually making a little money here and there with some of the things I do, and I find that more creative ways of doing that are less stressful for me than some of the things I've done in the past.

Comments

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

where does cyberfunded creativity end, and plain old selling your stuff online begin?

I had that question, too! (I wasn't at all sure if something like Portrait Adoption qualified, as I'm acting as something of a middleman, as well.)

It's nice to meet you! :)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I think this is a great question, and has so many permutations...

Sometimes I think at its purest, it's the exchange of one abstract measure of value (money) for another (something you consume online, but don't get any physical copy of).

The rest of it I think of as e-commerce, and while it's still a form of creativity that makes people money online, as you've noted kadiera people have been doing that already for years. :)

But that's just my opinion! This is new ground. :)