NYC Create

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Leverage What You Know Well

Your creativity can also be stimulated in the pursuit of becoming an expert in something that connects to your products and services. By having and building knowledge, the creative aspects of your mind will be triggered, especially in the areas you have knowledge of since you will have the breadth of understanding of a topic that leaves you free to get creative about it.

Leave Yourself Open to Possibility

Being creative means always being on the lookout for possible solutions. You can achieve this by being more mindful. In other words, don’t pre judge situations and instead be open to discovery. You can catch yourself in the act of judging and instead leave open the possibility for something else.

Increase Your Luck

Also, creatively you can create your own luck because if you consider yourself lucky you can become more lucky by being open to recognizing opportunities. Use your imagination by imagining what is possible.

Be Open

Of course, by the same token if something is not the right path to follow then shift gears and look at another method. This is a part of the creative process so you do not get fixated on a single idea. Don’t waste time, but through your openness be sure you accurately see a track to take.

Develop Marketing

An interesting creative strategy to use is to leave something undone. Let’s say for example you are a writer. Maybe leave a plot point not solved at the end of your writing time. That means when you return to writing you will need to stimulate your imagination to solve the problem today. This works for other areas as well such as developing marketing.

Give Yourself Time

It can also be great to brainstorm where you come up with lots of ideas about something. Sometimes you may want to give some space between coming up with ideas and then choosing the one you are actually going to use.

Do an “Act of Creativity”

You will want to train yourself to see relationships between things that may not seem related at first glance. Making those connections is an act of creativity.

Harry Houdini is a name that is well known in the area of entertainment, escape artists and magic. And the amazing thing is that he died in 1926 yet is still recognized today. Why is this? The answer is that not only was Houdini a master magician but he was a master marketer as well. He was also the ultimate ArtisticPreneur.

Houdini recognized early on in his career that he could not depend on anyone else to promote him, that he needed to promote himself. And promote himself he did. In fact just about any moment in Houdini’s life was a promotional opportunity. And the great thing is that he enjoyed what he promoted and promoted what he enjoyed.

In a recent blog entry in the Manhattan Magician blog, there is an article that deconstructs the methodology that the escape artist used. He was smart enough to realize that if he took on subject matters in conjunction with his conjuring that people were interested in, he could continually build his audience.

Houdini represented himself as a super human being. He was in top physical condition and he could do the impossible. But it wasn’t enough to do the impossible but he also made sure to build visibility for the impossible things he would do. And once he did anything of interest such as escaping from a prison cell, he made sure that all the right reporters had been contacted to their stories on it.

And Houdini would exaggerate what he accomplished. He realized that history is in the hands of those who document and market it, so he would always be sure to spin whatever he did in the best possible light in front of the most people as possible.

For example, he was once photographed with a president in conjunction with a large group of other folks. So what did he do? He cut everyone out of the photo except for himself and the president and that was the image that was published. Seeing just Houdini and the president had a much greater impact and meaning.

How to make money as an artist is an important topic. And sometimes it is helpful to be reminded of the various methods of doing so to reinvigorate you to take action steps. This goes for all kinds of artists including musicians, writers and filmmakers etc.

The idea for success is to develop several different income streams. If you do this faithfully and to its full potential, your income streams could add up to being the equivalent of working a 9-5 job or even more.

Again remember, these are classic techniques of making money as an artist that have been compiled into a 6 course series. Each of the 6 courses of the series explore a facet of the moneymaking ideas for creatives.

And the good news for you is that as a reader of the NYC Create newsletter and blog posts, each week for the next 6 weeks (including today) you are going to learn at no cost to you the basics of the course series which is normally paid.

Here now are some ideas and steps to consider on how to make money as an artist through education:

• In approaching the topic of “How to Make Money as an Artist” one of the best ways to put your artistic training to work is to teach. Chances are you have passion for your art form which in turn you can pass onto your students.• In short, teaching workshops can be a revenue stream. You can teach what you know.• Depending on what kind of art you do you can specialize in teaching adults or kids or even both.• The way to get started doing workshops is to do outreach to schools as well as places where courses are taught. Send them an email that links to your portfolio of work, regardless of whether you are a musician, writer or filmmaker etc.• It’s also a good idea to detail the kinds of workshops you do and how they are structured.• Bottom line, you want to get the venue you desire to teach at to be excited about working with you.• Be sure to send out at least two emails that are spread out by at least a few weeks and on the second email give a reason for emailing, maybe something new of interest on your site that your potential future client/workshop-venue will like to see.• You should constantly be updating your online portfolio.• Needless to say, you might also want to consider doing an email newsletter, but if so be sure to make certain your are following the GDBR guidelines.• Jumping off from live workshops done in-person, there are ways to teach online. Decide if you are interested in doing online education.• One way to get online content is to film your teaching of your workshops.• Selling your courses online requires getting a payment receiving method such as PayPal.• In doing your workshops and courses you want to think outside of the box. For example, some teaching artists work with their students one on one using programs like Skype.• Again, if choosing to work with Skype you need to figure out a way to receive payments.• You can even work live with multiple students at once using webinar programs.• It’s also a good idea to lay out in advance how many sessions will be needed to learn the creative skills you are teaching.• And offer a discount if your students purchase a package of several online courses.• This technique works whether you are teaching live through a program like Skype, or are creating courses in advance through a program like Thinkific.• If you want to offer premade courses with a program such as Thinkific, you’ll want to decide what formats you will include in your courses.• Do you want your students to be able to download your course?• What formats will you use? Audio? Video? PDF? Etc.

Hello ArtisticPreneurs.

We’re not going to say (at least not immediately anyway) the “M” word. The “M” word can be a very challenging one for artists. And as you know by now when we say artists we mean artists of all kinds including musicians, writers, filmmakers etc. Sometimes it’s easier to say “commerce” but the “M” word can be a topic of great stress for creators.

Not all creators mind you, but those who are not satisfied with where they are in their creative careers. Some would say no artist is ever satisfied and it is this dissatisfaction that drives her or him. This is probably true, but it doesn’t help when the bottom line is not being met to pay at least the minimal bills like food, rent and so forth.

We’ve had several readers suggest that we explore the topic of “How to Make “M” as an Artist.” If you check Google Trends “How to Make “M” as an Artist” (insert the entire “M” word) has such a large amount of interest (pun not intended) that it actually ranks as a trend of its own.

Plus if you put it through the “You Tube” test, which is seeing if it shows up as a menu pull-down item, “How to Make “M” as an Artist” passes with flying colors, namely the color green. Look for “M” topic to start next week and run for 6 consecutive weeks.

Now on to this week’s bullet point sequence. It picks up where we left off from last week and covers an OVERVIEW of the series. Note that in the bullet sequence there is mention in more detail of the Google Trends and YouTube popularity test.