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Wow, Kyle If I could earn 40,000 for an entire year, this would subsidize my social security. I have been working from my home studio as a freelance graphic designer for over fifteen years. Additionally, I’ve written, illustrated and self-published five children’s picture books. Still, I struggle with finding the balance to the time equals money equation. The ONLY time I’ve paid for a service related to my creative endeavors is when I had one of my books translated to Spanish. That book has not sold even one printed copy. Your article triggered me for sure. Especially when I sold myself to a best friend of more than 40 years only to have her take advantage of me, refuse to pay and sever the friendship I so highly value.

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Hi, Brett,

I used to be hesitant about sharing sales figures and talking about money, in general, but I've decided it's better to be upfront and honest about what I have been paid for editorial and advertising art in the hopes that other artists will not get cheated out of money they deserve for a job well done. When I started illustrating in 2003, editorial rates had been flat or falling for years, already. That trend continued because not enough artists were sharing the fees they were getting paid with one another and publications would offer lower and lower fees to younger artists who didn't know better. One of the advantages I had with the brush business was that I was able to reach a global audience. This is a very different scenario from the normal situation an illustrator faces when it comes to commission work. My prices were low -- between five dollars and $13 per unit -- but when you consider the hundreds of millions of people that could find my products, this added up quickly. Believe me, I do not consider that amount of money any differently than my colleagues – it is significant, and it was truly an amazing and lucky thing to be able to earn that much. This is why I continued to pour so much energy and effort into building the business. It had so much more earning potential than what I had been doing up until that point.

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This is a subject I've been thinking a lot about lately. Since I've made a living mostly from IT jobs (regrettably so given my Arts degree) when I decided to set up my current illustration portfolio at alzamon.art I was confident I could take it on from scratch due to my professional coding/design skills, and so I did, moonlighting over the course of several months. It runs on a flat file CMS system I had to learn all by myself since I didn't want to use Wordpress for it. And I think it's okay for now — but setting up a site like this is a high maintenance compromise since I'm the only one who knows how everything is set up, how to update/fix it, fix or replace web services and scripts when they change/fail over time, and so on and on. Sure enough part of what moved me to take the matter in my own hands is the personal pride on doing it myself - but I'm doubtful it would be worth my increasingly limited lifetime to go over it again — I'd rather delegate this task to a younger talent who is more enthusiast of messing with code than I currently am. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do absolutely everything by yourself — this has been a lesson long and hard to come by.

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Very relatable! I was 40 years old before I started really understanding how to navigate this with my own business(es). Takes time, trial and error!

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