On the business of doing what you want.

"It is an artist's job to be exploited; It is up to the artist to negotiate the terms." -Eric Haines I’m blessed to do what I like to do for a living. I have never forgotten that I GET to do what I do for a living: I am a juggler, stilt walker, comedian, one man band and artist. People pay me to do what I enjoy, much to the amazement of people who view the arts and performing arts as being a labor of love, “for which a true artist should gladly starve.” There is a false perspective both among artists and the general public that all those who engage in art for profit must have “sold out” to achieve their goal; they must pander to the audience in order to sell their work. I will gladly testify that the artist sets the terms of their own exploitation. If you engage the work because it interests you, because the ideas or process excites you, and people choose to pay you for it, you need not pander. 

Sure, there are artists of every stripe that do work that they don’t believe in, just to earn money. The mortgage looms, so they punch the artistic time clock to earn the cash. It happens, but compromising artistic integrity is not a necessary part of the business. 

 Produce what you believe in, and figure out a way to package it for market. Picture yourself in medieval times. Your website is your shingle,your sign hanging outside the shop to let people know what service you offer. Your videos, pictures and writing are the display case that show your wares. The customer expects a price for each of the wares in the shop, and is likely to have visited other shops to see their price for similar products, so your prices should be within the range of prices for similar products. If you are smart, you won’t undercut what other people in the same profession are charging, or you will risk driving the prices for your product down for all the people in your profession.  Like any other business, prices are set by supply and demand. 

For most artists, there is not a company that hires them to work for them, at least not at first. The artist IS the supply. A person in a small town learns to juggle, and tell a few jokes, and suddenly, they become the supplier of a product that did not exist before in that market. People buy the product for their kid’s birthday party, etc., and word spreads that a product exists that it was a good fit for what they paid for it. More people hire the juggler, who raises his prices as his act improves, and thus begins an industry, where no industry existed before. As the act expands, so does the reach, and the juggler entertains for business conventions and company picnics, places where the act has more monetary value to the customer. A birthday party of 10 five-year olds has a ceiling on the price a family will pay. A company with 1000 employees has a large budget to provide food and entertainment for their employees. Those are two different markets that the juggler can engage in, with a specific product and price set for each market. The juggler sets the terms for what he will charge, and what services he will provide for each price.  If you are smart, you will also produce high quality goods. If high quality products are available, they create their own market. Quality breeds demand, while low quality breeds suspicion, and a reduction in market. Low quality video games almost killed the emerging video game market. High quality games made demand increase. Today the video game market easily dominates the television and movie industries for top spot.

 http://consumerist.com/2014/06/09/its-time-to-start-treating-video-game-industry-like-the-21-billion-business-it-is/