Artists: Charging for Your Art Isn’t Selling Out — It’s Survival
Stop Acting Like Selling Your Art Is Evil: You Deserve to Thrive (AKA – Why Are Artists Lying to Themselves About Money? )
Why are we artists lying to ourselves?
No really. Why are we out here on these platforms, doing full Broadway monologues about how we “just want to create again without worrying about earning money” — and then, in the very next breath, saying “God, I wish I could live off my art and never work again.”
Like babes… which one is it?
And listen, I get it. I do.
I, too, believe not everything needs to be monetized. But god forbid you actually do start monetizing. Suddenly you’re treated like you spit on the Mona Lisa and personally invented the housing crisis.
We act like asking to be paid for your art is some kind of moral failure. “Art should be free, it’s about connection, it’s about humanity, it’s about something bigger than money!”
Right, right. Until your landlord asks if you want to pay rent this month with ✨vibes✨.
At this point, the hypocrisy isn’t even shocking. It’s just exhausting. Why can’t we decide what we actually want our creativity to do for us?
Here’s where I’m planting my little flag in the sand: Creativity moves us forward. And it is not wrong — not evil, not selfish, not icky — to want your creativity to also move you forward financially.
You can say no to money if you want. But you should never feel like saying yes means you’re a sellout who personally invented capitalism and colonization.
(And honestly? Some of you act like charging $5 for your poetry newsletter is the same as raising rent on a Brooklyn brownstone to $6,000 a month. Get a grip.)
I don’t even know what to call this. Reverse capitalism? Capitalism but wearing a quirky outfit and Doc Martens?
The way we recoil at the idea of charging for our art, like someone just waved a wad of cash in front of our faces and shouted, “Dance, monkey, dance!” It’s deranged.
What has society taught us about our creative genius, that we think it’s cute when it’s unpaid but dirty when it’s profitable? Because newsflash: your favorite actors and musicians?
They’re literally just… cosplaying. And method acting. And making stupid amounts of money doing it. Some influencers don’t even do anything except exist vaguely in a color palette, and they are cashing checks like Monopoly bankers.
Meanwhile you — you, with your stupidly brilliant brain — you’re out here drawing immaculate stick figures, telling gut-wrenching stories, building entire worlds, and somehow convincing yourself it’s worth less.
Do you see how insane that is?
Honestly, as an artist, it makes me a little angry. Because I know what I’m capable of. I know my stories aren’t 100% original — nobody’s are — but they’re mine. My voice, my words, my penmanship, my slightly chaotic but lovable brain.
Other people can draw stick figures, too. But they can’t draw my stick figures.
And yet somehow, influencers who just film themselves drinking matcha in natural lighting get to live in $7M homes in the hills — and I’m over here wondering if it’s “ethical” to charge $10 for a short story I worked 40 hours on.
Be serious.
Here’s what’s really nuts
When people say “I came here to be surrounded by art, not to pay for it,” what they’re really saying is:
“I want to absorb the brilliance of others without elevating their lives in any way.”
Bro. If none of us charge for our brilliance, if none of us dare to build lives out of it — how the hell are we supposed to keep creating?
How are WE supposed to survive in a world that runs on money if we insist on pretending like our art should be free just because it’s beautiful?
It’s actually dangerous to think this way. Because real life — real, drab, cubicle, pencil-skirted, math-dominated life — will eventually snuff out the joy and color that art gives you. Not because art stopped being magical. But because the artist couldn’t afford to keep making it.
So I’m gonna say it, and this time, no performative hand-wringing:
You’re not selling out. You’re just tired of living like your art should be your side hustle in a life you don’t even want.
And honestly? Same.
It’s not even about greed. It’s about not working six different jobs just to afford fifteen minutes of free time where you can doodle a little cat wearing a top hat.
It’s about survival. It’s about making enough to keep choosing art because you want to, not because you have to fit it into the leftover cracks of your day like some guilty little hobby.
And if someone wants to shame you for wanting that?
Let them. Let them sit there and rot in their martyr complex while you go out and buy paint and coffee and plane tickets with the money your art earned for you.
Because guess what? The world is already flooded with jobs that drain you. We don’t need to turn creativity into another unpaid internship.
You deserve better. And your art deserves a life that doesn’t apologize for wanting more.
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