Making money doing what you love?
Posted by Tim Gruber Tags: business, creative, freelance, marketing | Filed under business, career, featured, freelance
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See the second portion of Making Money Doing What You Love.
Seth Godin if you don’t know is a marketing guru. His blog always proves insightful on topics dealing with marketing especially if you’re working to market yourself as a freelance photographer.
One of his latest posts is worth a look: Maybe you can’t make money doing what you love
Some highlights from the post:
When what you do is what you love, you’re able to invest more effort and care and time. That means you’re more likely to win, to gain share, to profit. On the other hand, poets don’t get paid. Even worse, poets that try to get paid end up writing jingles and failing and hating it at the same time.
Seth makes a valid point. Is it better to get paid to do photography if it means taking pictures you aren’t happy with or is it better to take pictures you love, but support your passion by doing something else?
Ideally we could have our cake and eat it too. Meaning you or I would get paid for our vision and the pictures we love to take. Doesn’t always work that way, but I think the goal for any photographer should be aligning yourself with clients and editors that hire you not because you have a camera and a pulse, but because your vision and style fit the assignment.
I’m miles and miles from that myself, but it’s something I’m working towards and it starts by only showing work that represents YOU. It doesn’t mean showing a sports photo or a celebrity portrait cause you think that’s what editors want to see. Your portfolio should showcase your passion and love for what you love to do. This is the one time where it’s ok to make it about you.
Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, especially if you need to make a living at it. Go find a job you can commit to, a career or a business you can fall in love with.
Maybe you can’t make money doing what you love (at least what you love right now). But I bet you can figure out how to love what you do to make money (if you choose wisely).
Do your art. But don’t wreck your art if it doesn’t lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy.
Something to think about on this Monday afternoon.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Some research into what makes people good at what they do reveals a much more pragmatic cause:
“…when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don’t love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good.”
(see ‘A Star is Made’ in the NYTimes from 5/7/2006)
In other words, being good requires work, and it’s a lot easier to put in the work if you like what you do.
-k
October 24th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
So true Kevin. Great find on that article too. Reading it now.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
[...] Godin, who I blogged about in the past with my Making Money Doing What You Love? post, had another great post the other day that should serve as another reminder for all [...]
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!I blogged about the idea of making money doing what you love awhile back. If you haven’t yet check out that first post called Making Money Doing What You Love? [...]