One of the biggest creative buzzkills is the idea that your art has to start paying rent right away. Seriously, who decided that every hobby needs to be a side hustle? In this chat, we dive into the concept that you don't have to monetize your creativity just yet—let's keep the pressure cooker off and focus on what really matters: enjoying the process! We’ll explore how the pressure to sell can suck the joy right out of your artistic endeavors, and why giving yourself the freedom to create without the weight of expectations is essential. So, grab your favorite beverage, kick back, and let's embrace the messy, glorious journey of creating just for the sake of it!

Are you feeling pressure to monetize your creativity?

In Episode 6 of Create Anyway: You’re Allowed to Make Art, we explore the growing belief that every creative pursuit must become a side hustle. From selling art online to building a personal brand, modern creators are constantly told to turn passion into profit.

But what if you don’t have to monetize your art — at least not yet?

This episode is for artists, creatives, and busy professionals who feel the pressure to make their creative work financially productive before it’s fully formed. We discuss:

• The danger of monetizing art too early
• How hustle culture impacts creativity
• Why not every passion needs to become a business
• The importance of private creative practice
• How to protect your artistic growth from performance pressure

If you’re balancing a career, family life, and creative ambition, this episode offers a grounded reminder: your art does not need to justify itself with income.

You’re allowed to build slowly.

You’re allowed to practice without profit.

You’re allowed to create anyway.

This episode is especially relevant for:

• New artists starting later in life
• Creatives with full-time careers
• People exploring art after years away
• Anyone questioning whether their work “counts” without money attached

Listen now and reclaim your creative freedom.

1. The Monetization Trap

The moment you say you’re an artist, someone asks:

“So how are you going to make money from it?”

We’ve absorbed the belief that if it doesn’t generate income, it isn’t legitimate. But monetization and meaning are not the same thing.

2. Turning Everything Into a Product

When art becomes content, content becomes strategy, and strategy becomes survival — joy quietly disappears.

The rush to “scale” can suffocate the early stages of creative growth.

3. You’re Allowed to Practice in Private

Not everything needs an audience.

Not everything needs a launch.

Some art is meant to be awkward, unseen, and formative.

Growth requires protected space.

4. Monetization Changes the Relationship

The second money enters the picture, the questions change:

• What will sell?
• What performs?
• What’s trending?

Those aren’t bad questions — but they’re not beginner questions.

5. Build Depth Before Demand

Skill, voice, and creative identity take time.

If you rush to monetize before you understand your own work, you risk building something fragile.

There’s no prize for monetizing early.

There is power in developing slowly.

Takeaways:

• Creativity shouldn't pay rent immediately; give it space to breathe and grow.
• In today's hustle culture, there's a notion that every passion must be a side gig.
• Monetizing art too soon can drain the joy; focus on creation before cashing in.
• It's perfectly okay to enjoy your art without the pressure of profit hanging over you.
• Your creative journey should be about growth and fulfillment, not just financial gain.
• Take your time developing your craft; rushing to monetize can lead to burnout and regret.

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Reach Out To The Podcast

To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation.

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One of the fastest ways to kill a creative spark is to ask it to pay rent too soon.

Now we live in a world where everything has to become a side hustle.

If you start painting, someone asks you how do you sell it?

If you start writing, someone asks you about your sub stack.

If you start a podcast, somebody asks you about sponsors.

But what if you don't have to monetize yet?

What if your art is allowed to exist without strategy, without branding and without pressure?

In this episode, we're talking about why you don't have to turn your creativity to income, at least not right now.

And how protecting your art from performance might be the most important thing you do.

Hey, friend, this is Timothy Chemo Brian, your head instigator for for Create Art podcast where I use my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world and help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume.

I want to welcome you back again to my latest series, Create.

Anyway, you're allowed to make art.

And this episode is you don't have to monetize yet.

And we're going to be talking about that now.

It's important because we want to remove the pressure.

The pressure is killing more art than failure ever has.

So we want to make sure that we're ready to monetize.

And when you're just starting off, you may not be ready to monetize yet.

And it's almost insulting really, if you think about it, when people are saying, hey, how are you making money off of this?

I know Recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine who started to get into art and he does a lot of woodworking and his stuff is fantastic.

And I fell into that trap of going, well, hey, this could be a thing that you can make money at.

And he said, no, Tim, I do this because I love doing it.

Maybe you're in that same boat now.

I paint like a four year old on crack, I'll tell you that right now, and I'm happy with it.

Will I sell any of it?

Probably not.

But I enjoy it and I have a great time with it.

So why do we feel it necessary that if we're calling this a hobby or whatnot, whatever it is, whatever you're calling it, everyone wants to know if you're making money off of it, otherwise they think you're not serious about it.

But yet people are stamp collectors and you don't ask a stamp collector, hey, you making money off of that?

Or people collect bottle caps, or people knit little caps for newborn babies.

But they don't make money off of that.

Does that make them any less of an artist?

I don't think so.

That's what we're going to talk about here today.

So let's talk about the monetization trap, because it can be a trap, and especially when I'm talking podcasts.

When I talk to people about podcasts and they want to start one, I ask them, do you want to make money from this or not?

You know, is this just a passion project, which is perfectly fine, that's perfectly valid, or is this going to be a money maker for you, your business, what have you?

And then that's where we begin the conversation at, on what we're going to do.

Now.

You can always say it's just a passion project, and then later on, turn it into a monetization thing.

That can be difficult because it can be done.

But going the other way, going, hey, I'm going to make money from this, and no, I'm not going to turn into monetization.

If making money is your goal, yeah, that's not a bad thing.

That's fine.

I live in the real world, too, just like you do.

But when I'm creating art, I do it because it fills my soul first.

I enjoy it first and foremost.

And I have my day job, I have my 9 to 5, and that pays the bill.

So that way I can do the art.

And there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, you know what?

I'm tired of the 9 to 5.

I want to jump into the art world, and I want to make all my money from it.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but what I am saying is we get caught in this monetization trap where we think we're not legitimate unless we are making money.

And people may not think we're legitimate, and they may come up to us and say, hey, how are you going to make money off of this?

We have absorbed this belief that it has to make money.

You don't have to make money with your art.

You really don't.

You don't have to even worry about it right now.

What we're worried about right now is you putting pen to paper, putting brush to canvas, putting your fingers on that clay and doing something with it.

Because if you don't get to that point, this talk about monetization just goes out the window.

Then you've got nothing to sell.

But if we work on ourselves and we work on our art, then at some point, yeah, we can talk about monetization, especially if people are going to throw money at you and go, hey, I'll pay you to do this, okay, great, cool.

Wonderful.

But if we walk into it and go, yeah, this is how I'm going to make my money from here on out.

You got a long ways to go, and you've got a lot to learn.

You got to learn the business side and the art side, and that can be difficult.

So start with one.

Start with the art, and then work your way into the money.

So now we're going to be talking about turning everything into a product, which is a part of monetization.

Now, when your art becomes content, content becomes a strategy, and strategy becomes survival.

And the joy of doing it, the joy of filling up your soul with that goes out the window.

You're thinking, hey, what can I make that's going to sell?

And that's going to go viral?

That's going to make people pay attention to me instead of what fills up my soul.

See how that works?

What's going to sell versus what fills up my soul.

So fill that up first.

Get good with that first.

Get good with that feeling first.

And once that happens, then other people will notice about notice you, and then they'll want to know more.

Then purchase, and then there you go.

If you turn this into a job from Jump street, it's going to be a job and it's going to be a slog.

And there's literally millions of people out there doing it.

Millions.

And you're just going to be another one.

Now, are they artists?

Yeah, they're artists.

I'm going to call them artists.

That's fine.

I'm good with that.

I am not the art police.

But all they're doing is churning out content to sell.

They're not filling up their soul with the art that they're creating.

It's almost soulless.

I would say the whole aim of it is to sell it.

The art that I do, a lot of times I give it away.

People like it, I give it to them.

I'll show them picture of it.

They want it.

Okay, cool.

There you go.

Have at it.

I've mailed pieces out to people that have not paid for it because they expressed an interest in it.

I was like, cool, yeah, that's fine.

I've had people say, I'll pay for that.

Okay, great.

Here's the website.

Go pay for it.

Have at it.

Grab a print, do that.

But when we turn everything into a product and we turn it into a job, where's the love in that?

Now you may Love your job.

I don't love mine, but it pays the bill.

So I tolerate my job and it's fine.

I do great things with my job.

I make it fun.

I try to be as creative as I can with it, but that's not my passion.

My passion is to turn the light bulb on for people.

That's my passion now.

My job allows me to do that, but my creativity, my artistic nature allows my art to do that.

And I can put my passion into it now.

I can research and study and learn new things, and that's what I do with my art, with my day job, I do good.

I just got a bonus.

I just got a call and I got a bonus.

Yay.

But my art, I don't turn it into a product that I have to sell because for me, that's kind of soulless and it doesn't fill my soul.

It doesn't do anything for me except gives me money.

When I already make money, I already make decent money.

I just want to fill up my soul with stuff that I really enjoy looking at and I enjoy giving to people.

So now we're going to switch and talk about practicing in private.

You're allowed to do that now.

Not everything needs an audience and not everything needs a launch.

You don't have to have a launch strategy for this.

You can just do it.

You can just put it out there in the world if you want to, or you can like say you want to do a podcast.

You can sit and record yourself.

You do 100 episodes that way and then get better and better and better with each and every episode until you're ready to launch it out into the world.

And then when you do, people are going to take notice and go, this is his first podcast.

And they don't see the hundred episodes that you recorded previously.

You know, you can get a spot at a art gallery and they don't see all the horrible paintings that you did.

Nobody sees the first draft of any novel.

The public doesn't see those, doesn't see the rewrites.

They see the finished product.

And that's if the writer, the painter, the artist wants to put it out there.

Some art is not made to be seen.

It's to show the artist where they started at and where they're at now.

And that's okay.

Your growth is going to go better when you have that protective space, that non judgment where you're not worried about, you know, what's selling and what's not selling.

You're just growing, you're making mistakes, you're learning from those mistakes.

You're making beautiful mistakes, just like Bob Ross says.

But you need to have that in a protected space so that way you can grow, that way you can learn.

You can feel free to make as many mistakes as you want to make.

And it's a good, safe space to be in, to nurture yourself and to incubate that idea.

And then when it's ready to go out into the world, it's ready to go out in the world.

And there won't be a question about it.

You'll know.

You just have to trust yourself.

You'll know.

Monetizing or monetization changes your relationship with your art.

The second that money enters the picture, the questions are always going to change.

It's not going to be, does it fill my soul?

Am I growing from it?

Is it going to sell?

Is it going to perform?

Is it trending?

They're not bad questions because you're learning what the trends are.

You're learning what the audience wants.

But they're not beginner questions.

The beginner questions are, can I do this better?

Is there a better way to do this?

Is my process good?

Do I have a mentor?

Do I have somebody looking over and critiquing it to help me get to where I want to be?

Those are beginner questions.

And if you're in that area, in that stage of your life and your artistic journey, then you need to stick with those questions.

The other questions will come later when you monetize.

They will.

They have to.

Is it going to.

If you're monetizing, you have to know, is this going to sell?

Is this what my audience is going to pay for it?

Does it look good on the screen?

Does it look good in this photo?

Does it look good in the gallery, or what?

Whatever art you're doing, what's the trend?

Am I leading the trend?

Am I following the trend?

Am I way behind the trend?

Those are more advanced questions.

Those are questions for when you're into monetization.

Those should not be the questions.

As a beginner, when you're just starting off, you shouldn't be worried about that because it's not going to matter what's trending.

You're going to be way behind anyways because you got to learn to do what the trend is.

And by the time you learn that trends already passed you by, you're already three or four trends behind.

So know when to ask those questions.

Not when you begin, but when you're monetizing.

Now we're going to talk about building depth before demand.

Developing that skill and that voice and your creative identity is going to take time.

You want to build everything up on a solid foundation before the demand comes.

You want to be able to meet that demand.

You want to know how to quickly turn around a piece.

So that way, when it's.

When you need to jump to a different trend or create your own trend, or if you need to crank out a hundred pieces because somebody wants to buy 100 pieces of whatever it is that you're doing, you're not going to be able to do that until you develop yourself, develop that skill, learn how to do stuff quicker, in less time, with less effort.

You're going to want to develop your voice so that way people know and can distinguish your work versus somebody else's work.

And you want to have a style or creative identity that people can point to and go, that's Tim.

That's Tim right there.

If you rush to monetize before you understand your own work, you're going to look weak.

It's.

You're not.

It's not going to be sustainable.

So you're not going to be able to meet that demand.

That whole supply demand thing, you're not going to meet that demand because you don't have enough supply.

It's like trying to run a machine.

And you may get one or two widgets out just fine, but when the order calls for a thousand, you need to be pumping that machine hard.

There isn't a prize to monetize early.

You're not going to get ahead by monetizing early.

You'll probably get farther behind.

There is a power in taking your time to develop in your time, not anyone else's in your time.

And if people are still bugging you about, hey, are you going to make money from this?

Are you going to make money from this?

Well, look at their hobby and go, are you going to make money from that?

You're playing video games, you're going to make money from that?

No.

Why do you play video games?

Because you enjoy it.

Oh, well, then there you go.

I enjoy doing this art.

So jumping to monetization, you don't get anything extra if you do that.

You don't.

You get more headaches.

And if you hit it big, you're going to have even more headaches because you're not going to be able to supply the demand that's out there.

So you're really shooting yourself in the foot.

And people will probably give you one, maybe two chances and then they'll move on to Something else.

And then where are you going to be?

That monetization strategy that you have is gone.

It's toast.

You won't be able to use it and nobody's going to be interested in anything else that you do.

So develop yourself slowly.

Take your time.

This is the point where you take your time and get really, really good.

And then once you're there, then you toss it out there to the public and monetize from it.

All right, I want to say thank you for listening in on this episode about pushing for monetization.

All right?

You may not be ready for it yet, and that's okay.

There's not a problem with that.

Take your time.

Take your time.

You don't get extra bonus points for rushing to monetization.

You get more headaches in the end, and then you're probably going to stop creating art because it's not going to be fun anymore.

So think about that.

Again, I want to thank you for listening in.

And if you have any ideas, questions, comments, critiques about the show, feel free to email me.

I want to hear from you.

Timothyreateartpodcast.com that's the best way to reach me.

And if you got something out of this, make sure you share it with a friend that may need to hear this.

You can share it through your podcast app that you're using right now.

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I'm not going to bite your hand off.

I appreciate it.

That's fine.

Go for it.

Share it.

It's good stuff.

It's really good stuff.

It's stuff that I'm proud of.

And then he showed me the correct, correct way to podcast.

So, yeah, I'm probably one of the, one of the OGs of podcasting and I'm good with that.

It's not a problem.

I like it.

But if you pass it on to a friend, please go for it.

It's a free gift that you can give to them.

Talking about passing this on to a friend, I run another podcast called Find a Podcast About.

You can find it at findapodcast about xyz.

And that's where I help my listeners over there find their next binge worthy podcast and outsmart the algorithm.

You never know, you might find a podcast that you're going to fall in love with over there.

You can find it at tkbpodcaststudio.com and that's where I help my clients there lead through the noise with quiet professionalism.

So that way I can help them with their podcast.

If you've ever thought about starting up a podcast, I'd love to give you a hand with it.

Pop on over to the website and you can see my portfolio of podcasts that I'm currently working on.

Love to help you out with your ideas.

Right.

That's all I got for you here today.

Thank you so much for listening and for watching.

Appreciate you.

I definitely do.

Now go out there, tame that inner critic.

Create more than you consume.

Don't worry about the money.

The money will come.

Go out there and make some art for somebody you love yourself.

I'll talk to you next time, Sam.