There’s often nothing worse than having a dream or idea but not having the funds to make it a reality. It’s part of the jobs for those who are creative in a professional setting, but for the rest of the world there’s always a roadblock when it comes to finances. Taking the initiative to turn your hobby into a paid job is a big step, especially when creative works aren’t often taken seriously. Getting the funding together to make your creative dream a reality can change your life, but how can you go about this?
When you think about something you’ve dreamed about doing, it’s important to realise that you have a much better chance of making that dream a reality if you tell people about it rather than just keep it in your head! Vocalise what you want to the right channels, garner support on social media platforms and start investing in yourself. This can come in the form of educational classes to further your knowledge and even teaching yourself how to hone your craft using YouTube tutorials set up by others. Make it known what you’re going to do, why you’re going to do it and how you plan to get there. Once people know you are serious about what you want, you’re far more likely to find people with open arms and ready to welcome you into your new adventure.
It’s never impossible to get the funding you need to take on the world with your creativity. Bringing your creativity to life can take time and patience along with cash and if you take that dream and make it your focus, it can happen. Getting around the financial side of it is the big hurdle, but when you spend your life dreaming up creative solutions, you can easily get around that one. Creative people tend to be passionate and open-minded about their futures and how they live their lives, so if you are looking for ways to fund your future we’ve got some excellent ideas below for you.
Your Day Job
You likely are working a 9-5 job in an environment that is less than fruitful for you. Most creatives dream up how they would work for themselves, maximising their education and Master of Arts degree that they spent a lot of time and money on. However, don’t look at your current, less-than-creative day job as a bad thing. Your job is going to be the first place you turn to fund your creative business idea, as you can use a lot of your own savings to build your creative empire. The money you make on a regular basis can help you go one of two ways: you can save up to fund your dream with the right equipment, or you can self-fund your hobby on the side. You may well be perfectly happy in your day job and want to keep your hobby as it is, a hobby. But making money for someone else is often the main reason people look to work for themselves. Artists, bloggers and those in jobs that require imagination are often, by personality, not functional in an environment of rules and regulations. This is the main reason working for yourself can be so appealing! Don’t knock the day job though – if it could be your key to financial freedom with your own hobby that you enjoy so much earning you cash, then why wouldn’t you keep it?
Become Semi-Professional
You’ve probably seen and heard of Etsy all over social media, especially Facebook. Etsy is a platform for people of all types of background to open a shop selling their creations and get recognised for the things that they make. Keeping your day job doesn’t have to be a barrier to becoming a professional in your creativity, so why not start making things on the side and selling them? Setting yourself up as a business online with a good reach using social media as your tool, you can build yourself up slowly to a full-time business. The money you make from gigs on the side could all go into a pot to start you on your way to buying better equipment as you need it to manage working your hobby full time.
Teach Your Skill
Getting creative is so much more than just taking what you do – whether you draw, write or play an instrument – and using it yourself. Teaching what you can do to others is a wonderful money-spinner and a great way to add to your ever-expanding knowledge. People are always going to be interested in what you do and how you do it. Your style of writing, drawing or music could be of great interest to someone else and the easiest way to impart a little wisdom is to start a blog or vlog and write a few tutorials on how you do what you do. You can then set yourself up to have a paid blog and you can read here about how to do that. Photographers among you are as creative as an artist with a brush and your skills will be sought after for events and such like. Advertising yourself and your abilities on social media and other free platforms is a great way to market yourself and what you can do.
Go Fund You
Finding finance to start a business is complex. You have the traditional routes with the banks and other funding business angels, but you can also crowd fund. Websites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter can help you on your way to fund your creative dreams. Those websites are a fantastic way to get people interested in supporting you and also help you on your way to financial and creative freedom. Obviously, these won’t work for everyone, but they are a great option if you want to see how far you can impact the public around you.
Grants? What Grants?
You may not be fully aware of it, but there are plenty of business grants and scholarships out there for those who seek them out. Small cash injections in the form of grants are there but you need to take the initiative to go and look for them. You could be missing out on grants that you don’t have to repay by not searching for them. The downside for grants is that they can be fairly strict on their requirements, and if you don’t meet very specific criteria you could find your application rejected. However, this shouldn’t put you off applying. Just because you may get told no doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again and again. Entering contests for small and large prizes for work is worth looking at, as well. You could go quite far simply by ensuring that you keep an eye out on local council and newspaper pages for your field.
Fund With Credit
We should start here by saying that if you are in financially dire straits, you should probably avoid taking out personal credit to pay for a start-up. However, almost every business venture starts with finance on credit. Business credit and loans are available to those who set themselves up as a business with a solid business plan presented to the bank. Mixing personal credit with business credit is often not a good idea, as you can suffer financially for it. A small business loan or credit card, as well as services such as peer-to-peer lending are all a good way to fund what you need, from equipment to office space. Credit cards are the more convenient option, as they can be gained fairly quickly with ready money to spend. Before taking out any kind of credit, always ensure you can afford the repayments!
Say Yes!
Finances aside, making your dream a reality means to say yes at every given opportunity. If you are offered the chance to exchange skills with another in your field, say yes. Promoting your business within their business blog, while offering to promote what they do isn’t giving the competition a leg up. It’s collaborating with someone like-minded who can offer you extra followers and a way to cement yourself in your field. Saying yes to small jobs on the side of your regular day job, as well as doing something charity based are fantastic promotional tools. The key is to get your business name out there and recognised, and if that means being featured on a local business competitor website, you’ve got to take the chances and go for it!
Following through on your creative dreams can be costly, we don’t dispute that. But finding the way to finance your creative hobby can be hard. It’s better to be aware of the services available to you and the routes you can get support and funding than just be oblivious to how you can get started making your hobby your income. There is no need to wait around when there is so much advice out there!
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