When I joined masto, I gravitated towards following creative peeps and noticed a thing that's pretty common to all of us: we feel guilty for promoting places that people can buy our work or otherwise support us financially. So I started the #CreativeToots hashtag for that very reason. Got an Etsy page? Online store? Patreon? Selling a piece of art? Throw that tag on it. Do it with unfettered abandon. Everyone else: Look at that tag for artists to support. Buy their stuff. Help them create. <3
@WelshPixie I got the hastag pinned now, so I can wander through the posts at my leisure. I shut down my Esty and such due to a lack of sales. When the cost of posting put a hurting on my penny jar, I had no other choice.
I realized then that the lack of a solid following is the death of any art-based freelancing career. >.> I kick myself for not posting more, more often, and posting more finished works. <.<
@drakenhart it's difficult. Often the networking and marketing and admin sucks up as much, if not more, time than creating. :(
@WelshPixie Indeed. I was watching a series on Netflix that follows different creatives - and one was a fine artist. In order to just paint, she had to hire an accountant, marketing people, gallery organizers, and such. Even so she has to sit them them regularly in order to orchestrate her career goals.
Most of us online, we don't have that. >.> but the tools out there *are* improving!
@WelshPixie XD I <3 crochet. Those ends can be a royal PITA.
I'd love to have a social media assistant, or someone to post to all the galleries.accounts I have. ^.^ Heck, it'd be nice to have a Nanny too, or a second adult to help me wrangle kids so that I can work on painting or animating! ^.^
@drakenhart Ah yeah! Someone who pulls my finished pieces from an FTP file, does all the resizing appropriate for sharing on various social media sites but also for uploading to product places like Redbubble...
@WelshPixie This is a must! lol!
@drakenhart Gosh, if only XD I want to hire someone to erase my pencil lines and darn in my crochet ends, haha