Throughout my life I’ve always had a lot of creativity. I loved drawing and doing art back in the day. I love messing around with photoshop and making crazy pictures. I’m a huge fan of custom movie posters that people make or flyers promoting a show for a band.
After working at a beer store and my last 9-5 job for years, I found that my creative energy was being stifled. It was always there in the background, but I just didn’t have the opportunity to use it. I found it hard to be creative after a long day of working.
Now that I’m working for myself and doing different things like creating websites, I find that I have to fire up the ol creativity reservoir again. You have to use your creative energy to build stuff for yourself.
Everyone has creative energy
You may be reading this thinking that you aren’t very creative. I would argue that everyone has a creative energy within them, it’s just that you have forgotten it for so long that you don’t know that it still exists. The world is conspiring to keep your creative energy stifled. What use does a corporation have for your creativity if you are just a cog in the wheel office worker?
The less you use your creative energy, the more you lose it. After years of doing nothing creative it took me a while to get accustomed to creating stuff again. Once I figured it out though, I fell right back into what I loved.
Using creative energy feels good because you are building
To me, the process by which you create something is one of the most satisfying things you can do. Going into the either and bringing something to life which only existed in your mind a few minutes before is magic. This is one of the greatest things ever. Anything you can conceive in your mind, all you have to do is work at it and it will become real. This isn’t some woo woo secret stuff, the key is you have to do actual work.
If I have a thought of a warewolf and decide to draw it, all I need to do is get the proper materials, put in the work of drawing it, and then it exists in the real world. This same formula applies to anything. So if I wanted to build a business selling t-shirts, all I would need to do is gather the materials, but in the work of building it, and it exists in the real world giving me money every month. This is actually easier than you think with e-commerce solutions and t-shirt drop shippers. All you would need to do is come up with the design for the website and t-shirts.
Now that you know that all it takes is getting the materials together and putting work into it, what would you rather do? Would you rather keep putting in work at your 9-5 or use your creative energy to build something for yourself?
Using creative energy will give you more potential money
If you put your heart into what you are creating, the long term benefits are more money than if you were given a salary. There is no limit to the amount you can bring in with your creative energy. You are only limited by how much you work, and how creative you are. Not making enough, just change it up and try to be more creative. Still not working, try putting in more time on your projects.
This is in stark contrast to working a typical 9-5 job. If you are earning a salary, it doesn’t matter if you put in more hours, you will still get the same amount of money each month. If you manage to squeeze more effort into the work you are doing, you still will get paid the same amount of money each month.
Examples of ways to use your creative energy to get paid
There are countless ways to use creative energy in your life and turn it into a business. I just wanted to list some of the ways where you don’t need a degree or any kind of special know how, you just jump in and start doing it. The barrier to entry here is low so you can easily acquire the materials necessary and get to work.
One of the most obvious ways to use your creative energy is to do artwork and sell your pieces for huge amounts of money. This may sound absurd, but I can remember a few months ago going to an event for urban explorers. At this event someone had pictures they took for sale. They were going for 200-300 a piece. People were in fact buying them too. All this person did was go around and take pictures of abandoned buildings and frame the pictures. I’ve also gone to bars in Philly where they are selling art on the wall. Again, they were going for around 300 bucks a piece.
Do you like music a lot? Try your hand at being a dj. Djing has become super easy in the last couple years due to software available for your computer that pretty much does everything for you. All you need now is the ability to read a crowd, have good taste in music, and the ability to change songs. I could point to big international traveling djs that pull in hundreds of thousands per night, but even the low end club djs make a lot of money per night. A friend of a friend was doing this in the mid 2000’s and was pulling 1000 bucks per gig.
Perhaps you have a flair for design. Start building apps and websites. Think of it like real estate and you will make a lot of money. First you buy the domain. Then you design the site. After that you fill the site with content. This all takes your creative energy to pull off. After a while it starts making money. Do this enough time and you have a little empire of sites making you a nice income.
Finally, maybe you are a natural on film. Start making youtube videos. I know a lot of people who aren’t even that huge on youtube that are making their sole income from it. Check out a guy like darksydephil. He’s been making vids since 2008 in which he just plays videogames and comments over it. That’s it. He’s not even that good at it, and he still makes all his income off of youtube.
True Fans > Random People
When you have a business built around some type of creative endeavor, you will have two types of people checking you out. One is a true fan. These people will buy into whatever you are doing and buy everything you produce. The other type of person is a random dude. These people are tire kickers. They are just looking at your stuff because of boredom and won’t stick around. In order to actually make a living using your creative energy, you need the true fans.
I was first introduced to this by reading this article here. It talks about how if you build up 1000 true fans, it will come out to at least 100,000 dollars per year for you. This is predicated on the hypothesis that a true fan will spend a day’s paycheck on you per year. This is a conservative amount of 100 dollars.
I’ll use the blogging world as an example. The true fan would be someone who comes to your site every day, signs up for your email list, and follows you on social media. They comment on your posts and will buy your products. The random person is someone on reddit who comes over to your site through a link they saw posted on the site. Maybe they were bored at work at your article caught their eye. They click over for a couple minutes, hear what you have to say, and leave. I know this because I’ve put my articles on reddit and get huge spikes in traffic. Those spikes in traffic accounted for very little engagement however.
The trick is to convert those random people into true fans. This is done with marketing your brand and interacting with your audience, and it’s a very important step if you want to have this be your money maker.
Get started using your creative energy today
Some people believe they just aren’t a creative person, but I would say try something creative out anyway. It may be that you just never really attempted to do it out of being conditioned into believing it’s not “hard work”. Not to worry, just give stuff a try and you may find that you really have talent.
Try out everything you can. The barrier to entry now is so low that it’s worth it to do new things. Anyone can use their phone and start making youtube videos. Anyone can throw a website up for a couple dollars per month. Cost is no longer the issue here. The only real limit to what you can do is your own creativity.
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