Mental hack to prevent selling your art
How to optimize your effort for max motivation
I recently sold a handful of prints from my receipt animation project. It was surprisingly de-motivating. I’m trying to figure out why, and I came up with this:
If you want a job, sell your work.If you want respect, trade your art with peers.If you want purpose, give away your creations.If you sense judgement in these statements, that’s not my intention. There’s nothing inherently wrong with an art business. And there’s nothing superior about treating your art like a mission. And realistically an art practice is going to be a balance of sales, trades, and giveaways.
My point is to identify motivation.
If you make things, motivation is more precious than gold. Without the fuel to keep going, to grind through the work, you are lost. If order fulfillment drains your energy you need to ask yourself if an Etsy store selling receipts is worth the hassle. But if making a sale refills your batteries and chasing a sale pushes you to keep creating then use it. Either way, figure out what keeps you inspired and optimize your world to maximize motivation. Stay creative.
Your friend,
Ade
I like this perspective. And I completely understand the motivation killer. Selling something for say $5 dollars so people can afford it seems demotivating when it took you weeks to produce.
But I think there is a way to combine all of these. It's basically you give your work away for free (purpose) but allow people to pay you if they want (#1). It's known as different things: pay-what-you-want, value-for-value, etc...
For me, this resolves the paradox.
That's interesting, how selling work demotivated you. Do you do a lot of art swaps/trades with peers? I always feel like I'm not sure people want my art if I gift it to them, so when people buy it I feel that they genuinely want it.