Have you ever wondered why heaps of talented people wallow in poverty – just like the starving artist? A lot of reasons have been given. The most confounding among them is the stereotype that has existed for thousands of centuries.
This is a terrible myth that makes us believe that creative talent is meant to starve. It is long hardwired in our brain, such that consecutive generations of talent lived—and still do—miserably.
What Is the Way out of the Starving Artist Myth?
The first solution is ditching that nefarious stereotype itself. Second, building a creative yet commercial mindset that bolsters financial goals is another good way to go. Last, follow the right path to achieve profitable goals. In all, make no mistake, turning your expertise into sellable products has never been easier thanks to the Internet.
Jeff Goins gives a very powerful message saying, “Now you have a choice. You can go the way of the tired, frustrated artist who struggles to keep creating. Or you can embrace an important but challenging truth that just might set you free from such thinking. You don’t have to starve. You can thrive. The world is waiting for you to create your best work. Please don’t let us down.”
In this article, I am going to explain three practical ways to turn your expertise into a money making machine—just with three tools: your expertise, the Internet, and a die-hard passion.
1. Know What Sells Where
Even with your talent, you may continue to live the starving artist life if you don’t know where to sell what. So what do you do?
Earl Prevette gives a valuable hint in his book, entitled, How to Turn Your Ability Into Cash, where he noted that the first step is to analyze your area of expertise—problems you can solve with your talent—and crosscheck it with market demand. In fact, you can leverage artificial intelligence to make the best decision by using tools like Google Trends to discover if there’s demand for your expertise.
If you have an expertise that fits any of the millions of demands out there, you have a potential goldmine. For instance, New York Times best-selling authors and famous Fortune 500 CEOs make, per engagement, $25,00-$50,000 through public speaking.
Among several other options is online tutoring. A South Korean tutor, Kim Ki-Hoon earns $4-million a year. What does he do? He teaches English Language via paid Internet video.
In today’s world, knowledge sharing and acquisition is a big deal. Every day, over 3.5 billion people go online to learn. Isn’t it interesting that you can share your valuable expertise and make huge income by offering web-based classes? You can start a blog, and build it to a level where you can offer online courses, or even start an online university like Michael Hyatt. But to be honest, that’s not a day job.
Instead, Kajabi is a very popular all-in-one online tutoring platform you can use to market, sell, and deliver your knowledge online. “The reason that we went with Kajabi is because it’s all in one. We don’t have to go plug this in and plug that in— it’s all there in one place,” say Healthy Habit Happy Moms.
The pic below shows the regions where “online tutoring” is selling fast right now. However, you may want to go for consulting, freelance writing, webinar, podcast show, etc. Experts rely on this process to conduct market feasibility studies.
2. Offer Quality Product and Use Only Proven Processes
Whatever you decide to offer online, quality is king.
As we all know, every Tom, Dick and Harry can claim expertise in the Internet world. As such, you need quality as your hallmark if you want to separate yourself from the crowd and earn public trust.
To achieve this, you have to carry out repeated experiments and verify what works best. In addition, you can learn from successful people who’ve been there and done that.
Quality products, simply put, are the products and services that consistently meet or exceed customer requirements or expectations.
I’ve spent some bucks buying eBooks and online courses. Sometimes, I feel like diverting those investments to the nearest Gucci store. But the values I get from my preferred choice wouldn’t permit such. The truth is, millions of people are in my shoes. If you want to get their money, you must offer premium service.
3. Promote Your Brand
One big mistake routinely made by starving artists is the divorce from the entrepreneurial mindset. As always, they produce top-notch stuff. But what follows? They hoard it, waiting for someone to discover and promote it for them.
It doesn’t work that way.
If you want your expertise to pay the bills, you have to market it. There are a number of ways to go about it. Either on your personal blog, top publications, popular podcasts, social channels, AMA, or through networking events, you just have to promote that expert-based product you’ve got to offer.
This is the only way to get noticed, talked about, and to attract increasing prospects.
The starving artist is a myth that must die. To start turning your talent/expertise into a profitable venture, here’s a quote from Ashton Kutcher: “I didn’t really go the starving artist route. I kind of went and did massive, commercial things.”
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