How to Make Money as an Artist When You’re Tired AF

You’re allowed to want money and art.

Rest and ambition.

Creative freedom and cozy financial safety.

I know… CALL ME CRAZY.

But seriously, no one really tells you how to hold all of that when you’re running on fumes, spiraling in comparison, or worried that stepping away means you’ve failed.

This isn’t a blog about “making six figures in six weeks,” #sorrynotsorry. This is for the artist who’s tired, tender, and still full of dreams. For the one who’s asking, “How do I make money as an artist… without burning out?”

Here’s what I’ve learned on my own (messy) journey.

Start With Survival

Choosing a Cozy Girl Job to Stabilize Your Life

When you’re exhausted, the last thing you need is a job that drains your creativity even more.

That’s why I talk so much about having a cozy girl job… which is work that gives you enough financial support without zapping your energy. It’s something stable, gentle, remote, and flexible enough to leave room for your dreams.

It can be full-time, it can be a remote admin job, a few retainer social media freelancing clients, anything that’s easy enough that it comes naturally enough, consistent enough that you don’t have to fish for work every day, and boundaried enough where you have energy for your artistic projects.

Needing Money Doesn’t Mean You’ve Abandoned the Dream

It took me five months to realize I hadn’t failed just because I wasn’t performing or creating constantly.

Needing money is not a betrayal of your artistry!

In fact, if you’ve ever wondered how to make money as an artist without feeling like you’re giving up, the answer starts here: by recognizing your need and desire for money as valid.

Remember That Stability is the Foundation for Creative Safety

Your nervous system cannot create in chaos. Period.

Safety, routine, and rest are often the missing ingredients when you’re burned out and feeling behind. Stability is the soil it grows from. Otherwise, you have no energy or inspiration to actually start dreaming up your projects — the music you want to write, the visuals you want to design, the Etsy shop you want to start. There’s only so many things we can prioritize at one time!

Related: How to Be More Confident As a Creative & Show Up Before You Feel Ready

Build Something Outside Your Art (That Still Supports It)

Starting a Business That Funds Your Creative Practice

I started a branding and content studio not instead of my music, but because of it. It gave me the income, skills, and confidence to eventually pour back into my craft.

Now, this definitely isn’t for everyone. But when I was talking to my financial coach, she really encouraged it, and gosh darn if I’m not going to listen to a coach I trust the heck out of! AND she was right.

If your art already is entrepreneurial, like starting an Etsy shop or a physical store, this might be too much for you since you’re already doing something so similar!

For me, since I’m a performing artist, I found that creating my separate content studio just made sense, since I’d been doing marketing for years and because, ya know, marketing is just a liiiiittle easier to make money than performing, ATM 😉

This is the thing — building this has allowed me to (slowly!) stop associating my creativity with financial pressure. When you have a separate stream of income flowing in, especially one you designed yourself, you get to approach your artistry from a place of curiosity and play! You get to take risks, try new styles, and make something weird and wonderful just because and never feel like you have to pick and choose between being creative and making money.

Plus, starting a studio also taught me boundaries, pricing, and communication, all things that deeply benefit my work as a performer and vocalist, too!

It’s really about what works for you — there’s no one right answer. It depends on the leverage you have as an artist, which I take more about in this video:

Letting Your Other Talents (Branding, Content, etc.) Pay the Bills

In fact, let’s talk about that a little more.

There is this huge ego factor in my brain that was like… if I’m not getting paid for just being an artist, then I’m not really an artist. But honestly, that is a bunch of crazy sauce. Money will get you to so many places

Maybe you’re good with Canva, with writing, with organizing other creatives’ chaos. Use that. You don’t have to make money directly from your art to still be an artist. Learning how to make money as an artist can look like packaging your adjacent talents into sustainable services… so that you can dump that money into building your artistic practice! Just like a record company will invest in an artist they believe in.

You’re investing in yourself.

Knowing It’s Okay to Have Multiple Callings — You Don’t Need to Split Your Personality

Although this was great for my wallet, for a while, I felt like I had to hide my business self from my artist self, like one discredited the other.

But both are true, and both are needed. If you feel like you’re living two lives, ask yourself: what if that duality is actually your power?

The sooner you let yourself be the and — the artist and the founder, the creator and the coach, the dreamer and the doer — the sooner you’ll stop feeling like you have to prove yourself to both sides. Your art and your business don’t need to compete. They can collaborate!!

Related: How to Be More Confident As a Creative & Show Up Before You Feel Ready

Separate Your Worth From Your Output

Creative Rest Is a Power Move, Not a Step Back

We equate doing with deserving, especially in hustle culture. But rest is radical. Rest is productive. Rest might be the exact thing that reveals the next phase of your work.

Think about the most profound shifts you’ve experienced creatively. How many of them happened in silence? In solitude? In the quiet moments when you weren’t actively making, but simply being? Taking a shower, going to sleep, thinking about something else other than “OMG I need to be creative right now OR ELSE.”

Rest is incubation. And sometimes, the decision to pause is what protects your passion from becoming performance.

You Don’t Have to Constantly Perform to Be an Artist

There will be seasons of bloom, and seasons of compost. Performance doesn’t prove your worth.

In fact, art doesn’t always come with an audience. It often begins in the places no one claps for: journaling at 2am, humming melodies in the car, sketching on scrap paper with no agenda. You are still an artist when your work is invisible. When it’s intimate. When it’s just for you.

Even the most celebrated creatives take time to disappear and return. Give yourself that grace!

Internal Growth > Public Progress

When no one is clapping, are you still moving forward? Yes!!!

If you’re doing the internal work, getting clear, healing, learning how to make money as an artist who feels safe in her body and life, that growth matters, even when no one sees it. Especially when nobody sees it.

Sure, you might not post your emotional breakthroughs or your journaling epiphanies, but they’re transforming the way you create. You’re redefining success. You’re learning to build from alignment, not adrenaline. That quiet recalibration is the foundation for everything that comes next.

Release the Guilt Around Making Money

Let me be clear: money is not a betrayal. It’s a tool. It took me a while to understand this because so many of us associate money with greediness.

Money is what lets you take the class, buy the materials, say no to the draining gig. Having money gives your art more room to breathe, and you’re allowed to wish for an abundance of it!

Integrate Your Identities as Artist, Biz Owner + Human with Me!

You’re allowed to be all of it. The writer and the website designer. The actor and the studio owner and the gal who taught herself coding years ago and wants to use that to make money.

The tired human who needs to nap and the trailblazing creative who shows others what’s possible! If you’ve been wondering how to make money as an artist while holding your whole self tenderly, this is the way, friend.

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