For any new business, pricing work can be a total guessing game. On the one hand, you want to undercut the competition, beucase you know everyone wants a bargain and you want to get your product out there. On the other hand, you want to eat. How to solve this quandary?

The pricing problem becomes further compounded with creative businesses, because the product you’re selling isn’t something people can easily place value on. Artwork doesn’t immediately solve a pressing problem, or offer some kind of stable market for which you can compare models and prices. The price a person pays for artwork is whatever they feel it is worth. If they don’t feel it’s worth the price asked, they won’t pay for it.

Read On…

Hi everyone. I’ve been busy working on some incredible projects, but am just poking my head up out of the madness to point you in the direction of this fantastic and in-depth interview I did recently. My interviewer – Michelle Kaiser – is a pretty fascinating lady herself, and her site – Career Offroading – features interviews with women pursuing interesting careers. Here’s an extract from the interview.

How do you stay productive? (How do you stay in your chair and writing when you’d rather not?)

I love it. I’m compelled to do it. It feels right.

I also have an incredibly busy social life. You’d be horrified if you looked at my diary: concerts, parties, craft markets, evening classes, art gallery openings, live drawing events … and that’s just next week! All this stuff is fun, and I hate missing out on things, so I have to sit my butt down and say to myself “I have two hours to finish this before I head out the door, otherwise I’ll miss this fun thing!” And I always finish.

Do you have any advice for young writers?

1. You’re never too young to start. You have about 5 years of crappy writing to plow through before you approach anything near a professional level. So start now.

2. If you see a magazine / company and think “I’d love to work for them,” don’t just sit around believing you’re not good enough, ask! Be bold! I didn’t get my most lucrative and fun jobs from people calling me, but by contacting companies and saying “you’re cool and I’m cool. Let’s work together.”

3. Nothing is more important than a good writing soundtrack.

Hop over to Career Offroading to read the rest of my interview. And if you’ve got any questions for me, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer. And while you’re there you might want to check out Michelle’s other interviews – there’s one with animator Mel Rainsberger, anime artist Brooke Stephenson, and event planner Erin O’Neal.

Don’t miss all the fun! Sign up for the Grymm & Epic Gazette – you’ll get my FREE ebook “Unleash the Beast: Release Your Inner Creative Monster”, as well as a weekly dose of creative inspiration. Grymm!

In Monday’s Epic Interrogation, NYT Best-Selling urban fantasy writer Jeaniene Frost talked about honestly about her first failed attempt to quit her job – you can read the full story in Jeaniene’s interview, but basically, she quit too soon, thinking the money would be coming, and the money didn’t come. She had to go back to her day job, just to make ends meet.

Imagine how scary that must be, not just for Jeaniene, but for her family, too. Luckily, she’s now doing so well she’s been writing full time for two years with no sign of stopping.

You can quit your day job and make a living as a creative entrepreneur. There’s work aplenty out there for artists, writers, musicians, sculptors, actors, dancers and designers, if you learn about the business side of your art and apply yourself to finding it. You can find more joy than you’ll ever know working for yourself and spreading your unique creative message all over the world. But how do you avoid quitting too soon?

I am not a full-time writer. I’ve been running my freelance business part-time for nearly seven years now. When I’m not writing, I work for a non-profit creating braille books and resources for blind and low-vision NZers. As I’m legally blind myself, this job is especially important to me, as I know firsthand how hard it can be to access things you want to read if you can’t actually read them. Full time work may suit me some day, but right now it doesn’t, because I love what I do.

However, here’s what I would make sure you had in place before considering quitting your day job:

Read On…

Lets say for a minute that you sell some kind of actual, tangible product. Or you’re going to, once you’ve finished creating it. Maybe you make jewelry and sell it. Maybe you’re a band, and you’re pressing a CD to sell that. Maybe you knit funky mutli-colored winter scarves (if so, we need to talk …)

You probably feel a bit left out of the internet business conversation. I don’t blame you. These days, if anyone’s talking business online, they’re talking about info-products, selling services like consulting or de-stickifying your life or making your website look pretty. And these are all super awesome and useful services and products. Heck, I know, because I sell my fair share of info-products.

But you, yeah you, with your jewelry and your CD and your rainbow-colored scarves. You are so cool. You sell actual stuff.

Read On…

With the new year already in full swing (and several new projects in my inbox) us small business / productivity / being awesome bloggers are talking about daily routines – how to structure them, how to fine-tune them and the kind of epicly awesome results we expect.

Over the last year, I’ve been working on honing my daily routine, which is now so honed I could cut productivity’s face with the very suggestion of it.

My routine is perfect for me, but probably won’t work for anyone else. Although, I don’t meditate. I’m not a “raw food” kind of girl. I don’t have some kind of mad skincare regimen or believe in doing 50 press-ups before breakfast (at least, not anymore – back when I was a karate girl I used to, and they were on my knuckles, too).

Read On…