What are microgreens?
Simply put, microgreens are the sprouts of plants, harvested before reaching full maturity. Microgreens are usually harvested within a matter of days after being planted. Instead of being planted out in a garden or within a container, with room to grow, microgreens are usually grown indoors on trays, under grow lights. These trays are overseeded, as the sprouts don’t need room to mature into fully grown plants.
As reported by Nutrition Facts, “USDA researchers recently published a study assessing the nutrition content of 25 commercially available microgreens, seedlings of vegetables and herbs that have gained popularity in upscale markets and restaurants. Just a few inches tall, they boast intense flavors and vivid colors, but what about their nutritional content? No one knew until this new study came out.
We’ve known that baby spinach, for example, have higher levels of phytonutrients than mature spinach leaves, but what about really baby spinach, just a week or two old?
Microgreens won hands down (leaves down?), possessing significantly higher nutrient densities than mature leaves. For example, red cabbage microgreens have a 6-fold higher vitamin C concentration than mature red cabbage, and 69 times the vitamin K.”
Microgreens can be used in almost anything. As a topping, as a garnish, or blended into meals and drinks. However microgreens are used, since they are filled with nutrients, they can elevate whatever meal they are used in. If lettuce microgreens are used in a sandwich instead of lettuce, you’ll be getting more nutrients from your food than you would have if you used leaves of mature lettuce.
Another great thing about microgreens is that they can be grown at a small scale. You can put a small tray of soil on your windowsill, sprinkle a healthy portion of seeds over the flattened growing medium, and within two weeks you’ll have microgreen sprouts ready to add to any meal.
Figure out what kind of microgreens you like the taste of the most, or if you’re interested in the micros just for their nutrients, figure out which of those will grow in your indoor conditions the best. As microgreens only take a matter of days to grow, experimenting with the food is simple to do and easily repeatable.
Selling media on Shutterstock for extra cash
Shutterstock is a well known place to find stock photos or video, but what may not be as well known is where all of that media comes from. Shutterstock’s library of stock content is comprised of work uploaded by over a million individual contributors, freely accessible by anyone who needs to download visuals for creative or business projects. Becoming a Shutterstock Contributor is simple to do, and by even just uploading a handful of works, you can net yourself a good amount of extra cash, or even build an income stream that can support you for years to come.
To apply, you just have to submit a small sample of your work (around 10 images) and if enough of your images are deemed quality enough for the platform (around 7 images, or 70%), then you’re accepted as a Shutterstock Contributor. After being accepted, you’re free to upload as many images, videos, illustrations, and vectors as you’d like. These assets need to be approved after submission, but you’d be surprised at the amount that get accepted, as there are almost unlimited use cases for stock media.
The amount of money paid out whenever someone downloads your work varies, “you earn between 15% and 40% commission when one of your images or videos is downloaded at Shutterstock. This means you get paid $0.10 to $5.80 for images, $10.20 to $39.80 for extended licenses, and $1.25 to $47.92 for each video. In other words, Shutterstock pays you based on your current image and video levels,” according to Photutorial.
Being a Shutterstock Contributor, the name of the game is quantity (as well as, of course, quality). The more you upload, the more potential your work has to get downloaded. The more your work is downloaded, the more money you can make. Once you have a well populated portfolio, filled with a wide array of media and subjects, you can begin to see a snowball effect. This effect happens when years old media is still earning money, while your current uploads begin to earn.
Once your media starts to get downloaded, you’ll begin to see your contributor dashboard start to get populated with data about your work. You’ll get to see what keywords people are searching for, where your content appears. You’ll get to see where people are located when they download your work. You’ll also get to see which of your media assets are the best performing. This is all great information to help you decide what to photograph, film, draw, or create as a vector file.
I began uploading to Shutterstock in 2015, and I haven’t uploaded since. I have uploaded 43 images and 51 videos. In the seven years since uploading these initial 94 media assets, I have accumulated $396.41, over 28 downloads. These images and videos were media that I had spare, and only uploaded as a test of the platform. I didn’t go out of my way to film or take new pictures, I simply uploaded media that I already had ready to go. This is completely passive income.
The demand for these works is increasing. “According to the latest research report by Arizton, the global stock images and videos market will grow at a CAGR of 6.9% during 2022-2027. Increasing adoption of the e-Learning industry, reinvention of storytelling, growth of digital communities in the hyper-connected ecosystem, content automation & personalization are the major drivers in the stock images and videos market.”
It is entirely possible to make a living selling stock media. It is even more possible to create a passive revenue stream that may help you out with the bills here and there. These are both great opportunities for working artists and content creators. To get started, you just have to get started. Look through what media you may already have, and upload them to apply. Once you’re accepted, upload as you find time, and after long enough, you’ll start to see the rewards from your efforts. Upload more, and you’ll see a greater return. Upload occasionally, and you should still see those downloads accumulate.
6 companies own 90% of American media
Only 6 companies own 90% of all of the media produced in the United States. That means that only six companies own nine out of ten newspapers, magazines, television, radio, movies, or any other form of media that Americans consume. Nine out of ten opinions that are published in the United States are published by only 6 companies. Only six companies control the vast majority of news media that is consumed in America. The political zeitgeist in the United States is set by six companies.
“There’s been a lot of consolidation in the media industry in recent years, leaving just six big media companies in charge of most of mass media consumption and distribution. Some estimates claim as much as 90% of U.S. media is controlled by just six companies. The big six media companies right now are Comcast, Walt Disney, AT&T, Paramount Global, Sony, and Fox,” as reported by The Motley Fool.
This is a bit of a problem when the United States is as vast and diverse as it is. There are 331.1 million people in America, 50 states and countless more counties. There are potentially 331.1 million different opinions and viewpoints within the United States, and somehow the media that is meant to represent the American public is controlled by six companies, six CEOs.
This is is also a relatively new problem within the United States’ media industry. Before the age of the internet, there was a plethora of local news outlets. Most cities not only had one independently owned newspaper, but a few different papers that reflected the different viewpoints and lived realities of a city’s population. Similarly, there used to be independent television and radio stations that would report based on their own viewpoint.
Explained in a report by Middle Tennessee State University, “after World War II and particularly through the 1960s and 1970s, local newspapers began to close or merge as readership declined and audiences gravitated to television news; as a result, ownership of newspapers consolidated.
A study by media analyst Ben Bagdikian has charted this consolidation over a 30-year period. Bagdikian’s 2004 analysis indicates that Americans are served by 1,468 daily newspapers, 6,000 assorted magazines, 10,000 radio stations, 2,700 television and cable stations, and 2,600 book publishers that are under the aegis of five major multinational corporations.”
These companies effectively control what is published in the United States, and beyond, while also stamping out smaller media outlets that can’t compete with the reach of a multinational corporation. These media companies set the tone for political discourse, decide what entertainment gets created, or effectively set what information defines reality.
More viewpoints are generally a good thing, and media consolidation is the antithesis of this. The more viewpoints there are, the more information there is to generate an opinion from.
There are absolutely benefits to large media companies, like more resources for fact checking or the ability to invest into long-term investigative reporting. On the other hand, consolidated power within the information industry can sterilize and limit discourse to only what those in power would like to be discussed.
However the math ends up, more media companies should own a larger percentage of the total media being produced in the United States. Instead of a few large and consolidated voices at the top, ideally there would be a wide variety of local, regional and national media outlets.
Only six companies control ninety percent of what is read, seen, and heard in America. As a country that began with countless viewpoints and opinions, published as leaflets or small newspapers, this consolidation would be unrecognizable to those who founded the country. The concentration of voices in media doesn’t represent the United States of today. Not everyone needs to start their own newspaper or media company, but with the knowledge of media consolidation, it may be worth looking into what independent, reputable sources of media that are available to support.
What is dropshipping?
There’s a good chance that something you’ve purchased was dropshipped to you. But what is dropshipping? Dropshipping is when a third party ships a product for an online retailer. These dropshipping companies can either be manufacturers, wholesalers, warehousers, or facilitators of arbitrage. If you’ve purchased a shirt that was printed and shipped by a company that a designer works with, that’s dropshipping. If you’ve purchased something from an Instagram ad from a brand, and the product showed up in Amazon packaging, or imported from China after the transaction, that’s dropshipping. Many brands both large and small operate on this business model as it allows for businesses to sell without holding any inventory at all.
Again, the biggest benefit to businesses that dropship is that they don’t have to hold any inventory for the dropshipped items that are listed on their online store. With dropshipping, a business can list a product on their website, to be fulfilled by another company, usually without the end customer ever knowing the difference. This means you can get up and running with a dropshipping business in very little time, and begin making sales, all without ever even creating a product yourself.
Dropshipping is a great opportunity for influencers or artists to monetize their audience, or for traditional retailers and small businesses to expand their offering. If you’re an influencer and want to generate revenue from your online presence, dropshipping products can give you revenue without the hassle of R&D or needing specialized knowledge. If you’re an in-store retailer with an online store, you can add dropshipped products to your online offering, giving your customer base a deeper offering online.
To dropship, all you need to do is install a dropshipping app to your online website. The Shopify App Store has many dropshipping apps to choose from, whether it be apps that allow you to ship products from Amazon or Alibaba, to apps that connect you with a coffee roaster that will dropship ready-made coffee after a purchase clears on your website. Squarespace offers the same functionality, by letting you connect to apps that will print and dropship apparel and home goods that you design.
Again, you don’t need to know how to screenprint to get started selling t-shirts. You don’t need to know how to print your designs to a rug or a canvas to begin creating a collection of home goods for your brand. You no longer need to take a trip to China, find a manufacturer, and set up the logistics of importing if you want to sell a line of products that can be found on Alibaba. Dropshipping is the quickest way to get started selling online. All you need is an idea to follow, and the effort needed to set up your new online store. Now that you can sell almost anything at the click of a button, what do you want to sell?
Try Canva to design simple graphics and videos
Learning Photoshop, Illustrator or any other Adobe creative software program can be a daunting task when all you want to do is create simple graphics for your small business or nonprofit’s social media page. To make a basic announcement post or to populate your Instagram grid with graphics that represent your brand, you may just want to spend the minimum amount of time and effort possible, so that you can get back to what you do otherwise. Thankfully, Canva exists just for this. While you certainly can create professional grade visuals with Canva and Canva Pro, it is also more than possible to get what you need done in less than 10 minutes.
From Canva’s about page, “launched in 2013, Canva is an online design and publishing tool with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere.”
Accessible from a web browser or smartphone app, Canva is maybe the simplest way to get something designed, saved, and ready to publish. With post templates, you can create an Instagram square post that announces a new product with just a few clicks. All you need is a free account and an internet connection, and you can get started creating right away.
Canva’s product team keeps their customers’ use cases in mind, so if you want to create a Reel, there’s already a ready-made format for that piece of content. If you want to create a t-shirt design, Canva already has a starting point for you. Are you making a flyer or trifold leaflet? Canva can get you from concept to print in very little time. If you want to add clip art, Canva has a bank of free to use graphics elements (in addition to an expanded offering for Pro members).
Canva is also great for teams that work together on projects. With Canva’s collaboration tools, you can send a design to a team member for review, with that team member being able to make edits right from the Canva platform.
If you’re a small business owner that doesn’t have the budget to pay for a graphic designer or marketer, Canva is exactly what you need. You don’t need any downtime to learn how to use the platform, as usability is one of the core tenants of what makes Canva itself. Canva democratizes creativity as it is free to use, and simple to understand. With Canva, you can create professional looking graphics and videos almost in your sleep.
What is the Shopify App Store?
Launched in 2006, Shopify is an online platform that helps businesses build online stores, sell on social media channels, and sync real time store inventory to online sales. Shopify is used by millions of companies from individual artists, to small businesses, to some of the largest companies in both e-commerce and traditional retail. Shopify can be used as an inventory management system that syncs products across many sales channels, or just as a simple webstore builder for a handful of products. However you use Shopify, something worth looking into is the Shopify App Store.
From Shopify’s own blog, “launched in 2009, the first iteration of the Shopify App Store had less than a dozen apps, many of which ended in ‘-ify’ to match Shopify’s name.” Continuing, “from 100 apps in 2013 to over 2,000 apps today [2018], the Shopify App Store and its corresponding ecosystem of developers has become critical to solving the increasingly complex problems of Shopify merchants. The marketplace has become so popular over the years, that in 2017 it was one of the top five most frequently-viewed pages in all of Shopify, including the merchant admin.”
But what exactly is the Shopify App Store? Exactly that. It is an app store that Shopify merchants can use to find features to add to their websites or commerce offerings. Just as you can download apps to your iPhone, if you are a merchant on Shopify’s platform, you can download apps to your website. Just as iPhone apps increase the functionality of your smartphone, Shopify apps add functionality to your store.
Shopify apps can be for any number of categories. You can download apps for website design, marketing, customer support, new sales channels, logistics solutions, or even dropshipping automations. Now that the app store is well into its development, there is an app for just about anything you may need for your business.
If you’re a brand that sells products into a large number of stores, while also selling exclusive products on your website, you can download a store locator app to guide customers to where they can find your products in person. If you have your own delivery fleet, there are route planning apps to help you seamlessly connect your drivers to an app that will automatically route the most efficient delivery route for them to deliver. Need an app to help customers rent time at your yoga studio? Shopify can help. If you want to have your designs automatically print to a t-shirt and ship to a customer after a transaction, there is an app for that.
While there are plenty of free apps, some apps do require a subscription. This charge is automatically bundled into your monthly payment to Shopify, so there is no need to worry about keeping track of different times to pay different developers. Shopify also offers a “Built by Shopify” category for apps that have been built by the company itself.
New apps are onboarded often, and there are a lot already to search through. Even if you don’t have a Shopify account, you can still browse through the Shopify App Store to get inspiration before you launch an online store. Shopify apps help your online store reach new levels of functionality, allowing you to expand your businesses’ offering to customers. By searching the store, you can even get new ideas for where you want to take your business, by seeing what is already possible.
5 employee-made inventions that created new product categories
From Flaming Hot Cheetos to air conditioners that distill drinkable water, when empowered to think outside of the box, a company’s employees are sometimes the best source of new ideas. Giving employees the freedom to think about the companies they work for critically and creatively not only helps them feel more engaged, but also creates a company culture where they feel heard, appreciated and able to develop within their careers. Here’s a list of some well known innovations that brought in new revenue:
1) Flaming Hot Cheetos
During a period of low sales in the 1980’s the CEO of Frito-Lay asked employees to begin to think like they were owners of the company. This request inspired Richard Montañez to create a snack product that would appeal to a market underserved by his employer. Working as a janitor, he combined the product familiarity gained by working where Frito-Lay makes their snacks with the Mexican corn snack, elotes, and ended up creating the still popular Flaming Hot Cheetos.
“Over a 35-year career, the former janitor rose through the corporate ranks and is now the vice president of multicultural sales for PepsiCo America (the holding company of Frito-Lay). Before Montañez joined the executive team, Frito-Lay had only 3 Cheeto products; since then, the company has launched more than 20, each worth $300m+.”
2) Post-It Notes
Funnily enough, Michele from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion didn’t actually invent Post It Notes. The adhesive notes were in fact invented by someone who was working at 3M, though they had trouble gaining traction. “Spencer F. Silver was working for 3M in the late 60s when he developed a resilient adhesive that would make a piece of paper stick to a surface, but was still weak enough to let the papers be torn apart again. Silver pitched the product over and over again to people around the company for the next few years, but he never caught any traction. Until, that is, another colleague came along, took Silver’s adhesive, attached it to a bookmark prototype he was working on, and the Post-It was born.”
3) Ford Motors
Legacy companies from the industrial revolution are even starting to tap their internal potential by creating new initiatives to support employee ideas. “The efforts appear to be paying off. As of Tuesday, Ford is poised to have more U.S. utility patents granted this year than any other automaker, according to agency data. These patents include a flying drone that acts as a lookout for your self-driving car. A filter that purifies air conditioner condensation into drinkable water. And, more recently, an electric wheelchair that loads itself into the car.”
4) Adobe Systems
Known for their creative products that are used to create basic graphic design to professional music videos for Lady Gaga’s recent album release, Adobe has programs in place to support employee ideas. In an effort to encourage out of the box thinking from employees, Adobe created “the Adobe Kickstart initiative where any employee within the company can sign up for a two-day innovation workshop during which they are given a pre-paid $1,000 credit card to test out an idea and build a prototype.” Employees are then get the opportunity to pitch Adobe executives on their product or innovation, where if even just one exec gives the idea a ‘yes,’ the employees then get to take the next steps to actualize it.
5) Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods has set up an internal platform called FOODii that helps them garner feedback from employees on new product launches. This enables Kraft to create new products and iterate much faster than hiring external consultants and outsourcing market research. With FOODii, the people who know Kraft Foods the best, their own employees, can offer feedback on the products that they themselves will end up working on in the future.
“For example, our Jell-O marketing team turned to FOODii to help find a name for a new flavor of Jell-O Mousse Temptations. Less than 24 hours after the request, the Jell-O Team had 110 naming options to consider. They selected the 10 best names and sent them on to consumers for further evaluation. The final name, Chocolate Mint Sensation, comes from one of the suggestions provided through FOODii. Our employees have a vested interest in our success — they want to be sure we succeed, so their feedback is particularly valuable.”
You can make anything into a brand
You can kind of make anything into a brand. Really, almost any idea that you have can be made into a brand. Your new brand may not be successful in sales, legible in brand identity, or ever even exist in the world, but anything can be made into a brand. A brand is a concept, an idea, something you want to communicate. Brands can be a product, a company, works of art, or a way of being. Successful brands operate in a way that is authentic to a core idea or values. To start a brand, think about what you care about or want to say, and think of ways to build in the real world with those new ideas.
Take Supreme for an example. Supreme is a brand that sells a lot of random products that may not seem too related at first glance, from a single brick stamped with its logo to expired Oreos, and also clothing. Supreme is a brand that generates hype for itself, then drops collections of clothing along with the novelty items. They manufacture quality products and only sell in limited quantities. The combination of the hype, the novelty and the scarcity generates demand for their goods, so much so that customers camp out before drops and resell prices are reliably high for past products.
While the company wasn’t founded solely to raise funds for environmental causes and to fight climate change, Patagonia has essentially become a company whose brand is environmentalism. “Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe,” reports the New York Times.
A doesn’t have to be for a cause, although it can be. A brand can just be a collection of related products. Whatever makes that line of products similar to each other and unique from others is the brand’s essence. This can be a way to describe luxury brands. Brands like Gucci, Restoration Hardware, Bentley and Rolex are all brands that are known for their craft, design and lifestyle. The high quality manufacturing process for these brands’ products are what make them unique and desirable their customers.
Anything can be a brand. If you want to make a brand for yourself, all you have to do is think about what you want to do as a brand, or what you want to say. Make a first product that communicates your goal, then make a collection. Your brand can sell goods, services, events, entertainment, information, or even nothing at all. Think of what you want to do, and then figure how to get there. Why not start today?
Growing food staples indoors during winter months
There is absolutely nothing like eating a fresh vegetable or using fresh herbs in a recipe. Unless you are consistently purchasing your produce from a CSA, farmers market, or otherwise from a fresh food source, you are likely eating produce that is potentially weeks old, and chemically ripened. Even if you make an effort to purchase produce that is listed as from the United States, there are still workarounds where food imported from thousands of miles away can be marketed as local, just by proxy of being imported and distributed by a “local” distributor. It is actually very hard to eat fresh produce routinely.
Pictured: Yukon Gold potatoes, Grey Oyster mushrooms
In the summer months it is possible to grow a wide variety of food outdoors, more than is possible in a small indoor space. Outdoors, with a garden plot or an otherwise spacious place to create a garden, you can grow enough food to last yourself through those warm months. If you have the space, you can grow squash, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant, herbs, leafy greens, brussels sprouts, mushrooms, fresh fruits, really anything that can be grown within the limits of your growing zone.
Unfortunately as the days get colder and light becomes more scarce, growing ample food outdoors becomes more of a challenge. During the dead of winter, this task can be impossible. All is not lost though, as it is still possible to grow many different kinds of foods indoors, and with a little bit of planning, you can grow enough staples to incorporate fresh vegetables into your daily diet all winter long.
An obvious start to an indoor garden can simply be an indoor herb garden. Indoor herb gardens can occupy a windowsill, or take up a whole room. You can even think of potted herbs growing indoors as houseplants. You can grow fresh mushrooms indoors, and with some fast-growing species of mushroom, like the oyster mushroom, mushroom crops can grow frequently enough to eaten throughout the winter. Compact pepper plants, like jalapeño and chili peppers grow well indoors because they don’t take up much space. You can grow leafy greens like spinach and lettuce indoors, no problem. Determinate, compact tomato plants, like a Patio tomato grow fine in a small indoor space. Potatoes can even be grown indoors, although they take up a little more space and need some extra care to ensure they are adapting to an indoor environment.
Growing indoors is pretty similar to growing outdoors. You’ll still need the same lighting conditions and temperature regulation. Luckily you already probably keep where you live at an acceptable temperature, but these are all factors to consider. As your living space likely does not have wind blowing through it regularly, you may need to get a fan for your tomatoes, potatoes, or otherwise larger growing plants. You may need to water more or less than outside depending on the humidity levels of your space. Take what you know from growing outside, and apply that knowledge indoors. Do you notice wilt? That can be a need for more water, or maybe some air movement from a mechanical fan. Do you notice yellowing on your plant’s leaves? You may need to water less. Are your plants stunted in growth? You may need a grow light to ensure ample growing conditions.
Growing food indoors is fun, a good way to experiment with your gardening knowledge, and a fantastic way to incorporate actually fresh produce into your diet throughout the winter months. Start out with a basil plant, or some chives. These are simple to grow almost anywhere. Figure out where in your living space plants may grow best, and observe your plant’s growth over time. Before you know it, you’ll be growing enough staples indoors to add fresh flavor and nutrients into almost every wintertime meal.
Concerts in the US make $8.49 billion yearly
Making a living as a musician is hard until it isn’t. Just getting started, you’re not really going to make anything. You can monetize your streams and try to sell some merch, or perhaps make some cash doing a sponsored post on Instagram. Beginning your career as a musician will be slow, and you’re going to have to work hard in order to make a living for yourself. While it will be a challenge, the bright side is that as a musician, there is a well established, multi-billion dollar market to tap into for a living, once you can market yourself as a credible musical artist.
Getting started playing shows at the local farmers market or open mic, you’re not going to make a killing. Sure you’ll make $50 here or there, or maybe even $100 and some drink tickets if your event organizer is generous. In order to make a sustainable living though, you have to figure out a way to break into the live events and concert marketplace.
Luckily for you as a musician, there is an extremely reliable industry of live events, festivals and concerts to try and break into. You just have to figure out your way in. According to Statista, “revenue in the Music Events segment is projected to reach US$8.49bn in 2022. Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 9.49%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$13.36bn by 2027.”
This statistic is all inclusive of every level of music event in the United States. Getting booked at a festival? That revenue is counted in the total. Playing your first small theatre show in Chicago? That revenue is counted in the total. Did you make it big and now play stadium shows? That revenue is included in the $8.49 billion total.
While $8.49 billion can maybe seem like a small number when considering the sheer amount of musical acts that are out there, there is absolutely enough room to breakout.
The current record holder for best selling tour, which is a series of concert dates over a period of time, is Taylor Swift. “Between May 8 and October 6, Swift performed 38 dates across the country. Those shows were enough to gross $266.1 million on ticket sales of over 2 million. It's the highest-grossing U.S. tour since Billboard Boxscore began tracking touring data three decades ago,” as reported by Forbes.
In the year that Taylor Swift set the record for highest grossing concert tour in the history of US tours, she actually would have only represented around 3.1% of all ticket sales for that year. The falloff from the mega-stars like Taylor Swift is, well, swift. In 2021, the highest grossing tours were: The Rolling Stones — $115.5 million, Harry Styles — $86.7 million, Weezer/Fall Out Boy/Green Day — $67.3 million, Eagles “Hotel California Tour” —$59.2 million, Dead & Company — $50.2 million, Lou Bukis — $49.7 million, Guns N’ Roses — $47.3 million, Dave Matthews Band — $46 million, Phish — $44.4 million and the Jonas Brothers — $42.5 million.
In 2021, the cumulative total for the top ten best selling tours in the United States was $608.8, or only about 7.1% of that year’s total ticket sales in the US. That leaves around 92.9% of the $8.49 total, or $7,887,210,000 left for the rest of the musicians in the United States to split up amongst themselves. That’s a pretty good pot to split up.
As the frequency of and revenue from concerts and music events in the United States is only expected to increase in the coming years, it is safe to say that it is (and will likely always be) possible to make a living as a working musician. While it may be a far off goal to match the profile of a Taylor Swift, BTS or Grateful Dead, it is absolutely not impossible to figure out how to make a living for yourself by playing live music events and monetizing your music through streaming and merchandise. You just have to figure out your in. Start by playing whatever shows are accessible to you, build your resume, and rise up the ranks from farmers market to concert hall.
Flexible jobs for working artists
Making a living as an artist is hard. Making a living as an artist is even harder if you have yet to make your break, or develop a consistent base of clients for work or sales. Making a living as an artist means that you do not necessarily rely on a steady paycheck to reward you for your creative work. Sure you may make a living as a graphic designer, or through another creative profession, but making a living as an artist usually entails selling (or otherwise monetizing) your original works, not commissioned by a boss or corporate entity. If you want to make a living solely by selling your art, or through your wholly own creative expression, you may need to find another revenue source before you can fully make a living based off of your art.
Jobs like barista, bartender, server, retail, etcetera have traditionally been thought of as good jobs for working artists. These are jobs that can be flexible, provide reliable pay, and are within trades that allows for some job portability. In the days before the internet and the gig economy, these jobs could be thought of as “day jobs,” allowing for an artist to explore their individual creativity pursuits off the clock.
Nowadays, there are ample opportunities for working artists outside of these traditional jobs. While working a few shifts at the local coffee shop while you record an album or write a book at night is still a possibility, these jobs usually demand a regular work schedule. A new crop of work is now mainstream enough to support working artists, while also providing the flexibility that some creative types may find to be less limiting.
It is now possible to pick up work at the press of a button, instead of potentially committing to a rigid set of hours. If you’re a working artist or creative that has random hours and would like the ability to stop working when inspiration strikes, you can now work for Uber when you need cash, then spend the rest of your time on what you love. Amazon, Doordash, Postmates, Instacart, Taskrabbit, Shipt, Upwork, Fiverr, Wag, YourMechanic, HelloTech, 99 Designs, Angi, Soothe, Thumbtack, and more are all companies that offer start-stop gig work to workers in all different industries and categories of work.
In a city like Chicago, “the estimated total pay for a Driver at Uber is $38 per hour. This number represents the median, which is the midpoint of the ranges from our proprietary Total Pay Estimate model and based on salaries collected from our users. The estimated base pay is $31 per hour. The estimated additional pay is $8 per hour. Additional pay could include bonus, stock, commission, profit sharing or tips. The ‘Most Likely Range’ represents values that exist within the 25th and 75th percentile of all pay data available for this role,” as reported by Glassdoor.
“On Upwork, the rates for top content writers can range from as low as $15 dollars an hour to as high as $80, though most fall in the $30-50 range,” the company states on its about page.
As for the dogwalking and petsitting platform Wag, “earnings vary based on factors like the services you offer, rates you set and length of time you provide care. The average pay for a 30-minute walk is $12 plus tip, according to Wag. The base pay for pet sitting or boarding is $26 per night. You can get paid extra if an owner has more than one dog or requests recurring walks, and you’ll receive 100% of any tips you earn,” explains Nerdwallet.
Amazon’s warehouse jobs can now be thought of as gig work thanks to a new offering from the online megaretailer. Now offering what they call Anytime Shifts, as a Flex worker you can, “create your own schedule. Use an app to pick shifts up to 15 days in advance, and as soon as 15 minutes before a shift starts, giving you total control of when you work – with no set schedule.” These jobs pay a different rate across the United States, but on average, “The average hourly pay for a Amazon Warehouse job in the US is $16.50 and it ranges from $12.02 to $21.15,” according to ZipRecruiter.
If you’re making your way through your first creative masterpiece or have yet to establish yourself as a self-sustainable working artist, it can easy to get down on yourself. Without the validation of getting paid for your creative works, you can easily think less of yourself, or think that what you’e doing isn’t worth it. This is completely understandable, as the art world is hard to navigate and even harder to understand. Not everyone starts at the same starting point. What matters is creating a lifestyle that with help you actualize your creative goals. You can still get that barista or server job, but if you find the hours to be too constricting or the work to be too stressful, there are now new options to try. It is now possible to pick up work as needed, and build your own schedule. Why not give yourself the bandwidth to make just as much money as you need with a gig platform, and dedicate the rest of your time to what you love?
Keeping a routine helps maintain productivity
You don’t have to do everything all at once, overnight. You don’t need to build a self sustaining business in a year. If you haven’t reached a goal you have in mind yet, that’s fine, as long as you maintain progress over time. Sometimes it’s easy to rush or worry that you aren’t working hard enough, but as long as you maintain productivity, your effort can accumulate. Keeping a healthy routine, or some sort of a schedule, helps this. If you create a routine that gives structure to your days and weeks, you can build productive things into the extra space.
You likely already have some sort of schedule from work. If you’re a freelancer, maybe you don’t. If you have a traditional job with regular hours, then your creative time can be when you have free time around those hours. If you’re a freelancer, you may have to do some structuring in order to build personal creative time into your day to day life.
If you freelance, start with waking up at a set time every day if you don’t already. Decide to cook food for yourself more, if that’s not something you already do. Figure out a way to incorporate exercise into your week, even if you just go for a walk. Maintaining a routine that’s based around these things can give structure to your day, where you can then find new creative time.
Keeping a routine can help unlock new time to work on creative pursuits, build businesses or otherwise work on self development. You don’t necessarily have to keep a rigid schedule either, maybe you like operating at set times, figure out what works for you. Think of a handful of things to start at your routine, either daily or weekly. Don’t stress about missing days. Once you find what works for you, keep at it, and your routine will become second nature.
How to prune milkweed in fall
Cutting back your perennial milkweed plants in the late fall, after the leaves and top foliage has died off for the year is a good way to ensure the long term health of your pollinator plants. Pruning your perennial milkweed keeps your plants cleanly, healthy, and if done right will give wintertime shelter to beneficial insects and wildlife. All you need is a pair of gardening shears and a few minutes at your milkweed plant or pollinator garden, and this autumnal task is complete for the year.
As walked through by Save our Monarchs, “cut back milkweed stalks in the late fall or winter, after they have produced seed pods and these seeds have had time to mature. Leave at least 6 inches of stalks to provide habitat for insects throughout the winter. Leaving stalks also gives you a marker so you know where your milkweed patch is. Birds such as Baltimore orioles can also strip fibers for nest material. When Spring arrives, you will have an abundance of new shoots and you won't have to do a thing!”
Furthered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, “pollinators are in decline worldwide. Habitat loss, pesticide use, competition from nonnative species and diseases are killing pollinators. We can help pollinators by providing habitat in pollinator gardens. Native milkweeds are important components of pollinator habitats.”
Cutting back your plants gives less surface area for disease and gives next year’s growth a clear path to flourish. It also keeps your landscape clean for the following season. While pruning back most perennials in some way during autumn is recommended, it is possible to keep some plants as is, to create visual winter interest in snow. Milkweed is one of these plants that can be left alone for the next year, especially if the plant is wildly occurring.
Work hard but don’t burn out
Working hard is a good thing. However you can, working hard is generally going to be a good thing. Not working hard, or waiting out the clock, doing the minimum amount of effort to keep your job, or even purposefully not doing your best is generally not a good thing. Working hard can be easy, but it takes effort. Working hard can be showing up consistently, on time. Working hard can be consistently doing your personal best. Working hard can be excelling at your job or working fantastically long hours. Working hard can also just be knowing when your mind or body needs to take a break. Work hard, but don’t burn out.
Let’s say you were a car. Something happened, and you’re now a car, for the sake of this example. A car with manual transmission, forgot to mention. Ok, so you’re a manual transmission car and unfortunately gears 2-6 don’t work all of a sudden. You’d need to not rev your engine as much, and go at a slower and steady pace. In this situation, because you’re a car with an engine, you’re working hard. You’d be not burning out by maintaining a steady pace, instead of trying to go as fast as possible.
Work hard, but don’t burn out, however it means to you. If you’re someone who is able to drive fast while stuck in first gear, that’s a good thing. If you’re someone who is happy maintaining a slow burn, that’s great too. Find out at what level you can perform, where you’re still doing your best, and are aware of your personal limits. Don’t compare yourself to others.
Everyone works differently, and performance level does not always correspond to visibility. Somethings may look easy, but actually be very difficult and vice versa. It isn’t reasonable to expect yourself or others to perform at maximum capacity 24/7/365. By finding your own performance level and encouraging others to do the same, you will all be preventing yourselves from burning out.
What is a white label product?
If you’ve ever bought a product from an influencer or as a limited time drop, that product was likely a white label product. White label products are goods that are manufactured by one company, and then re-branded and sold by another company. Makeup, supplements, candles, generic coffee, wine, or any good that can be mass produced can be a white label product. White label products are made by manufacturers that are expert in production, and only sold by other entities that don’t have or want that manufacturing expertise.
White label products are excellent for one time promotional drops, because you don’t need to invest in R&D before releasing your product. White label products are also great for influencers, or other small businesses, because the product already exists in the world, only waiting for a novel re-brand.
Some white labeling services are automated and directly built into website hosting platforms like Shopify. Searching through the Shopify App Store, you can find private labelers for generic coffee brands, generic makeup brands, or services that will print and ship apparel on demand. With the help of these white label services, you can start a coffee brand, a makeup brand, or a clothing company literally overnight.
White label products rely on the re-branding of the influencer or business in order to make sales. White label products are made specifically to be consistent and able to be repeated in mass production. Once branding is applied to the white label product, it becomes either novel or differentiated in how the product is sold.
These white label products are often utilized in the creator economy, as influencers and creators generally don’t have full unlimited access to a manufacturing warehouse. White labels are great because they democratize a lot of product categories so that anyone can build a business within that category. You no longer have to own roasting equipment to be a coffee roaster. What you can do is start with a white label coffee product, build your brand, then buy roasting equipment if you want to specialize more. Now that you can make anything, what do you want to make?
What is a marketplace?
Online marketplaces can sell to people, to other businesses, or create a two sided platform like Uber’s drivers and riders. Marketplaces can cater to any industry or customer. Airbnb creates a marketplace where people can list their homes for rental by visitors, where Airbnb gets a cut with every transaction. eBay is one of the most classic examples of a marketplace, where people can shop for goods that have been listed by other people on eBay. Marketplaces are convenient for both buyers and sellers, and if you can think of a marketplace as a business, they can generate a lot of profit when people use the service.
“A two-sided market exists when both buyers and sellers meet to exchange a product or service, creating both bids to buy and offers (asks) to sell. This can occur when two user groups or agents interact through an intermediary or platform to the benefit of both parties,” explains Investopedia. Examples of this type of marketplace are Airbnb, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, Upwork, eBay, and Uber.
“Food delivery marketplaces are a common example of three-sided marketplaces, in that they are comprised of restaurants, delivery drivers, and consumers. Multi-sided marketplaces are often harder to get off the ground because they need to acquire and retain additional sides of the marketplace,” furthers Andreessen Horowitz.
All marketplaces benefit from something that is called the network effect. This what happens when the amount of people using a product increases over time. When there is ample demand, supply can meet that demand if the business is functional or the idea is salient. If the first person ever to open a new food delivery app specializing in local food is met with ample selection, they’re more likely to recommend the app, which means the delivery driver and restaurants can make more profit.
Online marketplaces can be great businesses because they are generally based off of software, and not so much hardware. Uber doesn’t actually own cars, they just take a cut from every successful trip or food delivery that their reservation software makes. These businesses are resilient, and can scale up and down as necessary. To think about what could be a marketplace, think about where there is demand with unmet supply, and how software can fix that.
Turn garden leftovers into seeds for next year
At the end of the year, when nights begin to get cold and the warmth of the sun becomes scarce, you’ll likely find leftovers in your garden that are either overripe, or found when clearing out for the season. While these spares can be composted whole, with a little bit of effort, you can get enough seeds for next year and more. One pepper can replace a gardens worth of plants, and a single tomato contains more than you’ll need for years to come.
This year, a handful of Garden Salsa peppers, several Black Cherry tomatoes and a single Gypsy pepper were still on plants, or nearby and still intact.
To save seeds from peppers, break open the peppers with your hands. Make sure to break the peppers open with your hands and not with a knife, to ensure that seeds aren’t broken while cutting. Remove the seeds from the center of the pepper, and let them fall into a bowl of water. Once all of your peppers of the same variety have been harvested from, pour out the water over a paper towel, and let dry, and compost the food waste.
To harvest seeds from tomatoes, similarly to saving seeds from peppers, break tomatoes open over a bowl of water, then pour the seed water over a paper towel to dry. For tomatoes, you can cut them to help get to the seeds easier, with less worry of seed damage than with peppers.
Once seeds are dried out, store them in a cool and dry area, overwintering them for the following year. While you don’t have to do this process, it is a good way to save some money and get a head start on next year. Additionally, if you have a specific heirloom variety that you like, this is a guaranteed way to ensure that the variety will be available next year. Have you finished your fall cleanup yet?
Dig up dahlia tubers for planting next year
Dahlias are beautiful, circular flowers that rebloom in prolific color from first bloom until frost. These vigorous growers come back year after year in warmer regions, perennially. In zone 5b, however, dahlias aren’t hardy to the cold winter. This means that you have to re-buy tubers every year, unless you dig up and reuse the roots of the flower.
Wait for a day after a rain when the ground is more workable, and try to dig up the roots of the flowers by pulling on the base of the flower stalks. The tubers should still be intact if you are gentle, and by storing them in a cool and relatively dry environment, they’ll overwinter for next year’s planting.
According to Dahlia.org, “One should store the tubers at a nearly constant, cool temperature. Most growers seem to recommend a range of 40 to 45 degrees. Freezing temperatures ruin tubers, and higher temperatures encourage microorganisms and fungus to destroy them. Also, warm temperatures prompt tubers to develop sprouts and feeder roots too soon. One prominent grower uses a discarded refrigerator, not plugged in, with a plastic gallon container of ice changed every few weeks to provide cooling and humidity.
One should inspect tubers monthly during the winter. Throw away any tubers that show signs of rotting. By checking frequently, one can throw away rotting tubers before the rot spreads to otherwise healthy tubers. Some growers say that if one stores tubers so that they do not touch (as one could in a wood container but not in plastic bags), then rot will not spread. A rotting tuber releases a gas that hastens the developing of eyes and sprouts. A rotted tuber can therefore be useful for tubers that are very late to develop. Anyone who uses a rotted tuber for this purpose should check the bag frequently to ensure that the rot does not spread to the healthy, late tubers.”
How to distribute your own music
It has never been easier to release music. Whether you want to profit off of your work, or just release music as a weekend project, music making and distribution is becoming more simple and more cheap every day. Below are a few of the most immediate way to begin getting your work out there:
Soundcloud
If you’re a new musician and have never distributed your own music, Soundcloud is going to be the fastest way to upload a song to the internet. All you need to do is create an account and upload your song file. You have the opportunity to add as much metadata to your song as you’d like (album art, credits, genre, tags, etc.) but if you just want a link to share that contains your song, Soundcloud can get you up and running in a few minutes. The popular streaming platform even has a genre of music named after it, or soundcloud rap.
YouTube
Do you make music videos or lyric videos for your music? YouTube is a simple way to upload the visuals for your music that has a built in music community of listeners and artists. The majority of the world’s music listening occurs on YouTube, with people opting to watch ad supported videos over paying for subscriptions. “Google has announced that it has 50 million users subscribed to or trying YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, which is a marked increase from the 30 million subscribers it reported in December 2020. This seems to mark a continued trend in people looking to make the jump from the free versions of YouTube and YouTube Music, even as more services are competing in the space,” reports the Verge.
TuneCore, etc.
Before the internet, and even well into the commercialization of it, in order to release music on streaming platforms or make it available on Internet Radio platforms like Pandora, you would need to sign to a record label with distribution infrastructure. If you didn’t want to sign to a label, you could always start your own label, but that was more costly and time intensive than releasing music yourself today. It costs $15/year to be able to release your music on all internet music streaming platforms, a relatively new opportunity for artists. This takes the gatekeepers out of the way, letting artists release music themselves, whenever they want, without giving up a percentage of profits to a label.
Social Media
If you’re just starting out, want to build anticipation for yet to be released on streaming music, or would like to experiment without a formal release, you can release snippets of music or full tracks on social media. With social media livestreaming you can work on music while getting feedback from your audience, then release the final product at a later time. Social media is a great way to feel less pressure when working on music, because it can be considered to be more of a living piece of work, instead of a final track uploaded for distribution.
However you want to release your music, today is the best time in history so far to be a musician. It has never been easier to release music, it has never been more possible to collaborate with others, and this possibility has never existed for more people. The barriers to entry are very low, and you can even make music on your phone. Now that you can release as much music as you want, what is your next song going to be?
Wholesale your artwork or craft with Faire
Ever dreamt of having your handmade ceramic housewares sold in a store like Crate and Barrel or your local boutique, but don’t know where to start or are overwhelmed at the thought of cold calling sales? In the past, to offer a collection to a retail establishment, you as an artist would need to prove that you can deliver a quality product, reliably, and then go out an find every single one of your customers to sell to (not forgetting that you would actually have to make and deliver your product on top of this). Today, with services like Faire, you can list your handmade artwork or craft goods to sell at wholesale to retail and ecommerce establishments.
Taking Faire as an example, if you are a ceramicist that makes a standardized craft product, like a handmade plate, that is unique to you (but still reliably similar enough to be bought in bulk), you can list that item online to be bought at wholesale. The buyers of your craft good can be small boutiques, larger regional chains, or even ecommerce stores that want to dropship unique goods. After you list your product, Faire will then find you buyers, then all you need to do is fulfill orders once they come in.
This capability takes a lot of pressure off of an artisan, as it saves the proactive sales that someone would have to do while starting their business, and creates a passive way to generate sales.
If you’re just starting out as an artisan, getting your first few sales online while building your portfolio of sold goods can be a great way to prove reliability to an in-person boutique. After retaining a few boutique clients, you could be on your way to selling in a big box store like Target or CB2.
Of course, you can opt to blend your sales approach by listing your craft products on a service like Faire, while also reaching out to local retailers or businesses within your community or through cold calling. Having a diversified approach to finding new business will often help in the long run, as online sales can come in when in-person outreach stalls and vice versa.
Selling your work through established channels like retail boutiques and high end retail can be a fantastic goal for an artisan to aspire to and achieve. Retail buyers are always on the lookout for new products to offer in stores, and by utilizing a modern digital tool like Faire to get a jumpstart is a great way to get your work in front of the people who make decisions about what is sold in stores. The best part about Faire is that it is almost completely passive, meaning once you list, the marketplace does the work for you. If you create craft goods, what store would you want to sell in?