Creating Your Artist Income Portfolio

Day 3: Streams of Income — How Multiple Streams Create Income Sovereignty

I used to believe this snarky phrase:

"Those who can't do, teach."

Now I believe the best teachers are the ones who teach what they do!

For the past 5-6 years, I've been enrolling myself in all manner of courses by people who practice a craft, and it's been some of the best education of my life. This shift in thinking opened up an entirely new way of viewing income streams. What if financial stability for creatives isn't about making one big stream wider, but creating multiple smaller stream that flow together into something greater?

Artists exhaust themselves trying to maximize a single revenue source (guilty!) when the real path to sovereignty might be a harmonious ecosystem of interconnected income sources.

Welcome to Day 3 of our Financial Sovereignty Creative Sprint, where we're discovering that financial stability isn't about having all your eggs in one impressive basket!

Yesterday, we explored the seasonal nature of creative income and how to work with these natural rhythms instead of fighting against them.

Today, we're looking at how multiple streams of income don't just protect you but can actually strengthen each other when approached intentionally.

The Truth About Publishing Timelines

Let me tell you a quick story.

I was with an artist friend whose gallery took forever to pay him once a painting was sold. I said I hoped they would get their act together. He simply shrugged and said, "They've been doing it this way for 20 years. They're not going to change."

That hit me hard.

I realized the same truth applies to publishing. It works the way it works, and I'm not likely going to change it, but I can accept it and engage with it accordingly.

Publishers will have delays. Contracts will take months to finalize. Invoices will be paid on their timeline, not yours.

This isn't a complaint. It's simply reality. And once I accepted that reality, I could build around it rather than fight against it.

Why Multiple Streams Matter

There has never been a period where I depended solely on publishing.