Week 26 Income Check-up

This week marks the halfway point in the year. How are you doing on your goals?

©2009 Shane Cooper, Clemintino y Javier. Oil on canvas.
©2009 Shane Cooper, Clemintino y Javier. Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches.

Because my primary concern is about your business goals and financial well-being, let me remind you of a couple of articles about achieving your income goals. Have you read these?
6 Steps to Identify Your Income Goals
The 7th Step to Achieving Income Goals

Get Real with Where the Money Comes From

My income-achieving process is daunting for some artists who find it a challenge to face the bottom line. But ignoring your financial situation based on fear or lack of knowledge doesn’t make it better. It just makes you an oblivious businessperson.
The process is based on multiple streams of income for your art business (art sales, teaching, greeting cards, consulting, e-books, etc.). If you’ve been looking at your income potential as one line item, it’s time to reconsider your approach and take a closer look at your earning potential.

Financial Check-In

This week – the 26th in 2011 – sit down with your income goals for the year and see how you’re doing.
For each stream of income, is your income-to-date more or less than it should be at this point? By how much?
The most important question you can answer through this process is: WHY? Why have you made more or less than your goal?
What did you do that worked? Can you do more of it?
Where did you mess up or goof off? Can you correct that for the rest of the year? Consider alternatives that would yield higher profits or better results.

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7 thoughts on “Week 26 Income Check-up”

  1. Alease Michelle

    I’m glad that you keep posting about looking at your finances. As creatives, we are called to create and sometimes not look at how you are doing financially.
    You give us focus and help artists make a living from there art. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that from creatives—-I want to make money from my art so how do I do it. I agree that we need to look at where we are making money and not making money—setting goals and what other areas to expand to.

    1. Alyson Stanfield

      Alease: Thank you. I am glad you find this helpful and am very happy you’re not afraid to confront reality.

    1. Alyson Stanfield

      Patricia: But you started your system in the Artist Conspiracy last month, yes?

    2. Yes, Alyson, I did – for my bookkeeping process, at least. There are not yet enough data points (sold works) to tell me anything, and that makes me feel very insecure. Actually, it tells me I’m doing something wrong but there’s not enough information for me to be able to pinpoint exactly what I need to to to increase the data points.
      In other words I can’t answer that “Why” you ask above.
      Yet.

  2. I’m making some progress here. Just reconciled the last quarter and haven’t spent all my income! Not to mention, there IS some income. Probably need to work on reconciling a little more often, so there isn’t a doubt there… 🙂

  3. Pingback: 5-Step Income-Generating Plan for 2013 — Art Biz Blog

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Your Artist Mailing List: Rethinking + Assessing

Get a transcript of episode 182 of The Art Biz (Rethinking Mailing Lists for Artists) followed by a 3-page worksheet to evaluate the overall health and usage of the 3 types of artist lists.

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