Making the Leap to Going Pro (Patreon)

I've been asked many times what it takes to go from someone who can do something creative at a level worth money as a hobby or minor sideline, to doing it full-time as a career.

Short version?

You have to get good at doing the parts that aren't fun.

Not just that when you do them, you do them well. Also that you DO them in a timely, ungrumpy, efficient manner. Even if the more you do it, the more parts end up not being fun.

That doesn't have to mean you never have fun. But creative work is work, and like all work it has less-fun and not-fun elements to it.

That might be polishing (literally or figuratively), or invoicing, or writing pitches, or tracking expenses to do taxes, or collaborating, or writing out instructions (be that for how to care for an art piece or how to run an adventure).

You can skip, hand-wave, or fudge those things if it's just a hobby, and if there are consequences, they don't impact whether or not you can cover the mortgage.

(And that begins to blur into some details of one of the many LONG answers, but the general point is clear enough.)