Do Other People Think You’re Getting Paid for This?

While i've gone over whether I should change my publishing schedule, I said "No!!" Because it's not that easy. It changes the experience for readers, it takes away the time I need to do editing if something is wrong or something can be done better, and I can't get an understanding of how pages flow together when they are posted (essentially) as they are done week to week. Does it sacrifice viewership? Sure does, but I'll get there when I get there. At this point there's no mulligans for things that look bad or sound awkward though, so getting it done the best I can is more important.

Anyway I really appreciate it!

People that i know IRL don't even know that i write anything

I'd say that people who have no insight into this matter then how would they know? Some would only do this and that if they'd get some financial gain from everything. I mean, I can understand where they're coming from. I mean for people who don't decide to write a novel/draw a comic they cannot imagine the amount of work and there would be many who wouldn't move their finger in their free time to devote themselves to a project like that. Many people do dream about getting into drawing comics and imagine how we drop now all work, just do our thing and we get paid for that So the imagination versus reality is completely different.

Not personally, though I'm not surprised people think this way (though it didn't really occur to me either until you pointed it out XD) When I was talking to an IRL friend about my comic being public domain, he said I could make money from it via crowdfunding platforms like Patreon instead, in a way that sounded to me like he thought it was simple (though I can't prove this is how it actually sounded since it's been too long for me to remember the exact phrasing :P)

It does make me wonder about my perception of other fields though ... my assumption of how easy it is to get into fields I've never tried getting into is probably off base as well XD

I've gotten to a point where I hate to show my art to people because I'll get a million suggestions on what I should be doing with my art to make money, all of which are just nonsense.

For me it's kind of strange because I do get paid for my art generally, I do comissions, a lot of conventions in artist alleys, I have a couple of people on patreon, an online store with a friend and I hope to eventually make print versions of my comic and sell them online and at conventions, but I don't get paid for my comic yet, which is very difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't really grasped how crowdfunding self publishing works.

My parents are supportive but aren't quite sure why I'm making my comic available online for free if I eventually intend to sell it, and why I don't pitch it to traditionnal publishing (I've yet to explain the dire publishing situation for comics in my country plus the fact that my native language is english so any pitch would inevitably be a translated to french version) because though it's not a slam dunk, the people I've talked to in the industry say it would be possible with the right pitch. Other than that people who aren't in the art world tend to assume I'm not getting paid for my art at all because I'm not employed by any studio, I'm not really popping off on the socials and I don't sell my oil paintings because I make them as presents to friends,, so when I tell them I can make rent in 1 weekend at a convention they sort of look at me shocked.

So I'm in episodic novels and on Tapas I didn't make money. On Dreame I didn't make money. One webtoons I didn't make money. But on Mythrill I'm the second most viewed and one of the highest grossing authors with my two stories. It's about finding the right platform and fan base. At the start I had people assume I was making money already (surprise surprise I wasn't). It was a similar reaction, they were shocked. Now I do make money. Some it's what they expect, some it's less, some it's more. It depends on who you ask, what their thoughts are.

Something I had to learn early on as a freelance illustrator is that people will deliberately try to give the appearance of being more successful than they are, because looking like you're highly successful is a good way to get more work, as clients will have more faith in you if it looks like lots of other clients have faith in you.

...So it took me a really long time to realise that I wasn't horribly under-performing compared to my peers by only making a modest income. I was actually doing unusually well, and a lot of them just simply didn't let on how much they lean on having a wealthy partner or family, or how much debt they were in.

A lot of the high profile jobs for big name publishers don't pay well at all, because they know illustrators will take them for the prestige of being published by a big name publisher; it makes you look successful. So there's always this funny disconnect, where when I started doing jobs for clients they'd heard of, people stopped asking how much money I was making, and started to believe me when I said I was making a comfortable income off my work.... even though doing those big jobs was sometimes when I was at my most broke in actual finances!

I think people are aware that my work at my day job working on edutainment pays most of my bills, and that my original comics and D&D content and stuff is a decent side-hustle. Sometimes I'm surprised by how much that side hustle makes... but also I know it's nowhere near enough that it'd pay my rent, and I don't think anyone thinks it is! Admittedly, I have a Northern accent, so I always sound like I have no money!

I mean to be fair, yeah a lot of people do that. Also I just realised that "I make rent in 1 weekend" sounds WAY MORE IMPRESSIVE if you think I live anywhere in the US. Rent is also crazy stupid where I live but I'm in a small flat I've had since I was a student and though it's a lot for what it is, it's just under 500 bucks, and most of my income at all comes from conventions because it's really easy to sell pretty things to people when you're shown to 30k people who like pretty things. It basically means that to be able to make rent, I have to do a convention every month, so it means that I have to make rent that weekend otherwise I don't have rent. The only freelance artists I know who make stable income work for animation studios and game studios or have longer ongoing contracts.

Either way people tend to underestimate how much I make from conventions and overestimate everything else, which is funny because a lot of them will go to conventions and spend what feels like their life savings and then be surprised artists are willing to pay for tables.

Hahaha yeah, that's true.

A few years back, I was living in East London, around Shoreditch, and an acquaintance from the comics scene ran into me in an event I'd gone to because it was at a cafe down the road from my flat. This person asked a very uncomfortable question, knowing I was working full time as a freelance illustrator at that time:
"...So how much are you making?"

I just gestured at Shoreditch and replied:
"Enough to live here."

They IMMEDIATELY stopped asking about money.

That is one of the biggest flexes you can do without saying a number frankly. I'd love to go back to England to live but oh god the price of everything. Gg for making enough for Shoreditch that's really impressive! At least to me, I'm still at baby's first paycheque stage which is probably why people assume the things they do about how financially viable paying for travel + tables is for conventions.

Welp... Friends and strangers who happened to make small chat with me praise me for being able to live out of this. Some ask me how long I've been doing this or what strategy I've applied to succeed, I avoid telling the details that exposes the toxic perfectionist enviroment I grew up with since I won't like some of them... idk, knowing a family member and then telling them, I simply don't want self-righteous hypocrites coming at my door.

My father's side while they compliment me and feel happy for me, there are concerned since my grandfather was also an artist, a very successful one but due to alzheimer he ended up in poverty and separated from his toddler sons at a very early age, never recovered and also became an addict. So both my dad and uncle worry especially about my mental state, but do it on a healthy way by not being pushy and just let me be honest to them, which, thankfully I do trust.

My mother's side, well... the few that kind of accepted and somewhat understood what I do is my younger aunt's husband and my great grandmother. My uncle liked to talk about the webcomics I work for and the process of making them since that interested him, meanwhile my great grandmother not only gave me input when I was drawing sexy girls, she also bought a few pin-ups and hung them on her fridge, still tho she admmited to me she was afraid I couldn't live out of this but she noticed her error the moment she saw me leaving my mom's house with brand new furniture already in the cargo truck (The ones I rubbed on everyone's faces: Fridge and Washing Machine which are hella expensive) since when my mom got with my dad she only had a bag with her clothes, nothing else (And my dad didn't had much either, so they started off pretty poor)

But despite that I purposefully used my money and even exposed my earnings to my family, seems like my mother doesn't believe I can live out of this. Even my therapist is amazed that despite how much I do, is not enough for this woman. And if she already didn't trust me at the point of every time she contacted me she went "Do you need money?" "Ask me if you need anything!" things got worse when my younger sibling got diagnosed of ASD, ugh, she immediatly assumed I must have ASD too and began to infantilize me even more and I called her out on her ableism and lack on trust of me, but things went even more clear when she said

"What are you going to do the day you can't live out of your hyperfixation?"

It's been almost a year since I went No Contact with her.

Oh, and I've also found out a few artists friends I have are a bit surprised when I mention I have a MakeUp, Hairdressing and Manicurist Titles, or that I even won a few hairstyle contests. They also get surprised at the fact I also won a few karaoke contests or that I worked on my hometown's City Hall.

Is a fact tho: In South-America you'll find out more people getting surprised at you making money out of this than not, if you don't make money they'll feel amazed you have the time to dedicate to your hobbies and would encourage you to keep it up.

Ah, not for me then. But thanks for the info.

People who are aware of how much time and effort goes into art and storytelling, sometimes, literally cannot fathom putting that much time, money, and effort into something that doesn't get you paid. People are so wrapped in capitalism, it's unheard of to spend so much time on something off passion alone.