On Monitezation

Last week was so busy I didn’t even get to check in here!

I was busy preparing for my concert last weekend. Last minute coachings, memorizing, promoting, and dealing with the logistics of hosting a concert in your front yard (all the while keeping up with students, muggle job, and home life).

I’m happy to report that the concert was a success. I’m really happy with the in-person and the online turnouts, and the response so far has been all positive. I do need to work on the monetization of these concerts going forward. I put my Venmo handle up in the event asking for tips and got….NOTHING.

To be clear, this is NOT a pity party. I’m looking at the facts to see if I can figure out a solution going forward.

I’m unsure if I didn’t put it in a prominent enough spot, or if people are simply out of the mindset of remembering that artists need dollars for their work. When I did this last August, people were surprisingly generous, but artist incomes and how they were effected by COVID was an active dialogue at the time. Less so now, but that doesn’t negate the need for it.

I’ll have to ponder how to handle this in the future. The reality is that putting on concerts costs money - there are operating costs for any business. Every business has losses at some point, so it’s not a huge big deal, but I’ll have to do something different in the future. As with other types of businesses, too many losses threatens the ability of said business to operate. Whether I am more vocal about asking for tips, charge a ticket fee, or some other option that I haven’t considered yet, I’ll have to experiment with other options so I can continue these events that people seem to truly enjoy.

I should say that I am not trying to get rich off of singing concerts in my front yard. The reality is that I look at it as a three-pronged benefit: I am providing a service to my community that seems to make people happy, I am giving myself a goal (see previous discussions about me being extremely goal oriented) that allows me to keep my performance skills sharp, and it can make some small amount of income for me. I got two out of three from this last concert, now I just need to figure out the third!

Now that the concert is done, I have some time to fill. Time to plan some new projects! Here is what’s on my to-do list for this week:

• Continue reading and working through the exercises in The Artist’s Way. I’ve been pretty good about doing my morning pages. Less so about completing the exercises and artist dates.

• Choose some new music to learn! I’ve got a running list of pieces I’d like to learn. I’m thinking about some Bach, Respighi, Spohr, or some more Donizetti.

• I have one hard deadline on the calendar, in that I’ve been asked to sing for the memorial service of a dear family friend. That’s in roughly three weeks, so I’ll start working on the music for that this week.

• In the less-than-fun department, I need to catch up on some bookkeeping! Blech…but necessary.

And in the realm of the universe taking care of you, let me just say that I got a Venmo payment from my concert literally as I was writing this post.

What are the ways you have monetized your creativity??