I am a chronic Etsy browser.
Most New Zealanders are not familiar with Etsy, so here's a little description: Etsy is an American based, international, online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods and supplies. If you are an artist or craftsperson of any kind, Etsy is arguably THE foremost place to sell online. It's a browser's delight: a veritable online world of beautiful, handmade goods with personality and individuality - many of them eco-friendly, recycled, vegan, or organic as well. I'm almost certain that a person's entire life could be supplied and maintained solely with items purchased on Etsy.
If you are looking for it, and if it's a physical object, then the chances are high that someone will sell it on Etsy. And while you're looking for it, you'll find a bunch of other things that you (a) had no idea existed, and (b) didn't know could be bought online. Homemade vegan marshmallows. Soap that looks like a chocolate truffle. Italian-sausage-scented lip balm. A fabulous coffin-couch.
And that's just a little taste of the delicious buffet that is Etsy.
One of the features that I really like on Etsy is their 'Quit Your Day Job' interviews with artists who make their livings by selling their work on Etsy. One sentence that crops up repeatedly from these full-time, self-employed artists (besides 'work on your photographs'!) goes along these lines:
"I have never worked so hard in my life".
For someone who is at the beginning of the journey towards full-time artistic self-employment, that's an intimidating thing to read.
I have never worked so hard in my life.
From all accounts, that's what artistic self-employment requires. A tonne of hard work.
It must take even more hard work when you are trying to succeed in a crowded marketplace - and, while I don't know the statistics, I would guess that the Internet is now the biggest and most crowded marketplace on Earth.
It must take even MORE hard work when you are trying to succeed in a particularly crowded corner of that marketplace: jewellery selling. For some reason - and I find this fact intriguing - the jewellery category on any and every shopping website is one of the most crowded; and on handmade goods websites the category is invariably the biggest - sometimes by 100%. I just checked, and a moment ago there were 1,420,338 jewellery items listed on Etsy alone. At the moment you read this, there will probably be even more. In a forum thread on the site, one jewellery seller gave a conservative estimate of the number of jewellery sellers on Etsy: between 7,000 and 10,000. Remember, that's just the jewellery sellers, and it's just on Etsy.
Suddenly that sentence - I have never worked so hard in my life - is put into perspective. One starts to realise that none of the full-time Etsy sellers in the 'Quit Your Day Job' interviews got where they are without working their tails off.
I have heard many successful people say that luck is a fallacy. Luck does not exist. If you want to do something difficult (such as becoming self-employed or climbing a Himalayan mountain), forget about luck. Or better: re-name it. Call it 'work'. Hey, they both have the same number of letters, and they both end with 'K', so the switch should be relatively easy, right? (Sarcastic laughter.)
Samuel Goldwyn, the Hollywood movie producer, said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." (Another favourite Goldwynism of mine is “If I look confused it’s because I’m thinking.”
) I have never worked so hard in my life. And the harder I work, the luckier I get.
To be honest, it's not a hugely appealing prospect. Is hard work ever appealing?
I guess it depends how badly you want the results.
And I think this is where a lot of us stumble: we don't want it badly enough.
