Why is NOBODY taking advantage of this idea?

what if I told you that one of the biggest mistakes that artists designers illustrators photographers make in their career is that they are not looking in the right places for opportunity now this probably works for all types of groups of people across the board but what I've personally seen from creative people is that they really have a very narrow view about what will work for their work how they can make money from the products and things that they make and one thing that I know for certain is that mindset is categorically incorrect that word is very hard to say fast categorically and what I want to talk to you today about is one specific idea that I am shocked that nobody has taken full advantage of well I won't say nobody but there are accounts out there on social media that have grown really large based around this concept and haven't taken full advantage of it so we're going to talk about that but first I need to tell you a story about me but if you're good you'll understand that it's actually a story about you maybe 10 years and one month ago I was working for the largest Automotive Enthusiast magazine out there it was called Source engine link it changed his name a couple times after it had many name changes before that but they were the number one company out there that wrote about essentially anything that had Wheels cars motorcycles trucks even boats really I know there's no wheels on boats but you get what I'm saying there were some Fringe topics that they had magazines on but for the most part it was automotive and motorcycle and truck related stuff now I spent 10 years with that company and through that whole career there I worked on several different types of magazines and at the very end there was working on a motorcycle magazine then 10 years ago minus the one month that whole partition of the company all the motorcycles that whole group was sold off to a different publishing company and I was out of a job myself other art directors uh some of the copy editors managing editors things like that we all got cut we all got let go and sent away because what they did they took the magazine sent them to a company it was too far away for most of us to do anything about it they kept the main editors and they kept the sales people and that was it and on that day you would think that I was very upset but actually I was actually quite happy because I still had my laptop with me took it to the local coffee shop and then I wrote my Manifesto called the color of the day is pink which basically kind of set the stage for me to figure out what it was I was going to do for myself by myself because I didn't want to go back to corporate business thing ever again over the next several years as you might imagine for print publishing they started partitioning off and killing off a bunch of their magazine properties all my friends and colleagues my editors photographers other art directors all out into the wind and probably not much opportunity for people who grew up in the print industry to go find new work in other print jobs there might be some but there wasn't a lot print industry was basically dying a slow painful death if you've ever been to a Barnes Noble bookshelf or magazine rack you'll see that it's pretty sparse now than it used to be like stuff that's not the case anymore most of those magazines are dead especially in these Niche categories like Automotive enthusiasts because most of the people that read those magazines are old and let's be honest they're dying and anybody new is getting their information directly from the internet if you were to go to a magazine rack and look and see what they have for Chevy muscle cars you're not going to see a whole lot there but if you went to the internet like say Instagram and typed in Chevy muscle cars as a hashtag you're going to see that there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of posts all relating to that topic and there lies a real opportunity but none of the people that I used to work with did anything to take advantage of that you would think that this whole group of very talented people would be able to get into social media and do something with that to turn themselves into an authority on that particular topic and you would be wrong none of them and I mean none did anything with their social media in a way that helped them build something for themselves they probably started using social media as a way to keep a poor folio of whatever it is they were doing but as soon as they found other jobs elsewhere they basically gave up on it blows my mind because there's a huge opportunity there with that particular group now you may not care about muscle cars or Street Choppers or lifted trucks or anything like that but there's a lesson here if you just stick with me for a bit for the sake of this video I went on to Instagram and looked up muscle cars in their search function to see like what exactly am I talking about here what is the potential for this particular Niche who out there is making content for this and what are they doing with that content once they've got the eyeballs on it not surprising there are many accounts that have high six figure if not seven figure amounts of followers on those particular accounts focused on cars trucks motorcycles no matter which category it is there's some account that's doing really well in that space except for one aspect they're not selling anything all they're doing is generating eyeballs onto the content and maybe they're getting good engagement but they're not selling anything to these people you have 1 million followers and you don't have a shop that is the opportunity if I was a bigger Automotive Enthusiast like I just had to take pictures and talk about things relating to cars and trucks and motorcycles I would go at this 100 all

day long now that's not my passion I do like cars I do like motorcycles I like all that stuff but from a very passive fan of the topic a cool Hot Rod or motorcycle Drives By I'm giving them the thumbs up but I'm not gonna stop and talk to any of these guys to try to tell me hey tell me a little bit about your motorcycle hey can I take a picture that's not me but maybe that's you maybe you have a passion for this topic and I'm telling you right now there are three ways that you can get into this and really start taking advantage of all the things that other people are not doing number one start from scratch go to any car events motorcycle events whatever events that you like go start taking pictures go start taking video sharing that on a new account that you create on Instagram also do some on YouTube and on Tick Tock make sure you take vertical videos so that you can share on Instagram reels also on Tick Tock also on YouTube short start building a community around this idea for this particular topic this particular subject of vehicles whatever it is that you like share everything you possibly can and as you start to build following and notoriety and you start engaging with some of these other accounts and you start talking to people that have all these cars online and you start tagging people when you take a picture of their car and they start sharing it with their friends and then they follow you and you just get bigger and bigger over time then you start developing designs based around the topic of the thing that you're into and make a shop using print fire Shopify and put those two together there's lots of different ways to do this but you know how I rolled that's those are my partners those are the people that I use the companies that I use start building a print-on-demand shop put that link into the bio of your social media accounts and then start seeing people buy your stuff and you can even integrate your stuff into the accounts as you see fit you wear your shirts to the shows people come up to you and ask you where'd you get that shirt and you can say I made it here's my shop eventually you might start to get sponsors or you get one people want to partner with you on that and they're just all these different opportunities and all it really takes is your enterprising Spirit to go after this one thing that you're passionate about that nobody else is doing anything with it now the concept number one is that it's a lot of work it's going to take to get done so you're going to be putting a lot of time and energy into it but if you do it right you could actually capitalize on it really well I did notice that one of those accounts that did really well only started back in 2021 and now has multiple hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers on their Instagram account the opportunity is there you just got to learn how to take advantage of it the number two way that you can do this is if you don't want to be the person to take all the pictures take all the video you want to leave that to somebody else but you understand that they don't have a shop and there's a chance for both of you to make money from this Prospect you go and you partner with them and you say I've got the skills to make products let's work together I'll build all the stuff you take all the photos we'll make some things as we sell then we'll split off I'll give you such percentage and I'll keep such percentage and everything will be great it'll be a good thing the cons of this is that if they ever figure out that all you're doing is taking some designs putting them on print on demand and then using a shop to sell stuff they may turn around and go and do it themselves and cut you right out but who's to say you couldn't turn right around take all your designs and go to their competitor and start doing the same thing with that company the third way to do this and this is the big baller play but go buy one of those accounts that are already established that already have all of this content that you could possibly build upon but they don't have the skills and maybe they want to get out because they're tired of taking pictures of cars they want to give that to somebody else for a fee now I don't know what it would cost to actually get into something like this if you started with an account that had tens of thousands of followers as opposed to hundreds of thousands or millions of followers it's obviously going to be a lot less expensive and then you can just build upon that and you may not even have to come out of pocket for it they may be interested in giving you seller financing where you start to pay them out of the revenue that you generate over a particular period of time let's say they sold it to you for like five thousand dollars you could say okay I will pay you 500 a month over the next 12 months from the revenue that I generate through all of those products that I've made they get a little bit more money in the end but it allows you to subsidize the cost without having to come out of pocket for any of it like I said baller play not for the timid it means that you definitely have to get hustling right out of the gate start working hard to start generating Revenue because you're going to need to be paying that back over time really quickly but you could also grow this thing really quickly if you did your due diligence and grew it to something massive like one of those other accounts and you're doing better because you're selling products and they're not when I think about this I think about all the peers that I knew at that company so many talented people not a single one of them taking advantage of it like this it blows my mind it almost makes me want to do it just because nobody else did but I'm not going to do that if you're into cars trucks motorcycles whatever you should take advantage of this because there's so much opportunity people love their cars it's not just about the cars it could be any particular Niche where somebody is

passionate about something enough that they want to emblaze in something on themselves and there's probably plenty of niches on Instagram on tick tock on whatever platform that are not taking advantage of this opportunity they're just in it for whatever clout and interaction that they get but I digress the way that I came to this Revelation is because I seek out information in multiple different places that aren't the regular places I'm not on Instagram looking for inspiration for whatever it is that I talk about I'm actually reading content from other business places like blogs and newsletters I read all this stuff and it inspires me to write about it in the hungry artist which is my newsletter and if you're not familiar with it you can go find the link to it in the description but I talk about all this stuff every single week opportunities like this news stories that might be pertinent or just commentary of things that I'm thinking about regarding the creative industry that might be helpful to you to grow whatever it is that you're trying to grow the hungry artist is flourishing it's growing and it's exactly why by the time you see me next time I'm gonna have rebranded this whole account based around that same identity welcome to the video version of The Hungry artist if you enjoyed this video make sure you go down there and hit that like button leave a comment to see if there's anything you'd like to say share questions I'll answer them and meanwhile go watch this video because that's going to be the next most important thing you watch now that's it I'm out I've been Dave you've been awesome I'll see you next time different but same