Hey gang!
Drex here from DrexFactor.com.
So...a couple years ago I remember running
across a blog post by the cellist Zoe Keating.
In it she laid out in fairly explicit detail
where her income for the past year and come
from and how much it amounted to.
Even though I’d long since put my own professional
music career on the backburner, it was still
really cool to see how she was earning a living
and adapting to the digital landscape.
In the spirit of that, I’m going to do the
same thing this year and share with you all
exactly how much this professional flow artist
really makes.
Before we dive in, I just want to take a moment
to give a shout out to the friends of the
channel!
Big thanks to Dark Monk, Emazing Lights, Flowtoys,
Spinballs, and Ultra Poi for helping to make
the videos on this channel possible.
You can visit them all on the web by following
the links down in the description of this
video.
Now, before we dive in I want to share a few
caveats about the information I’m sharing.
The first is that I’ve had a lot of clients
this year for a variety of different services.
I’m not going to share any of their names
but I will share dates and amounts of payments.
The reason for this is that I want to underscore
that live as a professional artist of any
sort is a very unstable one.
Sometimes you have more work than you can
handle and sometimes you’re eating ramen
and hoping for the phone to ring.
Second is that this is not by any means intended
to be representative of the income of what
every professional flow artist makes.
For one thing I know of several artists whose
income level is equal to or exceeds my own
who do it completely with performances.
I’ve made a few very specific choices in
how I intended to focus my time this year
and the amounts that I’ve made through different
channels reflects these choices.
Just because I’m making a specific amount
through either Patreon or performance doesn’t
mean that that’s the maximum you could make
if you wanted to try your hand at either one.
Third, I am a full-time flow artist.
I do not have a separate job from this so
the number you’re seeing is a reflection
of full time hustle.
It would be very, very hard to put these same
numbers together by trying to do any of these
income streams part time.
Finally, I also know that making this kind
of information available to the general public
is one of those things that is going to be
an invitation for a wide variety of criticism.
I make no claims to be the best businessman,
the best fundraiser, the best performer, the
best anything in the flow arts.
The one and only statement I’m making in
creating this video is that I thought it was
cool to see Zoe Keating do this sort of thing
and it made me inspired to see if anybody
in the flow world would also like to see data
of this sort.
Are you better at this stuff than I am?
Outstanding!
Please share your numbers to that myself and
others can learn from them.
So with that in mind I’m going to summarize
what I made and go through it item by item
from smallest contribution to greatest.
I started off this year by shutting down my
online store for making poi.
I made a video on why if you want to know,
but suffice it to say that took away a major
source of my income.
I had a small amount of stock left over and
I tried at least one experiment this year
in stocking the same kind of hippie cargo
pants that I wear so often in my videos.
I managed to sell almost all my old stock
but the pants themselves didn’t sell very
well at all.
All told I made about $400 off my online store
this year.
Next were festivals.
Since I was no longer vending poi, I raised
my prices this year for my travel stipend
requests to offset the loss of income.
I knew it meant I’d travel to fewer festivals
and I was totally okay with that.
Despite me increasing my rates, I still made
it to five festivals this year.
My profit off of teaching at those events
came to a total of $558 once you take out
the cost of airfare.
This was about 2% of my income.
Next up is my income through ad revenue on
my YouTube videos.
I’ve been a YouTube partner for several
years now, but this was definitely my biggest
year of income through the platform.
Not all my views on the platform get monetized.
I average about 97,000 views per month on
YouTube but only 31,000 of those are monetized.
There’s a very, very long explanation as
to why but that would be better explained
in another video.
I made $1300 off YouTube in 2017 with an average
of $140 per month, which I’m really happy
about.
I used to have a hard time making $50 per
month so I’m going to call that progress.
This was 5% of my income.
Next up is affiliate income.
What exactly is that?
Well, when I shut down my online poi shop
I switched over to a different income model.
I didn’t want to make poi any more, so instead
I created partnerships with companies that
did.
Basically, I have a unique code: “drexfact0r”
with a zero instead of an “o.”
And you can use this code at a bunch of different
companies that do sell poi such as Flowtoys,
Lanternsmith, Ultrapoi, and Emazinglights.
If you use that code at checkout it tells
them that the sale was my referral and thus
I get a cut and you also get a small discount
on your order.
The company gets some promo, I get some income,
and you get a recommendation from someone
you trust plus a discount.
Everybody wins with this system.
All told, I made about $1700 off of affiliate
sales this year for about 6% of my income.
Next is a category that’s a new income stream
for me--paid tutorials.
I’ll admit that in this category I’m being
a little bit loose in how I’m defining it.
I’ve had people this year pay me to create
custom tutorials for their own projects as
well as now using an online platform to sell
my own structured courses.
These two things aren’t really the same
thing because in many cases the tutorials
I was paid to create were then distributed
for free to the general public, but there
were a couple categories where I had to have
some wiggle room or I’d have wound up with
way too many categories to have to talk about.
I made $3200 off of paid tutorials this year
and it’s something I’m going to be spending
a lot of time on in the coming year, too.
These made up 12% of my income.
Next is the very unhelpful category Other.
This was basically where I stuck everything
that didn’t have any kind of plan behind
it or that was a one-off deal that was unlikely
to be repeated.
Some examples of things that wound up in this
category include the workshops that I taught
in the East Bay after Burning Man, a few private
lessons that I taught, coaching others on
the search engine optimization tricks that
have helped my YouTube channel grow, and many
many others.
All told these added up to about $3400 of
income.
Roughly 13% of the total.
Coming in at the second largest source of
my income for 2017 was performance gigs.
These could be anything from corporate events
to private birthday parties and the like.
I did a lot less performance in 2017 than
I did in 2016.
Partially because I was focused more on my
YouTube content and partially because I didn’t
actively seek many of these opportunities
out.
The months when I got the most gigs were April,
May, and November.
My most lucrative month was January and my
least lucrative month was July.
On average I made $300 per gig.
My total for the year was $7900 or about 29%
of my income.
And last but least--coming in at the biggest
share of my income for 2017 was my income
through Patreon!
This subscription service has been an absolute
godsend for me, subsidizing my work on YouTube
and allowing me the freedom to create projects
purely for the sake of creating them.
I started out the year with just under $600
of monthly income through the platform and
as of this month am earning over $800 per
month.
All told, Patreon accounts for just over $8,000
or 31% of my income for the year.
If you’ve been keeping track, that means
that my total for 2017 came to roughly $26,400
give or take.
There are a couple items yet to come in before
the end of the year that I’m including estimated
income on, so the amount may change a little
but only by a couple hundred dollars or so
at most.
So...that’s what this professional flow
artist made in 2017.
Want to dive deeper into the numbers?
I’ve got a short packet I’ve made available
on my website that includes a lot of this
data--privacy protected, of course.
If you’d like to check it out, please click
on the link in the description.
Let me know if this was at all helpful or
informative.
And if you’re also a full-time flow artist,
I’d love it if you’d share this information
yourself so we can compare notes.
It’s really easy to get embarrassed or scared
to talk about money but honestly I think having
more information out there is never a bad
thing.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you got anything out of this video, please
hit that like and subscribe button to help
my channel grow!
Special thanks to all my awesome supporters
on Patreon--you guys are the ones that make
these videos possible.
If you’re not a current backer and would
like to sign up to support the work that I
do, please go to patreon.com/drexfactorpoi.
Thanks again and peace!
