Art & Money

Revenue models for world-bending creatives

Author

Chase Spenst
April 01, 2025

It was about the time I opened the fridge and found myself staring into a psychedelic portal to another world that I thought:

“This is different. This… changes everything.”

But it wasn’t the interdimensional portal that sent a rush through my body.

It was the business model.

I’ll back up.

Meow Wolf is f*cking awesome.

If you haven’t visited, it’s incredible, you should do so. Pick whatever one is most convenient but my favorite is the original in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Built in a rundown former bowling alley and funded originally by a cold email to George R. R. Martin (yeah, THAT one), Meow Wolf is a completely immersive art and story experience. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, I went in completely unaware of what it was and that was absolutely the right way to approach it.

So all I’ll say, and all that’s relevant to this article, is that it’s somewhere between walking into a Salvador Dalí painting and an episode of Lost.

135 artists collaborated on the original story: “House of Eternal Return”. Painters, sculptors, musicians, digital artists, writers, architects, special effects engineers, and just about every other type of artist you can imagine came together to build this immersive experience.

That fridge that opens into a portal? Just one of many surprise delights you find as you wander 20,000 square feet of pure creativity and imagination.

FOR BEST RESULTS…

…consume with friends. Forward this on to one person who you talk business with and then invite them to grab coffee to catch up.

And it came about because the founders were frustrated with the lack of opportunities even in a thriving art city like Santa Fe.

Said another way, it’s hard to sell art.

So they found another way.

I know terms like monetization and business models get thrown around liberally and diluted into a tepid pool of MBA-speak pumped through creator-targeted social media.

But stay with me.

These artists applied their primary, beautiful asset, their creative minds, to the problem of monetization and came up with a new business model. The idea was a simple one as most great ideas are:

Selling paintings/sculptures/designs/etc. is hard. The time to create a piece just to sell it for a few thousand dollars is long. If you can charge more, great, but then the pool of people who can afford it goes down and you sell fewer. It’s just hard.

But lots of people can afford a $40 ticket for a full day experience (to say nothing about lunch and drinks and merch…).

So instead they sold access to an artistic experience rather than a physical product.

And the results were staggering.

Estimates are around $12-15 million per year and $150 million over about 10 years. The reported budget for their Denver location: $60 million. For the Las Vegas location: $40 million.

You don’t get a $40-60 million budget if the first location is not printing money.

These artists get to do the thing they love, they create incredible worlds, they push boundaries in new mediums… and they make significantly more money.

They just changed how they got paid.

Indie hackers did the same with software by going out on their own and building niche products they charged a subscription for. Now Saas is the standard.

Countless subject matter experts did the same when they substituted consulting engagements for online courses.

Writers created paid newsletters.

Sitting at lunch after my first visit in Santa Fe I couldn’t stop thinking about how I had thought about goods and services prior to this and what potential this held. It was one of those frame breaking moments for me.

I’ve been obsessed with creative companies and their business models ever since.

And we’re not done pioneering new monetization vehicles. There is still a lot of opportunity to unlock a completely different level to your business - whether it’s an agency, freelancing, tech, or whatever.

I recently had a conversation with a designer starting a fashion company. We discussed the option of licensing designs to other brands - and in doing so offloading all of the production, inventory, and distribution headaches - instead of manufacturing a product.

There is a lot of potential in this.

So what.

If you’re feeling stuck, I recommend considering one of the many ways to charge for art - literal art, technological art, subject matter expertise art, whatever YOUR “art” is.

So here’s every type of business and pricing model I could think of.

  • Bill hourly

  • Bill by product usage (requests run through a chat-bot or tickets sold to an exhibit)

  • Sell a product

  • Sell the designs for a product

  • Sell a course how to make the product

  • Sell a workshop teaching how to make the product

  • Sell consulting services assisting in the making of the product

  • Prepaid retainer to be filled and rolled over

  • Retainer for time allocated each month, no roll over

  • Monthly fees

  • Value or results-based pricing such as a percent of the outcome

  • Flat rate, all inclusive

  • Performance-based fee or bonuses (price goes up with performance)

  • Waterfall performance-based (rate goes down with usage)

  • Membership (unlimited access to something)

  • Subscription (steady supply of something delivered on a consistent basis)

  • Events

  • Licensing & royalties (“rent” out the use of something you own such as IP)

  • Add services to your software (consulting, implementation, etc.)

  • Add software to your services (build something custom for a fee then charge for on-going use)

  • Cost-plus pricing (mark-up project costs by a fixed percent)

  • Courses

  • Workshops

  • Sprints (sort of in between a workshop and a course)

  • Add on-boarding or set up fees

  • Offer for free with ads

  • Offer paid without ads

  • Affiliate revenue for referrals (per lead, per call, or per sale)

  • Broker relationships or connections

And I’m sure you can think of a few others from combining some of the ones here or twisting them slightly.

Get creative with it.

But here’s what you need to do at the very core:

Understand the core value being provided. When at all possible tie this back to a human physical or emotional need.

For example, there are coffee kiosks that sell convenience but charge on a per coffee basis. There are cafe’s that sell a space to sit and meet a friend and charge on a per pastry basis.

Think about your art. Think about your customer. Think about the value. Think about the best way to deliver that art and the easiest way to pay for it.

This is one of my favorite topics in the world so if this is of interest and you’d like to work with us on developing a different (or maybe just slightly enhanced) business model for your art, we’d love to hear from you.

Best,

Chase “get paid” Spenst

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