Everyone’s heard the term starving artist. I live on the west coast and can do just about everything just short of traditional art. My main title is video editor, but what I actually do is a lot of 3D work. I make advertisements for my company. I hire voice narrators, storyboard commercials, motion graphics, advanced compositing with shot footage with 3D overlayed and the list goes on, but I only get 50k a year. I‘ve been doing this type of work for a decade. I used to make motion posters for films and animated stage backgrounds for live performances and got paid even less.

I see other jobs that require my skill set that pay more and I apply but never hear back. I knew I was never going to make great money being a creative but I feel 50k is not enough for what I do.

Should I just suck it up and be happy with this or am I really getting paid too little? If not how do I stand out. I think my demo reel is pretty good, but I’m not even sure the jobs I’m applying to even look at it based on the view count.

I’m just a little lost. Some advice would be appreciated.