The Timeless Principles of Getting Paid for Your Art (Still Relevant in 2026)

About this episode

Ekaterina Popova discusses the enduring principles of getting paid for art, drawing from her personal experiences and insights.

So much of what we hear right now is about what is changing, what is closing, what is shifting. In this solo episode, Ekaterina Popova cuts through the noise to focus on what has remained true across every platform, every trend cycle, and every era of the art world: the core principles of getting paid for doing what you love. Kat takes us back to her teenage years, painting prom backdrops and dance team sets for a hundred dollars at a time, with no connections, no following, and a kind of blissful confidence that the work would find its people. That early experience shaped a belief system that carried her through years of building a creative business, and she traces exactly where that belief started to crack, what planted it back, and what she wishes she had known sooner. In this episode, Kat shares how her earliest art sales happened long before social media existed, why the doubt she absorbed in art school was some of the most expensive she ever entertained, what the relationship with your own work has to do with whether it ever sells, and how she hired a coach this week with nothing more than an Instagram DM and a clear sense of what she needed. This one is for the artist who…

People in this episode

Host: Ekaterina Popova

Topics covered

• art sales
• creative business
• timeless principles
• entrepreneurship
• self-confidence
• art world

Keywords

• art
• business
• entrepreneurship
• sales
• confidence
• strategy
• social media

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Create! Podcast, Instagram, Create Magazine

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