Is there a way to make money making "artistic" maps?

[Aval Penworth]

I've mentioned this on other threads, but I think the tourist market is a viable way to make some extra cash from maps.

[Gamerprinter]

As with anything I do, business wise, since I have to market my cartography skills now, is to be 'proactive' about it. I don't look for jobs where people are looking for my talent - I may never find anything if I do, since I don't do GIS, CAD or that kind of mapping.

I build me a website. I start contacting prospective clients RPG, board game, online/printed periodical - or tourism boards, ad agencies, department of natural resources, whoever it is I need to contact to see if I can fill a need, that might not realize they need until I tell them they do. Really, that's how I do anything. Now I do this in a friendly manner, but I am firm at what my offer is and offer quotes for specific work based on their response.

I either get the work, or I don't. If I don't try, I'll never know the work is available or not, and its often surprising who actually needs and wants the work, if only someone mentioned that you could do it at all. It takes both networking and sending Emails through those contact pages on the various websites out there, getting involved in their online communities.

Torstan (Jonathan Roberts) is very successful doing pro cartography commissions for Open Design Project and Rite Publishing, I see Sapiento agressively marketing himself on the various RPG forums out there. I've continued to do map commissions, while pursuing a direction more towards publication and game product printing/distribution. So we all pick our niche and pursue it. We don't wait for it to come to us - that will happen, but only after you let yourself be known in the industry, giving example after example.

You have to 'sell yourself', because you are afterall the cartographer and that is a unique and useful talent in the right hands. But they'll never know, unless you tell them...

GP