Creative careers have a diversity of categories. If you use Michael Bungay Stanier’s distinctions, jobs fall into one following three categories:
Bad Work – “a waste of time, energy, and life”
Good Work – “familiar, useful and productive work”
Great Work – “work that inspires, stretches and provokes… the work that matters”
Other categories include artistic paths that include the fine arts, literature, music, drama and other performing arts. Further categories are for craft and designer-making professions for people who create and sell their work in various mediums such as wood, metal, glass, ceramics and other materials.
In The Creative Economy, John Howkins says is “The creative economy consists of the transactions in … creative products. Each transaction may have two complementary values, the value of the intangible, intellectual property and the value of the physical carrier or platform (if any).  In some industries, such as digital software, the intellectual property value is higher. In others, such as art, the unit cost of the physical object is higher.”
Various industries employ talented people in fields such as the broadcast media, film, marketing and advertising, design, popular music and web development. Some common talent and skill sets associated with creative careers are ingenuity, passion and the ability to endure the challenges of making a living using ones unique/individual creative talents.
As with all careers, jobs, industries, and businesses, creative careers have been impacted by the Internet and technology. The definition of an artist can refer to one’s given expertise in various fields or with the traditional reference of “creative artist” Po tae’to/ Po Tah to. Knowing how to express and translate your skills within the Internet environment becomes a viable means of financial and exposure survival. Monster, a job-search engine, marks creative careers such as graphic design, multi-media art, and animation as some higher-paying creative careers. In these fields, association with the digital media makes the career profitable.
Maureen Henderson, a writer for Forbes women, says internships, which are a good way to get your foot in the door, are not so readily available for creative careers.
Internships for creative careers are highly competitive. “Unpaid internships,” says Henderson in particular, “exclude students from poorer families who can’t afford to work for nothing for a summer or a semester, especially after they graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt If you aren’t financially able to shoulder the cost of working for free, you face a greater struggle when it comes to breaking into journalism, fashion and the publishing or music industries among others. And privilege runs downhill, because it’s often your educational background that opens the door to landing those coveted entry-level unpaid gigs.”
For many creative artists, freelancers, and entrepeneurs a second career or side job becomes a viable backup. Passion, planning, and commitment determines how well, how long, and how well you will do in most creative. But to quote Hill Harper, “A true commitment and planned investment in yourself and a thorough research to accomplish your desired goal can go a long way in negating or overcoming obstacles.”