Hey everyone,
I wanted to start a serious discussion about the barrier to entry for starting a digital career or business from scratch today. Whether you are trying to be a video animator, a graphic designer, a content creator, or even just trying to handle the marketing for a new small business, it feels like the barrier isn’t “skill” anymore—it’s money.
I am a beginner with a limited budget (under 20 euros/month), and I’ve noticed a frustrating pattern across the entire industry, not just in photo editing:
- The “Paywall” on Basic Creativity It seems like every single tool required to launch a project is fragmented and expensive.
- Want to do basic graphic design or remove backgrounds? You hit a daily export limit unless you pay.
- Want to create simple video animations or motion graphics? The good templates or “smart” rendering features are locked behind a Pro tier.
- Need help with copywriting, SEO, or brainstorming marketing ideas? The platforms that help speed this up require credits or monthly subs.
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The Fragmentation Trap If you try to do everything yourself (the “solopreneur” route), you theoretically need a “tech stack” of 4-5 different subscriptions. One for video, one for design, one for market research/analytics. Even if you have the vision and the time to learn, the tools fight you. I recently ended up paying for a full year of a simple photo editor just to get access to basic cutting and glitch effects because the free limit was 3 files a day.
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The Impulse Buy Model Many of these platforms lure you in, but they don’t scale. You buy a subscription thinking it solves your problem, only to realize it doesn’t understand your specific vision, and you’ve wasted money on a tool that limits your creativity rather than helping it.
So, for those of you who started with zero budget:
-> Is it still possible to be a “Jack of all trades” creator without spending hundreds a month on software? -> Are there any robust “All-in-One” tools that cover video, design, and marketing basics without aggressive limits? -> How do you manage the costs when you are just starting out and not making any money yet?
Would love to hear your thoughts on navigating this expensive landscape.
Before monthly subscriptions there were yearly ones of several thousands of dollars, and before that it was a huge lump sum in the tens of thousands for most software with one off costs which in some cases included purchasing proprietary hardware to actually use the software. Subscriptions and start up entry costs have always been bad.
The legal way is to be affiliated with an educational institution as they take on those costs and you can use the software they purchase. Or in some cases you get access to educational licenses to learn a software that you can then credit to your portfolio and CV so you can be employable.
Though these days free open source and piracy are easier than ever, so it’s more about finding a workflow with a set of tools that you can do what you need to do, to create what only you can create which in the end is what will set you out from the rest.
It’s rare these days that someone is going to ask for files in a proprietary format, so it’s actually easier to produce a result that someone is able to consume, technically speaking.
Add darktable to the list for raw photo editing. Blender for 3d modeling/animation, hell it even has a video editor now.
If Davinci Resolve seems complicated then Kden Live is another open source alternative.
It’s definitely possible to get started in almost all major creative endeavors using almost exclusively foss. It will require a little more effort in some cases but a lot of these tools also have good free plugins. I typically recommend people start there until they find a propietary software that is a must for their creative/marketing niche.
For me that was a DAW. I worked with what I could for 5 years before I finaly “splurged” on Ableton Live which luckily is NOT subscription based.
I was going to chime in with something similar. It used to not be free to be creative before (unless you pirated). It was actually more expensive. You had to work full time in person at a studio, or be a student, to have access to creative software. I think the idea of freemium has ruined the expectations of people a bit, as people expect things to be for free.
That being said, I don’t think there’s been a cheaper time to be a digital creative, because of all the open source and free options people have now. Will you be able to keep making money from for the long run? Probably not, but it can remain a hobby.