This is true for almost anyone, in any line of work, but it is more prominent in art. as an artist your income directly or indirectly is dependent on your fame, the more fame you have, the more valuable your work would be, and the more money you can make from them, it is simply a matter of supply and demand.
People like to buy art from famous artists, and an artist can produce a limited amount of artwork, when you become famous enough, you'll get multiple requests and you'll get to choose who to sell to, or who's commission to accept. Naturally you'll prefer those who pay more and that's only one of the ways fame can translate to fortune.
There are tons of other ways to generate money out of your fame, people do get paid for talks, teaching, writing, demonstrating, judging, consultation and etc... in their respective field, usually those who have more fame are in more demand in these situations.
When you became a professional artist, (and all it takes to become professional is getting paid to do art), you'll see several trends that positively effect the amount of money you'll make.
It really is that simple, all you have to do is manage your time and efforts and put your work up on the right outlets, everything else will automatically fall in place.
Now let's see where am I in the process
I consider myself pre-starter, I haven't put any works out on the outlets like deviantart or pixiv because I want to start strong, I want to be above average when I start producing complete artworks, I want to build my portfolio on a solid foundation of work samples that'll get at least a good enough from the ones who consider commissioning something. as why I share them on steemit, well I need a thumbnail for my post and I consider steemit community intimate enough to share with even my worse tries alongside my ramblings. plus, I'm being supported by friends ;) it is a small push but it gives me a good reason to try harder.
