I love receiving Seth Godin’s daily updates in my inbox, and usually find myself in agreement with his “pull the rug out from under conventional thought” approach, but today I’m not so in tune with him.

Today, Seth argues that it makes sense to become a master of just one trade, a Chai Wallah as he puts it. Of course I’m a big fan of spiced tea, but I’m also a huge fan of the potential the internet gives artists to develop skills that in the past had to be relinquished to gatekeepers, trendsetters and those with skills and (often) expensive equipment and resources.

Today artists have cheap (and even free!) access to a plethora of tools and resources that mean we can choose to be publishers, PR executives, gallery owners, designers and broadcasters. There are free blogs such as Blogger and WordPress, to get out messages out there, there’s Blurb and Lulu to allow us to become publishers. There’s Youtube and Vimeo, and Blip.tv, AudioBoo and Audacity, Moo and Flickr and ImageKind. There’s even a free version of Photoshop over on Photoshop.com. The list goes on, and on and on and on.

Surely, as imaginative, artists, better placed than many to think outside the box, we would be really missing a trick if we ignored all this potential and just concentrated on one skill. Wonderful if you are a talented illustrator, but wouldn’t it be better if you could publish (and have people buy) your work without having to wait for a commission or an agent or publisher to say “yes” to your fabulous book idea? Why concentrate on painting those huge canvases and hoping a gallery own will pick them up, when you could reach out directly to your potential clients, and keep the create power (and money) in your own hands. I love the fact that I’ve learnt to draw, design and print my own work, and then find different ways to offer it to anyone interested.

Which trades would you like to be master of?