Cartographer's Toolkit

Is anyone making serious money with mapmaking? For most, map-making is an art to be studied for your own personal self-interest and to make sure you can adequately communicate the results of your hard-to-understand geo-analysis methods. Making money solely off the map product and nothing else is doable but probably won’t make you a millionaire.

That’s not to be down on the subject. The person selling unique and extremely high-quality map products might make a pretty good living (e.g., typography maps) at it, especially if they sell them without a middle-man. The point is, map-making in itself is not an easy money maker. To make good money at it you need to have something very unique to offer, a way to market it, and a customer base who has money to spend.

Something along those lines might be to consult on historical map verification and content for the would-be investor. This isn’t too far-fetched of an example. Indeed, some are saying that historic maps are the new long-term investment vehicle, superseding other forms of art which have perhaps reached their price peaks.

Without those three big things: a unique map product, a marketing vehicle, and a moneyed customer base, your expertise can be more profitably put to use doing analysis and data manipulation with cartography being a good way to enhance your products as opposed to being your only product.