The word “amateur” has gotten a bad meaning over the years. Amateur is the opposite of professional. It has come to mean someone is sloppy, or someone who doesn’t care about what they are doing. But really the unprofessional part is more literal – you are doing something that is not your profession. You are not paid to do this for a living. This largely comes from the sports world. A professional athlete gets paid to play the sport. An amateur does not.
We’ve conflated this meaning of professional with another meaning of the word – to take pains to do something carefully and with good quality. Thus, we think of an amateur as someone who does shoddy work because they are inexperienced.
If you look back at the etymology of the word, amateur comes from the Italian “amatore”, from Latin “amator”, lover, from “amare”, to love.
So an amateur is someone doing something they love, without getting paid for it. This seems more like something we should praise people for, rather than using the word as an insult.
Of course, in this day and age, it’s far easier to move into a position where you can start getting paid for doing what you love. If you make stuff, you don’t have to do a long apprenticeship and open up a brick and mortar shop somewhere. You can just sell it on Etsy or wherever, or set up your own site with a shopping cart. The lines have blurred, but still useful to keep these definitions in mind.