PC getting paid

Well the answer really depends on what your playing. Assuming it's DnD (becouse it seems like it), we luckily have some level of rule support. 3 and 3.5 have really well defined craft rules, so if it's that edition just look up crafting. I don't know about 4e as I never played it (though not for the reasons everyone else didn't, I was at a stage where I was trying to introduce MMO players to tabletop, but couldn't afford new books. Ended up taking 3.5 and HB perk trees for them.)

5e is the more popular system at the moment, so I'll spend a bit of time going into it. The rules suggest that a character who has down time can create 5gp worth of value using a tool proficiency per day. So what does this mean for your wood carver? whittled statues are kind of like the druid focuses, so I'd value them at 1 gp a pop and if he's doing nothing but sitting down and carving all day he can make and sell 5 for 5gp. This of course hinges on the fact that he is proficiency with the relevant tool (wood carvers tools obviously). If he isn't but he still like carving statues, just have npcs point out how amateurish the carvings are, that they can do as well if not better and that they are unwilling to fork over good money for shoddy work. But what if he isn't sitting there and doing it. What if he's setting up by the fire to do some carving when he's on watch. Well watches tend to be no more then 4 hours, and a working day back then was more like 12 so at best he's making ~1.5. But it's hard to be super focused on carving after a full day of adventuring, so I'd half that time again and for good measure round down. So now we have our adventurer/woodcarver making 1 totem every 2 days for an extra income of 5 silver a day. This isn't going to break the game, but it'll still give the sense that he's doing something.

If you feel like the reward should scale over time then there is a simple solution. Don't increase the number of totems but increase their value. If I had the choice between buying a statuette made by hunter Joe at 1gp, or a statuette that was in the pocket of the Knight protector of the land as he slew a great demon at 5gp (the price of a reliquary), and I had the cash I would so by the dearer statuette. But by that stage the profit being made of these sales should have diminished in importance anyway. After all, in fiction the epic heroes tend not to need to stay in a village for time working as a blacksmith in order to fuel their adventures.

I hope this helps, if you were looking for more of a how to handle this in an rp sense let me know, I have some tips for that too, but this response is already getting a bit long, and I think you were looking for something more mechanical based on your question.