Louise Murphy of Fredericksburg, Texas, asks, “What one marketing method would you use if you were just getting started?”

Well, I know you’re eager to get out and start marketing.

But Louise, before you do anything, before you get your work out there and start selling, you need to know where you want to go — before you go there. You don’t get in your car and start driving before you have a destination in mind. Same for this: Before you start marketing, you need to set your goal. Then you’ll build a strategy and tactics to get you to that goal.

I suggest starting small, and building out from there. When getting started, you just want to focus on a couple of things — the important first steps, so to speak. I’d suggest setting one, maybe two goals for things you’d absolutely die to achieve in the next six months.

For instance, if you haven’t sold any of your paintings before, maybe you’d like to sell your first painting and get some money for it. That’s an admirable and achievable first goal; it’s always a really good starting goal for a painter. Or maybe your goal is to find someone to sell your art for you, like an art gallery, or perhaps you’d like to find a partnership where you could display your art for sale in a local restaurant.

It’s so important that you set some basic goals before you do anything.

Secondly, you need to find three really honest people who are professionals and will tell you the truth. People who will tell you if your art is ready or if it still needs some work before you’re ready to start selling. I don’t recommend asking family or close friends; rather, I suggest that those three people could be fellow artists, art gallery owners, or other professionals who know what makes a market-ready piece of art. It’s critical to know if your work is ready for prime time, so to speak. If all three are saying it’s ready, then you probably should have been selling already. If two out of the three really honest people say it’s ready to go to market, then you should try to fix the problem identified by the person who disagrees, but you should still try to start selling while you work on it.

Once you set a goal, then you start to collect the e-mail addresses and mailing addresses of people interested in your work.

One strategy that will be important for your goal of selling is sending people to a website to view your art, so you’ll need to start building a site to show your finished work. You’ll want to get comfortable talking about your work and telling the stories behind your paintings, and maybe blogging about your work as well. These are all important things for new artists getting started.

Building a website, talking about your art, making e-mail and mailing lists of the names of people who like your work … these can all be goals for an artist who’s just starting out. And they’re all things that other successful artists did at some point in their early career.

There are lots of companies that can build a website for you — you don’t have to become too technical or build something from scratch all on your own. Work with people who work with other artists; you’ll want to be sure you’re showcasing your best work.

Once you’ve got a website and a handful of people who are interested in your work and are on that list of yours, you can start working on getting those people to visit your website, and then, hopefully, getting them to buy your artwork.

To summarize: Set goals. Keep them achievable. Make sure your artwork is good enough. Accumulate and capture a list of people who like your art. Build a website, get comfortable talking about your art, and start directing people who have an interest in your work back to your website.

I hope, Louis, that helps you understand a solid art startup.

Interested in growing your art sales and income? Read my best-selling book Make More Money Selling Your Art: Proven Techniques for Turning Your Passion Into Profit.