In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares advice for making prints of your artwork, and how licensing works to help you make more money from your art.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 31 >>>

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What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads

In the marketing minute I try to answer your art marketing questions to give me a question or two, Tell me who you are your name and your town and email me [email protected]. Today, two questions come from the same person Brent in northern Utah. He says I paint really, really small, often five by seven or less with watercolor pencils. I also have painted a lot of digital paintings using art rage, which is a an app. Because of the nature of my original pieces. I believe the best way to monetize these would be to sell prints in this way. I could even be scaled up if I desire. So my main question for you is, what’s your best advice on selling prints? Well, Brent, it’s an interesting question. It’s one that comes up a lot. A lot of artists talk about selling prints. Selling your originals is an option of course. But In most cases, the smaller you paint, the smaller the price, you may or may not get a lot of money for smaller paintings, it’s hard to know I haven’t seen your work. But exceptional work will sell no matter what the question is always the price point. The nice thing about your medium of pencils and painting small as you can scale it up. Or if you’re painting and art rage an app, you can scale it up to almost any size print. The print market can be tricky. And prints are oftentimes a question for artists But usually, because they don’t want to devalue their originals by making prints some fear that it’s going to make the buyer feel like it’s less of a painting if there are more prints out there. But I quite frankly think it’s the opposite. I think if you have a couple of really good paintings, I wouldn’t do it with every one. They have a couple of really good paintings, you make prints of those. You’re ahead of the game. If you’re the buyer, because you have the original and of course others can have a print but it’s not the original and of course it can be signed and numbered if you want to do that. So I don’t think it hurts you. And of course, the question becomes where do you distribute and sell these prints, you do it online, you do it in a gallery. There are lots of online sites willing to carry your images and, and print on demand. And you want to vet out their quality before picking them, because you want to see if they’re going to get your colors right, they’re going to do nice paper and so on. And dig around till you find somebody to do that. Now, you can also work with a print distributor. Some of these companies sell to galleries or hotels, or even places like Target, they mass produce them. So they’re not necessarily printing them out as you play prints, but they’re mass producing, printing them. And then they pay you a per print fee or royalty of some kind. It’s not a lot of money, but it can add up if you get a lot of volume. And of course, if you’re at a place like Target, they may sell thousands or maybe 10s of thousands. So lots of these companies can also do licensing your work.

I see your second question. Here is the licensing the images, but you have no idea how that works. Well licensing is a big industry for those who don’t understand it. Let’s start by saying that if you have a brand name, let’s say it’s Coca Cola, coke will license their image. And you’ll see it on products. You know, if you walk into any gift shop, you might see nostalgic Coca Cola posters with Santa Claus. Or you might see the polar bear is a stuffed toy. They don’t make all those products, they licensed them. And people who make products go around and find people who have interesting names that they can logo put their their logos on their products. So a friend of mine does this with prints or not prints but with paintings. So he has a deal with a major licensing firm who sells his license of his images. And they represent him at the big annual licensing conference where people shop for brands for their products. In his case, his paintings go on calendars and mouse pads and coffee mugs and you name it t shirts. He gets a percentage of everything sold. It’s negotiated for him by the firm, and they keep a percentage for doing it for him. And he’s making a few extra thousand dollars a month, which is not so bad. Some years are good. Some years are not good depends on how things do you know, and art styles can be cyclical. But he’s been consistent for about 20 years, getting money every single month from paintings that he could have only sold one time and so this way he gets more money out of his paintings. So I think it’s a good thing but you want to find a professional licensing firm that’s going to be trustworthy. Do it all for you because trying to do this on your own is not a good use of your time these people know their market. Well, I hope this has been helpful. This has been the art marketing minute.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

Remember to Submit Your Question: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.