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 how to know if your website is up to par in order to effectively sell your art, and thoughts on understanding why collectors might pass on your work even when they compliment it.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 50 >

 

Submit Your Art Marketing 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.

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
Thank you Jim Kipping and in the marketing minute I try to answer your questions. I do answer them. I don’t know if I answered him well, but you can email your questions to me [email protected]. And here’s a question from Robert, in Norfolk, Virginia, who says I know it’s important to have a website. So I do have a simple one. But how do I know if it’s good enough? Well, the way you know that, Robert, it’s a great question. You can’t know if it’s good enough unless you know what its purpose is and when What the purpose is going to use and how it’s going to serve you. So you need to know how you will measure success, right? So some websites are there to get your work seen others are there to sell work. Others are there to gather names of potential customers, there’s a lot of different strategies you can take. But you want to start with your goal in mind. All right, so if I’m building a website, what do I want to do? I’ll in my particular case, I wanted to communicate information and then I’ve got to make sure that I’m gathering names and so I, I oftentimes offer a free incentive of some kind. So somebody has a reason to, to offer me their email address and they can get on my newsletters or whatever I’m offering at the time, but you want to start with a goal in mind and then determine what is success now if I have a website and I get no visitors, it’s not a success. How many visitors Do I need and want How many? How easy is it to find my stuff? How is how many names do I want how you know what kind of sales Do I need or you know what’s considered Good sales from your website, you know, if it’s costing you money, and it’s not bringing you any value that’s of no value to you really, you know, it’s kind of like imagined, in the old days, we had what we call phone books, you probably remember those some of you do. And, you know, there were, you know, three inches thick in a city like New York, probably, you know, six inches thick of phone book with thousands, 10s of thousands, millions of names in it, and addresses. And, you know, it doesn’t do you any good to be in the phone book unless somebody’s looking for you. And so you’ve got to find a strategy to make them want to look you up. There are literally probably hundreds of millions, if not billions of websites now. And so the question is, how do you get them to find you? What’s your discovery tool? How are they going to find you? What do you want them to do when they get there? What actions do you want them to take? So I can’t really answer your question about how, whether or not it’s good enough, because good enough is defined by your goals. And so you first got to start out with your goals, then.

Next question comes from Katrina Gorman in San Antonio, Texas. Katrina has sent us a whole bunch of questions. We like her a lot, because we like questions. Here’s one of them that she sent. And she says, if people tell you over and over, they love your work. But you notice these same people are buying work from another artist, what’s a good way to find out? Why, or should you not even worry about it? Well, Katrina, I think first off, people are generally good. And they mean to compliment you because they, it may not be an expression of interest, they may they may genuinely like your work, but they don’t want to own it. Or maybe they’re complimenting you a lot, because maybe they’re thinking you’ll give it to them. I mean, that could be possibility. But liking something and wanting to own it or different things. Owning art is very special, something that speaks to really only just one person, if there’s one original, it’s for one person, so sometimes it needs to find the right buyer. Now, I wouldn’t overthink this, you know, appreciate the compliments, pay attention. If the complements are over the top or come in frequently or a lot on a particular piece, because then you can kind of take it to the next level. So you can find a way to ask, you know, maybe so you don’t put them on the spot. You don’t you don’t have to say, Hey, would you like to own that? Because they might, you know, they might not know how much it would cost or be embarrassed if they can’t afford it or whatever. But you can say, you know, the old remember, I’ve got a friend who is asking for me kind of thing. You know, you could say, Do you know anybody who would love to own it, I’d like to find it a loving home. And if you happen to know somebody who would love to own it, you know, I’m trying to get, you know, certain amount of money for it. And you know, if you know, or you might say, you know, you you seem to like the slot, do you have interest in it? And if you do, tell me what you’re thinking about in terms of what you’re thinking about paying, you know, the reason to do that is because they could be thinking about $1 and you could be thinking about $100 or they could be thinking about 200 And you could be thinking about $100 and so the nice thing to do is just to say you know what, what have you got in mind? And if there’s a big gap then that’s gonna make it a little uncomfortable you can say wow, you know I was hoping to get $100 and you’re only willing to pay $5 you know please understand I need to make a living on this and so you know if you want to come up a little bit maybe I can come down a little bit but please know that you know, I’ve got to get a certain range and I’m sure you understand that this is how I make my living. So anyway, you can keep it third party by saying you know if if you know somebody who thinks it’s a fit, you know, that kind of thing or you can just be honest and say hey, you know, what are you thinking I noticed you bought some other art you seem to be interested in this but you haven’t. You haven’t expressed interest in buying it if you want to buy it that’d be cool with me we can figure that out. You know, sometimes just straight out upfront, be honest as possible is probably the best way. A lot of people play games. I don’t like to play games anyway. I’m paying attention to signals as well. important though, you know, if people if you’re in a gallery setting, and people go back and look at it a couple times, if they’re talking about it, or if they’re looking deeply, you know, look for things that they’re showing signals of interest. And then you can engage them, you know, maybe you don’t say, hey, do you want to buy it? That’s a little awkward, but you can say, Hey, does that painting remind you of anything? And maybe they’ll say, yeah, when I was a kid, there was this mountain with a river going through, you know, that kind of thing. And so you can look for ways to deepen that conversation. So they tell you that you said, Well, tell me a little bit more about that, you know, well, I really had this wonderful childhood, you know, when I visited my grandparents, and that house in the painting reminds me of my grandparents really tell me more and you know, so they’ll, they’ll deepen, and as they deepen, they will tend to deepen their commitment and interest and talk themselves into it because sometimes people just need to talk themselves into something you can’t ever talk anybody into anything. Don’t even try. It is not in your DNA. It’s not an My DNA you know, I might, if I see somebody is interested in something, I might highlight something, but I’m not, you know, I can’t twist somebody’s arm and talk them into something. I mean, you don’t want to be that person. You don’t want to be talking people into things that they don’t want.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of 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.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: 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.