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 on how to know when your paintings are “good enough” to sell and when to start marketing your art, and tips for building your first website so you can sell your art online.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 28 >>>

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 0:24
Thank you Jim Kipping. And thank you for joining us today. My goal is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists. So let’s get right to today’s questions. Here’s a question from Janet of Queen, New Mexico. How many paintings that are good enough should I have before I start marketing my art? Well, loaded question, Janet. How do you know if it’s good enough right now, you may think it’s good enough, but somebody else may not. If you’re putting your paintings out there and they’re selling, they’re good enough for somebody. So that’s a good start. So let’s get some experience, let’s do a little show set up in a local restaurant, do some things like that to see. And anytime you do a show you want to have, you know, at least eight or 10 paintings and probably twice as many if you possibly can, I would get expert opinions. Try to get some people who know who are expert artists, gallery owners or others to give you some opinions. Are you ready? and be ready because they might not tell you you are. So you’ve just got to keep practicing, get ready if you’re not. If you want to get into a gallery, of course, you got to have a body of work and they want to see consistency across multiple paintings. You know, you don’t want to have one good painting and you certainly don’t want to take a painting that you did in a workshop with an instructor who worked on it and put that out there because that’s considered a no no. Okay? It’s it may be something you did, but if you didn’t do it entirely, or it’s not an original composition, it will get discovered. Anyway. It’s never too early to start marketing yourself. You know, and you know what i what i mean by that is you can be gathering names. You don’t necessarily have to be advertising it putting yourself out there but you can test the market to some shows and start building a list of interested people. Anytime you get anybody interested, ask for a business card or ask them to give you their email address, you’ll put them on your eventual newsletter and that way you could be building names. So that’s part of what you can do. Alright. Anyway, I think you want to have a fair number of paintings before you get rolling. Probably a dozen is a good number. You don’t want to look empty. If you’re doing a website, you want to have some red dots and sold paintings. That would be nice, too.

Eric Rhoads 2:31
Next question from Sandy in Eldorado, Arkansas, Sandy, welcome to the podcast. She says or he says I don’t know if it’s a he or she. It says I’m looking for a website. Should I go with a company that focuses on building websites for artists? should I look for a shopping cart in my artists website? Should I go with one of these sites that they advertise on TV? Well, Sandy, look, there are a lot of people out there that build websites. It’s become kind of commodity with a lot of people, but there are people out there that do websites just for artists and they offer some tools that kind of make it easier for you. Why not consider one of those? That’s what I would say, you know, it’s not always about how much money you’re going to save. It’s about you know, what’s gonna work well for you. But you have to ask yourself why you want a website. I got an email from some lady the other day and she said, You know, I, I spent some money, I got a website, I put the website up, I had it up for a year, I only had like, 30 visitors and I didn’t sell any paintings. Well, what do you expect? Really? I mean, the reality is that a website is kind of like having your name in the phone book, right? There are millions 10s of millions, probably more than 10s of millions of websites out there. How are you going to get discovered? How are they going to find out about you? What are you going to do to drive them there? So you got to ask yourself, why do you want a website you know, because maybe you could do it on a Facebook page, right? What’s your purpose, if you want to be discovered you can drive them to a lot of different places website or Facebook page or otherwise, but you Really want to ask yourself if I’m going to have a website? What’s my strategy? How am I going to drive people to my website, and that’s what you really want to be thinking about. So I don’t know, you’d probably want to start out and experiment a little bit, see what you can learn. Having a shopping cart. If you’re thinking about selling your artwork online, might be a good idea. shopping carts can be a little bit more expensive, but some of the services offer them but you know, don’t necessarily set high expectations. I know a lot of artists who are on a lot of websites and a lot of them are not selling anything on their websites, a few are, but a lot of them are not and they’re selling at other places or they’re driving people to their websites by advertising to places that have known collectors, you know, like Fine Art Connoisseur magazine or Plein Air magazine. So you might want to consider those things. You know, just get out there and try some things. There’s not necessarily always a right or wrong. There’s also platforms like Etsy and eBay, you know, might be a good way to experiment. But anyway, this may be helpful.

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.