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, publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares advice on where to begin when it comes to marketing, and how to change your limited perception of what buyers are willing to pay for a piece of art.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 51 >

Art Marketing Minute Podcast

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
In the marketing minute I answer your marketing questions you can email me anytime, Eric@artmarketingcom. Here’s a question from Jacob in Cincinnati who says Where do I begin when it comes to marketing, social media, advertising, having a website? Well, Jacob, I get this question a lot. It’s a very normal question. And it’s an important question because nobody knows where to begin. It’s like what do I do? I’ve got to start selling my work. I think the most important thing is to ask yourself what you want to accomplish, set some goals and try to figure out how you’re going to accomplish those goals. Now you don’t have to set giant goals yet. Just set some goals. You know, what’s the number one thing you want to accomplish? You want to sell paintings. You want to build a brand you want to do Something else get names for your website so that you can email people your newsletter, try to figure out what it is you’re looking for. Once you set those goals, then you’ll have an idea what you’re going for. Because you cannot do any marketing, until you really understand what you’re marketing to accomplish. But if you have a framework, let’s say you know that your number one goal is branding, you’ve got to build your name, while you’re going to think differently about branding than you are about how to capture names for your website, so you can send them emails, or how to how to sell specific paintings. It’s all different. So the very beginning part of everything is set some goals figure out your strategy, what is it I want to accomplish? How am I going to accomplish it is more after the strategy because that’s tactic. But strategy first is what do I want to accomplish? Now it’s easy to say, Well, I want to accomplish everything and I get that But the reality is you can’t accomplish everything all at once. You’ve got to start somewhere. And I think that what you’ve got to do is figure out what’s the most important thing for you to accomplish. It’s I can’t answer that for you because it’s different for everybody, but start there. Good question. Thank you.

The next question comes from Beatrice in Sedalia, Sedalia, I believe Missouri. Beatrice says I feel like I have a limited perception about what buyers are willing to pay. Can you speak to this in regards to pricing? Well, the best way to understand this, Beatrice is to understand that there are people who have more money than I have or more money than you have. And we tend to base our pricing based on what we would be willing to pay or what we could afford. But what if somebody has 100 times more money, or 1000 times more money or 10,000 times more money. Suddenly, those Things change. And so what you want to do is ask yourself, first off, what do I need for this painting? What What is my dream price for this? You may not get there in the beginning, but you want to start and ask yourself, where do I want to be and then you want to craft a plan on how to get there. Now, galleries will tell you that they don’t want you to start out too high because they want to build a collector base. Get those people to keep investing in you more and more over time. If you’re selling direct online, it depends on the environment you’re selling in. If you’re selling in a high end online gallery, for instance, that sells big expensive paintings and you’re really really low priced, it actually might hurt you instead of helping you versus if you’re the most expensive thing and a low end, you know, kind of a crummy online gallery or environment then it might hurt you. So again, it comes down to understanding your strategy. I realized a long time ago that only A lot of people had a lot more money than me and I would limit my thinking by that I would say, Okay, well, I’m only making $40,000 a year, how can I possibly sell something that’s gonna somebody’s gonna pay $50,000 for that’s more than I make in a year. And yet there are people out there who would look at a painting and say, Well, what do you mean? It’s it’s $2,000 It can’t be any good if it’s $2,000 it but if it were $20,000 I might consider it and it’s hard to believe that people think that way because you know, everybody, including wealthy people want a bargain. But why does somebody who’s wealthy buy a Mercedes instead of buying a Kia? Well, Kia is a great car. It’s a good looking car, but it doesn’t have the brand that Mercedes has right and why is it somebody will buy a Rolls Royce instead of a Mercedes? Well, the people who buy Rolls Royce probably look at Mercedes as a low end brand or a lower end brand. Why is it some people will buy a Ferrari for a million dollars instead of a Rolls Royce for 250 or $300,000. And again, it kind of goes back to their stature in life. So a lot of that depends on who you’re talking to where you’re talking to them what your environment is, all those things matter. So you need to understand that. So start by asking yourself, where am I selling it? If I’m selling it on my own website, that’s a little bit of a problem because you have to establish some relevance to the buyers and you don’t even know who’s visiting the probably so you want to try and figure out who’s visiting where you want to be. I look for ways to put myself in front of fluent people. You know, my magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur has over 300 billionaires that read it, and lots of upper one percenters very affluent people. And so I know that if I put something expensive in front of those people, they’re not going to blink twice. I mean, yeah. Maybe if it’s too expensive, but what’s too expensive, you have to a billionaire. Now, not every person is going to buy that painting. They have to look at it and say, This lives up to my perception of quality. But you may be telling yourself stories about I’m not good enough yet, and maybe you’re not, but you might be good enough. And if you are good enough, somebody looks at that and says, Well, this person’s got, you know, a $5,000 painting, that’s no problem for me. And you might be thinking I’d never pay $5000 for a painting, I could only pay $200 for a painting. Well, I get that. And that’s part of where we all have to kind of get our mindset in the place. I have a saying that I say in my book, Make More Money Selling Your Art and that is always stand in the river where the money is flowing. We tend to hang out with people that we hang out with. If we don’t have a lot of money, we tend to hang out with people who don’t have a lot of money. People who have a lot of money tend to hang out with people who have a lot more money. And so you want to make sure that you’re standing in the river where the money is flowing. Anyway, I hope this helps.

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.