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 discusses NFTs and social media platforms, and answers questions about how to know if your work is ready to sell and how you can use art competitions to market your art.

Have a question about how to sell your art? Ask Eric at artmarketing.com/questions.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 112 >

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:
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, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads
In the art marketing minute, my goal is to answer your marketing questions. And almost all the questions we ever asked come from you once in a while. We don’t have one and we have to make one up but very rarely. But it has happened. So I’m just being honest here. You can send your questions to me, [email protected] or you can email or you can actually there’s a way you can go to artmarketing.com/questions And you can actually record a video. I don’t think anybody’s ever done that. But you could be the first and we’d like that. My producer Amandine is going to read the questions and then I’m going to answer.

Amandine
Eric the first question is from Marla Brenner from Madison, Wisconsin. What is an NFT? How might it help the future of art marketing? How might hurt have been approached on mine from a buyer wanting to purchase an NFT of my work? Does it make sense that he may be the future of sales of original traditionally produced art?

Eric Rhoads
Well, so the NFT thing is really interesting phenomena. We did an article on NF Ts and in one of my publications, and one of my editors had written that he thought it was a fad. And I quickly wrote him back and I said, I’m gonna change that line, because this is not a fad, this is something that’s going to last and it’s it’s gaining steam, and it’s something we need to embrace and, and, and, and truly it is really the case. Nf ts a lot of confusion about it to a lot of people, and especially people who are not what I call digital natives. If you’re a digital native, you’re someone who grew up everything was digital, everything was you know, on your phone on your music was digital, people like me are not digital natives. You know, we grew up with books and records and, and those kinds of things. And so when you’re a digital native NFT makes a whole lot more sense than when you’re not a digital native NF T stands for a non fungible token. And essentially, in the world of what’s called blockchain, which is a it’s the same technology that is used for for cryptocurrency and NFT really is kind of a child of cryptocurrency, it means that no one can steal it, at that it has to be replicated, it’s replicated every like nine seconds across 100 million different computers, and there’s just no way anybody can steal it in theory. And so, it is morphing into a lot of things it started out as a digital, only digital, you know, the the original NFT images were something that somebody had created digitally. And when you get an NFT on that digital image, even though it may have been reproduced, you know, millions of times you have the NFT means you have the original the only one it cannot be it may be duplicated. But you have proof that it’s the only one you have NFT is essentially almost like a What could I say it’s almost like a What’s the term I’m looking for, you know, a title on a house, it’s kind of like if you had a title on a on an image. And that title can never be stolen from you, but it can be sold. And what’s wonderful about NFT, that is not true. Typically with paintings is in the NFT world, when you set up your first NFT, you can set it up so that you always get a percentage of the sale, no matter what and you get to set the percentage. Of course, the higher up, you set it, it might discourage other people. And anyone who has owned the NFT in the past can also set to get a percentage, but you got to be conservative about that. Because you know, at some point somebody wants to make money on it too. And they can’t because everybody else owns it. But what’s nice about it is if you created NFT, and you say okay, for ever, anytime this NF T is going to be sold, I’m going to make, let’s say 5% on it. And so, oftentimes NF Ts, if they’re making money, if they’re good, NF Ts, they’re sold 2030 4050 100 times and sometimes in NFT can start out for under a couple $100 and go to you know, we’ve seen stories of, of, you know, millions of dollars. Those are rare. It’s, you know, there are lots of NF T’s out there that have never sold that have never been successful. But the way to do it is basically you go to what’s called an NF T exchange. Now, you can Google NF T exchanges, there’s tons of them, there’s open C there’s xe there’s crypto punks, there’s referable super rare, I like wearable, for some reason, I don’t know why. But you’ve got to look and see if you see something that fits what you do, because the audiences tend to buy you know, like there’s a there’s an NF T site that’s kind of devoted to sports related things. So you’re probably not a place for you. And I’m sure there’s NFT exchanges devoted to you know, more traditional art and more modern art, etc. So you just have to google them. Basically, you go in there, you pay a small fee, I don’t know what it is 1020 bucks, and you create your NFT and you put all your registry information, and you upload the image of that, and then it goes into the exchange and if you’re lucky, it will sell and if you’re really good at marketing, you’ll figure out how to promote it to help it sell. Giving people a link to where They can find it. So I think it’s very exciting. I haven’t done a lot with it personally. But I do think it’s something that I will do a lot with when I just find the time. And it’s not likely to be going away, you know, there’s a NFT has been wounded a little bit, because at the current time of this broadcast, there has been, you know, the Bitcoin thing is, has had a lot of problems, there’s been some fraud, and so on. And so a lot of people had a Bitcoin and a lot of the crypto are going down. But that doesn’t mean it goes down forever. I don’t give advice here, you have to figure that stuff out on your own. But I suspect that all of those things will continue and continue to be strong, because they’re really appealing to a digital generation. And now you have a digital generation that has money. So they will buy NF T’s. And so the you know, the big thing is how do you tie an NF T with a traditional painting. And you know, you can do an image of that traditional painting nfts can be more than an intimate, you know, that can be, you know, a video or it could be a process of creating the painting kind of a thing. But ultimately, it’s the NFT that’s going to sell that you can design things were in theory so that the painting, and the NFT have to sell together. But really, the painting is not necessarily in the exchange. I may have that wrong, but I don’t see how that’s done. But maybe it can be done. We’ll have to look into that. Anyway, I hope that helps. I probably confused everybody. I’m a little confused about some of myself. Next question, Amandine.

Amandine
The next question is from Lorenzo Chavez from Parker, Colorado. What is the most effective social media platform for art marketing?

Eric Rhoads
And sales? Is the question. Okay, so, Lorenzo, that question and I don’t mean to insult you, but I’m gonna. Alright. Alright. So that question is like saying, What’s the most effective magazine to advertise in? That’s broad, or what’s the most effective TV network or to watch or, you know, that’s broad social media is broad, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, tik, Tok, Snapchat, you know, everything, you know, there are broad audiences. And most of these now, you know, they typically they start out as, as mediums for for younger people. You know, Facebook started out as something for younger people, once, once my generation started coming on, they’re like, Sia, bye, bye. We don’t want to be a part of you. And then they moved over to do other things, they moved over to Instagram. And then we all went to Instagram, and they’re like, we’re leaving, we’re going to Snapchat, you know, so, and Tik Tok, and so on. So what happens is you get these bubbles. And then when the, the older generations come on, the kids end up going somewhere else. But you know, they’re all very broad. And each of them has its attributes, each of them can be very effective for you in different ways. So it’s not so much about which one is a better advertising medium. They’re all really, really great advertising mediums. It’s more about how are you going to use them? And what is what is the strategy. So what I tell people is a social media is not an advertising solution. I know that sounds weird. And by the way, I spend, I can’t even say the amount of money but I will tell you that it’s a very large number, very large. I spent a lot of money in social media, but and I’ve wasted a lot of money on social media. But I also have learned what works. But you know what, I had to go to experts, I had to find people who were I have had several different ad agencies, some of which I still employ. And these people who spend their lives and it really know what works and what doesn’t work. And the the methodology and the trends change every single week, because each one of these social media changes something there’s something new, you know, when Apple changed their technology so that you couldn’t be tracked and you couldn’t retarget people that just killed a lot of social media advertising. So you have to be constantly evolving and trying to learn what it is. But let’s back up. You know, the the question may be how do I make money with social media? But really, the question is, how do I make money advertising? And maybe the question back that up further is just how do I make money as an artist? And so that’s the place to start. It’s not necessarily about medium. It’s, you know, you could say, well, how do I make money? You in Fine Art connoisseur magazine or plein air magazine, that’s not the place to start, the place to start is what do I want to accomplish? What are my goals? What is my budget? What percentage of my sales Am I willing to give up now in, in most businesses, you’re a business, if you’re selling artwork, and most businesses, depending on the nature of the business, there is an allocation towards marketing. So in the makeup business, because it’s such a high margin business, you know, they it’s clay, right, colored clay. And so basically, you know, the cost to make, you know, some makeup, for some expensive company, really, the biggest cost is the jar, right? The clay that’s in the glob that’s inside isn’t very expensive. So they can spend tons of money branding, and hiring movie stars and doing all this stuff, to drive interest in their glob, and they’re still going to make a lot of money on it, their margins, as we say, are going to be really high. But if you are, you know, if you’re in a business where you only make 1%, on what you’re selling, you can’t spend as much advertising. So you have to ask yourself, all right, assuming I let’s say it’s paintings, and I’ve just written an article about this, it’s gonna get posted somewhere soon. I think it’s going to be posted on the oil painters of America newsletter in December. But it’s kind of about, you know, how you budget this stuff. But basically, the way to start is, what are your goals? What what is my strategy, you know, once I knew my goals, if let’s say I made a goal that I’m going to make $100,000 This year, and I have to, you know, have that $100 $100,000 I, if I meet that goal, I’m going to make X amount of profit, meaning after all my expenses, I’m going to put money in the bank after my taxes and put money in the bank. And based on that, how much of that are you willing to give up? To get more business? Because really, that’s what advertising is, right? It’s how much am I willing to give up? And so most companies have a range between 5% and 20, or 25%, for marketing, and some some even higher than that, depending again, like on the margins, so you want to be thinking about how much am I willing to give up? And here’s a clue, the person this is going to see seem really obtuse. The person who spends the most money, the person who outspends their competitors, wins. And and so the way I look at things is I say, How much money am I willing to spend to get a sale? And what is the lifetime value of the person who buys. So if let’s say, you come and buy something from me one time for 10 bucks. And then over the course of the next three years, you spend another 60 bucks, total of 70 bucks, your lifetime value is 70 bucks, right? So I then say, Okay, what am I willing to spend to get your 70 bucks, and I might say, Well, I’m willing to spend 20% was $14. So I’ll spend $14 on ads to attract you. And I lose money on the first sale, but that’s okay, because you’re likely to make a second purchase, and then I’ll break even on the second one, and then maybe make some money on you in the future. That’s kind of how it’s done. That’s how you think about it. So you’re asked yourself, based on my current track record, how many paintings do I sell a year? And let’s say you sold 10? At 1000 bucks. That’s easy math, that’s 10,000 bucks. How much are you willing to spend of that? 10,000 bucks to get that 10,000 bucks? Is it 1000? Is it 500? Is it 2000? Is it 5000? Because the more you spend, the more people you attract, the more people you bring in, the more you have the ability to sell, but it all boils down to budget, your goals and then developing a strategy. And the strategy then is okay, how am I you know, what am I going to sell? How am I going to present myself what’s my messaging going to be? And then tactic is the very last thing you do and social media is a tactic. Advertising is a tactic whether you’re advertising and fine art connoisseur or plein air somewhere else. Whether you’re doing social media ads, it’s a tactic. You need to know all that stuff and do your homework first. The last thing you want to do Facebook and Instagram will pop up these things that say do you want to boost this you had? You had 2300 People watch this. Do you want to boost it? Click here spend 10 bucks, and they’re going to put it out in front of a bunch of other people. That’s not effective. Typically, it’s not and by the way, it’s very expensive to do it that way doesn’t seem like much, but there are much more effective ways to do it. And that’s about getting into and knowing and understanding how social media works. It’s a very effective medium when you do it right. But anything is effective when you do it. Right. And in this world, not everything is about social media, you think it is because you spend all your time there. But not everybody does. And not everybody’s going to see you. And if you’re focusing, you’re saying, Well, I have, you know, 1000 followers, I have 10,000 followers, or I have 100,000 followers. You know, are those followers people who are going to buy your artwork? And the answer is, some are, some are not. And so, you know, or are those 1000 followers, people are going to go to my workshops, some are, some are not. So what you really want to do is focus on who am I building my audience? What is my purpose? Most of us have all of our friends, you know, I have a lot of artists friends, but are those people who are buying paintings? While some artists are buying paintings? There’s no question about that a lot of them are, but you have to ask yourself what is going to work effectively? Anyway, that’s today’s 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 artist 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.

> Visit EricRhoads.com (Publisher of ArtMarketing.com) to learn about opportunities for artists and art collectors, including:

  • Art retreats
  • International art trips
  • Art conventions
  • Art workshops (in person and online)
  • And more!