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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 135: Scams and Pricing Your Art

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

How can artists manage social media junk queries versus actual buyers? And how should you price your framed oil paintings? Eric Rhoads answers in this week’s Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

Get your copy of Eric’s #1 Amazon Best Seller, “Make More Money Selling Your Art: Proven Techniques for Turning Your Passion Into Profit” here.

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode #135 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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, it is sometimes 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:
You can send your questions to me [email protected]. And by the way, that’s a great resource artmarketing.com has lots of great articles for free. Okay, so the first question comes from Nancy Tyler in Dallas, Texas. I love going out to paint plein air and sell my work as a means to finance my trips and supplies. Many sales come through Instagram and Facebook from people that I’ve made connection with. Through my travels at outdoor events and finding the painting in their neighborhood. A question is how do I continue to engage these wonderful collectors on social media while discouraging the many many offers from those wanting to offer me ridiculous sums for my work as NFTs, cryptocurrency, bla bla bla bla bla. And it has become exhausting, explaining that I don’t deal in digital file sales and crypto and deleting their posts. Well, Nancy, it’s, it’s funny because it’s comes on the heels of my colleague Ali sent me a note that I had been somebody had hacked my account, and was pretending to be me and telling people that they had won prizes. And if they clicked on this link, they would collect their prizes. And then of course, it was some other kind of a scam. And I said, that’s the price of popularity. I mean, that’s the price of success, I suppose. And that is that you can’t avoid that stuff. If you’re on social media, and you’re getting some followers and people see that you’re eventually going to get hacked, and you’re gonna just have to deal with that stuff. As far as NFT’s go. The whole NFT thing is kind of, I don’t, from my perspective, kind of over maybe it’s not but, there’s a lot of artists are hearing from people saying, oh, I want to do NFT’s of your work, and then, they end up getting scammed, or I don’t think there’s very many people out there legitimately reaching out to artists and saying, I want to do NFT’s of your work. But quite frankly, I mean, you can do LFTs generate them with with AI now and come up with some pretty cool things and who needs who needs to do that. So, the people who’s spent millions or hundreds of million dollars on NFT’s most of them are burned pretty badly. Now most of them are you know, it’s not recovered. That could change. I don’t want to be a Luddite and say never, never say never. But right now, that kind of stuff is happening and, the whole idea of crypto. I love crypto. I think it’s really cool. But, it’s really easy to get scammed through people you there are legitimate places to go if you want to do nfts Do NFT marketplaces, if you want to do crypto do it yourself, do crypto marketplaces, but steady, steady. Be careful who you take advice from. I personally have been scammed. And I don’t want that to happen to you. But I do want to bring something up that you said I just want to you know, you said you love to go out painting and plein air and use it as a means of financing your trips and supplies. I think that’s that’s wonderful. But, you can go further than that if you want. And I think it’s nice that you look at it and say okay, this is a way to finance my trips and supplies but maybe, maybe you can do more with it. You can make more of a living with it that depends on you and what you want to do. But you also mentioned something else and that is let’s see here that that. Oh, let’s edit that out. So I want to touch on a couple other things you said your plein air painting and you’re selling via Facebook and Instagram from people you made a connection with when you were out plein air painting at events or otherwise, it’s worth pointing out because the sales that you’re getting from Facebook and Instagram may have more to do with the fact that you were out there they worked, saw your work in person, they met you in person you connected with them, they followed you, that may have more to do with it than just putting yourself out there on social media and hoping that somebody’s gonna spend money, it happens, it’s happened to me, it doesn’t happen a lot, it happens to some of my friends frequently, some of them not frequently, I think it depends on how good you are at working social media. But, there’s a lot of phony buyers out there, too, every single week, not a week goes by where I don’t get, hey, I love your artwork. And usually, it’s coming from social media, I love your artwork. And I’d like to, we’ve got a special anniversary coming up, it’s my wife’s birthday or something. And then they say they want to buy your painting, and then they cut a deal to buy your paintings and they send you a check, and you send them the painting, and then they overpay you on the cheque. And then you they say well just Venmo me the difference, I must have misunderstood, then you Venmo the money, they’ve got your painting, and then the cheque doesn’t clear. And this is a big scam. This is going on, every week, every week you get it. So it’s kind of like the Nigerian prince, it’s same kind of a thing. So be careful out there. But there are fundamentals in marketing that, no matter what the the hot thing of the moment is, these fundamentals really matter. We’re attracted to shiny objects, we assume because we have a few 1000 followers, or maybe even more than that, that everybody sees every post. And the reality is, it’s not true 2% to 3% of your followers ever see your posts ever? And only if you can increase your engagement levels? Do they start seeing a more if if Facebook or Instagram, same company, see you increasing the engagement levels? How many people comment how many things you comment back, that type of things, how many people share, then those engagement levels drive up, then you might go from 3% to 4%. And, if there are lots of things, lots of comments, lots of engagement, they might go to 5%, sometimes they go higher, but usually, we get a mistaken belief that we have a lot of followers and those people see everything we do, that’s just not true. It they’re people who have millions of followers, they have great results, because a small percentage of their people see every post or if they’re super, super popular, and it’s good for the platform than Instagram or Facebook will push them out more. But, when you have big numbers, you get small percentages, it still makes a big difference. When you have small numbers and you get small percentages, people not seeing things. So be careful about that, social media changes every three months, they’re always updating the algorithms, things always are changing. And most of us don’t have time to keep up on that. So there are experts out there that help you. But there are also experts out there that are willing to scam you. So be really careful about that. You can sell on social media, people do it. And don’t, don’t put it into things you can’t control. Put it into things you can control. There are things that are tried and true that have tribes of followers that are very specific to tribes of people who buy paintings, like the pages of, of my art magazines, the people there buy paintings, so you would kind of know that the likelihood of selling a painting is going to increase by being there. Whereas, you’re being random, just because you have a lot of followers doesn’t mean they’re people buy paintings. They might be other artists they might be who knows, there are a lot of people who, who, who follow for no reason. So they might like your artwork, but they’re never gonna buy anything. So keep that in mind.

Okay, the next question comes from Sally Dixon in Maine. I’m an impressionist plein air artists with 30 years experience. I have an art show coming up in November. How do I price my framed oil paintings? I have a website to backup my work. I’ve been in the Portland Art Gallery in Maine. I really want homes for these ocean scapes and landscapes and floral paintings. It’s a local art show at our library. So I want to price them reasonably well. I’m not sure what the question is. But let’s just talk about a couple of things. First off, let’s Congrats. Congrats on getting into an art show. That’s big deal. Thank you for pointing that out. How do I use set? How do I price my framed paintings? Does that mean that you also we’re gonna put paintings in the show that are not framed. I want to talk about frames. First off, the only things I believe, there are no rules. But the only thing I believe that you should be selling are framed paintings. Or if you have something unframed, and that might be matted prints, a lot of people sell matted prints at art shows and things like that. And you should be able to make a 600% markup, that’s the average automatic print, the cost of printing, unframed, you can make some good money on that, and to have a low price point, you might have $7 in it and sell it for $50, or something like that. So I want you to think of frames as a way to increase your profitability, and a way to increase the status of the painting, which increases your profitability a friend of mine recently sold. Recently, he told me he spent $7,000 to frame a painting, why would do not just put a $40 frame on it? Well, because he’s a high level artist he’s selling at a high level show is selling to people who have big money and big homes, and they want the best. And so you put a, you put a good frame on, it matters. I have a friend that owns a gallery, he had a painting in the gallery as a $2,000 painting, he had a frame on it didn’t sell for years. So he decided to send it back to the artist. And then he thought, now I’ll try a new frame. So he spent $4,000 on a single frame, put it back in the gallery, he said, Well, if I’m going to have a $4,000 frame, I need to raise the price. But he thought, well, it’s a beautiful frame, it looks completely different now. So stead of selling for $2,000, you put a $14,000 price tag on it 10,000 For the painting 4000 to get paid back for the frame sold first week, frames make a difference. I think that anything unframed devalues your work, if you have unframed paintings and you’re selling them cheap, you have frame paintings, you’re selling them for more money, it’s going to devalue your painting. So even if you’re saying these are my studies, these are not my best work. Don’t, don’t do that. So don’t stack them up and put them in a pile, don’t set a bunch of stuff on the ground, just treat them like they are paintings that deserve to be purchased. If they’re going to be in the show, put your best work out there and put, if you have to stack with more, or paintings, then frame them up and hang them up when you need to replace the others that are sold that have red dots on them. You also mentioned you want to price your work reasonably what does that mean? What is reasonable? Is, is reasonable. What’s reasonable to you? is reasonable. What’s reasonable to Bill Gates or Elon Musk? Is it you know, a lot of people say well, I want to price my work so that the average Joe who’s like me can afford it. But what about getting properly compensated for your time and your education and the amount of time you’ve spent learning paint learning painting? What about getting what if? What if this idea of pricing your paintings reasonably is more about your insecurity, that you can’t get a good price than it is about getting a good price? What if it’s about something completely different? You know, I hear this a lot people say I want a reasonably priced so just anybody can afford my work. But then they’re saying, Well, I would like to be able to go to the plein air convention or something, I can’t afford it. Well price your work higher, so you can afford it. And this is the big problem. Most artists I know underpriced their work. Most artists I know could double and or triple their work price and get it and probably not have any more price resistance. But most of them are like well, I don’t know, I think I could only afford this. So I want to make it affordable for everybody yet somebody could walk into your gallery and spend $40,000 on a painting, or 140,000 or 400,000. So just keep that psychology in mind that you might want to be thinking about why is it that you want to price things the way you are? Does somebody who’s going to a local library have no money? Yes, but there’s also people who go to a library local library who live in a in a $10 million house. So keep it in mind. Just try to think through what is being reasonable mean. Now, I want to meet my market. I want to give good value, but I also know that there are people who want things that are the best. There’s 10% Of all people who want the best. And so you might want to have something that those people want and price signals value. It’s documented, it’s tested. If you walk into an art gallery, and there’s $150,000 painting, next to an equally good painting, that’s $10,000. The $150,000 painting is the better painting and someone will buy that before they’ll buy the $10,000 painting could be an almost identical painting, but there’s something wrong with it, because this one’s 10. That one is 150,000. So just keep that in mind. All right. Anyway, that is the art marketing minute. Remember, pricing is emotional. So keep that in mind.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2024-02-05T13:46:15-05:00February 9th, 2024|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

How to Sell More Art in 2024

Planning your art goals may not be very exciting, but it’s more exciting when you plan to have more money at the end of the year — so start now.

Here are a few things to think about right now:

1. Write down all your goals for 2024.

Now put them in order, from most important to least important. Pay special attention to the top three.

Chances are that one goal will stand out as about 80% more important than any other goal. (Remember, goals are not a “to-do list.”) Pick your number one goal. If you could focus on achieving only one goal, this would be the one.

2. Thinking about that goal, ask yourself…

Is it measurable?

For instance, if your goal is “make more money,” decide how much more money. Be exact. It’s hard to know how to shoot for a target if you can’t see the target.

Is it obtainable?

If you’re making $50,000 and you set a goal to make $1 million, that is probably unobtainable this year. (But it might make a great 5-year goal.) What IS obtainable in 2024? Is 10% more money obtainable? 20%? 50%? 100%?

When you ask yourself about each figure, is there something in your gut saying, “That’s not possible”? That’s where your limiting behavior will kick in, and it will sabotage you every time. Consider the number you believe you can achieve, and shoot for that.

But before you give up on a bigger number, try breaking it down into weeks. I like to use 50 weeks. So if your goal is to go from $50,000 to $100,000 … divide $100,000 by 50 weeks. That’s $2,000 a week. You’re already making $1,000 a week. So, does adding an extra $1,000 a week seem doable?

The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Is there a WHY behind your goal?

Goals are rarely met unless you know why they are important to you. Whether your goal is to double your income because you need to do that to buy a new house and make the payments, or if you simply need more to survive, then you’ll work for it. But if there is no “why,” chances are you won’t do the work.

3. Manifesting and Planning

Manifesting means envisioning yourself at your goal. Don’t say “I’m gonna make $100,000 a year,” say, “I make $100,000 a year.” Your mind has to believe it, and if you repeat it enough, your mind will find a way to make it happen.

Manifesting without action isn’t enough. You need to build a plan. A plan makes it believable. What can I do to add an extra $1,000 each week? Or an extra $200 each weekday? Come up with 20 things, and pick the best ones.

Build the steps of your plan into your calendar. You need to have them in there to remind you to do them. Don’t ignore them. Block out time to work on the actions that will help you hit your goals.

Don’t let a week go by without doing the extra steps toward your goal.

Hold yourself accountable for $2,000 every single week. Don’t stop working till you hit that goal.

Read your full list of art goals once a week. Most people don’t keep reading them, and as a result, they don’t obtain them.

Goal-setting tends to get overcomplicated. The billionaires I know focus on only three goals at a time, with one big one. They have a relentless focus on number one until they achieve it.

I believe any artist can double their income each year. I outline some of these things in my book.

Don’t overcomplicate goal-setting.

In summary…

  1. Pick one big thing that, if you accomplish it, will change your life.
  2. Break that one thing down into weekly goals.
  3. Meet those art goals every week, no matter what.
  4. Put them in your calendar and devote time to them in pre-planned blocks.

I hope this is helpful,
Eric

PS: I have a ton of things you can find for free here on ArtMarketing.com. Marketing and selling does not have to be overwhelming, and it will change your life once you accept that it’s a fact of doing business.

By |2024-01-09T07:29:41-05:00December 28th, 2023|Business|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast Episode 134: Pricing Your Art and AI for Artists

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

How do you price your paintings (and not set the price too low)? And how can artists use AI for their business? Eric Rhoads answers in this week’s Art Marketing Minute.

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode # >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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, it is sometimes 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:
Okay, So we have a thing here. I don’t see the questions. I don’t prepare the questions. I am taking this off the top of my head, so I may completely blow it. But I’m basing this on a lifetime of experience in marketing, not necessarily all art marketing, but a lot of marketing. You could send your questions to meet [email protected]. Which by the way, artmarketing.com has a lot of really great stuff on it for free. Or you can come onto the podcast sometime and ask your questions, but just send a note to us, [email protected]. First question comes from Marine Shelton Wallace in Tennessee. And the question is, how do you know how to price your paintings? How do you know how to price your paintings and not price oneself too cheap? Well, pricing is the most it’s the biggest question I get, I get literally hundreds of questions about pricing all the time, nobody knows how to do pricing. And pricing is all emotion of very little logic. And the reason for that is that art is not something that is easy to compare to. I mean, it’s it’s easy to say, Okay, there’s a difference between a Volkswagen and a Honda, and a Rolls Royce and a Bentley and Lamborghini, and so on. There’s a difference. But a lot of that is actually psychological. I mean, what why is one car $30,000 And another car is $130,000. And another one is $600,000. At some point, there’s not that much better car under the hood, or that much better paint job. As a matter of fact, I heard a statistic this is probably dated, I know it’s dated. But at the time I heard this statistic a BMW seven series was selling for, I don’t know, let’s say $100,000. And a Bentley was selling for 250. And this the Bentley, the body and the chassis are very, very close to the same. And there was only at the time and $18,000 difference between manufacturing the BMW and the Bentley, made by the same company, yet one was twice or three times the price. Why is that? Well, Bentley is about status. I was looking at cars, it’s like a giant picture frame around you. Some people identify a you know, with a gold frame, other people identify with a, you know, no frame. So pricing is emotional, it’s about status. But it’s also there is some measurable quality, especially in a world of realism. In the abstract world, there’s, it’s hard to measure quality, because it’s all about pure creativity, where as you can tell if someone is good at drawing are good at painting. And of course, there’s a lot of different styles and what you love is going to resonate with you in a different way. But ultimately, there is a little bit of measurability, but not a lot because you have seen paintings and I’ve seen paintings, and I won’t mention names. But you’ve seen paintings a year ago, how did that person get so famous because their paintings don’t, to me don’t seem very wonderful. And yet people are spending big money on him. We have we see that all the time. I had an argument with not an argument. I had a discussion with an art gallery I was in and I went into the gallerist I was invited in and I said they said well, okay, what about pricing? I said, I would like to be the most expensive artist in the gallery. And they said, but you’re not the best artists in the gallery. I said who’s to say? And they said, Well, we don’t think you’re the best artists in the gallery are good, but you’re not great. I said, Well, I get that but someone is going to walk into that gallery who doesn’t know the difference? Who sees something that emotionally resonates with them and they’re gonna go, I want that. And if that person happens to be somebody who doesn’t have any price sensitivity than that, it really doesn’t matter. Now, they’re the things that you can do to elevate your price. Our branding, branding elevates your price if you are TL and Lawson You can get a whole lot more money for your paintings typically than I could Right, because everybody knows he’s a brilliant painter, everybody knows his work sells for big money, everybody knows that this guy is at the top of the game. And a lot of that happens over time, because of doing a lot of shows, developing his work. And also galleries and others advertising the work and branding the work and so on. Well, Lee, that’s not a word, he deserves it well. But there are people out there who can simply advertise their work and increase their prices, because people recognize their name. And when you’re in a situation and you have painting a and you have painting B and you have one who is not known, and one who is known and you like equally, the two paintings, you’re likely to choose the one that you know, because it’s like, when you go into a store, and you could buy a t shirt with no logo on it, for the same price as a t shirt with a logo on it, and you happen to identify with that brand. You’re sometimes you feel a little weird buying something without a logo on it. I’m the opposite. I don’t like to wear logos. I don’t like to advertise other people’s stuff with my money. But anyway, that works. So how do you price your work? Well, first off, when you’re starting out, you’ve got to get a feel for it, you just got to get used to selling work. And the environment has everything to do with the price that you’re gonna get, you’re not likely this is I can’t say this is totally true, but you’re not likely to get a 10,000 or $20,000 price for an eight by 10 or 2016 by 20 painting until you’ve got your brand developed or until you’re in a gallery that is selling other 16 or $20,000 painters. If you’re in your put at doing an art show in the local art center, everything in those in that environment is likely priced low. So, you might see some $50 paintings or $300 paintings. And if people are coming in there for Christmas sale, some people who don’t know the artists are going to just pick something they like, and they’re going to pick something that’s priced within their range. Other people are gonna go, Hey, I have no problem paying 350 or $1,000, or whatever it is. But when you start getting into the bigger money than other things factor in so if you’re like, just starting out, just start showing your work somewhere. And what I used to do is I just say to people, make me an offer. And the reason I did that is because I wanted to know what the market would bear. And while some people would come in and make me an offer of $50. And I’d take it and some people would come in and make me an offer $500 And I’d take it and sometimes I I’d say you know, that’s probably not enough. I was out painting in Banff and Lake Louise one day a guy came up to me and he said, So how long? Did it take you to do that painting? And I knew exactly where it was going. And I said, well, two hours and 20 years. He said What do you mean? I said 20 years to learn how to do it in two hours. And he said, Oh, okay. And he said, What would you take for that painting? I said, Well, I don’t really feel like I want to sell it because I’ll take it back. I want to keep it it’s a memory but I’ll take it back frame it, probably send it to my gallery, they’re gonna sell it for quite a bit of money. But, he says Well, would you take $50 for it, I said, Thank you know, but to him $50 was probably a lot of money. So you got to be really sensitive to those things. But, I think just experiment. If you read books on pricing, one of the things that they talk about is that you keep raising your prices until things don’t sell and when they don’t sell then you’re back off one step and that kind of determines your pricing TV companies do that all the time. So I think you just got to hit and miss try a lot of different things. There’s not an exact formula but if you want to sell things and advertise them brand yourself and do it over time, it doesn’t happen overnight. People don’t see everything every time you got to be out there. And environment makes a big difference. If you’re selling at a flea market, it’s a whole lot different environment than if you’re selling at the Palm Beach art show right? Is somebody who walked into the Palm Beach art show drop a quarter of a million dollars and not bat an eye where somebody might bat an eye spin and 20 at the flea market so environment makes big difference. brand makes a huge difference.

Okay, next question. We have had a lot of questions from people about AI. So we don’t have a specific person on this AI to help your marketing, how can AI help your business? Which AI software tool should I try? Well, first, let me just say this. A lot of people are coming out against AI, a lot of people think it’s terrible thing, that it’s gonna ruin the world, that it’s copying and stealing your stuff. And there are a lot of lawsuits flying around, and there’s gonna be a lot more of that before it all settles out. The same kind of thing happened when Macintosh first came out, and Photoshop first came out and the laser printer first came out, this is gonna be the death of graphic design. And, in some ways it was because a lot of people could do their own, but it just changed things it didn’t, it wasn’t necessarily the death of the reality is you can go into a program called mid journey, which I use all the time I use it pretty much every day, mid journey, I went into mid journey, and I said, I would like you to generate an image of two women standing by a lake with a mountain in the background, fall leaves on the ground and fall color. I would like them dressed in 1950s outfits. And I would like it to be in the style of paint by number. And it spit out four images. I didn’t like them. So it’s been up for more informed, more informed more, and I picked one and I used it to promote fall color week. perfectly legal, perfectly able to do that. And it was it was almost perfect. Sometimes they’re not almost perfect, but it’s getting better and better. In terms of ways to do it. There are AI programs now that you can use to build your social media. The key to all AI is what they call the prompt. And the prompt means that how you ask the question is how you is going to give you the right response. If you say, give me an image of two women painting by a lake. That’s one thing if I give them more specific instructions, and that’s another, so I use AI on a lot of different things. First off, I use AI to write things for me. If I have a long presentation I need to create, I’ll go into AI and I’ll say build me a presentation and I want a heading over each paragraph and I want 10 paragraphs. And I want 10 steps towards this particular thing and write it for me. And you know 80 percent of the time it’s like really, really good. Sometimes it’s not. And so you can use things like that for preparing presentations, you can actually use them to build slides. Now you can use them to build video. There are programs that you can use to build out your social media, I have gone in and said okay, this is the message I want to send build me 15 social media posts. And then it’ll give me ideas for images, it’ll, it’ll build the social media posts, and then it’ll give me ideas for images, then I go into another AI program like majority mid journey, I’ll say, build me this image. I have not yet figured out how to build my own image into those images. But it’s coming AI has that capability. I did get very close with mid journey. And so there’s a lot of things, I use a chat GPT I have a membership, I use my journey. I am really in love with one called barred by Google that was really, really terrific. And again, there’s API’s for a lot of different things, we have AI programs that work with some of our software. So if somebody’s buying a video, that, that ai ai will say, Oh, you bought a portrait video, here are three other portrait videos you might like. So it’s a recommendation engine, this is changing the world, it’s changing marketing, it’s gonna get to a point where it’s going to be really, really, really a good tool, and it’s already pretty good. I probably save all right now I probably save 10 hours a week using AI that’s 10 hours that I’m getting back to use for other things. And I can see coming to a point where it’s going to save me 50% of my time. You can even say build me a calendar to do this to do that. Schedule this I mean, you can use it for almost anything it’s going to get to a point where it’s going to become very valuable. So you could you could do it say build me an ad, use this image and build me an ad concept. Give me 13 headlines. I went through I wanted to chat GPT He, and I needed some quotes for social media. So I said go to my, my daily show on YouTube, art marketing, I mean art school alive, and go in there and pull 50 quotes from that. And it did. And I had them in three minutes. And then I said, Okay, go into my blog, send a coffee, and pull 50 quotes from that, and put my name at the end. And it did. And so I was able to use those in social media. And then you can use AI to import them into Canva. And Canva will create images at Canva has AI now, so there’s a lot of different things you can use. So I know it’s not specific. It’s very random, but it’s going to change things. The all things change all the time. And change is good. It’s beautiful. It’s nothing to be frightened of. is AI going to take over the world and eliminate human beings? Well, some people think so. And if so, it’s been nice knowing you. Okay, that’s the art marketing minute. I’m Eric Rhoads. I hope it helps you.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-12-06T11:41:48-05:00December 15th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 133

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute:
What can you do to attract more out-of-town buyers?
Are there ways to vet potential buyers so you don’t waste your time?
Listen and learn!

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode #133 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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, it is sometimes 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:
This question comes from Mark Reynolds in Quincy, California. Mark says I own a frame and gallery shop in Quincy. In 2024. I’ll be organizing my third plein air festival. Congratulations on that Mark, it’s pretty cool. The first year 23 artists attended and 2023 there were 38 artists in 2024. I’m expecting 60 artists. I advertised in two magazines, plus Facebook and Instagram. And I need to attract more art buyers to attend the reception and the street fair. What else can I do to attract out of area art buyers? The area’s full of artists but not very well known? Well, that’s a big question Mark first, congratulations on doing that. I think it’s really important to to start plein air events. You know, there are, are now hundreds of plein air events around the world. And there were none. When we started this magazine are very few maybe maybe under three or four. So it’s really changed a lot and people like you are important to us. And thank you I know one of the advertising places you spent money on was plein air magazine, thank you. It’s a good place to be if you’re selling a plein air event. Many galleries have tried to avoid things like what you’ve done because they think it hurts their business. Because we had a gallery say to us, you know, I don’t I don’t want to be a part of a plein air event because all these people are gonna come to town, they’re gonna buy paintings at the plein air event. And they’re not gonna buy paintings from my artists and from my gallery. And I said, Oh, contraire, they will because they’re in there. They’re here to see art, they love art, they go see paintings they want, they’re gonna wander into every gallery in town, they’re gonna buy paintings. And sure enough, that turns out to be true. So I applaud you, because a lot of galleries might have just rejected that whole idea. So that’s really nice. People get this art buying dopamine high, and they like to buy art. And so when they come around for a plein air event, you know, especially if you’re sponsoring it, you’re gonna sell art, you’re gonna have a big, a big success. And I think we all need to approach things with an abundance mindset instead of, you know, a protective mindset. Now, you say you advertised in a couple of magazines that you need to attract more art buyers to attend? Well, let’s take that. Let’s take that question. First. I think that the question is, how did you advertise in those magazines? I know you advertised in one of ours. Plein Air magazine, I don’t know if you advertise in Fine Art connoisseur, which is where all the collectors are. And I think you advertised in one of the Western publications, all good, all good decisions. But the things you’ve got to ask yourself is did I have enough frequency? Frequency is the repetition of ads? And did I have an ad that really stood out that got attention that made people slap them in the face and made them pay attention and get their attention? I think everyone in the plein air world needs a dual strategy. And the dual strategy is a local strategy and a national strategy. Now, a national strategy would be something like plein air magazine, right because you’re reaching a national audience. And it’s important for a lot of reasons. First off, it reaches art collectors who are specifically plein air collectors. And it reaches people who oftentimes traveled to shows especially if it’s a regional thing you know, if it’s a couple hour drive three hour drive a weekend away, then it’s cool say hey, I’m gonna drive up to your town to Quincy and experience this event. But the other reason it’s important is because the key to a successful plein air Event is the artists. And because the chatter from artist goes like this, Hey, I went to this plein air event and they didn’t have any good artists and they didn’t sell any work, I’m not going back. So the other artists, when they get the opportunity to go, I’m going to skip that one. And to make yourself known. So what, what we typically say is, you want at least three and one is a call for artists early on at the time, you’re getting ready to solicit artists to have them come in. And then the second one is about a month or two months before the event, and you get and then the third one is right before the event. And then we recommend also, that you get on our newsletters and things like that. So that it’s a reminder, hey, next weekend is this and make sure you come to this, make sure you schedule this, that kind of thing. I think that’s really important. But you know, you really need to reach local people, because anybody who’s within a, let’s say, an hour or two hour driving distance is the most likely to come to your event. And so where do you reach people like that? Well, the first question is, you know, are you a suburb of another area? Are you isolated in the middle of nowhere? I don’t know the answer to that. Because I don’t know where Quincy is, I should know. I’m sorry. But I think the the idea here is there are lots of ways you can advertise locally. And there are local, you know, websites, newspapers, magazines, tourism, books, things like that. We have up here in the Adirondacks, we have a very successful plein air festival, it’s it’s in its 20th year, and you know, they are everywhere, they have banners on the streets, they get the local community to put up banners. So it’s talking to the tourists, you know, they’re there in all the local magazines, their stories in the newspaper, they’re really working the PR angle, they are advertising, they have posters all over town that you know, they do all those things, all of those things matter, not one works independently. So you want to make sure that you’re getting out and having a local strategy. But you also want to have that national prestige because you need those, you know, there sometimes it’s one collector who sees that ad who comes in and buys you know, six or eight paintings, and spends $20,000. You know, that’s, that’s what you hope for. And so make sure that you’re doing both of those things. I think that’s important. The other thing I like media partners, I like collaborations, media partners, would be you know, you go to the local city magazine, in the surrounding area, or the local TV station, a local radio station, you say, Hey, I’m gonna put your logo on the posters, you’re gonna have a presence, you’re gonna have a booth, a table, whatever. If you promote it, we’re gonna get you involved in it, you could do you get the exclusive on the local story, you know, those kinds of things, that stuff works really, really well. And that’s how I would do it. And the other thing that’s really important is who you have involved in your event, most of the successful events in America, and there are lots of successful events. But the ones that are the biggest and most successful, surround themselves with really, really smart local people who they get involved as volunteers and all kinds of different levels. And you want smart people who know lots of people who can invite lots of people, smart people who know how to encourage people to buy, know how to run auctions, because you can’t just assume they’re going to buy, you need to nudge them a little bit, you need to help them along, you need to have somebody standing there by the booths and saying, Hey, let me tell you about this painting, you know, there’s a lot of different things you can do that will really help this. And remember, the artists component is really, really important. There’s a show, I won’t mention names, but there was a show it was really a big and prominent show. And they decided in their infinite wisdom that they were going to be a little bit more equal and sensitive to the needs of the local community. Make sense? Right? So they said, All right, we’re gonna make 50% of the artists, local artists and 50% national artists. And so they did not jury in the local artists, they just put in the squeaky wheels, the ones who, you know, always were asking, and as a result, they brought the overall quality of the show down because some of the artists that they let in were not very good. I happen to be at that show. I happened to be judging that show was a almost an embarrassment. And the thing that happens is the the good artists who come in say, wait, wait a minute, I’m showing with other artists, they should all be good. It shouldn’t be a bunch of good artists and a bunch of lesser developed artists. I mean, every one of us was a bad artist at one time. So I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that, but you’ve got to have good artwork. And so the key to that is to have an independent third party juror who juries in it’s fine. have local people, it’s fine if you want to have 50% local people, but make sure they’re juried in and, and that you’re not doing favors for somebody who, who you know you like them, but they’re not a very good painter. And I know I’ll get emails about this, I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. But the reality is if you’re trying to build a reputation for show, you need to have good painters and and so the good painters would not accept the invitations for the show when they were invited back. And the word got out that the show didn’t sell well. And because people saw, I don’t know something about bad paintings brought things down, I suppose. And as a result, things changed pretty dramatically. And so what you want to do is focus on getting really, really good painters in there, Quality Matters, local Quality Matters, National Quality Matters. But make sure that it’s good because word spreads, and artists don’t want to come to shows where they’re not going to make any money.

Second question comes from Scott Pinu in Dalton, Pennsylvania, he said, I just read your book. And I now have a clearer vision on how to handle social media and how advertising is a more effective tool. Each day, I spent at least an hour working on some aspects of marketing planning, Bravo on that, and I’m working to launch my business in the fall of 24. I’m developing ways to make buying my art enjoyable as an experience for collectors. My question to you is, since I’m planning on selling directly to collectors, when I’m approached regarding my works, is there an easy way to vet the potential buyer early on to make sure I’m dealing with a legitimate collector without insulting them? Or coming across? Like, I don’t know what I’m doing? We hear a lot about fraudulent sellers. We hear a lot about fraudulent buyers, but to what degree should I be concerned about potential fraudulent buyers? Well, that’s a loaded question, isn’t it? I mean, you know, we’re all getting these emails that say, Hey, it’s my, I saw your work online, it’s my wife’s anniversary, I want to buy or something special, I like your paintings, I want to buy one of your paintings turns out to be a big scam, you know, they send the painting the check bounces, you know, etc. Watch that. It’s very, very tough. But, you know, I think that first off, why do you need to find out if they’re legit buyers, you know, if if you’re doing something quality, you can kind of tell if somebody’s quality. But be careful about that. You know, I was at a gallery in New York one day, I was sitting there waiting for a meeting. And this guy walks out of the gallery, and the gallery owner says, Hey, that guy just spent a half a million dollars in paintings. He said, When he first came in, I looked him up and down. He was wearing flip flops, shorts and a T shirt, I thought he can’t afford anything. He can’t, he doesn’t belong here. Well, he just sold his company, his kids are out of college, he had plenty of money, and he spent a half a million dollars. So you can’t judge people based on the way they look. You know, you want to, you might want to have legitimate payment methods, you might want to have a credit card machine so that you can, you know, run it through the bank, if the if there’s fraud, that’s the bank’s problem, not yours. I wouldn’t you know, if you want to take checks, you can take checks, but there’s certainly ways that you can call and check those checks or deposit those checks with your with your camera and your phone instantly to make sure they go through. So there’s a lot of things you can do, you’re gonna have some risk, but I wouldn’t worry about that too much. I think the thing that I worry about more is that if you try to categorize people, you might lose people because some people might be offended by some attempt to find out if they’re if they have the money, I wouldn’t worry about that. I just don’t worry about that kind of stuff at all, you know, the majority of people who are going to buy something are going to be legit. And you know, once in a while you get burned, I got burned on something one time pretty badly. It stung but I didn’t stop doing everything. I was just one more cautious. The other thing is, I’m a little concerned about what you said is I’m only going to sell direct. Now, a lot of artists do that. And that’s a really, really wonderful thing. But here’s why I oftentimes say to people, be careful what you wish for. Because, you know, the art of the typical artists argument is well, I you know, I get to keep all the money. So I you know, now I have the responsibility selling all the paintings, I get to keep all the money, I have to do all the advertising, I have to attract all the customers. I have to deal with the customer service of all the customers I got to answer questions. I got to be on the phone. I got to be constantly reaching out to people I got to constantly advertising man, it’s exhausting. And yet if someone good likes your work like a gallerist for instance, they are selling while you’re sleeping. I mean literally in some cases because if you get a gallery in a you know Ever timezone and they’re open while you’re still in bed, you know, if they’re in New York and you’re in California, they’re open and they’re selling paintings while you’re sleeping. And, uh, you have a gallery in Alaska or you know, a Hawaii, there are a lot of different things, you know, they’re selling while you’re sleeping, and they’re selling for, if you have two or three galleries, I don’t like to have more than two or three, I have three, currently, I have an offer from a fourth I’m considering but you know, I don’t know, if I can, I can produce enough quality for that. But some artists sell direct up to a certain size, and then anything over eight by 10, or whatever they’ll sell through galleries, that’s an option. But you know, you have a lot of work to do. And I like to leverage, you know, if I can have three people, three different people selling for me, you know, if my sales skill isn’t very good, then you know, if I’m, if I screw up, I don’t eat, you know, if I’ve got three galleries and one of the three is good, at least I eat something, if two of the three are good, I might sell a little bit more, all three are selling stuff, I’m golden. Now, I don’t ever like to turn 100% Over of anything over to somebody else, I want to make sure you remain in control. I talked about that my book a little bit, you probably saw that. But you know, you could you could try a couple of things. First off, you know, direct marketing. And that’s what you’re doing. When you’re selling direct. It’s a whole different game, you have to build email lists, you have to do a lot of different things differently. And you got to stay in touch with people and there’s a limit to how much ask you can make. So you got to look for different ways to get your work in front of different people get it seen and get it seen by people that you don’t know exist because the ultimate buyer is somebody you don’t even know. So I like the idea of multiplying yourself and I hope you consider it talking about selling direct. I think it’s it’s okay, but you got to be really good at this. And I don’t know I’m pretty good at it. But I’m not selling any my work direct. So, just just a thought. Anyway, that’s the marketing minute. I hope it’s been helpful.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-09-12T10:27:01-04:00September 22nd, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 132

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric answers the questions, “Who owns the rights to copy your painting if you donate it?” and “Should you take genre-specific paintings only when attending a niche event?”

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode #132 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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, it is sometimes 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:
Okay, the first question comes from Gail Caraghnatto of inland South Carolina. It says if you have created a painting, and it is donated to your local art group for a fundraiser, who owns the rights to the copy of the painting to make greeting cards or prints that might be sold? Well, Gail, that’s a really great question. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of donating paintings to but first copyright issues. I am not a copyright attorney, it’s a really good idea to have somebody that you can rely on to give you valuable advice in case I’m wrong. But I think what I have understood is it depends entirely on how the painting is marked. Right now I can’t give legal advice. And you should check with an expert in case I’m wrong. But I signed my name on the front, my signature. And on the back I write I sign my name and I write my name. And I put Circle C copyright 2023 My name, period, and then I write all rights reserved. All means everything, everything. All copies, all prints, all postcards, all everything all rights reserved. That is a statement that says you own it. If you do not do that, my understanding is that person who owns that painting could potentially go duplicate it and sell it. So you want to make sure that’s clear. Now I have a little rubber stamp that I had made. Now I have to update it every year that says, you know copyright 2023 B Eric Rhoads all rights reserved, and I think there’s something else on it. I can’t remember what’s on it. I don’t have it in front of me. But then I also put my website on it which is also valuable, you know, to contact the artist, go to www whatever. And so This is a great opportunity to get your website on the back of it too. But I have friends who put a circle C in front of their signature on the front of the painting. And some of them have said, If you don’t do that it really isn’t valuably copyrighted. Now there’s a copyright process. But there is also you know, where you can actually, you know, mail a copy of print of the mag print of the, the image to yourself and so on it. You know, that’s, that’s more than most of us will do. But you want to have some kind of production anyway. Now, let’s talk about donating paintings. Since we’re on that topic a little bit. I get a lot of requests. I know you do, too. And my rule is this does it fit with my current marketing plan? Right. So like if, let’s say, I live in the Adirondacks in the summer, but I’m only focusing on selling paintings in my hometown of Austin, or something hometown, but we’re live now, then I am not likely to do a giveaway of a painting in the Adirondacks because I don’t care if I get known here, right. I don’t care if people know who I am. But if I unless, of course, I just want to do it, because I’m a nice guy. And that’s a different story. You want to help somebody out. That’s cool, too. But if you’re doing it is marketing, then you want to have some reason to do it. Now. I have something that I started doing years ago, and it’s worked very effectively. Imagine this I’m at, I’m going to be in this art auction. And a piece of Mahler comes out for this art auction. And my painting is highlighted on the brochure that gets mailed. It’s big. It says, this painting worth, you know, whatever. $1,000 is going to be auctioned off, you know, by Eric Rhoads. And so now I’m getting my name in their mailer, I’m getting my name on their website, I’m getting my name on their email promotions. And when I went to the event, they held the painting up and they stood up and they said, Please, we’d like to introduce the artist Eric Rhoads. And I stood up, and I got some polite applause. And then I sat down, then afterwards, people came up to me, I didn’t know you were the artist. But now I put your face with the name. And so you get a dialogue going, and you have a chance to possibly get commissions or other things. That’s all of that stuff was intentional. I said to them, I’ll donate a painting. And I’ll do it under the circumstances. So you can go there’s one thing I’ve done in the past is I’ve said, Okay, I’ll give you a little tiny painting. But if you do the following things, I’ll give you a big painting. And because I’m looking for publicity, right, so I’ll say, you know, if you do an introduction to me, if you put my painting as a highlighted piece of the biggest image on your promotional materials, and your website and your emails, and if you introduce me at the event, I’ll do that I’ll give you a, you know, more expensive, larger painting or something like that. And so that’s been very effective. I don’t do it very often. Because quite frankly, I’m so busy doing this, I don’t do much to market my own artwork, I mean, a couple of galleries, but they do that stuff, but I’m not doing it. So but if you’re doing it figure out does it fit what it is I’m trying to do. Now, the other thing I always ask for, I don’t always get it, but I try is I say I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a big one and a little one. Here’s the deal. On the little one. Usually you go to these auctions, they have silent auction for some pieces, like so I’ll say I’ll give you a small frame painting, if I can put a business card poll out, and some slips, so people can put their name in it. And that way I get names. Now, the other thing I’ve done and sometimes effectively, sometimes not. And that is I’ve said, I will also give you this bigger, more expensive painting. If after the auction, you send out an email and you make sure that you mention and show my painting and somebody me holding the painting with the winner of the auction. That’s all I need is because it’s just another chance to get my name out there. And they’ll usually do that they usually won’t give you their email list, but sometimes they will. And so I have had one instances anyway, where I’ve been able to send out my own email and say, hey, you know, you saw me at the, the SO and SO St. Jude charity auction, and I had these paintings and I just wanted to make you aware of some of the other paintings I have. If you’re ever interested in you can join my email list by clicking this and so on. So, you know sometimes you can do things like that. Now, my understanding is that the laws of change used to be you could only deduct the cost of materials like the cost of paint and canvas. This thick those laws changed finally, and you can deduct a true market value if you can prove that market value. But again, check with your experts, your bookkeeper, whomever. You know, but I’m only interested in marketing, you know, if I’m not focused on a local town, if I’m focused nationally, then I’m going to I’d be more likely to put something in a national event than I would a local event, for instance. Okay. All right.

The second question comes from David Gorski in Fairfield, Connecticut. I think this is a two-parter. For many years, I was an aviation artist while trying to get better at landscapes for my aviation paintings, I basically stopped painting aircraft and started painting seascapes and landscapes. Recently out of the blue and Aviation Museum, airshow contacted me asked me to bring my aviation art to the airshow. So the first question is, Should I bring aviation art to the show? Because it’s what they’re all about? Or should I also bring a smattering of my other paintings. I’m concerned about diluting the aviation brand, making it look less focused. I also understand that there might be others there who might be interested in other subjects. Now, first off, you probably have to ask them that question. But I would, or maybe you just don’t ask, and maybe you just, you know, bring all your aviation paintings and put them up on a wall, and then have another wall that’s devoted to other paintings that you’ve done. Because if somebody has fallen in love with your paintings, they might like something else that you’ve done. And you’re right, there are other people there who might not be interested in airplanes, they might be there for some other reason. But they go, Oh, I love that landscape, or that farm or whatever. So I think any opportunity to get things in front of people is a good idea. So I like the idea of show your paintings as originals, and also show other options. And I think in a case like that, I’m not a big prints guy. But I think in a case like that, you’re selling originals, but you could also sell prints of all of your most popular originals. That way, you know, somebody is not going to spend 2345 $10,000 on an original, they might spend 50 bucks on a print. Just saying. So. I mean, that happens very frequently at art shows that, you know, 10 shows. So his follow up question is, since the show is coming up soon, I need to make decisions on my website. Because I think, you know, probably people are going to be visiting it right? So do you think I should have them the aviation paintings, and the other art together on the same website, or under different categories? Right now they’re separate. And I’m just not sure having two separate desperate subjects on the site would look like I’m not focused, again, thanks for your expertise and insight, blah, blah, blah. Well, I, you know, aviation people, car people, you know, they’re interested in what they’re interested in. And so I think I’d have a website, it’s cheap and easy to do, I’d have a website, if you’re really focusing on getting these people to come back and buy something, I’d have a website on your aviation art, and I’d have it filled with keywords. So if somebody searches, pictures of airplanes, you know, your website comes up and have a way they can order it by online. And then you might have a button that says, visit my other, my other art on that. And then that takes you to your, normal website, which, I assume would be David gorski.com. And then you can have all of your other art there. And you can also have a button say, visit my aviation art website, so you’re not cluttering it up. The thing that I believe is that there is what I like to call a set, and that is the set of painting or a style. So you want to make sure that if somebody sees an ad and they click through to your website, what they see in the ad is there not what something that isn’t there and you want to you know, if it’s sold, put a sold sign on it. And then have a button that says other paintings like this, you know, but follow the set and do what people want. Anyway, hope that helps. That’s it for the marketing minute.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-08-24T08:52:15-04:00September 1st, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 131

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric addresses the first things you should do when you’re ready to begin marketing your art; and how to know which media could be the most effective for showcasing your unique work.

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 131 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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:
this is from Sandy White in Colorado who says I am finally getting into marketing my own artwork. What are the first things that I should be doing? Sandy, congratulations. You’ve asked a loaded question because marketing is vast. And it includes so much and I will go into some depth. But all these answers are in my book, or maybe most of them are. But let’s touch on some of the key things. First off, you, you ask yourself, why? Why am I marketing? Why do I want to market what do I hope to accomplish, you need to be very specific, not broad. For instance, instead of saying, I want to sell more art, which is broad, you say, I want to sell $500 of art in every single month, or 5000, or 500,000, or whatever your number is. Now, we all have different reasons for our why. And that’s why we have to define what we want first, because marketing isn’t always about selling art. It is always about selling yourself and your brand. But you might do it for different reasons, you might do it for recognition, you might do it for awareness, you might want to get galleries to pick you up, you might be marketing to get invited to all the great parties in your town. And of course, you might be marketing to sell art. So no, you might want all those things, but you got to pick one, and make that your primary focus. So make a list of everything that you want, prioritize it, define that list exactly into exact terms, and then set some goals, your goals will determine the actions that you take, because each action requires a different approach in most cases. So once you get some goals, break them into small steps, what I call micro goals, I like weekly goals, I have a weekly goal every week of the year for my entire year, based on my big initiatives I’m trying to accomplish. So you can do that, too. It’s not hard, take some time, but it’s not hard. Just follow a plan. So it’s not all or nothing at once, right. So we can’t get it all at once. No matter how hard we try, no matter how much money we have, we can’t get it all at once. There are things you can do to stimulate things better with those things. But to get noticed, to get started selling, you’ve got to gradually build sales with confidence before you pull the trigger. You know, if you decide you want to go full time, and replace your full time income, then you’ve got to kind of get used to it first. So don’t just jump in and quit your job. I mean, I don’t recommend that I think you want to keep that job because things always take longer and cost more money than you think they will and having that job will help you and you’ll be able to just work two jobs simultaneously your art and that job. Alright. Also, you need to decide where your focus is gonna lie is it local, regional, national or international, it becomes more complex and more expensive, the more you add to that and expand, but I want to recommend that every artist ultimately, as a local strategy, and a national strategy. And the reason I say that is because local is really important to you. Because you know, you can get involved in local things and become a celebrity locally, and that’s gonna buy you a lot of parties and invitations and things like that, and you’re gonna get seen, and there’s money in your town who will buy your paintings. But a national strategy is also good because sometimes the local towns have bad economies, and you want to have a strategy so you can go where the money is, jump or fish are jumping into the boat, so to speak, right? So this list, of course, is the top of the iceberg. But start defining what you want your life to look like what you need financially, what you want to be able to do, such as travel or workshops, or other things, perks. And then you know, maybe it’s building the ultimate studio like Lori Putnam did. She’s famous now. But she came to me she was broke. We built a plan. I helped her with her marketing. She built her ultimate studio and makes more money than she ever thought possible in her life. And it’s very possible, it just takes time and dedication. She’s worked very hard at it for 10 solid years. And she made really good progress fast, but she makes more and more progress. The longer you keep it going you build momentum. She’s passionate, she’s driven, she works hard. And she’s also become a better marketer than me, because she’s really good at it. She’s got good instincts, and so if you study it, you can become that too. So hope that helps.

The second question comes from Scott in Middleton, Pennsylvania, who says this is a long one. I’m driven to specialize in biblical narrative compositions in the style of Caravaggio, late Titian and late Rembrandt in the 10 of Burzum. Tradition. I don’t know what that means. I’m drawing upon it education and biblical studies. 20 years of managing a high end picture framing and manufacturing business, and a lifelong connection with the church. Over the last 24 years, I have researched museum conservation bulletins, technical books, and the old masters and frequented museums. I am making my own on panels using historical pigments sourced from regions in Europe, where old masters are likely to have acquired theirs, you would like our our video that Eric Johnson did. He goes through a lot of that. Anyway, using high quality, linen, traditional techniques for the restricted palette and I aim to create quality paintings that will age well far beyond my lifetime. Let’s hope so I prioritize creating powerful and dynamic images that evoke contemplation. Currently, I’m working on donating two eight foot by 16 foot paintings for a church ceiling. Installation. One is an intimate dramatic composition of the Last Supper, the other is an eerie landscape with Christ carrying His cross. My primary goal is to create a masterpiece that is worthy of appreciation, as though by the hand of an old master, or, as I would say, a new master, right? I feel that I will be ready to begin promoting my work sometime next year. What type or which type of media do you think would be the most effective in showcasing my work? Wow, Scott, that’s very impressive. Man, I’d like to see your work. I’ll look it up. You know, that’s a loaded question. Because it’s really a question that is not answerable. Because you haven’t given me enough data? You see? You have to know the purpose or the desire, you see what a start marketing, but for what purpose? Are you going to give away paintings, you got to do more donations? What are you going to do? Most people think about advertising and where they want to advertise, before they even consider what goals and outcomes they want, which is really not the right thing to do. Because you end up spending a lot of money you don’t need to spend when you don’t know it’s like, you know, taking your car and putting it on auto drive and not knowing where it’s going. Right. So you want to begin promoting your work. To what end? I asked okay, I can imagine a lot of scenarios like wanting more Commission’s wanting to sell collectors wanting galleries, seeking recognition or galleries. I’m sure there’s many, many more. But I’d like you to go into depth with your answers. Asking which media I should use is kind of like saying which tool should I use to build something? Well, it all depends on what you want to build, how fast you want to build it, how long you want it to last, what are the weather conditions it’s going to be exposed to all those things matter because your tools and materials matter. So marketing doesn’t have to be complex, it’s a simple solution to overcome a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. But I can’t solve a problem till I know what the problem is. And you can’t either. So you need to define that. media choices can accomplish a lot of different things for you and at different levels. I magazine Fine Art connoisseur, for instance, reaches a lot of really mega rich billionaire type art collectors, who love realism. But it may not reach people who commissioned church paintings, for instance, you know, my neighbor was put in charge of a megachurch commission of a mosaic and she spent five or 10 years on it. She went, she didn’t even know my magazine existed, she went to Florence found answers there ended up getting an artist there to do it, who spent five years building this and then shipping it over and installing it. So you know, you need to figure out where the fish are that you want to buy, and that you want to catch. Right? So, you know, first off, you got to know what the problem is start by stating the desired outcome. And if that’s I want to get more commissions then get specific, how many more commissions, one commission, two commissions and at what amount of money? If you want one commission within 12 months, and I know you have to work in advance, because you’re going to be working on one for a long time, then, you know, what are you willing to spend to get that commission? Are you willing to spend 10%, five to 10, sometimes 20%, marketing expense is pretty normal. And so if you get $100,000 Commission, whether you spend 10, grand or 10% to get that commission, it’s probably worth it. Right? And so sometimes it’s not about advertising, though, you know, it might be a matter of a couple of phone calls, or asking the right people who the right people are, or maybe it’s advertising, maybe it’s in a church publication that church art curators read or something I don’t know, you’re gonna have to figure out that out. But answer those questions first. And then I can suggest the tools you need. And you can ask again on here and I’ll give you more answers. Might not be immediate at all though. Right? Hope this helps. Anyway, that is today’s art marketing minute.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-08-17T09:56:55-04:00August 11th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 130

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

In this episode, Eric Rhoads opens the floor to our friends in the Dreamliners* group for a special Plein Air Podcast that focuses on art marketing and the eternal question, “How do you sell your art?”

*The Dreamliners group was started by fans of Eric’s Art School Live program in 2020 and has grown to 3,700 members. As a listener of the Plein Air Podcast, you’re welcome to join the “Dreamlineartists” group on Facebook.

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 130 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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.

Speaker 3 13:44
I’m Pat White. I’m from Louisiana. And I’m a been a professional Realtor for 40 years and been painting for about 13 years. So I have a lot of experience in marketing. So as an artist, what percent of our gross income should be spent on marketing for budgeting purposes?

Eric Rhoads 14:05
Well, I think that’s a loaded question. Everybody’s going to be a little bit different. Everybody has to spend marketing money based on the timing of their marketing. Right so let me give you an example of that Pat, the if you’re a brand new artist, you have no brand whatsoever people don’t know who you are people need to discover you. You’re going to spend a higher level of money on your marketing to build yourself up at that time. And that will probably last for potentially a few years because it takes a few years to really properly brand yourself as an artist. Now it depends on where you’re branding yourself to so branding yourself in a what Where did you say you live?

Unknown Speaker 14:55
Baton Rouge Louisiana

Eric Rhoads 14:57
Okay, so and Baton Rouge If the cost of marketing is going to be a lot different than the cost of marketing in, let’s say, San Antonio, or in New York City or something, so if you’re focusing on local marketing versus national marketing, etc, then it changes. So I believe that every artist should have at least a dual strategy, and probably a trio. And that would be a local marketing strategy. Local, meaning local and regional, and a national marketing strategy, meaning reaching the entire US if you’re in the US, or whatever your country is, and then potentially an international strategy, if that makes sense for you, it does for some artists, I was talking to TL Lawson, yesterday or the day before, and he’s doing a big show in London. And about last time, he did a show in London, about 50% of the audience bought from Europe, and the other 50% bought from the United States. And so that that would be an example of someone who has an international strategy. He has a Gallery in London, he probably has them in other places as well. But this gives you an opportunity then to grow in other markets, if you feel that need, most of us aren’t going to need that. Because we’re probably likely to sell all we need in either our local or national strategy. So if you’re brand new, then you’ve got a lot more marketing expense than you normally would. And there is there’s the there’s the issue of time versus money. So in the case of time versus money, a lot of us don’t have any money to market. But we have plenty of time. And so you can make up for a lot of the lack of money with time, by you know, even if you’re hand addressing envelopes by yourself and taking the time to do it, versus paying somebody to do that or paying a service to do that. It’s going to depend on you. When I started my business, I had no money. And I had a lot of time. And so I did everything imaginable for a number of years, probably for I went seven years without a paycheck. And when I first started my business, and so I think the idea is, you know, you’re contributing what you can give of yourself towards that marketing effort. You might not be able to afford advertising in the beginning, you might have to do you know, list building or other things, which we’ll probably talk about.

Speaker 4 17:42
Good to see you. I’m Linda Marie Crab. I’m always here in Italy. And yes, and my question is a lot of what’s in the book, and I love the book, but it doesn’t work. Over here overseas, for example, you just mentioned, I believe you said he’s an American artist who shows in London. But in Italy, the market is totally different from what it is in the States. And so I was wondering if, if you make a new addition, will you include more for an international artist or or perhaps, like a small chapter where there are other things because here it’s marketing is if you go up to an Italian and you ask if you can have their email address, if they’re watching over your shoulder while you’re painting, they’re going to be thinking that you have other motives. And so some of the things just don’t work in Europe. And so that’s my question.

Eric Rhoads 18:57
Well, I let me answer that in a couple of ways. Linda, Linda, Linda Marie, you want to be called Linda Linda Marie and Linda’s fine. Okay. So first off, Europe is different. And different areas of Europe are different. I’ve been told that the way I do marketing would never fly in England, for instance, because it’s just too abrupt to direct to in your face, so to speak. And yet, I remember a story about a friend of mine who is a world famous marketing guy, consultant. And he was told this, he said, you know, he wanted to do a series of seminars in England. And the his advisers said, No, you can’t do that. You can’t use the same kind of headlines, the same kind of copy the same approaches. And he said, Well, I don’t believe that for a minute. He said what works works And he says, I don’t think I need to change my tone, I don’t think I need to change anything. And while they battled on that, but he decided that he was going to do it the way he wanted to do it anyway. And he had a partner in England, and in that partner was the one saying, you know, it won’t work over here. Well, it, not only did it work is that he sold out everything, and he sold it out fast in his partner, living there, realize that what he’s being told about what you can and cannot do in England is only opinion. And so his partner now has built a thriving business using same same type of marketing that this fellow, Dan Kennedy used. And so I would caution, you know, we hear a lot, Linda, not just in Europe, but throughout the United States as well. We hear people say, Well, I could never do that, or I can’t do that, or people don’t want that, you know, you’ve got to be thinking about really understanding your audience. And sometimes we think we understand our audience, and we don’t understand it. So let me give you an example. I work with a guy who is a world class marketing consultant, who built a company from zero to $400 million in two years. And he did it using certain types of marketing. And he was told, you know, this, this type of marketing, you know, lots of frequent emails, that type of thing is just too much never worked, and that he would completely lose his list. And so he went ahead with us anyway. And he would send emails daily, sometimes two or three emails daily. And he lost about 2% of his list, and the rest never left him. And he gets massive amounts of response every day. So I think that there’s a rule in marketing that applies really, to everything, and that is to test everything, you know, maybe giving, asking somebody for an email, when you’re out, you know, painting and somebody talks to you maybe that that is something you’re not comfortable with. And if you’re not comfortable with Don’t, don’t do anything in marketing that you’re not comfortable with. But there may be a way and you want to test different ways, you know, maybe it’s having a little card that you hand out that’s got a QR code on it, or maybe there’s a QR code on your easel, or maybe there is some kind of an explanation that makes it in the eyes of the beholder, and an acceptable thing. So those things might might work, they might not work, you know, we all have to adapt. And I, you know, I’ve been doing marketing now in the United States and a little bit in some other countries from time to time I did marketing for I can’t mention the name, but a world famous Watch Company, out of a foreign country. And so what you have to do is you have to kind of figure it out, you have to try things you have to adapt, you have to, you know, things that are hot, one minute change. You know, two years, three years ago, Facebook, you could do almost anything on Facebook, you could do retargeting on Facebook, that would get to all the Apple phones, and then Apple changed it. And so now you can’t do retargeting on those phones unless those people have given you permission. So that killed a lot of businesses overnight, I hurt my own business. Thankfully, we knew it was coming. We had planned for it, we had some other things ready. So you’re gonna be experimental and just try things, you know. But be careful about what you tell yourself, you know, we give ourselves messages. And those messages might be true. They might be you know, if I were to ask my friends, I have an employee, a guy who works for me. And he’s, he’s always saying, you know, this won’t work. We shouldn’t do this. We do too much of that, you know, on and on, and on and on. And for him, he’s right. I would never respond to that I would never do this. And but the reality is what we’re doing is working. It’s, it’s working well. And we have tested the ways that he suggested because we obviously you know, somebody says, hey, try this. We’re going to try it. And you know, there are there are people who believe that long emails are necessary. There are other people who believe that short emails are necessary, or other people believe no emails are necessary. So we test it and we test it all the time. So if we’re sending out an email We have taken a certain number of people, and you know, maybe a small group of people, maybe it’s 1000 people. And we’ve sent half of that group one way and half of that group and other way. And then we track the response. And so and whatever wins, that’s what we end up doing. Sometimes it’s a short email, sometimes it’s a long one, sometimes it’s no email, sometimes it’s an image. So you just got to try everything related to the book. I’m working on another book. I don’t have any plans to update the current book, although I might at some point, I’ve updated at one time. And the next book, I’m not going to get too much detail about it yet, I would say it’s about a quarter of the way done. And it’s just kind of trying to reflect some new things that I’ve learned some new things that I’ve discovered. So we’ll talk about that when the time comes.

Speaker 5 26:03
It’s great to be here. Eric, I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done. And if not for COVID, I never would have found this wonderful book. I love this book, it is filled with so much good information that I always keep it nearby. And if I could show you the highlights, it’s practically all highlighted for important information.

Eric Rhoads 26:29
Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot, show him to show me the highlights.

Speaker 5 26:34
Okay, so I got tired of highlighting every line. So I just put a yellow line down the entire because just putting a few here and there wasn’t cutting it, it was all important. So I’m Elaine Miller, and I’m an artist I’ve been painting for about eight years. And I’ve owned a series art gallery that I created seven years ago. And I am just so thrilled to have your guidance in all that we’re doing here. My question is, with all the news about the economy coming up, and I’m trying not to listen to news, but the economy goes in a roller coaster, and we might be coming into a recession. What is your advice for artists and galleries to protect themselves during a recession? What’s the best advice to give?

Eric Rhoads 27:30
Well, I first off, I think we’ve been in a recession for several months. And I think that, you know, the news media tries to control the narrative or somebody tries to control the narrative. We’ve been in a recession for a long time, we, you know, we’ve seen indicators of business changing substantially for at least six months, maybe maybe eight months. And so I think that, you know, we’re in it. And I talked to a lot of artists every day. And many of the artists that I talked to are feeling it. They’re not, they’re not seeing the level of sales. They’re worried or concerned. And I’ll just tell you a couple of stories. In the Great Depression. Now, the Great Depression was worse than any recession that we’ve seen in the United States, since although there’s been some that have been close. The Great Depression. I’m hearing feedback. Did somebody unmute? Okay, so in the Great Depression, there was a dominant cereal company, it was called post. They did post toasties. They did post them they did, you know, all kinds of things. You’ve heard of Marjorie Merriweather Post, it was her father that created that company became General Foods. And during the Great Depression, there was a startup company called Kellogg’s ke Double L O, double good, right. And Kellogg’s started advertising when the Depression started. And board of directors at post, one of the people that post cereals, went to the board of directors and said, Hey, there’s this young startup company, and they’re advertising a lot. And we’ve cut all of our advertising because of the depression because we’ve believed that, you know, we’re number one, and we’re going to always remain number one. And the board met and they said, Yeah, yeah, we’re gonna keep that. Keep that philosophy. Nobody’s going to beat us. They’re a gnat. They’re a little company just ignore them. Well, by the end of the Great Depression, and post cereals at the beginning of the Depression had a 90% market share. At the end of the Depression, Kellogg had a 75% market share, they beat post and And to this day, post is never recovered to this day. And the reason this is an important story is because a recession or a depression is the biggest opportunity to grow. Because you can grow with almost no noise. So what happened to Kellogg, they dominated at the time newspapers and radio, they were advertising heavily, I’m sure it was really hard for them to put that money out there. But it was working, they were they were winning. And nobody else was advertising, or very few others were advertising. So not only were they advertising, they were getting great rates, because the media was desperate. And so this is the message. And that is to always remember that if you’re gonna go down, you go down in flames. And what that basically means is you’ve got to try everything, you You never give up 50% At least 50% of your success or failure during any time is about your attitude, your mindset. And it’s also about your mindset in a tough economy. So here’s what happens. I was in the radio broadcasting business for a number of years. And I was always able to say, Oh, the recession is right around the corner, because we saw trends when everybody started canceling their radio advertising, and the TV stations, but it had not been publicly announced yet that it was a recession. When we see people cutting expenses, you know, there’s a problem. And so what’s the first thing everybody cuts? They cut advertising because they look at advertising is an unnecessary expense. When in reality advertising is the opposite of that. It’s it’s it’s a total important expense and something that they do all the other times, why would they do it here? So there’s a gallery. I think it’s okay to mention a name, but I you know, I better not, there’s a gallery that started up in 2008. And all of a sudden, they just appeared on the scene. And they had all these major artists, they appeared on the scene in 2008. And I was in the advertising business at the time, I have fine art connoisseur in plein air magazine. And I noticed that we were losing a lot of advertisers. But this advertiser was, instead of buying one page, they’re buying 5678 pages of advertising. And they were just blown everybody out of the water. And so a few years later, had dinner with his advertiser. And I said, Okay, what’s the deal here? You know, I think I know what was going on. But you tell me, because he had since sold to Gallery. He said, Well, I used to be a consultant for one of the major, major consulting firms. He said, I know that the best possible time to make a business is during a recession, because everybody’s gonna stop advertising. He said, All of my competitors, all the ones that I had targeted and cared about all of them had either reduce their advertising or stopped altogether. He said out of the, he said, I got 10% 10% of the customers from each my top 10 customer, top 10 competitors. He said, several of those galleries don’t exist today, because they they stopped advertising. He said that 10% of there’s always money that will buy those 10% will always buy said My goal was to get all those 10 percenters that are going to keep buying. And so a lot of galleries went away during that period of time in Santa Fe, I’m, I think I remember there were 210 galleries, something to that effect that went away. I may be wrong about that. And yet, the ones who survived are the ones who kept their face far forward. They were out there. They were doing the same disciplines that they were doing before. And in some cases, like this guy, they were doing more. So you know, what happens when, when you’re trying to cut expenses, you start looking at the things and saying, Oh, these are unnecessary? Well, I won’t do any shows for a while. I won’t do any gallery shows because that Wine and crackers and cheese are too expensive. Or I’m not going to do any advertising or, you know, whatever the the promotional, I’m not going to do any direct mail or any postcards or any books or you know, whatever they normally do. And so what happens is that you’re out of sight. You’re out of mind, people forget about you. There’s a concept in advertising called momentum. And it’s true with all things is once you build momentum, you know You’re really crushing it, you’re just driving through, but the minute you stop putting fuel in the airplane, the airplane starts to glide down, and then that airplane eventually crashes if it can’t land. And so the same is true for momentum. You know, when you’re building up your brand as an artist, or you’re building up your brand as a gallery, you know, there’s this, this theory, you know, that post serials took on, which is, well, we’re so big. And, you know, if we stop for a couple of years, it’s not gonna matter. I had an advertiser. Again, no names, I had an advertiser who called me up and said, You know, I’ve been advertising consistently for five or six years. I’m gonna stop and, and move my money somewhere else for for a while. And I said, Well, I think that’s mistake. And I know you’re gonna believe I’m just saying that because I don’t want to lose your business, which is also true. I said, but the problem is that I have you have built up momentum with my audience, and you’re deciding, you’re gonna go to a completely new audience that doesn’t know you, they don’t know you exist, there’s going to be some overlap, you know, two or 3%, probably, but they don’t know you. So you’re starting from scratch. So you’re gonna get out there, and you’re going to spend your money and you’re going to have to spend more money than normal? Because you are trying to get known? Oh, no, no, that’s not true. Everybody knows me now, everything’s gonna be fine. So person left, about three, four months, six months, tops later, person calls and says, my phone stopped ringing. I, you know, I stopped hearing from people I will I’m not top of mind anymore, I’m coming back. So what ended up happening is, the ads in the beginning of this other publication weren’t working yet. It takes time, you got to build up momentum. And not only that, but this person was out of sight, out of mind with the audience that that had been built up. As a result, the, you know, things go down pretty fast. So you want to, you always want to maintain a presence. I’ve always believed that. To some extent, any presence is better than no presents, you know, I do have a caveat to that. And that is, if you’re a full page advertiser, or you’re a double page advertiser, or what we call a double truck. And all of a sudden, you become a quarter page advertiser, you’re sending a signal to your market, that something’s wrong. And so if you’re a quarter page advertiser, and you maintain a little smaller ad, that we don’t sell them, but if you had a smaller ad, that it’s probably not as dramatic as moving from a three times the size four times the size. So you know, there are a lot of things like that. Do you have to keep in mind? I’m not sure I answered your question.

Speaker 5 38:06
Oh, you did. You did marketing, maintain the marketing, and don’t disappear. I mean, the serial story is proof that it works, it worked in the Depression. And so if we can all hold on to that idea, if we’re in a dip, then we put all of our money that we can and just stay invisible, and not drop out with the rest of them, because the people who are the survivors are the ones who are going to be successful. So thank you so much.

Eric Rhoads 38:35
You’re welcome. I had all my top executives fly in a few weeks ago. And I made a speech. Now we had lots of agenda items for two days, but I made a speech and I said, if anybody here is thinking about cutting expenses, just know I’m totally for cutting expenses if we need to. And it’s always better to get out ahead of it. But I am not cutting any advertising expenses. As a matter of fact, I intend to increase advertising. And you know, a lot of deer in the headlights looks and then I tell the story. So this is a really great time, it’s really a good time for an artist to launch. Now you have to have the the money to launch. Now you don’t have to do advertising, but if you’re gonna do things that cost you money, you know, you’re gonna have to have some of that and anybody who’s starting a business and you as artists or business and so on if your gallery. I mean, when you’re launching a business, you have to put money aside for marketing. Now. I didn’t answer the question about the percentage, and I will answer that. Because that was an early question. Like I said, standard is I didn’t say a standard but I said there is a is higher than normal level in the beginning. And then once you get to a point of maintenance, you probably don’t have to work as hard. I think it depends on the type of business to like, if you’re in the cosmetics business, cosmetics business has a 90% margin, glop is basically just mud with with dye in it, lipstick is just goop, right? It costs nothing to make the most expensive part about it is the packaging. And they will spend loads of money on advertising because they got 90% profit, they spend a lot of their money on advertising, they grow their business, they still got 50% profit, if you’re in a business where you have no profit, then you can’t spend a lot of money. So in in your business. You know, I don’t want to diminish this. But the reality is, at least as a as an artist, you know, it’s your time and some materials. And so you have a little bit of flexibility there you have what I would consider to be a high margin business. Now, if you have a gallery, you’re given away half of that to the gallery. So now you’re in a much lower margin business. So you have to, you have to decide. The other thing you can do is you can partner collaborate with others, whether it’s your gallery, there’s a thing called Co Op advertising, where a lot of people will go to their Gallery, and they’ll say, Listen, I want you to advertise me, and I’ll pay 50% of the ads, when you feature me as the primary artist, because now you’re buying an ad for half off. They’re they’re buying an ad for half off, you both get benefit, you’re getting benefit of them promoting you. Next question, Katie, what’s your question? I’ll tell us who you are.

Speaker 6 41:47
I’m Katie Smith, and I’m from Santa Maria, California. And my question is about mastermind groups. I’m wanting to start a mastermind group with some like minded people. And I’m wondering how you go about choosing who to be in a group with? And then also, as we get started, should we place a timeframe on our group from the get go and say we’re going to be together for one year or two years or five years? Is there some kind of a timeframe that should be established? Or do people come and go from mastermind groups and it’s, it stays as a body that changes its members over time.

Eric Rhoads 42:31
I’m gonna, I’m going to answer that first. And then I’m going to answer the other piece of it later. You know, you want to try it out. Before you, before you commit to anything, you, the key to a good mastermind group is who’s in the group and how participative they are. And if if you find somebody’s a dud, you got to move them out. So you’ve got to have somebody who’s the head of that mastermind group, who is going to be willing to make the tough decisions and call people out if they’re not participating. Now, let me just back up and say that if you don’t know what a mastermind group is, it’s a group of people who get together to share information so that you can grow. The idea is you have one mind, but if there are six of you together, you have a master mind, everybody’s working on your problem, and you’re working on their problem. I have been in and paid for to attend multiple masterminds in my life. And there, I wish I learned about him when I was 30. Because I would have done it then. I’m in one mastermind. Now, I spend a substantially high amount of money, the equivalent of a full time salary for one person to be at a mastermind. And not just an average person, but a pretty high level person. And the reason I do it is because I have 15 other people working on my business, and they can see things I can’t see. And they tell me the truth, even when my baby is ugly. So tell me your first part of your question again.

Speaker 6 44:16
And the first one was yes. How to choose who to be in a group with?

Eric Rhoads 44:21
Well, I think the first thing is to set a goal and the goal is to understand what it is you want, do I? What’s my mastermind about? Is it to sit around and chat have friends? Or is it to become a better painter? Or is it to become a better marketer or a better business person? You need to articulate that? And then you need to handpick the people that you think are the smartest people that you can get your hands on because the reality you’re starting a mastermind so that you can learn from the best and you’re going to have people who want to participate, and you’re going to have to be willing to, to in the nicest possible way, say, Sorry, Charlie. And, and that you don’t have to be rude to anybody, and maybe they don’t even know about it. But I think the idea is, you try to articulate so you, you pick up the phone, and you call one person. And you you call your, you know, one of your top targets. And you say, hey, it’s Katie, remember me? Hey, I’ve been observing that you’re doing this really, really? Well. That’s your superpower? From what I can tell, would you agree yes or no? Yes, I do this really? Well, this is my superpower. Would you say that I do that better or worse than you? And if they say, well, you’re probably doing better than I am in that say, Well, why don’t we put our heads together? Let’s meet, you know, once a quarter, once a month. And let’s just compare notes. And I’ll help you and you help me? And why don’t we see if we can get you? Would you agree to that? Sure. No charge, right. And then who, what, what areas of your life are missing that you need help with? Let’s say it’s about marketing. I need somebody really understands advertising? Oh, you know, I do too. Why don’t we call I understand that, you know, this person is really good at advertising. And so, you know, and I would start it out small, I keep it to two or three people in the beginning, see how it goes, you have to have a format, you have to follow a discipline, you’ve got to, you’ve got to have a leader who’s going to be like, we’re not going there. This is this is off topic. And I have a mastermind, actually, this week for two full days in Austin, Texas. And the guy who runs my mastermind that I pay a lot of money to, he keeps us on task, we’re not talking about that that’s not relevant. And he just kind of reigns us in all the time. Because it’s really easy to get off on stories and, and things that are not focused. And so you want to keep it focused. And if you really want to do it, you can also find a professional who can kind of guide your group, but that’s gonna cost you money. Did that answer your question?

Speaker 6 47:14
Yeah. What about that timeframe, though? Is it something that there should be a timeframe on like, when you’re in these mastermind groups? Are they open ended?

Eric Rhoads 47:24
I would say let’s try it for a year, and see how it goes. And if everybody participates, and everybody wants to keep going, and if somebody drops out, then you get to invite somebody else in, I wouldn’t necessarily make it a group thing. But you can. But the thing you got to be careful of is you’re going to have friends who want to get into the group that are not necessarily people are going to put in the work, everybody’s got to put in the work.

Speaker 3 47:53
And, and your book, great book, again, we talk a lot about social media, and this book was written a few years ago. So things have changed. But it seems like what you cover in the book is still relevant. But you just talk about that you use LinkedIn a lot, which I’ve never spent a lot of time on. And now things have changed with Instagram and Facebook to more real skinny. So you can you talk a little bit about social media and how we can use it to our advantage?

Eric Rhoads 48:18
Well, yes, I can. Thank you, Pat. The The first thing to understand about social media is that it’s ever changing, you know, Instagram and Facebook, and you know, they’re hot. Does anybody remember MySpace, they were hot. And then they were not. Things don’t seem to go in and out quite as quickly. But tick tock came on fast. And you know, there’s some talk about tick tock, being restricted in the future, etc. So things are always going to be changing. The other thing is there’s change constantly within those organizations. One minute, they’re focusing on reels, the next minute, they’re focusing on something else. The reason they’re all focusing on reels right now is because tick tock is eating their lunch in terms of time spent online. And so they want reels, they want things that are quick that people can flip through. And so they, they will reward you. And typically these organizations will tell you what they’re thinking, you know, or you can see clues, you know, like they say, Hey, we’re opening up a new thing called this or that, whenever they have a new thing, be the first to jump on it, because they will reward you if you’re putting content on their new thing, then they are going to make sure you’re getting pushed out there and you want them pushing you out there. The average if you’re on Facebook, the average number has gone down from 7% to 3%. And what that means is that let’s say you, you think you’re a big deal. Let’s say you have 5000 followers and you think every time I put something out on Facebook all 5000 of my followers see what I’m writing or posting? Not true. A year ago, two years ago, 7% only 7% See what you’re using, or what you’re posting. Today only 3% see it. So you’re talking to no one. And the only way that they’re, you’re gonna get to more people is if you do Boost Post advertising, which I don’t recommend, as I know that works. Secondly, is you have to figure out how to get Facebook to push you to other people. So when if Facebook sees high engagement, they are Instagram to, or LinkedIn really, if they see high engagement on your page, then they will reward you with more views because they want people engaging. So things like asking a question. You see, somebody asked a question about something and everybody chimes in with an answer. Facebook sees that Instagram sees that, and they’re like, oh, this person’s got a lot of people interacting, that means more people will interact if we push it out there. So now they’re going to show it to 7% instead, and it gets more action, maybe they’ll show it to another 5% and so on. You know, even the people who have 10 million followers aren’t getting out to more than a small percentage of their people. But if they get good interaction, so that’s why engaging content, things that are relevant to the audience. That’s why those things matter. Did that answer your question?

Speaker 3 51:45
Did my I guess the second part of that, again, with a social media? You said you don’t believe in boosting our our ad but don’t isn’t? If you’d run an ad, you can target your friends and friends of your friends. Right? And that would force everybody to see your your painting or whatever you’re putting out? Is that true?

Eric Rhoads 52:05
No. No, I didn’t say I didn’t believe in ADS. I said I don’t believe in boosting, there’s a difference. There are boosting ads, you get these little things to said, Do you want to boost this post? That doesn’t even necessarily mean it’s going to be boosted to your friend list, it might be boosted some to some group in Afghanistan or something it does doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to see it, it’s just that more people will see it, and not a lot of more people. And you got to ask yourself, can I spend an extra 20 bucks? You know, what is that worth? To me? Why am I doing it? If you cannot see a specific return on your Instagram, your Facebook, you know, this is a giant trap. You have all these people who believe, you know, they beat their chests because they have 100,000 followers, having 100,000 followers on Instagram is the equivalent of having 5000 followers on Facebook, it’s been proven time and time again, Instagram, it depends on what kind of following you have and where you’re being followed. But it is. It’s what we call vanity metric. And so if you’re focusing on vanity metric, I hired an agency to help me with with social media posting, and they, you know, they helped me a lot, they got a lot of stuff out there. And I was spending, I don’t know, some large amount of money every month. And I looked at it and I said, Why am I doing this because I’m not making any money from it. And I’m not trying to make money for you know, I don’t monetize my YouTube show. I don’t monetize any of my stuff like some people do. I don’t really want people drive in ads in my stuff i and it’s not worth the money to me. I’m doing it for completely different reasons. I’m doing it about my community, what I’m involved in, you know, plein air painting or realistic painting or otherwise. And so that’s what that’s more about for me, but I still to this day have not figured out how to make money with it. Now, I do know people who do, but those are not necessarily certainly things that are a right fit for me. So I’m not necessarily going down that road.

Speaker 7 54:18
Hi, my name is Gabriel Stockton. I live in sunny San Diego. And my question for you, Eric is from a video publishers point of view. What are the points that you’re looking for in artists for consideration of making videos?

Eric Rhoads 54:39
Well, everything in marketing boils down to one thing, Gabriel what does the audience want? The hardest question to answer in any marketing is how do I find out what my audience really wants? Because you can ask Ask them and sometimes they don’t know what they want. And and I don’t mean that to sound rude. But let me give you an example, I had a product that I developed back in 1902 or something. It was a product that had never been created before. It was a broadcast studio on wheels that looked like a giant radio, it was called a giant boombox. And I had a manufacturer lined up, and I had this great idea. And I did a survey of radio stations that I wanted to sell it to. And the survey came back that they didn’t want it. I even put a picture of it, would you buy this, if it was available for your radio station with your call letters on it? And they said they didn’t want it. And I was pretty discouraged for a minute. And I thought, Well, I’m gonna do it anyway. Because I think they once I show them, they will want it. And I build a $6 million business on that overnight, because of my gut instinct. Because my gut because I came out of that industry. My gut told me that I I believe that to be the right time. Now I can tell you 30 Other failure stories that were my gut was wrong. So to answer your question, when we do art instruction, courses, videos, master classes, whatever you want to call it, we have, we’re investing heavily in the artist, it’s not unusual for us to invest 20 3040 $50,000 in a single production, you know, we have Hollywood level, video team, we have soundstage, we have cameras that just the lenses alone are seven grand, the cameras are 20 3040 grand, that you know, this is really high quality stuff. You know, we spend a lot of days with them. There’s travel involved, and there’s a lot of other things. And you know what I say to my team, who helps me put this together? I say, Okay, would you be willing to take 30 $40,000 out of your pocket? And roll the dice on this artists that you’re recommending to me? And there’s usually a long pause. And oftentimes, the answer is no. And you know, and I want to be able to do anybody and everybody, I love artists, I like they’re my friends, I want to be able to help them out whenever I possibly can. But at the end of the day, if I do too many failures, I’m not helping anybody. I’m not I may be helping the artists, I get a lot of publicity. But at the end of the day, if they’re not making money, they’re not going to come back to me. And if, if I’m not making money, I’m not going to want to do anything else with them. I mean, maybe other things, but not that. So that’s the problem is, you know, you have you have a big investment. So we ask a lot of questions. When we’re developing, who we’re going to approach we ask questions like, what are their followings? Like, what, what is the interaction on their following? You know, how many people do they have on certain social media? How active? Are they promoting themselves? Are they good, you know, we have some artists who work with us and promote themselves. We have other artists who they never want to help. They don’t even want to tell anybody a website, because they consider it to be evil to promote themselves. So, you know, there’s a lot of different things at the end of the day. If, if we can’t make it successful for us in some way and successful for our artists, partners, it doesn’t make sense to do it. And we get surprises all the time, we have artists that we’ve done on a whim that we’ve invested in that we have done massive sales with, we have artists that we have that are massive, big names that we’ve done things with that, you know, didn’t do as well as we hoped they would. And you know, so it’s still very hard to understand what to do with it. But, you know, at the end of the day, we shoot 2025 30 of these a year. So do the math. I mean, you’re talking about a very big investment. And though we kind of look at it, like venture capital firm would look at companies, you know, they say, Well, you know, we’re going to invest in 10 companies, we hope that seven of them make some money and five of them make a lot of money and two of them are really really big hits. But that’s not always true. I mean, sometimes we have several that don’t do well and sometimes We have some that do well, the artists always win. We don’t always win. The artists always win. Max Ginsburg called me one day. And he said, Eric, you made me famous. And I said, why? What’s that all about? He says, Well, you know, you just talked about me so much. So I’m getting invited all over the world and, and I’m getting articles about me and other publications. And, you know, so when we get behind an artist, you know, we’re if if it makes sense, I mean, we’re not going to put something inappropriate and but if we have a watercolor artists, they’re gonna go into our watercolor newsletter, or if a pastel artists, our newsletter, or our general interest newsletter, or our magazines, and on our stages at the conventions, you know, those kinds of things we we try to be as proactive as possible to push these. That answer your question?

Unknown Speaker 1:00:59
that does, thank you so much.

Announcer 1:01:02
This has been the marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com.

Eric Rhoads 1:01:11
Well, I hope you enjoyed that. If you have questions, email me, [email protected]. We’ll get them on the art Marketing podcast. And also on the plein air podcast. I have an art marketing blog. It’s artmarketing.com It’s really easy. And you can go there and learn a lot about it. I have videos and things like that at paint tube.tv. But if you’re really interested and a career and selling your work, marketing, your work is obviously an important part of it. And I studied Marketing long before I ever got into art, I did marketing, I wasted a lot of years and a lot of dollars making a lot of stupid mistakes and learning things. And I’m still up on it, I still stay very, very current. I’m in marketing groups and a lot of other things. So anyway, hope you enjoyed it today. I want to remind you guys pastel live is coming up in August, make sure to sign up for that at pastel live.com. The next artist retreat I’ve got coming up is fall color week, which is a week of painting in September into the early October. And last but not least, we still have some seats left on our fine art trip to Stockholm and Madrid. We go deep, and we get contacts that you’ll never meet on your own. We do experiences that you’ll never be able to do on your own. Because we use our Rolodex, anybody remember what a Rolodex is. And so that’s something that that we try to do want to remind you guys that we do have a regular podcast called The Art marketing minute and look for that it’s on its own. But you can also get that at the end of end of these broadcasts. I’d like to encourage you guys to subscribe to plein air magazine. That’s kind of the root of it all. And some of you are not yet subscribers. 10s of 1000s of you are thank you for that. If you’re out of the country, a lot of people just pick the digital edition. But most people pick the subscription to digital and print because the digital comes out sooner. Right? You don’t have to wait for the mail. And it has 30% more content, more images, things that we just don’t have enough paper to do because paper is expensive. Last but not least, I want to tell you about my blog called Sunday coffee. I come out with it every Sunday and you can find it for free. It’s at Coffee with eric.com. So anyway, I want to thank you guys for watching today for being here for the 250th episode for listening. And remember it’s a big world out there. Go paint it. We’ll see. Bye bye.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-07-21T08:18:00-04:00July 21st, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 129 – Expanded Edition Live from PACE

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

This week’s Art Marketing Minute was recorded live in person at the 10th Annual Plein Air Convention & Expo

Listen and watch as Eric Rhoads answers questions on:

  • writing emails get the attention of art galleries;
  • how much time an artist should spend on marketing;
  • your name when it comes to branding;
  • using software for art business;
  • finding balance as a painter and other aspects of being a full-time artist;
  • social media for artists – using photos versus videos, and if you should ever “boost” a post;
  • finding new work with galleries no matter how “old” you are;
  • how important it is to have a niche

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 129 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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 0:13
So welcome to the Art Marketing podcast. We’re live today at the plein air convention. Welcome you guys. Thank you for being here. All right. So we’ll be taking some audience questions. And we’ll also be answering some questions that have been pre-delivered to us.

We have a question from Jennifer Smith, well in Canada, and the question is how to write a great email that will get attention to get into a gallery. So let’s, there’s a whole different answer about how to get into a gallery. I’m going to talk about that in a second. But let’s just talk about writing emails. If you’re writing, marketing, emails, marketing emails are essentially designed to get somebody to pay attention, maybe, maybe the goal of the email is to get somebody to buy something, maybe the goal is to get them to go to a particular place. And so the very first thing you do with an email is you ask yourself, what is my goal? What do I want to accomplish? So sometimes, we do emails where we want to do what we call sell the click right? So the whole goal of an email is to get somebody to click through to something. So that that that email will get them to open up a webpage or something, it might be to get them to schedule something on their calendar, or it might be to get them to respond to something. So the first thing you ask yourself is, what do I want somebody to do? The second thing you want to do is ask yourself, Who am I speaking to? And what is it that they want? So if you were, let’s say you were targeting an art gallery, and you’re writing an email to an art gallery, which by the way, I don’t recommend, and I’ll talk about that in a minute. But if you were writing to an art gallery, ask yourself this, what’s important to an art gallery. And most of us who are artists don’t necessarily understand what is important to an art gallery. There’s an art gallery owner here in the room right now that I see. And I can tell you that the conversations that she has, are a whole lot different than the conversations that you have. And what I mean by that is that she’s thinking about different problems that she has to solve, right? So what are the problems that an art gallery has to solve? First off, they have to figure out how to sell enough to keep the doors open, and to pay for the lights to pay for the employees. And so the one thing that’s always on the mind of an art gallery is how am I going to sell enough to keep the doors open? And then the second part of that is, how am I going to sell enough that I can actually make enough profit to pay myself? And then on top of that, how am I going to make enough profit that I can actually have a future, right, so I can put some money away. And so an art gallery owner typically is interested in one thing only, and that is, how am I going to sell something. And now that doesn’t mean they’re not interested in you. They’re not interested in in your art, because they are otherwise they wouldn’t be in that business. A lot of art galleries very, very deeply care about their owners, I mean about their artists, and they want to help them as well. But if you have an artist that you think is just a really, really terrific artist, and you’ve had them in your gallery, and you’ve tried to sell them and they don’t sell, there’s only so far they’re gonna go right, they’re not going to keep giving you that wall space. Think about this. If you walk into a shopping center, or let’s say a grocery store, and what do you see on the ends of the aisles, right? There’s always a product on the end aisle cap. And those companies, let’s say it’s Coca Cola, Coca Cola pays the store extra money to have their product on the end aisle cap. Why did they do that? Because they know that’s the most visible spot, do you end up somewhere in the middle of the aisle that’s less visible, but if you’re right there on the end, everybody gets to see it, right? That’s why they want to pay money for it. Well, every bit of shelf space that a retailer has, is valuable. And a retailer, a serious retailer, whether it’s a clothing store, a grocery store, they know how much money they get out of their shelf space, and if they put something on a primary spot, then they say to themselves, this shirt, this t shirt has to generate, you know $30,000 This month and and if it’s not gonna do it, then we’re going to put it in the back of the room where it’s going to generate, you know, a different amount of money. So really, that’s how a gallery person would think as well. And that is I have so much wall space, I have only so many artists, what’s the most important wall space in my gallery? And that’s typically what the spot that people see when they first come in, or there may be another premium spot. And so when they’re thinking about where am I going to put the art, they’ve got to say to themselves, alright, if this is, if this spot makes up 80% of my sales, then what do I need in that spot, I need something that’s going to sell, I need something that’s going to sell for a high price. And as a result, they’re thinking about, Okay, do I put a new artist in that spot? Do I test them elsewhere first? And is this going to be productive for me? So you need to be thinking when you’re writing an email, to a gallery, or to anyone you’re thinking about, Okay, what’s the most important thing that you can say to them, because in an email, it’s the most important thing in an email is the subject line. Everybody thinks, well, the body of the email is what counts. But if they don’t open the email, right, you you don’t get them. Right. So the most important thing you write is that subject line. And a subject line really should not be over five words. Now, sometimes there are exceptions to that. And the reason it’s five words is because if you’re looking at your email on your phone, and you’ve got a small screen, there’s an average of five words that show up in the subject line, and the rest of them get cut off. And 80% of people check their email on their small screen, not their big screen. And most Commerce today is taking place on a small screen. So you want to optimize for small screens. So that means you want to have a shorter email, and you want to have something that’s going to get their attention. So based on what I just said, what’s going to get their attention? And the answer to that is something about how they’re going to make some money off of you. Right? So what do you put in a subject line, and it’s maybe it’s, I’ve got an idea on how you can make some money. I’ve got an idea. That’s kind of it’s more than five words. But the idea is get their attention, draw them in. Now, the second thing is that the second most important thing in an email is the headline. Most people don’t put headlines in their emails. But if you’re in a marketing, mindset, you you may not put it as a big headline, but you might make it as the first sentence. So what’s the most important thing that you can say? You can say, Dear Elaine, I have a history of selling substantial amounts of art at high prices in three other galleries. I’ve decided to add one gallery this year. And I’d like to talk to you about that. All right, now You’ve piqued my curiosity, right? Because now you’ve said, All right, you already know my business, you know, that I need to sell. And so you’ve caught my attention. Now, if you don’t have something like that to say, then you can’t make it up. But you’ve got to look for something that’s going to be of value.

Eric Rhoads 8:35
Now. I will tell you, I’m going to answer this question in a different way. And I don’t want to be discouraging anybody. But when you randomly send an email to a gallery, and a gallery, a really good gallery, like a New York City Gallery, is getting 345 600 solicitations from artists pretty much every week. And if they actually open all those emails, they don’t get anything else done. I was sitting with a gallery owner in New York and he said, Do you mind if I get some work done while you’re while you’re talking? I said, No, I don’t mind. What do you do? And he says, Well, I have he had a pulled out a big box. He said these are submissions from artists. And there must have been 150 of them in there. He said this is a week’s worth. And he had opened it up peek in and throw them away, open them up, peek in and throw away. And he said, I don’t ever pay attention to the submissions that I get because I already know the artists that I want. He said I’m not peeking in to look at their art. I’m peeking in to make sure that I didn’t miss something like a customer said something or whatever, but they kind of knew which ones were probably submissions. And so he said if I were to open and pay attention to every piece of mail every email, then I would never get anything else done. And he said I was in the gallery. I was talking to a client who was about to buy a high end painting. And this guy wondered, and he was an artist, he says, Hey, I’d like to talk to you about carrying my artwork. And the guy said, Oh, can you just wait a few minutes, and he says, Well, I’m in kind of a hurry. And anyway, he interrupted, the client left, he lost a sale. So from the mindset of a gallery, you’re a pest, right? You’re unnecessary pest, they love you. But if you’re, if you’re trying to get into the gallery that way, so best way to get into a gallery is to get introduced, find somebody who knows an artist that’s in that gallery, get to know the artists that are in that gallery, contact those artists, get to know them, ask them to critique your work, don’t ask them for right away for an intro to the gallery. And after you get to know them, and you and you feel comfortable with them, and they feel comfortable with you, you might say, hey, are there any galleries that you would recommend that I should go in? And if they feel comfortable, they might say, well, you know, I actually would introduce you into this gallery or that gallery. But if they don’t say that, then they’re not comfortable that your works ready. So you want to be really careful about not being a pest now, you can get around that. I know people who do get around that, but you’ve got to be really sensitive to being a pest. Right? Because if you if you’re not, then that’ll be an issue. Okay, do we have any questions from the audience? And if so, just come right up to the microphone. Ask your question. And then we’ll see if we can help.

Speaker 2 11:45
My name is Nancy cloths, I come from Portland, Oregon. very delighted to be here. I noticed a major uptick in this plein air convention on computer information. We’ve gotten lots of information through emails, here’s how you access your links and so forth. And I’m wondering as an artist, what percentage in our marketing life? Should we be on the computer in person? Writing, creating brochures? Do you have any kind of formula? Say I consider 50% of my life as an artist in marketing, and teaching? And I just wondered, it seems like the proportions of how we spend our time in marketing materials and access to the computer and so forth, has changed.

Eric Rhoads 12:42
Okay, good question. Thanks. Stay at the mic, because I might ask you a question. Or you might comment on something. The world has changed, obviously, you know, we used to Does anybody remember letterhead? I don’t think our company even has any letterhead anymore. And if we did, I wouldn’t even know how to find it. But you know, we used to spend a ton of money on letterhead and brochures and things like that. And we don’t do much in print anymore. I don’t even carry business cards, I have an electronic business card, somebody holds up their camera to it, and it scans it and puts it in their phone. And I hate I hate the idea of printing something. But I still print magazines. Isn’t that ironic? And people still read print magazines, but some people still read digital magazines. Some people don’t read any magazines. I think that, you know, from our standpoint, we like the idea of being able to be nimble, because if we, we have to change something, we can change it and notify everybody and it’s out there. But in your world as an artist, you have to, you have to think about, you know, what’s your environment? First off, my rule is you should spend 20% of your time on marketing, no matter what if that’s one out of five days, and you can break it up however you want. But if you force yourself to spend 20% of your time, even if you don’t know what to do, you’ll find something to do. And if you find something to do, you’ll be doing productive work eventually towards selling or whatever. So I think artists typically galleries typically need brochures or books or some way to show the art. It’s an expensive investment, you know, even southern beaches and Christie’s has gotten away from from doing the catalogs, it’s all online now, which I prefer because I can just click and look at it and register and and make a bid if I want to. But it depends on the audiences you’re talking to more and more older demographics are more tuned in especially after COVID You know, nobody before COVID knew how to use Zoom. And now everybody does. And so the world is more electronic. And so you have to just get Gotta judge what it is you do. Did that scratch that itch? Or is there more you need?

Speaker 2 15:06
Yeah, my Mondays are devoted to marketing. And then every morning, I’m, I’m one to two hours in marketing, okay, I teach and I present and I sell in a gallery and I, I have to produce, I am trying to establish a balance a new balance with with production.

Eric Rhoads 15:26
Well, what I would ask yourself is, what is my, I have what I call my optimum times, right? I know my energy patterns, I know when my mind is working great. I know when I’m tired. So you know, my day I start out like really high energy, well, kind of, after I workout, I’m low energy, and then I get high energy again. And then I kind of go along, and then after lunch, I lose my energy, and then it starts dwindling down for the rest of the day. And so I try to put the important things that require my brain, my thinking time, in that period of time, and the things that don’t require that in the other periods of time. So, for instance, I oftentimes would, would tell my salespeople, there are certain things that you do when you’re at your best, right, so you make your phone calls when you’re at your best. And when you’re tired after lunch, that’s when you build your presentations, and you get that stuff out of the way. So if you were to look at my calendar, I, I’m not always perfect about this, but I actually calendar eyes, my projects, I calendar is thinking time, because everybody needs to just stop for an hour or 20 minutes or you know, two or three times a week and just think about your business. And I oftentimes will calendar eyes, not just meetings, but I’ll calendar eyes projects, I’m going to give myself one hour to get this project done, or two hours or whatever. in your particular case. And in my particular case, I have painting time as well. And I do my best painting when I’m at my highest energy. And unfortunately, because I have all of this that I have to run, I don’t paint during my high energy times, except sometimes on the weekends, right? If I can get high energy time, on a Saturday morning or after church on Sunday, that kind of thing, then I will I’ll be able to paint better in those periods of time. But you know, I go out to the studio six or seven o’clock, eight o’clock at night, and I’ll paint till two o’clock in the morning some days. And so but that’s, that’s just me, but you just have to kind of figure out what works for you. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you. Any other questions? Come up to the mic if you have one. And and if you could just be lined up so that one person asked them the next one we’ll get to you.

Speaker 3 18:12
Hi, I’m Caitlin Lee line hatch from Wisconsin. Super excited to be here my first time. My question relates to how to figure out how to use my name as my brand. It’s a little complicated. I feel like I’m in an identity crisis. Because I I’ve used my maiden name my whole life doing art, but it was more of a hobby, after getting married, you know, dropped that. But now that I’m finally getting back into my art, after 10 years of raising kids, I still want to sign my work with my maiden name, but use my maiden name and married name to talk about myself because we also have another business that I think goes well with the story of my art. And we run a dairy farm and make cheese and it’s a beautiful story that works together. But I’m worried that if I have two different names, it’s complicated. And is it a mistake? Or will people just eventually figure it out?

Eric Rhoads 19:06
If I woke you up in the middle of the night from a dead sleep? And I asked you if you had to make a liver die decision right now about what direction you would go What would you pick?

Speaker 3 19:17
the hyphenated name but still sign it just my maiden name they want to do

Eric Rhoads 19:23
all right, well, you need to do what you want to do. And I came out of the radio industry and we had radio names. And you know, like you’d have a guy or a lady who had a really difficult to name, last name, you know something, you know, heavily ethnic or something and, and so they’d say, Okay, well your sandy beach or you know, or, you know, your french fry or whatever, they come up with these names and jingles for him and the reason they do that is because they’re memorable If you have a name that is not memorable, then it makes your life much more difficult. And it makes their life much more difficult. You know, we have a company that we acquired little little art instruction video. And we kept that name for 10 years, before we stopped using it and combined it into one name of paint tube TV. And it and we kept it alive, because a lot of the people who knew them, you know, we wanted that consistency. But as those people kind of aged out, and then we started getting them more familiar with their other brands, we put them together. But we one of our slogans was, you know, difficult name, great training. And but if, if I were starting from scratch, I would consider, you know, coming up with something that’s easy. Now, there are a number of artists who will just use their first name, or their last name, or maybe they’ll come up with something. I, my brother calls me brick, because my, my first name is Bruce. So there’s the B, about my family. And my middle name is Eric. And my family always calls me, Rick. So he calls me brick. And I was thought, well, that’d be a great name for if I became a abstract painter, I just become brick, right? So because I wouldn’t want anybody to know who I was anyway, because I don’t do that. So you, I think, if you’re going to do something, pick something and stick with it, whatever you’re going to do. I have a friend that’s here, I don’t know if she’s in the audience. But she, she decided that she she was using a her maiden name and her married name, hyphenated for many years. And she got known as that for many years. And then she decided she was going to change her name. And I said, You’re stupid. Don’t change your name, you know, you’ve got 30 years of branding. And now all of a sudden you want to become whatever it was, I said, Don’t do that. You’re just throwing away 30 years of equity, and brand equity. So in your particular case, if you’ve been known as your maiden name, then I would incorporate that. And I would, I would add your last name if you want to do that. But if your last name is tough, maybe stick with your maiden name, you have your dairy farm business, you can easily be who you are for that and be who you are for your artists. And I’ll tell you something, I I’m on a board of directors, with 15 other companies. And one of the people on my board is an artist who makes $5 million a year as an artist, by the way. And he has different brands. So he has his name as a brand. But he has also he’s created names. He’s made up names of other brands with different styles of art. And, and he never puts his picture on it. So I mean, it’s no different than then a cosmetics company saying okay, well, let’s come up with the essence of Jasper, right? You know, so you could do something like that if you like. So we have a lot of artists who have these like, the questions are like, Well, I’m known as a portrait artist, but I really also want to be a sculptor. And so it’s like, do you confuse your audience or not? And so those are ways to overcome that. Tell me your name again.

Unknown Speaker 23:44
Caitlin Lee line hatch.

Eric Rhoads 23:46
Caitlin Lee line hash hatch hatch. Well, that’s easy. That’s fine. It’s very elegant sounding. And it might be hard to write all of that on a signature. But I think that’s fine. Okay. All right. Did I answer your question? Yes. Okay, great. Terrific. Next question.

Speaker 4 24:07
Hello, my name is Gabrielle istok. And this is my first physical time so it’s nice to finally meet everybody and you in person. I would like to know, back to our first question, that gal asked about marketing. What is some software that you use? I could definitely use some good calendar software. What is something that you recommend to help artists in now this more digital age?

Eric Rhoads 24:40
Oh, well, what kind of help?

Unknown Speaker 24:44
Like what what? So I still use

Eric Rhoads 24:47
I understand AI can make the art for you. Is that what you’re looking for?

Speaker 4 24:51
No. I don’t think so. I’m, I’m referring to you know, I still use the good old paper have, you know, calendar? Are you using software to schedule things? Well?

Eric Rhoads 25:09
That’s a loaded question. The answer to that is yes, and no. So I’m a bit of a tech nerd. But I’m also a bit of a Luddite. So I have, I have tried different programs and spent money on different programs and apps, and so on to manage my to do list. And I do my to do list every day on paper. And the reason I do it is because I have a system, I have a book, I buy these hard bound books at the office supply. And the left side, I write the date, the left side is for notes, the right side is for my to do list. And I take my to do list and I prioritize it by A, B, or C. A is the most important, B is kind of important. C isn’t really very important right now. And I list everything by A, B, and C. And sometimes there’s 50, or 75, things on that list. It’s not uncommon. And then I also go through and I put an asterix next to something if it’s urgent. So it could be a C, but it has to get done because it’s urgent. And then, so I put that Asterix there, that means I gotta get it done today, then the next thing I do is I go through my list and I go, is there anything on here that I can delegate, and unit probably don’t have anybody to delegate it to. But if you did, I go through and go, You know what, this is really something I shouldn’t be doing, I shouldn’t waste my time doing it. So I’ll cross it out. And I’ll send a quick email to Carrie or somebody or ally. And I’ll say, do this. And then I go through and N A is 80%. Those are the big things, right? I, I try to knock out my A’s first. And so how do you know which one so if I’ve got five A’s, I go through it. And I said based on today where I am, and what’s the most important thing to me, that’s going to be the most important to what I’m trying to move the needle on at this time. So it might be a new product, or it might be a different project, or it might be a money. So like, if I know like I have to sell out the plein air convention by, you know, within three days, and I’ve only got three days to do it, that becomes a one and then the next thing becomes a two. And so that’s how I do it. So I do that manually. Now, there’s software that will do that for you to do a better job. But I’ve never been able to I just you know, because I’ve been doing it for 30 years, it’s just works for me. And we’re using a piece of software we were using. Let’s see where it is called up up. Upwork. Right? Is it Upwork. Anyway, we now build all of our projects in the software, click up, click up, thank you. And, and we put every detail every step of everything and every person who’s involved with it into that. And then it sends us reminders of what to do and how to do it. So my whole company operates on on clickup. Now, we were using another piece of software until about six weeks ago. And so I get email notices, and it tells me when I need to have something done. And that is a really great tool for you. It forces you to plan. But once you plan once, if you have like a typical week and you want to repeat that, you can it’ll just automatically you just regenerate it for the next week. So it says okay, spend spend two hours on marketing starting at two o’clock on Thursday something but you know, I just use Google Calendar and and what’s in my iPhone that’s convenient for me. I use AI a lot not to create paintings. But I have aI up all the time. I recommend spending the money for chat GBT for it costs you like a couple $100 a year but it’s better. And so now you can have it write emails for you. You can have it write promotional pieces for you. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. And just to give you an example, I told Christina, who’s our social media manager that I wanted to do quotes from Sunday coffee, and she said, Okay, well get me some quotes from Sunday coffee. So I went into AI, I said, go to my Sunday coffee blog, find 50 Motivational quotes and put my name at the end of them. Two minutes later, I had 50 of them. And so I and I sent her that and then we also learned how to use a software called Canva. That is for graphics. And there’s a way you can automate that. So she was able to take that automation that I had In two minutes, she automated it in Canva it spit out in another 10 minutes spit up 5050 different graphics for it. So that’s, that’s where you can save a lot of time and and AI is going to be very valuable for marketing for all artists. I anytime I have a hard problem I’m trying to solve, I’ll go into AI and I’ll say, here’s the problem, what would you do? And it’ll give me a list. And some of the things are correct. And some of them aren’t. Some are things I haven’t thought of. So it can be very valuable.

Speaker 4 30:32
And nice. I also enjoy it. It’s called vid IQ and they have a chat GBT thing that links to your YouTube. So everything you’re saying in your YouTube connects, and you can do that same thing, like, what did I say over here? And they’ll bring it over and write what you said. So it feels more genuine? Because it took what you were talking about in your own YouTube channel. And then one other question I had, is it is it a is a new fad that’s going on right now. But I noticed when people are on camera, and they’re addressing people that might be watching them on camera, they’re saying friend, like, hey, Fran, I want to tell you about this thing. Is that a good marketing strategy?

Eric Rhoads 31:20
I don’t know. I have no idea. I don’t know why it’s a trend. There’s no, there’s nothing I’ve seen that indicates one way or the other. I think that general rule of thumb is whenever you can be personalized, it’s better. You know, if you’re sending an email, and you have a system that allows you to do this, whether it’s MailChimp or some other thing, we use Agora Pulse, you know, you’ll get an email that says, hey, Gabriel, that’s more powerful than saying, Hey, friend, but sometimes there’s a moment when you want to say, Hey, dear fellow artists, or whatever, but anytime you say anything like that, you immediately go, your radar goes at, and Oh, me, and you hit delete, right. And this I do this all day, every day, we all do. And so, I mean, the best rule for all marketing is tested. You know, test test one doing Hey, friend and test one without it. The most important thing is what you say it when you’re talking about YouTube, I paid a huge amount of money for YouTube training. I hired a consultant on YouTube. As you know, I’ve got 100,000 followers on my YouTube channel now. And the most important thing is the first three seconds, and also the titling. I went through and changed all the titles of the my top 50 viewed art school live shows. And I put the word secrets and every one of them and viewing went up. And it’s stupid, but it works. And so you know, Secrets of watercolour painting with Gabriel Stockton, you know, kind of a thing. And but the first three seconds of your show, determine what it’s like you’re driving down the highway at 65 miles an hour, in your case, 85 miles an hour, you’re driving down and you see a billboard. And you’ll see two billboards, and one says McDonald’s next exit, and the other one has like 500 words on it crammed in, and you can’t even make it out, right. And you might make it out if you drive by it every day going to work. And so you’ve got to put a billboard out front of your YouTube, or anything you do your emails, if everybody in the room would just start saying, okay, what can I say that people want to hear? That’s going to get attention. And I’m going to put that at the front of emails. I have a friend is a best selling author. And he said to me, he was coaching me on writing my Sunday coffee. And he said, Now when you write it, write everything and then take the first two paragraphs and throw them away. Because nobody gets to the point until the third paragraph. And so I’ve now learned to get to the point right away. But the idea is you want to get their attention because they’re deciding am I going to watch this? Am I going to read this? Am I going to open this? What’s going to get their attention? Alright, good question. Thank you.

Speaker 5 34:36
My name is Frank Gonzales. I live in Mexico. I keep Jalisco Mexico and this is my first time as you know. Yes. Okay, so I have two questions. One is kind of an awkward one. I have been teaching in San Miguel de Allende, watercolor and oil. I love that. Yes, I know you were there at some point.

Eric Rhoads 34:57
I’ll tell you a quick story. Okay. Very quick. All right, COVID hits, Art School live starts, we get millions of viewers. And I’m walking down the street in San Miguel. And my wife says, Don’t look now, but that guy’s staring at us. And you know, you hear these stories about people getting kidnapped and all this stuff. So she’s like, be careful, be careful. And I said, just don’t look at him. So we walked by the guy and he starts walking towards us. And she’s like, holding on to her purse. And he says, Are you Eric Rhoads? Yes, I took us on a tour. So anyway, I’m sorry.

Speaker 5 35:37
Okay. Well, my question has to do with the so I started teaching there. I’ve been teaching for quite a few years now. 20, to be exact. But the thing here is that when I started teaching in San Miguel de Allende, and I used my name and friend, Gonzales, then they say, you’re no different Gonzales. They say, Well, you are not every Gonzales. And I said, Of course I am. It happens to be that there’s another artist there who has the same name. And I’m trying to kidnap him, but I haven’t really. So somebody said to me, you should change your name. And I said, No, he needs to change his name. I don’t know, what do you think about that?

Eric Rhoads 36:15
Well, what I would do, first off, I would go meet this guy, and get your picture taken with him. And then I would tell the story on social media about how that you’ve got this confusion thing going on. And that just be kind of a fun thing to do. But the only thing you can do is figure out another way you can differentiate yourself. Now, when you’re attracting audience to come to you and San Miguel, they’re probably coming from other places. I know from also from San Miguel, they’re all coming from San Miguel, not all of them. Okay, but so you have to figure out, first off, what I would do with your marketing is I would put your name and then put where, where you’re from? Okay. Okay, so like DaVinci? Yeah. Okay. And then I would put your photo that way. The people who know the other guy are gonna go, that’s a different guy. Right? So there are obviously lots of people with different names. It’s a very difficult marketing dilemma. And you only run into that in San Miguel.

Speaker 5 37:45
Okay, so the second thing, the second thing has to do with the so I paint a lot I paint fires. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. But so I have this idea, this strategy, which actually, I want to explain a little bit so that you can tell me what you think. So what I’ve been doing other than painting, and you know, selling my work in different galleries, I, I became a promoter of art. I also became an art auctioneer. And I paint a lot of public art in my town, because many people cannot buy my art, but I still want them to enjoy it and to have it. And also, I use it obviously, as a strategy for marketing. And last year, we founded an art museum in our town. Yeah, we have over 500 600 pieces of art that, you know, a lot of people from different parts of the world come to, to our little town, I actually learned to speak English there. So I mean, doing all of these things besides painting, thinking, you know, this is a nice, a nice way to put myself you know, in front of people. But the idea is to do that publicly and socially. Until 55. I will become 51 next year. So it’s like, Okay, so once I get to that point, then I do nothing but painting. So it’s like a, like a ladder. I want to think to get to a point where I’m known in my area, but then I can just do what I love, which is painting. like to know what you think about that.

Eric Rhoads 39:20
I think it’s a really good idea, but it’s also very stupid. Okay, and I’m not calling you stupid. So here’s the problem. We have this misconception, that when we become famous that all of our problems are gonna go away. All right, so I’ve known some pretty great artists, some of which are no longer around. I won’t use any names. But I had a conversation with one of these famous artists over dinner one night, and I said, you know, it must be really nice to be you because you don’t have to mark it anymore. He said, What are you talking about? He says if I’m if I’m not seen all the time, everywhere they forget me at you have to be seen all the time. If you look at the great artists alive today, let’s look at like David LaFell. Do you think David LaFell doesn’t do any marketing? David LaFell does marketing every day of his life. Richard Schmidt and I talked to him about this, Richard Schmidt did marketing every day of his life. Now, it may not be marketing in the traditional sense that you think of I mean, maybe you weren’t seeing ads, with Richard Schmid, talking about his paintings or something, but you would see books come out, you would see shows you would see stories or articles, everyone needs to adopt an attitude that if I’m selling my artwork, if I’m in a business, which you are your small business, then if I’m in business, you have to devote a certain amount of time to your marketing. And that never ends. Marketing is a lifetime commitment. If you think you’re going to get to a high point of awareness, you will, and you’re doing all the right things to do that. But here’s the problem. Once you get up here, the minute you stop promoting, you start sliding down the scale. And so remember that there’s a concept called attrition, right? So if, if I owned a gallery, in a typical year, 10% of my customers would die, move, retire, not have any more wall space, lose their jobs run out of money, I’d lose 10% of my customers in a typical year, in 2008, the attrition rate for art galleries was 60%. That means in 2008, most art galleries lost 60% of their customers, and most of them didn’t survive hundreds of art galleries went away, not the smart ones, in 2008, actually increased their advertising, even though everybody said, you know, we’re in a recession, nobody has any money. And those people survived, and they’re still around today. Because they realized that if you stay top of mind, you’re gonna get the customers that are spending, there may not be as many people spending. But if you can get some money in the door, then that will help you survive. So here’s what’s going to happen, you’re going to make yourself famous in your area, but 10% of them are going to die, move, whatever. And then there’s going to be 10% new people who come in and they don’t know you. And, you know, five years from now, 50% of those people are gone. And five years from now, 50% of the new people don’t know you exist. So you are constantly having to replace that 10% that’s going away with a new 10%. Okay,

Speaker 5 43:04
no, but I guess what I meant is, you know, the public card, the social work and all of that I don’t I know that I can’t stop doing my publicity. I mean, that’s, that’s a certainty for me that I know that I have to invest in my own publicity. But I just, I guess what I’m trying to say is, you know, I’ve been doing all these things, and everybody gets when they think art, the first name that comes to their mind is my name. Well, except with that other guy who doesn’t same name as me. But when I’m saying 55, I’m saying 55, to do all the work that I do all the teaching, all the auctioning, and all of those things, and stop all of that paint and still continue with my publishing Academy. That would never stop, I can’t do it all.

Eric Rhoads 43:47
So what you have to do is look for leverage. And what I mean by that is, so I’m kind of in the same boat, I can’t do it all anymore. I used to do it all. I used to be a one man show and do everything. Now I have 5050 people and I still can’t keep up. Right? And, and so the first thing is if you can get some help some volunteers, somebody to do some work with you. Maybe it’s some paid people from time to time, that to help you do some of those things. But the other thing is to leverage other people and that is to look for somebody else who’s aggressive in your marketplace that wants to be involved in those things. And then see if you can do collaborations with them, you know, they have marketing that’s going on, maybe they can include you in their marketing in exchange for something you do for them. Look for ways to collaborate look for ways to be interacting with other people. You know, I have a this is gonna sound really, really arrogant, and I don’t mean it to sound arrogant. It’s just you get to a point where you have so much demand on your time. You have to be picky Right. So if I did every art competition that I was asked to judge, if I did every show opening that I was asked to attend, I physically couldn’t do them all. I mean, there would be something every weekend. And so I have to turn down most of it. If I did, all the speaking engagements I’m asked to do, I would have to turn them down. So I, I set a let what I call my leverage rule, and that is, okay, I will only accept a speaking engagement, unless if there’s a minimum number of people in the, in the crowd, usually 1000 people or more, because, you know, I’m gonna get on an airplane, I’m gonna fly across the country, it’s gonna take me a day to get there, I’m gonna have to stay in a hotel, and I hate hotels. I’m going to have to get up at four o’clock in the morning to go to the airport. And then I’m going to go and I’m going to speak to 50 people. And no, I would love to speak to those 50 people, it’s just not productive. So if I’m going, I have something that I want in return, right? I want them to sign up for my email list. I want them to buy a product I want them to know about a blog or a podcast or something that I do. And so I, I look at that. And I say, Okay, what’s my goal? If I accept, I turned down, there was a big art convention for art materials people in in Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago, Columbus a few weeks ago, and they asked me to be on a panel with three other people who were my equivalents in other industries, I mean, for for other publications, and and I said, No, I’ll come if I’m a keynote speaker, but I won’t come if I’m on a panel. Now, why would I do that? Because I didn’t want to be one of three. I thought, if I’m gonna fly across the country, I want to stand out, I want to have control of the conversation, I want to be able to talk to the audience. Now that sounds arrogant. And it might be and that’s not my intent. But if I’m going to take my time, I want to get value out of it. So you have to look at that and say, How can I get value? How can I leverage my time? What else can I do? Thank you. All right, next question.

Unknown Speaker 47:23
Hello, my name is Laura Lee, I’m from Texas.

Eric Rhoads 47:26
Can you get a little closer to the mic? Yeah, you could pull it up if you want to tall or handheld.

Speaker 6 47:32
Okay, no, that’s okay. I’m fine. I wrote out my question, because I wanted to make sure I did it. Right. So in doing emails and social media posts, how important is it to be on the camera myself? And what would you say about photos versus videos?

Eric Rhoads 47:48
All right, well, and we’ll get into a dialogue about social media here from this. First off, in, you know, the, the world has changed so dramatically. It you know, the, we have people on our team who do nothing but social media and video and, and I have a producer for my show, and we take my show, my daily show, and then we make shorts out of that. And then we put captioning on it. And we take my podcasts and we do shorts out of that we put captioning on it, we actually now have just discovered an AI tool that does all that for us. We have, we have one company that we pay a couple $1,000 a month just to do that for us. And we found this AI tool that does it for like $10 a month or something. And so this guy is gonna probably lose his job. You don’t work for us. It’s a company. And we do it because Facebook and YouTube and Instagram are fighting for their lives because Tik Tok is crushing them. And so they’re if you do reals, if you do shorts, they will reward you. And the way that social media works first off, most people think, Okay, I have 10,000 followers. If I write something, all 10,000 people are gonna see it. Anybody in the room believe that? No. So three years ago, the number was 7%. Facebook will push your posts to 7% of your followers only 7%. Today, the number is 3% only 3% of your followers are going to see it. So you have all these people who think Well, I’m gonna do my marketing on Facebook and on Instagram and I don’t need anything else. I’ll just push it out to my 100,000 followers, you know, and, and so what Facebook does is they look at at your engagement rates And the first thing they reward is if you’re doing video, they reward that. And so rewarding means if we have good engagement, people watching it, then we’re going to show it to more people. If they watch it more than the first three seconds, then that’s good. We’ll show it to even more people. If they watch it. Halfway through, we’re going to show it to even more people, they watch it all the way through, we’re going to show it to even more people. Right? So that means that you have to be thinking about what I talked about earlier, how do I get them to watch what’s what’s the first thing I can say that’s gonna stand out, be controversial, get their attention, whatever. And then what can I say that’s gonna make people watch all the way through you, if you pay attention to Instagram, you’ll see people doing this very effectively. You know, at the end, I’m going to show you how I, you know, did this magic trick, whatever. And the whole goal is to try to pull you through, you know, these people do these things where they turn the paintings around, and they’re trying to hold people longer. And that’s why they do this stuff. And so video is very highly important. And if you’re branding yourself as an artist, in today’s world, brand yourself, and that means they need to know you, they need to know your face, and you need to have your look. And your look needs to be your look forever. I told Eric Koppel when we did our first video with him, I said, What’s your look going to be since I don’t know he had this cap on. I said, Don’t ever take the cap off. This is now your look. And so you’ve seen everything you see him in on his social media for the last 10 years, he’s got that cap on same cap probably stinks by now. And the idea here is that you need every artist needs a brand. They need something that you know might be your haircut, it might be your glasses, it might be your jacket, it might be everybody’s got to look, you pay close attention to Jane Seymour, you know, she’s always got the scarf on. And she’s you know, we’re about to take a picture with something. She said, Oh, wait, let me put my scarf on. Right. So everybody’s got their look, you need to kind of figure out what is my look, you know, when I’m on art school life, I wear a black shirt every day, this my look that I that I wear there. And so you have to kind of figure out what, what do I want to be how do I want people to perceive me, and you need to build your brand. And you need to show your picture. So I think it’s important. Thank you. Okay. Other questions?

Speaker 7 52:40
I can. How about that. I’m Doris MIDI. And I’m from Tarrytown, New York. I’m 80 years old. And when I walk into certain places of certain galleries, to find out if I can set up an appointment to show my work or whatever. I believe sometimes I’m totally eliminated because I’m not a young artist who might be selling their paintings cheaply, or have a certain amount of years to be in the industry. And I’m wondering, how do you combat that?

Eric Rhoads 53:14
Well, I think the very first thing that came to mind, tell me your name again.

Unknown Speaker 53:19
Doris VAD, Doris, yes,

Eric Rhoads 53:22
the and forgive me for saying this. But the first thing that comes to mind is you have to ask yourself, am I telling myself a story? Or is this really true? Because we all get stories in our heads about the way things are. And sometimes those things happen, because we have those stories in our heads. And that may not be the truth. I mean, if Andrew Wyeth walked into a gallery, and he was 80 years old, what would happen?

Speaker 7 53:53
Well, he had a reputation that preceded him. Okay, he would be welcomed.

Eric Rhoads 53:57
Sure. All right. So it’s not about age is no, what is it?

Speaker 7 54:04
It’s my ad, my actions possibly

Eric Rhoads 54:08
is about reputation. Okay, right. So what does every gallery want, they want you to make their job easy, right? That a gallery owner wants to know that your work is going to sell that you’re going to be easy to sell. I mean, some artists are easy to sell. I mean, if I had Jeremy lifting, I could sell that all day long. Right? So I think that what you need to ask yourself is it might not be an age thing. It might be in some cases. You know, as I get older, I notice how some people respond. You know, people start calling me sir, you know, things like that. So there’s gonna be some of that ageism stuff that takes place but you know, screw you’re gonna just go forward anyway and do what you want to do. and you will find a way to overcome any obstacle because that’s who you are. And, you know, I have had people in my life that have, I have made, I’ve judged them. And they’ve, I’ve had impressions in my mind, and I would have discounted them. I hate saying it, because it’s, it’s just something I don’t like about myself, but it’s true. But there are some people who live up to that. And then there are some people who are like, not letting you get away with that, you know, I’m gonna plow through and I’m gonna change your mind. And you have met people who are 80 years old, and who are fireballs and energetic and can get things done, and you’ve met people who are 50 that act like they’re 90, right? So, you know, just manage your mindset mindset is so critical. How you think about yourself, listen, I look at myself in the mirror every day. And I wonder, you know, how did that happen? And so, I have to constantly say to myself, that, you know, we let this stuff creep into our heads, you know, oh, you know, nobody wants to hear from me, because I’m, you know, over 40 I mean, or over 50 or over sick, you know, I mean, think about when you turned 30 What a big tragedy it was. And then when you turn 40, it was a tragedy, then when you turned 50, it was a major tragedy, then you returned 60 It’s like you’re almost dead. And then you turn 70. And you look back at 60 and 50, and said, Gee, I wish I were 50. Right? It’s all head trash. So you have to manage your head trash.

Speaker 7 56:46
Well, most people don’t take me to be as old as I am. Well, you don’t look old. And you know, I I have like four businesses I’m running and all that. But it’s just when I walk into the galleries, it’s what happens and I don’t, maybe that’s what I’m trying to rationalize, because I know you can’t

Eric Rhoads 57:04
do cold. Maybe they just maybe your work just isn’t something they like, and they haven’t

Speaker 7 57:08
even seen it. Yeah, I’m just cruising to see what the gallery has to offer. Yeah. And, you know, find out who the principles are just see the thing, okay. And if I’m not buying, I’m kind of like, well, what do you want to do here? And I said, I’d like to show a portfolio. Oh, we only buy from Europe or something.

Eric Rhoads 57:25
Yeah, but it’s a it has nothing to do with your age. Okay. It has to do with with the idea that if they took 10 minutes for everybody who walked in for it with a portfolio, they would never get anything else done. And, and you are the fifth artist has walked in that day. And the 50th That’s walked in that month, and the 900 That’s walked in that year. And so they have set their standards, and they’ve said, you know, we’re not talking to these people, right? So you have to ask yourself, alright, if I want to be in this gallery, how do I get in there? And so maybe the question isn’t, I’m an art, maybe you’re not saying I’m an artist? I’m, you know, I want to be in your gallery. Maybe the question is, tell me about this artist. And then they tell you about him say, how do you find people like this, these people are this is amazing. And they’ll Oh, you know, while we were really watching this, or whatever, I had an art dealer tell me that he said he has a secret, Instagram and Facebook account. And he follows artists with a secret name because they don’t they everybody knows his name. And he said, I watch their behavior. I watched how they not only what they post, I watch if they post good things or bad things I watch if they post things that are uncooked, I watch if they’re showing party photos with their head in the toilet, you know, things that are gonna get in the way he says, and I watched their progress over a number of years. And sometimes when they get to a certain point, I’m like, Okay, I want to bring them in. I had a gallery owner tell me that one of her customers came in the other day, and and brought the painting that she had just bought. And she said, I can’t own this painting anymore. Because I saw the artist on Facebook and him doing something so disgusting. I just don’t want to own his work anymore. So she traded it for something else. That’s how important this stuff is. And so you got to do your research. You got to do your homework. And you know, the concept of marketing is really when everybody else is doing this. Do this Zig when everybody else zags. And rather than being one of 9000 people that year that go into that gallery. Why don’t you figure out a strategy that you’re going to be the one they’re going to pick this year. And so you know, use your brain Get to know the other artists that are in the gallery try to figure out what you can do that is going to get you invited in. Because if you’re invited in you have more strength, more power. And by the way, they see your work. They’re not going to care about your age. The only thing they’re going to care about your age, I had a gallery owner tell me one year, he said, he saw younger artists who was really hot, he said, Oh, this is great. I can get 40 years of sales out of this guy. Versus I can get 20 years out of sales of this person. Right? So that’s how people think sometimes it’s it’s cold and cruel, but it’s true. Okay. Thank you. Good job.

Speaker 8 1:00:44
Hello, Eric, how are you? So my, my name is Luis Sackett, I’m from New Mexico. And I’ve been painting a long time. Now I sell occasionally on Facebook, or Instagram. But I noticed that they were throttling back the amount of people that were watching, I check the statistics, the statistics on Facebook to see how many interactions I’ve had how many views I’ve had. So trying to figure a way around, not boost having to pay to boost something.

Eric Rhoads 1:01:17
So complete waste of money, don’t ever hit the boost.

Speaker 8 1:01:20
That’s just what I was gonna say I did that one time, I saw less interaction than when I didn’t do it. So that really teed me off, I thought, me I’m not doing that one again. So I sat there, and I tried to figure out a way to get more exposure without any monetary outlay on my part, I had a painting in my studio, that was a failed painting. And I have occasional killer or curate days in my studio, where I’ll pick something up that has displeased me, because you know, your site advances faster than your abilities. And so I looked at him, and I thought, I’ll give it an hour. Let me see if I can turn it into something. And it turned into a pretty credible little eight by 10 painting. And I thought, you know, I didn’t have this painting. When I walked into the building, what would I lose if I gave it away? So I created on my Facebook page, a share contest, that if you shared my painting publicly, and then let me know that you did it, I put your name and a hat. And on Mother’s Day, picked out a name. And somebody when the painting, it wasn’t framed, I could stick it in an envelope send it so the postage was no big deal. And I had a bunch of names people I didn’t even know. And I checked the interactions the end of that week. And where I had had something like 58 interactions the week before I was up 2000 interactions. I had a whole bunch more people that followed me. And it didn’t cost me anything but an hour of my time. So I thought that was pretty good. And somebody who knows me pretty well said, why don’t you do it around Christmas time, too. And I thought, What is your thought about repeating something like that? I think it was fairly successful the first time out. But I don’t know if it’s a good idea to create a pattern of that or to do it for a short time or to not do it.

Eric Rhoads 1:03:18
Well, that’s very creative. Congratulations. I think that I have two answers to that question. If if something works, keep doing it till it doesn’t work. And if it doesn’t work, keep changing it until it does work. And if that doesn’t work, then try something completely new. So we will sometimes we send out emails, and sometimes we’ll send out two emails, we’ll send out 1000 emails, we’ll send 500 with one subject line, and 500 with another subject line, and one subject line, we’ll get 60% response and one will get you know, and you never know what it’s going to be. And so we’ll pick that subject line, then we’ll send the email out to everybody else. So you know, test everything, try things. I think that’s remarkable. I think the thing that we all get hung up on is, it doesn’t matter how many followers you have, those are called vanity metrics. And it’s really easy to get sucked into that, you know, because you see this. This artist has 100,000 followers on Instagram, and I don’t and you go, Oh, well. So I hired a guy. I have a guy that works for me on Instagram. And I said, you know, this guy’s got 100,000 followers and I don’t and I want 100,000 followers and so he got his special software. He looked into it and he said he bought them all. You can buy you can buy you know you go to these farms and you can buy names. and you can get 100,000 followers in Iran. But who cares?

Speaker 8 1:05:04
I wanted to be able to sell so well.

Eric Rhoads 1:05:07
That’s the point. Yeah. Right. So the game is not to get followers. followers don’t matter. If you have 100,000 followers, who don’t make $5,000 a year and can’t don’t have any expendable income for buying paintings. What do you have? You have vanity metrics, it’s all ego. Right? If you have five followers, who spend $5,000 with you a month that you don’t need any more followers, right? So what the key is attracting followers, the key is attracting valuable follower.

Speaker 8 1:05:47
I had two people inquire about paintings and and that’s good. Yeah. So we’re, I’m in the process of communicating with them whether or not that saucer works, I don’t know. But that was two people more interested in my paintings than were the week before.

Eric Rhoads 1:06:02
That’s right. And so that’s, I mean, that’s really the game. And maybe it’s a numbers game, and you get as many as you can, and hope that you get some people who are actually going to do it. The thing that we tend to get hung up on as artists is we we are talking about things that collectors don’t care about. Now. I think there’s two categories. I think there are collectors and I think there are people who buy art. I met a woman yesterday, she’s got 700 paintings in her house, and sculpture. She’s a collector. There are a lot of people in here who buy paintings that are not collectors, they just happen to buy paintings. They love paintings. So you know, the big artists, by the way, buy a lot of paintings. Yeah, they do. Okay, so if you’re talking to artists, that’s okay. And you might sell paintings to artists, because they buy paintings. But if you’re not talking to people who buy paintings, then you’re it’s, it’s all ego, if it’s if you’re trying to sell paintings, so you have to figure out how do I find people? What’s the messaging that is going to appeal to somebody who might buy a painting, and maybe it’s talks about art history, or maybe it’s talks about things that how to protect your art collection. And if you wrote, one of the best things that everybody’s ignoring, is LinkedIn. There are groups, I’m in groups on LinkedIn, that are art collector groups, and Art Gallery groups. And if you are in those groups, and you’re posting you post a story on five ways to make your art collection more valuable, and then they start following you. Who are you getting? You’re getting people who are in those groups who want to know that kind of stuff. If your store posting stories about five ways to make Cadmium Yellow tastes better. It’s right. So anyway, thank you for that question. All right. We have time for one more. Okay, one more question. And then we’re out. So you’re on tell us your name. And where are you from?

Speaker 9 1:08:18
Mansi from Arizona. And first, I want to tell you, I love your Sunday coffee. It’s your fabulous writer. I kind of a two part question. But one is, how important is it to have a particular niche in your painting? Because I like to paint, you know, from the East to ask from people, the landscapes and you know, oceans. I mean, should I zero in on one particular thing?

Eric Rhoads 1:08:46
Well, it’s a tough question, I think. I’ll tell you a story. So I have this buddy, is a brilliant painter. And he got known for painting. Trying to figure out how to say this, so it doesn’t reveal who he is. He got known for painting a particular subject. And he was really, really great at it. And he sold lots and lots of paintings. And then he decided that he wanted to shake it up and try something new. And he take took this trip, and he did all these paintings that were a completely different subject matter. And his gallery supported him on it, and they did the show, and the show bombed. And because they asked all these people who were used to his paintings to come in, and it wasn’t so much the artists that they valued, I mean, they did, it was the subject matter, plus the artists that they valued, and when he changed his subject matter. It was a tough, tough thing for him. Now, that’s not always true. I mean, you know, we’re gonna be announcing a trip this week. Maybe I announced that already, but you know, so we Do shows like if we go to Cuba, we’ll do people do shows their Cuba stuff and things like that. I think that when you’re getting established, you want to stay in terms of what you’re promoting, you want to stay relatively narrow. And narrow can be pretty wide. I mean, landscape painting is pretty wide subject. But if you’re doing like, landscape painting, and still life painting and portrait painting and other things, you can confuse people. And so what I oftentimes will tell people is get yourself established. And then once you’ve developed a good collector base, then you can start experimenting and expanding. And a woman call me one time she advertised, and she said, I didn’t get one call from my advertisement, nobody’s reading your magazine, this is fine art connoisseur. And I said, Hmm, because this other galleries called me and they sold, they sold a $500,000 painting. She I said, so it’s not a matter of somebody’s not reading. And I said, what, tell me exactly what you’re promoting. She says, while I was promoting my commission portraiture, I said, Great. Let me see the ad. And I looked up the ad, and I said, Okay, I’m gonna go to the website, went to the website, and it had her name, and it said, landscape painter. And I said, Okay, how do I, how do I find that portrait? She said, Well, if you click on this button, and then you look at subjects, and you click on that subject, and then you look at this, you’re going to find my portrait sirs. And I said, you’re throwing your money away, you know, if the website that you’re putting on your ad, needs to take them right to that painting. And she said, Well, what if it’s sold, I said, take it right to that painting anyway, and say, sold, here are five others that you might like, because they’re going there to scratch that itch. This happens to me all the time, it really irritates me, because you have, you know, you’re spending money to get people to something you like, and then it’s not there. And this happens more times than not, we caution our advertisers not to do that. But when you if you put too much out there, you’re risking confusing your market, figure out what you want to do, and what you want to promote first and foremost, and try to get known for something, and then you can start expanding and, uh, you can do whatever you want to do, it doesn’t matter. But you kind of I think people kind of need to be known for something, you know, Thomas Kincade, was the painter of light. And, and now everybody, for a few years after that everybody became the painter of something, you know. So I think the idea is just kind of get known for something. And if you want to be broad about it, then you know, maybe you become the bold brush, stroke painter, you know, and now everything you do is in bold brushstrokes, and then you can kind of encompass everything. You just have to experiment and try to protect.

Speaker 9 1:13:07
So then the part two of that would be I only have time for so much. To get a marketer it would that be a good idea? Because I mean, there’s all kinds of things online that says learn from me how to market. I don’t even have time to learn other stuff I’ve tried. But so is it important to find a marketer? And how would you do that?

Eric Rhoads 1:13:28
Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of stuff I’m seeing. I’m seeing things, courses from people who I’ve never heard of that doesn’t mean anything, but I’m seeing people out there who are pushing things that I’m not sure what they have to offer. I never marketed any art. I’m not you know, I teach art marketing and I never marketed any art. I just I did marketing, I learned marketing principles. You know, there’s some of them are going to be good, some are not going to be good. You can spend a lot of money on something. And ultimately, you just have to decide what is it you want to be? The best possible solution is just to take well the best possible solution is to have a an agent or a someone you know a lot of people have a spouse who becomes their marketer Kathy Odom’s husband, Buddy is her marketer. I think he’s helping other artists market their work now he’s very good. But the idea is that if you can have somebody who’s helping you so you can pay if you know you don’t have the marketing skills and don’t want to learn them. That’s okay. You know, not everybody’s gonna be that way. Be able to market some of us, you know, Camille pres wattics She’s a brilliant artist. She’s a brilliant marketer, she’s a brilliant businesswoman. She’s got that mixture Some of us need help, you know, I I have big muscles in some areas, and I have giant weaknesses and other areas and I have big muscles in In, in marketing, I have no muscles in bookkeeping and accounting. So I have to surround myself with people. And I’m in a position I can do that because my business is has been built up. But you know, you can find somebody to help you with something. There are there good people out there, there are bad people out there, get references. I spent last year I spent, I’m embarrassed to say how much money it was a big amount of money. It was a full time salary for an employee on an ad agency that gave me all these promises, and thankfully, I was marketing one of our online conferences, and I wanted them to help us boost it. Thankfully, I kept my own marketing going anyway, they sold 20 seats. I sold 1500 seats. They charged me, you know, $200,000 to sell 20 seats. I, you know, I fired him. And I’m embarrassed by it. But you know, thankfully I didn’t because they said oh, don’t do your own marketing. Let us do it all if I had done that. And the problem is, I got it. The problem is you can never if you’re in control of your business, you always have to stay in control of your business. You can never let go entirely of your marketing. You can delegate you cannot advocate. Yes. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you guys.

 

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-06-09T08:46:59-04:00June 23rd, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 128

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. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads answers questions about planning to be a premier painter, and what to do when someone says they can’t afford one of your paintings.

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 128 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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
Our goal is to help you learn to sell your paintings in one form or another. And if you learn marketing, you embrace it. It will help you we have questions that you send in sometimes we record them if we get a chance, you can send them to [email protected]. And we have a great website you can look at artmarketing.com, which is a terrific place for lots of stories on how to market your art. Okay, what’s our first question, Amandine?

Amandine
The first question is from Joanna Pyramind. From Glenwood Springs, Colorado. My goal is to be the premier local landscape artist in my Colorado ski town in five years. But my art isn’t ready yet. How would you work smarter to improve your art if you knew your art wasn’t ready. I also want to use this time to plan, save and understand marketing so that I’ll be ready when the time is right. What should I be doing? Lastly, with selling “underbaked” art be a bad idea.

Eric Rhoads
All right. Well, Joanne, thank you. I love the fact that you have goals. And I think it’s important to have goals. But you know, it’s a, it’s potentially a big, audacious goal. And I think it’s good to have big, audacious goals. But if you are not selling your art today, and you think that five years from today, you’re going to be the best artist in your town, you better hope the best artist in your town is someone you can easily overcome, right? I mean, there are painters out there who’ve been painting for 40 or 50 years who are brilliant. And brush time does matter experience does matter. And we want everybody I want to encourage you, we want everybody to dig in to study to learn, and to practice. So, you know, there’s there’s a lot of issues here. So I’m going to touch on some of these things. But first off, you got to do the best thing you can to make yourself as good as you can. And I don’t know what that is for you. Because I don’t know where you are. But what I like to do, I, I don’t just ask anybody, because my mother would tell me how good my paintings were even when they weren’t. And you know, it’s like, no, I need to know what I’m doing wrong. And so you need to get your paintings in front of somebody who will tell you the truth. And you’ve got to give them permission to tell you the truth. And the only way I do that is I say look, I don’t want to hear anything good about it. I just want to hear what’s wrong with it, tell me how to fix it, tell me what I need to be working on. Because you know, when I go and study with somebody, oftentimes they’ll say bring a couple of your paintings or some slides or your work or something some you know pictures on your phone, because they can instantly see where your weaknesses lie. And you know might be composition might be values might be brushwork might be who knows what, so you need somebody to give you some feedback. So you need a couple of trusted people to give you feedback. And I include in that somebody who would be a gallery owner or to not to not to get into their gallery, just be upfront say look, I you know, maybe I’d like to be in here in the future. But right now, I just need to know what I need to work on from their perspective. Now they’re gallery owners aren’t painters, but they can see things because they’re around art all the time. I think that the most important thing for you to do after that is to say okay, well what’s my target look like if your goal really is to be the top painter in your, in your small ski town in five years, you know, where’s the bar and what do I have to be? And who’s going to be judging that how are you going to know when you’ve accomplished it? And so, you know, I think studying I don’t really think in terms of competition and painters because you know, I don’t look at my goal isn’t to try to beat another painter out at its you know, or to be I just want to be the asked I can be, and, you know, I think what you’re really saying is I want to make a living equal to or better than the best painter in my town. And that’s a handsome goal. So you need to kind of get the details, you know, if, if that’s your goal, why is it your goal? Why is it important to you? And then what are the specific keys to that goal? What do I have to do to match it? Well, you know, what kind of sales? Do I have to do, you know, yearly, monthly, weekly? And is that really the right goal? I mean, it might be, but you got to figure that out. Now, if you are not ready, and you know that you’re, you’re on the right track, I mean, sometimes I painted for a lot of years, and I still struggle. And I know I’m not as far along as I could be, if I if I could find the time. And you know, if you can put in 810 hours a day, just painting, it’s gonna, you know, I’ve watched Richard Lindenberg, who went from a full time job to a full time painter, two years later, by painting eight hours a day, he was phenomenal. And he just continues to get better and better, you know, and is he had a level of some of his mentors. He’s pushing on it, but he’s not there yet. But most of us aren’t most of us, you know, we’ll never get to those levels, because those mentors are always pushing themselves and getting better and better. So, you know, don’t don’t compare yourself to other people, I think that’s the biggest way to get frustrated. If you’re not selling, and you want to be selling, I will tell you this, there’s no second chance to make a first impression. And if you, if somebody perceives you as a bad painter, they’re going to hold on to that for a long time. And so before you start putting your work out there, make sure that you’re comfortable with it, make sure others who you trust are comfortable with it, because, you know, nobody expects you to be John Singer Sargent, or under Zorn, but they do expect you to have a certain level of quality. Now, different galleries have different levels of quality, different buyers have different perceptions of quality. So you know, you can kind of ease your way in, get used to it get known by some people develop an audience. And you know, just continue forward as you grow, but just be ready. That’s the best advice for you in terms of marketing. You know, marketing takes planning, it takes strategy, I think, you know, really, if I were to bring it down to a nutshell, number one, be the best painter you can be. Number two, be the kind of person that people want to help, you know, some people come in and say I deserve to be in this art gallery will look at you. And that’s not nice, you know, people want to help nice people. So work on that, if you’re not, because you need people to help you out along the way, I wouldn’t be where I am. And others wouldn’t be where they are without the people, they’re helping them. You need people. So start working on relationships, you know, if you if you target a gallery in five years, start getting to know them, help them out, hang out with them. But don’t ask for anything, just help. You know, I think that matters. And then what’s number three, ultimately, it’s about visibility. Visibility gives you a critical advantage be everywhere in network and involved, when the time comes advertise like crazy and never let up. Once you decide to be a professional painter. Advertising is a cost of doing business for the rest of your life. You have to admit that and but advertising is almost like cheating. You can’t cheat painting, because you got to learn it. But you can cheat advertising, I don’t mean to be dishonest. I mean, the fact is that you can if you do it, right, you have really great creative, and you have really great buying, and you spend the right amount of money to hit the right audiences. You know, we do very targeted audiences at my magazines, you know, with rich art collectors, for instance, a fine art connoisseur. So the idea is, you gain every advantage from visibility. So you got to enter every show, you got to win as many shows as you can. Even if you win as a finalist in something, you got something to talk about on your website, you got something to talk about to other people. All that builds up into becoming your brand and who you are. Getting into the right shows is a big booster. You know, some of the shows that one big artists told me he applied nine years in a row to get into a major show and he didn’t think he’d ever get in and boom, one time he was in and now he’s in forever. Winning top awards is going to build visibility. You just got to do a lot of different things. Don’t focus on tactics, focus on strategy, you know, learn where you want to be. Learn what you need to do to get there, and then figure out what the steps are. Next question.

Amandine
The next question is from Judy app from Canada. When a person says I can’t afford that when they have expressed interest in a piece, what they are really saying is, I disagree with the value given to it with dollars. How do you make a person understand what those dollars are really paying for in original art?

Eric Rhoads
Well, Jody, I think that people say a lot of things when they’re trying to get out of a purchase. And you may be assuming that they’re saying I disagree with the value given to it in dollars, right? They may not be saying that at all, they might be saying, I just want to get out of here. I got lunch in five minutes, I gotta get out of here. You never know people, people tell you things to get out of purchases. There are Little White Lies We all tell. You know, like, when you’re shopping and a salesperson approaches you can I help you, you say what, I’m just looking right? Little White Lies. And it’s just because you don’t want to be bugged. You’re gonna find what you want. And sometimes you’re going to ask, sometimes you’re not people have excuses they use including the excuse if I can’t afford it. And that’s a pretty hard one to come overcome. Because if you if you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it. So that doesn’t mean they don’t value your work, it means that they can’t afford it, or they’re lying to you. So you can’t necessarily change people’s minds. Now, selling begins with the word no, or I’m not interested. Because if you push a little further, you might help somebody break through, you can’t change their mind, but they can change their mind. So if you ask questions that help them change their mind that can help. I like to understand, do they really want it? And can they truly not afford it? Or can they afford it? And so how do you get there, you ask questions, I don’t ever want anybody to feel pressured. But you can lead them to a solution that works for them. Sometimes I can’t afford it might mean I’m looking for a better price. Or it might mean I’m just not fully committed yet. Or it might mean I need a creative solution, like a payment plan or something. So I might say, you know, Mrs. Jones, I hear that a lot. Some people say they can’t afford it, because they’re really looking for a better price. Other set, because they really just don’t want to say no and don’t want to hurt my feelings. But you know, either is okay. Because after all, not everybody’s a buyer and you know, I have thick skin. So which are you? Are you really looking for a better price, you really can’t afford it, or is this just not for you, that sometimes flushes it out, pause and listen, if they say it’s not for them, thank them for being honest, tell them that you hope to have a great day and that you hope they’ll find something eventually. And by the way, if you send me your email, I’ll put that on my newsletter. And that way, if you see something you like, eventually, maybe it’ll come back in and get something you know, just very low key, you know, only 20% of the people are ever ready to buy at that moment. It’s that continual exposure and contact that brings them back in eventually. Sometimes that takes years. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes it takes days. And you know, you can give them a postcard or calendar something to remember you by if you want to. If they say I truly can’t afford it, then you can say something like this, I understand that that’s not unusual, I find that sometimes I have to work with people. And I do it when I can. Sometimes people just need to put it on their credit card and make payments that’s planting that idea. Sometimes they make payments to me, sometimes they pick it up once it’s paid off, you know, whatever works for you, you know, I’m pretty flexible. If that route doesn’t work for you then simply ask, well, what can we do together to make sure we can hang this in your home tonight? Ask him you know, where do you think you’re gonna hang out, get them visit, envisioning that a little bit and listen, don’t talk. And then they might add, let them make an offer. And you know, if you’re far, far apart, you say, well, that doesn’t work for me, but this works for me. And understand that whatever you say they’re going to come back and come back with half of that. So, you know, I really can’t make that price concession. Now, anytime you do give a price concession always give an answer a reason. Because if you just give a price concession, it feels a little dirty sometimes. But if you say like, well, you know, my accountant has told me I can never discount prices. But once in a while, I really see somebody that I know they really want it and I just want to help them out a little bit. So he has given me or she’s given me leeway, I can do it three times a year, but I can only do it three times a year. And I haven’t done it this year. I haven’t had to but I’d be willing to do a little bit of a concession if if that’ll help you and then you know, maybe pay me in return in the future by buying something else or you know, whatever. So sometimes little things like that, you know if the if the number is too low, say here’s here’s what I can live with. And sometimes you just have to say I can’t take that I apologize and walk away And you know what, I’ve walked away from deals, thought about him come back and bought things I have. Sometimes I thought about him for weeks and come back and bought things you just never know. So I think it’s, it’s a good idea to just get some practice. Now some of us just are not good at that we’re uncomfortable with it. So a really good way to do it is if you have a friend, like have them work at your booth at an art show and have your and you work their booth so that you’re talking about them that way. You know, I can’t give you a discount because the artist isn’t here. But you know, here’s what I can do. Here’s what I’m allowed to do. They’ve allotted me 10% or something like that. Anyway, I hope that works for you. That’s the art marketing minute.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-05-18T08:18:09-04:00June 2nd, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 127

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. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads, author of Make More Money Selling Your Art, discusses the best place to begin to market your art; and what not to do to drive up your prices.

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 127 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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:
So the goal if you want to make a living as an artist is to figure out how to do it. And it’s unfortunately it’s not just like the what was that Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. It’s not true. If you paint it, they won’t come you have to invite people in you have to learn marketing to do that. It doesn’t have to be harsh. It doesn’t have to be sleazy or greasy or salesy, but it is a good skill to learn because otherwise, you’ll have skinny kids. So the first question comes from Patricia Tabor Perry, in Massachusetts. And the question is simple one, where is the best place to begin to market your art? You know, that’s a that’s a loaded question, Patricia, because there’s so many answers to that. I think, first off, I think a very first piece of this is to find out if you’re ready. I, I certainly wasn’t ready when I started marketing my art. And I struggled with that. Because you know, it’s it’s kind of like, if you’re, you’re manufacturing a product and your product isn’t good, you’re gonna have a hard time selling it, you know, so you got a car where the doors don’t work, you know, nobody’s gonna buy it. And so I like to I like the idea of getting some advice. So find some trusted advisors, who will tell you the truth. And the way I have always approached it is I don’t want you to say anything good. I want you to tell me the bad stuff, because I need to know what I’ve got to work on what I’ve got to fix. And ultimately, the question is, am I ready? Now there’s different levels of people, right? So if you were to ask Cindy Baron, for instance. You know, she’s at a very, very high level know, she’s a very generous person, and she will, you know, be very kind to you. But, you know, her standards are high. And someone else who asked their standards might not be as high. So you want to ask people who have standards that are high, because I think that’s important. Now, you might not, you know, you might go out there anyway, because you might not get to that level right away. But one thing I like to do is ask gallery owners and I did this recently, I sent a picture of a painting to a friend of mine who’s a gallery owner. I said, Listen, I have no intention of asking you to go into your gallery. Because I this is not a ploy to have you secretly discover what a great painter I am. I just said, I, I don’t know if this is ready, and I don’t I need some feedback. And he was very generous. Now you have to do it with somebody you know, and trust if you can. And he was very generous and he gave me some really great feedback, some things that I couldn’t see. And that’s the nice thing and I have friends that I will contact that I paint with. And I’ll send them an image when I’m painting I’ll say something’s not right. But I can’t tell what it is. And you know, somebody will say, well move that tree. I was doing a self portrait. And Max Ginsburg said, Well, you know, there, you’re missing. You’re missing the enough darks on this side of the face if you just change that one thing, and he was completely right, and so but I couldn’t see it. So look for somebody to give you feedback. Now, the other thing you’ve got to do is start with some questions. The questions you got to ask yourself is why do you want to market your art? What what is your purpose? You know, I did some coaching at fall color week, one year, because it was snowing and nobody wanted to go out. And so I killed some time by offering some coaching one on one with some people. And a couple of people said, you know, I want to sell my art. And I said, why? And they said, I don’t know. Cuz everybody’s supposed to do that. I said, Well, that’s not true. I said, Do you need the money? And in two cases, they said, No, I don’t need the money. I have plenty of money, I retired, I put my money away. I said, Well, why do you want to sell your art? And then they realized, well, it was really about recognition. And they wanted that validation that somebody was willing to pay for it. I said, Well, can you get that validation some other way? Like, could you get it by donating your art or charity auctions or things that others will appreciate it, but you don’t have to feel like you have the pressure of marketing and selling your art and advertising? And so that resonated with those people, but you got to figure out why do you want to do it? What do you want to accomplish? Why do you want to sell it isn’t about money? Do you want to make a living? If it’s you want to make a living? How much of a living Do you want to make? You know, do you want to replace the income you have? Now, you know, if you’re a heart surgeon, and you’re making, I don’t know how much heart surgeons make, but you’re making that much money? I’ll go talk to a heart surgeon today and find out. They’re never going to tell me the but the idea is, is that a little money is a lot of money. Is it a retirement income? Is it a full time gig that influences all of the things that you’re going to have to figure out? You know, what about recognition? How important is that, that validation? And then you know, you dig into those things and try to understand what it is you really want to accomplish, because a lot of people chase rainbows that they don’t really want to chase and they get there and they go, Oh, right. And, you know, I’m really busy. And I don’t like being busy. You know, so find it, talk to other artists find out what their life is, like, you know, if you say, Well, I want to do I want to be like this artist or that, like artists call that artists and say, Hey, what’s your life? Like, you know, and they’re, they’re like, Well, you know, I’m on the road seven months a year doing plein air shows, and I never see my family. And you know, it’s a hard way to make a living. I like it. I love it. But, you know, are you willing to do that, so you got to be thinking about those things in terms of once you get beyond all of that, then you’re going to have to think about, you know, how do I ease into this? What’s my strategy? You know, I think just start small, start easy do tests, I love tests, you know, like, a really great way to start is just to do a little art show, you know, local cafe, local restaurant, go to the owner, set something up, give them a piece of it, if they need that, you know, the goal is to just find out, you know, this isn’t always about making money. It really never is, that’s a side benefit, I think because you do what you love, and the money will typically follow. But there are things that you have to do disciplines you have to do so start small, do a little business, a little art show in a business or a cafe or something, try that or maybe you know, try a little gallery test, you know, maybe there’s a community gallery you can try out or maybe you know, you start talking to galleries, but I would find out first if your work is marketable before you do that, see what works. And then kind of start there. You know, the, the ultimate answer to that question that I always say in my art Marketing Bootcamp, is I talk about okay, very first thing you do is you start building your list, because if you build a list, then you can get more contact with people. As you know, somebody signs up for your newsletter, you give them an incentive to do that, and so on.

Now, the next question is from Emily Feeney in Illinois, would publishing the name of high profile buyers drive up prices? Well, Emily, I’m going to tell you a little bit of a story. I had a really wonderful artists friend in Carmel, who had her own gallery, and she had a lot of famous people who bought paintings. And she would take pictures with those people, and she would blow them up and frame them and put them in the gallery. And that was an implied endorsement. It said, well because Pierce Brosnan or Oprah Winfrey or Tom Cruise or somebody bought one of my paintings. And there, here’s my picture with them. That’s an implied endorsement. It’s not an endorsement, but it’s implied. What I told her to do, I advised her to do is I said, you need something that you can actually talk about. She said, I said, Well, who famous? Do you have that is not on the pictures on the wall that you’d like to be able to talk about? And she told me a very famous director. And I said, Well, do you have any way to contact that person? She said, Well, I have his contact information. But these people are hard to get to. I said, Well, why don’t you do this? Would you say, you know, you were in the gallery send a little, little tiny painting. So you were in the gallery a couple years ago. And I just, I’m so honored that you own a piece of mine, I was thinking about you, I thought you’d like to have this little painting as well. And then wait for a response. Don’t ask for anything upfront. And then wait, once you get a response, then you can, if they send you a note, or they give you a call, or somebody calls for you, then you can open the door and say, Hey, would it be okay? What I have your permission, if I could say I’m in the Steven Spielberg collection, or I’m in the Oprah Winfrey, correct collection? And some of them will say yes. And some will say no, because people like their privacy. So always ask if you can get a picture with somebody and you can say, Hey, are you okay? If I post this? Or are you okay? If I put it up in my studio or my gallery, then that gives you something and you know, I went to a hairdresser one time, and he was like a hairdresser to the movie stars. And he never said anything about it. But there are pictures of him with all these famous people all around. It’s like so you know, what’s the story you tell your friends? Oh, the hairdresser, I go to does, you know, Donny Osmond or something? Right? Anyway, I think that, you know, it’s a good thing to look for every possible advantage that you can have. And getting high profile buyers will help your branding, it’ll help your pricing. It will make other people want it. Because celebrity works now, if it’s hope high profile in some other area, you know, a sports celebrity or something else, it doesn’t matter. But it should be people that, you know, people know, I mean, if you’re saying, Well, this is Bob Jones, and he’s the CEO of SpaceX or something and then, you know, maybe, maybe you have to tell people who they are everybody would know if it’s allowed musk, but the idea would be get their permission, don’t do anything without them. I used to have a different take on that. But I don’t anymore. I want everything to be on the up and up. I don’t want anything to be at all questionable. Because, you know, eventually they’re gonna find out and you don’t want to make a mad and you don’t want to offend anybody, and it’s just the best thing to do. Anyway, that’s today’s our marketing minute.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-05-11T07:23:40-04:00May 26th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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