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, answers the questions: “Should I start an LLC or get a business license before selling my art?” and “How do we engage more art buyers?”

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 115 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best-selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute, we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
In the marketing minute I tried to answer your marketing questions. I learned marketing the hard way. I didn’t have anybody to teach me it just kind of was experimentation. And I had a lot of failed mistakes, a lot of disasters, wasted a lot of money did a lot of stupid things. And so I’m trying to share what I’ve learned. I’ve tried to make myself a student of marketing for the last 30 plus years. And so I don’t necessarily approach things the way other marketing people might. And that’s not necessarily good or bad. It’s just different. So if you have questions, you can send them to me artmarketing.com/questions. You can go and actually produce a video there or you can email me [email protected] I’m gonna read the questions today, because Amandine, my producer’s a little under the weather. The first question is from Valerie Lovell Roselli I’m sorry, I probably butchered your name in Phoenix, should I start an LLC or get a business license before considering selling my art? I’m really stuck on the business side of things. Well, Valerie, I’m not a lawyer, I’m not an accountant. I can’t give you sound advice on tax matters and licensing matters and things like that. But that’s why there are pros out there who can answer those questions. And I have to go to those people too, because I don’t possess all of that knowledge. But when I launch a business and I have launched 3040 50 businesses, probably some of them have been really big, you know, big, well funded, venture capital funded businesses, some have been startups. But when I launch a business whenever I possibly can I try to test things out before I get commitment. Now, you can’t always do that, you know, if I’m going to a venture capital firm, I can’t go to them say hey, I have an idea. And I don’t know how much money it’s gonna make, they’re gonna ask you to be a little bit more buttoned down than that, and they’re, but they’re not going to invest in artists. So I wouldn’t worry about that. But, you know, I like to get a feel for whether or not it has a chance of success before I start building out infrastructure. So I oftentimes will do some marketing tests. I’ll put it out there, see if people are interested in it, then sometimes I’ll contact them and say, Hey, thanks for your interest. I’ve decided not to do it. Or sometimes they’ll say thanks for your interest, I am going to do it. But it’s going to take me a year or two years or five years or whatever. And so I like to test it in your particular case, as an artist. I think the starting point is you got to find out if your work is good enough. And are you able to sell any art now if you’re selling art now, you already know what to do. You just have to move forward to the next level. But if you’re not selling art yet, then don’t start a corporation don’t get a license, don’t set up bank accounts, and then find out that nothing is going to sell I think you need to find out if it’s going to sell first. So the alternative is to test right. And again, I may be giving you wrong advice. But you know, I think, you know, there are a lot of people who would sell something on eBay. And you may have to claim it on your taxes, I’m not suggesting it shouldn’t, but you sell a painting, or two, or five, or 10, or 20. And then you find, realize that you’ve got a business here, that’s when you want to build your business structure. So test the waters. Now, there’s all kinds of things you’ve got to keep in mind, too. For instance, you know, business, business is simple structure, but it can be overwhelming. So for instance, you know, there are different types of corporations that a good lawyer can walk you through those, I started to make a mistake, one time, I was going to set up a different type of corporation. And my lawyer pointed out to me, don’t do that. And I had gotten some bad advice from somebody. But he said, Don’t do that, because you’ll get doubly taxed. And I didn’t realize that. So I set up a Sub S Corporation, so I don’t get double the tax. But, you know, there’s a lot of different things, and they serve different purposes. Their purpose for a corporation, quite frankly, is you want to have structure, but you also have liability issues, and you have to be able to take care of those liabilities. And a corporation will protect you in theory, if you have, you know, you do something where somebody gets hurt, or damaged or killed, or, you know, whatever, that’s not likely to happen in the art world, unless, maybe they eat your paint at a workshop. Well, just sayin. So find experts, and don’t be stuck. You know, the hard stuff is finding a way to sell, the easier stuff is finding a structure because you can go online and find somebody who can teach you all that. And by the way, you can find most of the advice online and then just set up your corporation whatever.

The next question comes from Aaron Volpe in California. Aaron says, How do we engage more people? I feel like there’s a section of people who buy art, but most people don’t. People who already buy or the eyeballs everybody’s trying to get in front of and they are already oversaturated. But what about those who have disposable income but our current content to hang a factory made live laugh love sign who their walls instead of fine art? Can they be awakened? He said woken up? Can they be awakened or engaged to see how fine art can enrich their lives for there’s about 30 questions in there, Erin? Great questions. I’m going to break them down in smaller chunks. So regarding how do we engage more people? It’s a natural question. And I often fall into this trap. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not necessarily the right question. The right question isn’t how do I engage more people? The right question is how do I sell more art? And if you ask yourself the right question, you get different answers. Because the answers to how do I sell more art might be engaging more people, but they might not be? You see, there are two primary ways there’s more ways. But there are two primary ways to make money. And that is to get new customers or to get old customers to spend more or buy again. So let’s play it out for a minute. Let’s say you have about 150 people who bought art from you over the past of say, three years. Some would say myself included would say they’re probably better prospects, the new customers why? Because they’re already sold on you, they already are aware of you, they know your art, they like your style, they’ve invested in buying something from you, they already own it. So the hard work of selling them on you and your art is over. You don’t have to do that. So the only challenge is, then how do you get them to buy more art? And that’s easy. In my mind. I’ve got all that in my book. How do you convert a person who has one painting to becoming a multiple painting collector? Out? You can do it now. So ask yourself this. So how do I sell more than one painting this year, if you sold 100% of them one more, and you painted 150 paintings this year, you wouldn’t need to sell anyone new. Now selling 100% is unusual because most people don’t sell 100% of anything and people circumstances changes. The people who are your collectors might have died or gotten sick or downsized or moved or gotten divorced or lost their jobs, whatever. But you could sell 10% of them another painting and some of those would buy more than one. So the odds are pretty good. And so I’d start there ask yourself the question, how do I sell more paintings and how do I sell more paintings to the people that got them because once you get into going after new audiences, now you got to sell them on you. You got to find ways to reach them. You got to expose them to your work. You know, you’ve got to convert them from a, from a looker to an interested person to a buyer. And so that’s tougher, quite frankly. Now, the second part of your question is that people who already buy, you say, are the eyeballs everyone is trying to get in front of, and they’re already saturated. I gotta tell you, this is a story that you’re telling yourself, I don’t know where that story comes from. But unless you have data to support that, because everything is always about data, especially in marketing, unless you have data to support that you’re making an assumption, and it’s probably an incorrect assumption, I don’t mean to embarrass you, please. But be careful about the stories that you tell yourself, the story isn’t true. There are lots of people who buy art and buy it frequently and buy more and more and more. I know, lots of them. And I hear stories like, I tell myself, I’m not ever going to buy any more art, than I see something I fall in love with. And I buy it anyway, you know, and I have no room on my walls. But I’m building another room, I actually have some friends who built a bigger house with a bigger room just so they can house more paintings. So there are lots of people out there that buy art, you’ve got to figure out how to get in front of them, and how to target them. And you know that that’s, that’s easy, really. Now the next part of the question is about those who have quote unquote, disposable income, but are content to hang a factory made live love laugh sign on their walls, instead of fine art? Can they be woken up or engaged? To see how fine art can enrich their lives? Well, here’s the newsflash, Aaron. Every person who buys original art did not use to buy it. Every person has a first time. How do you be that first time? Well, there are lots of first times, maybe you’re selling people now and you’re there first times. But you know, I don’t think people run around thinking about art. Most people don’t we do. They’re not thinking about is that an original or is that a print, they see something in target they like and they go, Oh, that’s beautiful. I’ll buy it. It’s Oh, it’s $75. And it’s a print in target. And I, by the way, have some beautiful prints that I got to target. They’re just beautiful boat prints, right? So you can be frustrated over that. But if people It makes people happy, that’s okay. Now, I know people who are billionaires who have prints in their house, and I know billionaires who have original paintings in their house, and I know billionaires who have both in their house. So it’s something that they love. But once you get exposed to original paintings, and you see the difference of them in your house, then, you know, you fall in love with it, and you want more and more of them. That’s what happened to me. And so I believe that, you know, there are a lot of people out there that you can target who are going to buy paintings from you, you you have a big uphill battle, trying to convert people who buy prints at Target to spending, you know, bigger money on original art, although your art might be the same price, you never know. But you got to get in front of them somewhere. And a lot of people wander through art shows intent shows, and they’ve never bought a piece of art. I bought my first piece of art ever, as a tourist in New Orleans from a street artist. And then the second piece of art ever from a street artist in France. Well, so those are unusual. But my saying is you stand in the river, where the money is flowing. Another way of saying it is standing the river where art is selling, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. People like me survive by building audiences. Art buyers, I have an audience, for instance, fine art kind of Sir. You know, I have 310 billionaires that read it, quite frankly, if nobody else read it. Those are probably enough to survive on but you know, there’s 1000s of people who read it that some of them buy art, some of them don’t. And they you want to go into places where they’re concentrated audiences and and there’s nothing wrong with marketing on on social media, because people who are following artists like artists, and a lot of artists also buy art. But you also have to understand that you’re not necessarily going to reach concentrated levels of collectors there you might on a LinkedIn collectors group. Or you might find other ways to reach out to collectors. And by the way, not everybody who buys harder consider themselves collectors. So anyway, I think the idea is, why does something sell and how do I sell more of it? I have you know, I have magazines and newsletters. We deal with a lot of artists. I have a lot of artists who advertise a lot of galleries who advertise, but I can tell you one thing I can have two people in the same magazine, and one will sell The painting and the other one won’t. So when the it doesn’t sell, of course, it’s my fault, right? But then why does the other one that has the equal size at equivalent price equivalent type of painting? Why does that one sell. And I think a lot of that goes down to first off, it’s personal choice, somebody sees something they like, they might buy it, somebody is reminded of it, they might buy it. But it also goes deeper than that. A lot of people will have what I call brand preferences. If I say to you right now, what’s a fast food company that you think of? You might immediately think of a company, maybe it’s McDonald’s, right? And that isn’t necessarily we’re going to eat, but that’s what you think of. But if I said to you, if you came into a million dollars today, and you could buy any historic artist, who would you buy, you’re gonna have someone in the top of your mind. And there are people out there who track contemporary artists, and they say, you know, if I, you know, I get a bonus at work this Christmas, or next Christmas, then they might say, Well, I would, I would love to buy, you know, this person’s painting. And the reason that those people are on that person’s list is because it’s about top of mind awareness. And that boils down to branding, and always being there. Now, this is story about this guy. He, he came into some money, I don’t know how he came into some money. But he picked up the magazine, and he flipped through the magazine. And he had some artists in there that he was looking for that he always thought if I get some money, I’m gonna buy this artist. And one of them was in there. And the other one wasn’t he that other artists had been in the last issue. And this artist, or this person called the artist and said, Hey, Ken, is that painting still available, and he bought the painting, but the other, he didn’t bother to go to the website of the other artist. Instead, he’s kept flipping through the magazine, he saw something else he liked. It was something new. So maybe it was a brand new didn’t know, I don’t know, but he ended up buying that instead. And so that’s why you know, having that constant presence, even if you can’t afford a big presence, have a small presence, so that you’re there. Because you know, what happens a lot is somebody will buy an ad in a magazine that they’re featured in. And they’ll you know, they’ll put a big full page ad in there about the you know, themselves because they’re in a story. And then somebody will think about that. And I go, Yeah, I kind of liked that. And then they’re not thinking about you anymore. And the next time around, the next magazine comes out, and you’re not in there. But they might be thinking, hey, I remember I saw that magazine, I don’t know where it is, but maybe that artist is in here. And so we actually find that when you’re in there the second time, it actually has a good chance of success as well. So the idea is being there frequently. Anyway, there’s a lot of a lot of strategy behind that. So I think, first off, don’t tell yourself stories. There are plenty of people out there that buy art. The reality is if you paint 50 paintings a year, all you need is 50 people or maybe 25 people to buy two or maybe four people i i walked into a gallery one time the gallery owner said See that guy over there. I said, Yeah, he said he walked anyway, that one, that one, that one, that one that one that one six painting so far, he’s bought, it didn’t even ask the price. Right? So you just never know. And so the key is you got to be present. You got to be there where people can see you manage your thinking about stories don’t get negative, there’s plenty of business out there. There’s plenty of business out there even in a bad economy. And there are people out there who are spending money like drunken sailors, even though not everybody is because it depends on how much money you have. So anyway, that’s today’s art marketing minute.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artist to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected] And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

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

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

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com. 

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads discusses why website traffic might not be as important as you think; and the top art marketing lessons of 2022.

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 114 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best-selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute, we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
The marketing minute I try to answer your art marketing questions. Sometimes I fail. We’ll see what happens today. You can upload a video question to art marketing.com/questions. Or you can email me [email protected] Amandine, my producer is on it. She is gathering questions and she’s going to tell us what today’s question is.

Amandine:
So the first question today is from Rick Pearson from Jacksonville, Florida. I have kept a website for years. But other than traffic, I deter it from my own social media and email, it gains very little traffic, how can I create interest and raise the level?

Eric Rhoads:
Thank you for that, Rick, you know, so this is? It’s a similar question. This woman came to me. And she said, I want a website. I said, Okay. And she said, I said why? And she said, because I know that if I build a website, you know, the world’s gonna be the path to my door, I’m gonna get rich, I’m going to sell lots of paintings. And you’re going to sell lots of workshops and everything else. And I said, Okay. Do you think that’s going to work? She said, Yeah, I do. I think it’s going to work. So she builds her website, she calls me six months later, and she said, I haven’t really had any visitors. What am I doing wrong? And I said, what you’re doing wrong is you’re assuming that a website is a marketing tactic. And it’s kind of like having a website is kind of like being listed in the phonebook. Anybody remember phone books, you know, there, there are some, some ridiculous number like 190 200,000 new websites every single day, you know, there are billions of websites, and to think that somebody’s going to discover you, and come to your page and spend money. It’s just it’s folly. And so what you have to do is you have to, you have to drive the discovery, you have to have a very specific purpose. Now, you mentioned that, you know, other than social media and email, I gained very little traffic. So this this case, Rick Peterson from Jacksonville is using email, probably sending out a newsletter or something like that using social media to drive traffic, but it’s not driving enough traffic. Or, and the reality is, I mean, if you back this up a little bit further, when how many people do you really need? How many visitors? Do you really need? Do you need 100,000? Do you need a million? Do you need 10 million? It kind of goes back to how many followers do you need on social media? You know, the reality is if most artists who are active and generating paintings are not generating a whole heck of a lot of paintings, and if you want to sell let’s say your number is 50 paintings a year? How many people do you really need? You need 50? People actually, you probably need 25 people, you just got to sell two paintings, each one of them. So you got to think a little bit differently about this. Rick, I think that I have a gut feeling that this concept of websites is going to change pretty considerably. Because the reality is you need to be where the traffic is. And the traffic is not on your website. So where can you be where the traffic is? Well, there, there are lots of options for you there are there people who sell art online and you can become part of an art online community and sell your work there. A really great example of that is Etsy. Etsy is a site for crafts people. Amazon also has a craft site where you can put your craft, in your case your paintings, or photography, or whatever it is on those sites. And you might have a chance of getting discovered a little easier in there. Because you know, somebody might search a term that will pop up one of your paintings in the search, or you have the opportunity in some case is if you want to put a little money after you can kind of stimulate how you can get featured on a page or how you can show up a little faster and so on. But you know, the reality is, is if you want to drive traffic, you have to be willing to spend money. Now you can do it organically. But you said you’re doing it on your on your social media, and you’re not getting a lot of traffic. And that’s an issue. Now, a lot of us have social media followers, who are our own tribe, not the people that you want to sell paintings to. And so you might want to start there by saying, Okay, how can I make my social media more about the people, I want to sell paintings to how do I get art collectors there? To my, to my site? And then what else can I do to drive them there? You know, so how do I drive people I drive people. First off, I use everything, you know, it used to be, there was a single channel for marketing. Today, there’s 100 channels for marketing. And, and there are channels within channels, for instance, magazine advertising, which may seem old school is still working very effectively, because there are people who like to have that tactile paper in their hands and the images and, and they’ll rip pages out and hand them to their assistant and say, Hey, call and find out how much this painting is, you know, really, really rich people think like that. And you want to be in an environment where you can get to the people who are likely to buy your paintings and doesn’t necessarily have to be really, really rich people. You know, my magazine Fine Art kind of service, you know, like three 400 billionaires and a lot of upper one percenters and really, really rich people who read it. And I had I had an incident where somebody said to me, Well, you know, I’ve advertised in there, and I’m not selling, and I looked at their ads, and I looked at their website, and I said, Well, you’re too cheap. And they said, Well, how could that be? And I said, well, because people with money want something that is not cheap. And so I recommended actually considering raising his prices. I don’t know if he did or not. But you know, I always tell this story about this art show. I’ve told it 1000 times probably told it here. But this guy at the plein air convention told me the story said he was at an art show, lady came up to the booth said I’d like to buy that painting. She said, How much is it? He says it’s for $4,000? She writes, she said I’ll take it, she writes a check handsome a check for $40,000. He says, oh, ma’am. It’s not 40,000, it’s 4000. And she said, Oh, it must not be very good. And she ripped up the check and left. So you’ve got to understand how people think. And just because you think a particular way doesn’t mean that’s how your buyers think. So you’ve got to ask yourself, How do I drive them their ads, social media, et cetera. But the real real issue is, everybody is focused on selling a painting. And I think that’s the wrong focus. You see, selling a painting isn’t necessarily what it’s all about. It’s, it’s ultimately where you want to be. But what you want to do is sell a painting at a higher price, you want to get your prices up, you want to get to a point where collectors are collecting you buying multiple pieces of work. And the way to do that is through branding. I’ll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But I think the idea is you want to be capturing names, you want to be contacting those names with, with some, you know, some newsletters, and there’s a whole different way to do that. You know, most people do newsletters wrong. I talked a little bit about that in my book. But the idea is, if you want to drive traffic, follow what the big boys do. And the big boys spend money to drive traffic. And they do it in a lot of ways. Sometimes it’s social media advertising, sometimes it’s traditional advertising, sometimes it’s direct mail. You know, there’s a lot of different things don’t poopoo the old things just because, you know, they’re not cool and modern, because they still work. And those things can be very effective for you on Monday. And our next question.

Amandine:
I actually have a question for you. We are now one day away from the end of 2022. And I think it’s a good time to look back at the year and remember what we accomplished and learned. So share with us the marketing lesson that helped you the most in 2022.

Eric Rhoads:
Well, I’m not sure I could tell you a specific marketing thing that I learned and 22 I I study like a madman I read everything. I’m a member of some mastermind groups. I you know, I buy courses I am obsessed with learning, because everything changed me Everything changed. After COVID, the way people buy today is different than the way they bought two years ago. And everything is always changing. So you got to stay up on the changes, and it’s hard to stay up on top of it. And, you know, I probably spend at least a couple hours every single day trying to stay on top of this stuff, because I teach it, I got to make sure that I know it. But you know, it always boils down to the basics always has even the things that are changing boiled down to the basics. What I do, and what I would recommend for most people to do is, is you’ve got to make a plan for 2023. In this particular case, it’s kind of late, right? Because you’ve got to make a plan, then you got to implement the plan. And I usually try to, you know, make my plan in the early fall, usually September, and I plan out my whole year, my company, all the things that we’re going to do, and and we have meetings, and you know, we do all that kind of stuff, then. But you know, it’s the second best time is now right? So what you want to do is sit down and I recommend go into a quiet room with a pad of paper, and just sit down and dreams start with a dream. And start with asking yourself, what do I want out of my life? What do I want my life to look like in 2023 2425? You know, be thinking a few years in advance? And what do I don’t want? What do I not want to do? Because that’s important? What do I want to do more of one of the things I love doing, what do I need? What are my my financial needs? What are my family needs? You know, what, what are you dreaming about having? You know, is it something you want to have build a new studio or build a house or own a house or, you know, whatever it might be? And so you start out by you lay all that stuff out, you get it all on paper, and then you go through and you say, Okay, let’s come up with a priority, what is the most important one thing on this list? That if I if I managed to do this one thing, then I will be further along. So you figure out what that one thing is. And then you say to yourself, Okay, I have the one thing now I gotta build a plan. So I you know, I usually have two or three things, but one thing makes up 80%. Right? So what is the one thing that makes up 80%? That’s going to move the needle the most in my life? And then you say, Okay, what do I need to do to get there? Now? If it’s financial, then you say, Okay, well, the number is $100,000, or 500,000, or whatever your number is. Now you say, Okay, how much is that a month? I just wrote an article that’s going to be in the OPA newsletter, maybe it’s been there already about this, but you know, you start looking at your your needs, what do I have to have in order to hit this goal? What do I need? On top of what I have to have? How many paintings do I have to sell in an average year to get there? And how do I get that many paintings sold? And then you know, it’s a process of, alright, if I’m selling two to a month now and I need to sell for a month, I’m doubling my business, how do I do that. And so you go through this entire process of thinking through it, and you’re going to be thinking about your advertising your social media strategy, your tactics. But first off, you think about things like your branding, because as I mentioned earlier, you know, branding is really, really, really critical. Because branding, puts you on the top 10 list, or the top five list or the top two lists. You see, here’s what happens. Let’s say that somebody decides to leave me a big amount of money. I don’t know what a big amount of money is. But let’s say it’s a big amount of money. And I say to myself, you know, I have enough money. There’s an artist that I’ve always wanted to own. And who is that artists now, in my particular case, I can tell you right off the top, if I had enough money, I would buy John Singer Sargent and I would buy Edgar Payne and I’d buy Joaquin, Surya and Zorn, you know, those kinds of things, if they could be bought, you’d have to have a whole lot of money to get some of those. Well, the other thing is, how do I get on the, you know, of the contemporary artists, everybody out there? If I if I say, Who do you think of is the top landscape artists in America that you would want to own? I think a lot of people would say Clyde, ASP IVIG maybe they’d say Scott Christiansen, there might be some other names, but there’s a couple that float to the top. Now, that doesn’t happen by accident. Now, it does happen by longevity. But it’s not just longevity because there are artists who’ve been out there longer than these people have, that nobody has ever heard of. So they’re very, very smart. people and they’re very smart about keeping their names visible, you know, and finding ways that they can be, they can highly visible and build their brands. So, you know, you say, Okay, well, okay, who’s number three on that list? Is it? You know, is it George Carlson? Is it T. Allen Lawson, is it? You know, I mean, there’s, you know, there’s a lot of big names that come to mind. You’ve got to figure out how do I insert myself into that list. And the way to do that is branding. Now I can tell you that an artists like Lori Putnam, just put her money where her mouth is probably 10 years ago, and she just said, You know what, I don’t have the money, but I’m going to start advertising and she advertises and fine art connoisseur and plein air magazine, every single issue. And I think both issues are both magazines, I’m not sure. And over time, and it took time, it built, she started getting invitations to things she started getting invitations to better galleries, and then she got able to go into even better galleries, and she started a collector base, and she became very well known. And she knows that if she drops that advertising for three months, she’s out of sight and out of mind. And or if she drops it for six months, and a lot of people are like, well, you know, everybody knows who I am now? Well, no, because it’s like a giant escalator. Right? There’s people coming in, and people coming out all the time, and you got to be branding to new people all the time. There’s attrition, you’re gonna have collectors that you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna be bringing new ones on, you have to stay top of mind. And so when you’re laying out your plan, ask yourself what you know, where do you really want to be, and most things don’t happen in a year. Right, you can make some pretty big things happen in a year. But you know, to get on, get known at the level of a high level artist, you know, first off, you got to get the chops, you got to be able to paint like that. But you also have to be, you got to just be branding yourself constantly, you got to be out there, pushing it, getting your name out there. And look, look at Ryan Jensen’s ads in plein air magazine, you know, he’s flying across the air, like Superman, it just grabs your attention, it immediately says this guy is different. This guy’s a crazy man. And that’s the branding, I’m sure that he wants. And so by being out there all the time, what’s going to happen, he’s going to elevate himself into the, that list of must haves as a collector, you know, and a lot of collectors have a must have list, you know, they have the artists that they see it the events they hear about, they just got to have them in their collection, that’s where you want to be ultimately so, you know, figure out how to where you want to be what’s your strategy, what are your tactics, it’s not always about selling art immediately. It’s about planting seeds, right? You know, you don’t grow money trees, you don’t put a seed in the ground, and that money tree doesn’t grow. Immediately, you know, it’s just like you say, Okay, I’m gonna plant bananas, well, you got to, you know, I planted pineapples, it took a little time for pineapples to come up, I planted an avocado tree out of a seed, you know, in the first five, seven years, it didn’t bear fruit, and then all of a sudden, I had more fruit than I could possibly have. So I think the idea is you want to just plant the seeds for money trees, and then you want to stand in the river where the money is flowing in that in other words, what that means is, where are the collectors, where are the people buying paintings, spending their time, if they’re in Fine Art connoisseur or plein air magazine, then that’s where you need to be it because if they’re not on your social media site, and many of them are not, and there are people out there, you don’t even know who are out there that are seeing these things that are buying these things. I have a one one gallery tells me he sells an average of $80,000 for every time he runs an ad in one of those magazines so I mean it just it but he sells expensive paintings. So you just got to lay out a plan, figure out your tactics, but most important is start with a plan and get help you know, there’s lots of lots of marketing information out there. Some of its good some of it’s not good, you’re gonna have to decide, but get some help learn about this study this if you are in a business, you are expected to become good at what you do. And even though a lot of artists say Well, I’m an artist, I don’t really want to be in business. If you’re selling work, you’re in business, and you got to have the mindset of I gotta learn the stuff I got to learn. And you know, you’re still an artist, it’s not changing your identity. But you’re just putting out a different hat I you know, you have to have an accounting hat you have to have a shipping hat. You have to have a gallery relationship hat. You have to have a customer hat you have to have a marketing hat, etc. Think about the different hats anyway, that is today’s marketing minute.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artist to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected] And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

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

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

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com. 

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads discusses NFTs and social media platforms, and answers questions about how to know if your work is ready to sell and how you can use art competitions to market your art.

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 112 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best-selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute, we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

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

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

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

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

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

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artist to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected] And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

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

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

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com. 

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads answers the questions: “How I should manage my reputation online and in person?” and “Without going through a gallery, how do I sell and unload artwork currently in storage?”

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 110 >

Click here to listen to this Art Marketing Minute

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best-selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute, we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:

Oh in the marketing minute I was sleeping there in the marketing minute I answer your art marketing questions. You can upload your video [email protected]/questions or you can email me [email protected] Amandine, our producer, what is the first question?

Amandine 49:48
The first question is from Jen Wendling from Syracuse, New York. I am a new artist. I’m just starting to put my work out there. I’ve sold some pieces. What is your recommendation for new artists? And do you have any advice on how I should manage my reputation online? And?

Eric Rhoads 50:08
You know, that’s a really great question. It’s very astute of you to ask that question. Because if you’re just kind of starting, and nobody really knows who you are, um, some people do, obviously, you have, there’s an old quote, right, the old quote is, you never have a second chance to make a first impression. And so many artists start out and hurt their careers by making really silly mistakes, reputation, mistakes, marketing mistakes, and I’m not just trying to hock my book, but you need to read my book, make more money selling your art, that’s a really good place to start. But let’s just talk about that in case you don’t read it. By the way, I’ve got a great blog at artmarketing.com, too. So what I would recommend you’re brand new, you first off want to say, Okay, what do I want out of my career? What is my grand vision, now, I don’t know what age you are, Jen. But I’m going to pretend you’re 25. Okay. And I’m going to pretend you have a 50 year career ahead of you. And if you plant the right seeds now, and continue working the system, you’re going to be able to be by the time you’re relatively, you know, not terribly old. If you do it, right, let’s say five or seven years from now, you could be considered a very important artist, and 1015 years from now, you could be considered a master artist, and then ride that wave for the rest of your career. Now, you got to have the chops, I’m not going to talk about the chops, you’re gonna have to figure out how to get the chops, how to be a good painter, et cetera. That’s a whole nother animal. And I know CW is going to have talked about that a little bit. So I think the first thing to understand is, you know, what are my goals? What is my five year, three year, two year one year goal? What do I need to do? What and I would start out, in spite of the fact you want to do some big dreaming? And where do you ultimately want to be all of that stuff, setting those goals is important, I think what you want to do is start out by saying, Okay, how do I get what I need in your one. Now, if you’re working another job, what I highly recommend is not quitting your job, but I highly recommend is paint and figure out a way to get to the same level of income that you’re at in your job. And once you get to the same level of income, prove it for another year. And once you’ve proven it for another year, then you can quit your job, or you can phase out of your job because you get this overlap. And that’s a really great way to do it, because it takes some of the risk out of it. And that’s that can be nerve racking, because you quit your job, you don’t have any income, you’re under a lot of stress. Unless you’ve got savings, a lot of us don’t. So I think that’s one of the things you want to do. And I have a whole video series just about that one particular topic, somewhere, I don’t know where it is, but we can find anyway, the idea here is you got to, you know, everything you do isn’t going to go perfect. And you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. And mistakes are important because you grow from mistakes. And it’s better to make mistakes when you still have an income. Because once you’re relying on your income, if you make those mistakes, you’re going to be harder, more costly. So I would recommend that that procedure, but where you’re going to start is you got to start building a collector base people who are interested in your work, you got to start building a database of people who have expressed interest in your work. And a database of people have expressed interest in your workshop, you got to build the right kind of website. And most people do websites wrong. There’s a whole whole chapter on that. And and you need to look for ways that you can get frequently in front of people in a tasteful way so that they’re going to see your artwork and a lot of people do that with newsletters and I have a whole section on newsletters because most people do newsletters completely wrong. And you know, they make it all about them and nobody cares about you. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend you, but they don’t even know you yet. Why would they want to read your newsletter unless you do something in your newsletter that is really interesting to them. So look for look for something, they care about that good about them and then pepper it with the stuff about you and it’s gonna it’s gonna go much better. The idea is you want to build your own media and when you build your own media, that means you get them on your list. And that way you can talk to him through email, etc. Now, there’s a whole social media marketing thing you know, and that’s very important, more important than ever, but it’s not everything. And if you are of the generation that has grown up with only social media, you’re going to assume that nothing else exists. And I have a mentor that I actually have paid a lot of money to, to teach me a lot about marketing. And one of the things he says is, if you’re only digital, you only have half of a business. And what he means by that is, there are other ways to generate income, you know, a gallery is not digital, you might be advertising a gallery on Instagram, or Facebook, or they might be advertising you. But that’s not where you reach everybody, there are certain people who have money, who are not looking at your Instagram or your Facebook, and you’ll never figure out how to reach them all. And so what you want to do is ask yourself, Where is the money? Where How can I stand in the river where the money is flowing? So where what are the rivers where money is flowing? Well, art shows as a river where money is flowing, you know, you’ve got 10 shows, you know, in your local community, you know, if you’re, if you’re up for it, if you’re good enough, you know, you have these art shows, like the LA art show, Palm Beach art show Baltimore, you know, those kinds of things, where you can buy a booth, they’re expensive, but they’re probably worth it. You have art magazines, like my fine art connoisseur, you know, all these billionaires who read it and buy art, I want to advertise your tells me it gets $80,000 Average sales from each ad, but that’s a cumulative effort. And also he sells, you know, $500,000 paintings. So you know, you got to try a lot of different things, and you got to stick with it, because you’re in it for the game, the long haul. And what typically happens when people are first learning marketing, they like, oh, I tried that didn’t work, I’ll go somewhere else. And then I’ll I tried that it didn’t work, I’ll go somewhere else and keep doing that. And you just burn out everything, when if you stick with something, and you just keep building on it, you build momentum over a long period of time. So that’s kind of a first piece of that. The second thing is about reputation. Now, reputation matters more than you can possibly imagine. If you make the wrong moves early, you are getting yourself in trouble. Okay, so let’s just assume that, you know, you get, you get invited into this gallery, and you haven’t done your homework. And it turns out the gallery has a bad reputation. And they’re taking advantage of people and they’re not paying their bills, and they’re not paying their artists and you know, everything is going wrong with them, you get tainted by their reputation. On the other hand, if you got invited into like one of the top galleries a super important, you know, high high reputation, they know that they only select the best, that’s a booster to your reputation. And there’s a middle ground, you’re gonna know you’re gonna have to go into that middle ground before you go into the high ground, typically, not always. But you want to ask yourself, you know, can I be patient? Can I take my time to get invited into the right places? I have whole whole chapters and videos on getting invited into art galleries, but and getting invited as the answer you don’t want to call on him. Sorry, don’t do it. There’s a whole reason. And that basically, is you’re going to annoy them and they don’t want to be annoyed. So get yourself thinking about your reputation. What what is my brand look like? Am I elegant? And my cheap in my colorful, you know, what is the brand? What do you want to stand for watch branding, don’t copy branding, because people come up with branding concepts and strategies because they have a specific thing in mind. That may not be what you think it is. But try to figure out you know, who has been buying my paintings? What can I understand about them? What do they like about them? What is the story behind them? Write stories for every painting? I I think this is really critically important story stick. And 50% of the people who look at your paintings in a gallery environment, are not the kind of people who can get it. You know, 50% are like, Oh, I get it and 50% need to be told how to get it seems crazy. That’s just human nature. Right? You get it? I get it, but you know, somebody who’s a particular type of person, they’re not going to get it. So think in terms of that and then start building you know, I, I think you know, it’s I like the idea of dominating a particular magazine to dominate it for five or 10 years. I have one artist who was broke bankrupt, hardly had any money and decided to advertise in one of my magazines. I think it was fine art connoisseur and just the bought what she could buy, which was a quarter page or half page or something in every single issue, never skipping it. And it was hard. And I said, Look, you know, after the first year, you’re going to feel a little nervous about this, because you’re spending this money and you’re not really feeling the result. But you got to build your brand and your reputation. And after, after that, all of a sudden, you know, invites started coming in to be judges and to do galleries and to do shows, and you know, stuff like that. And things started selling and moving. And then better galleries came on board after a few years, and she was able to get rid of the crummy galleries. And you know, it just was like, elevating up and has stuck with it for 10 years, and it has put this person into superstar status. Now, you got to be able to paint or draw or sculpt or whatever it is you do photography. So keep that in mind. But it’s a long game, and you got to play the long game if you want to succeed. Well, also, I should mention that, you know, there is no difference between your personal reputation and your business reputation. I had a gallery owner, I’ve told the story a few times, gallery owner and a major, big city, big gallery, important gallery fired, fired an artist, because the artists kept posting pictures of, of the crazy stuff that he was involved with, in you know, you know, partying and stuff like that. And now you could probably tell yourself a story. Well, you know, that’s the reputation I want. But the gallery got complaints about it, one lady wanted to, it turned her off so much, she wanted to get a refund on her painting because she didn’t like what the artist was standing for. So you got to keep that stuff in mind. I have another artist friend who’s very prominent, and he insists on sharing his political opinions on social media. And no matter what you think, and no matter how much you want to stand for what you stand for, which is fine. But just know, if you do that. You’re going to make 50% of the people hate you. Sorry, it’s the truth. They’re not going to be able to overcome that. And you know, you’ve seen this. I mean, you’ve seen people who have boycotted companies, because they got political, and they just, you know, these companies shouldn’t be getting political. I don’t want to get polluted. Anyway, that’s about online reputation.

Amandine 1:02:42
The second question is from Deseret homes, Sharon Lee, from Washington, my art galleries all closed during COVID. I’m not interested in gallery hunting or hanging in short shows anymore. How do I sell and unload artwork or lean storage?

Eric Rhoads 1:03:01
All right, well, so I’m gonna get a little down on you here. Desert free, no offense intended. But it sounds like you’ve given up look, in the world of business. And if you’re selling paintings, you’re in the world of business, your small business, whether you like it or not. And in the world of business, you’re gonna get your gut kicked in, you’re gonna get your teeth kicked in, you’re gonna lose paintings. I had 12 pieces in a gallery out west, the gallery went bankrupt. I never got my paintings back. Luckily, by some stroke of luck, I was at a party, I met a guy I talked to him, he says, Oh, we’ve been looking for you, my sister owned this gallery. And we’ve been we’ve gave up looking for you, but we have all your stuff. And they sent back in 10 years, 12 years later, miracle, but for years, I thought I’d been burned, you’re gonna get burned. It’s part of doing business. You don’t like it? I don’t like it. But it’s part of doing business. And if you give up and say, Well, I’m not gonna go into any galleries, because all my galleries closed during COVID. Guess what, not all the galleries did close. There are great galleries out there that are thriving, not just surviving. And there’s a lot of other things that you should be doing. So if you’re giving up on galleries, if you’re giving up on shows, don’t give up. Now, if you decide you want to give up because you just don’t want to put up with it anymore. I get it. That’s fine. You might be at a stage in your life where you just don’t want to do that kind of work. But the reality is, if you’re gonna sell artwork, you got to do the work. And it’s a pretty much full time job. I always say, if you’re marketing your own art, you got to spend 20% of your time which is roughly you know, two hours a day or one day a week out of your five day week to work on marketing your art, you know, it’s just you got to work it you got to be talking to people you got to be selling Listen, you gotta be marketing and putting shows together, you know, all this stuff, I mean, it’s just all part of it, if you don’t do it, you’re not going to get the results you want, the more you’re willing to put into it. And in the early stages of your career, you put all that time and effort into it, and then you don’t have to do as much still got to do it. You can’t completely disappear. But if you keep, keep it alive, keep the train running, you’re gonna have a big impact. But how do you sell and in this case, she says unload artwork, currently in storage well, okay, so if you want to just unload everything, let’s, let’s say, you’re not going to pay it anymore, you’re not going to try to market your art anymore, you just want to unload everything? Well, you know, there’s a lot of things, you can do a garage sale, I know it sounds silly, you can do an art sale, like a garage sale, you can do Facebook marketplace, if you want, you can place some ads, or local ads, depending on the prices and how many paintings you can play some local ads, you know, in the local media, newspaper, websites, whatever, you know, if you have something here in Austin, we have the East Austin studio tours, you can participate in that, you know, get space in one of those studios, with somebody else, pay them for a little of their time, or whatever, put your work in there, and they get big crowds through you can sell that way. You know, you can try to sell it online, and, you know, put together a website with all the stuff that you’re offering. If you’re trying to get rid of it, then it’s all about price, right? Because if if you’re willing to dip price, you’re gonna get rid of things much faster. If you’re not willing, then you’re going to it’s going to take longer, you can still do it, but it’s going to take longer. I think that the real question is, how do I sell artwork, if I don’t want to do shows and being a gallery, and that becomes pretty much a self marketing strategy. That means you’re promoting online, you’re promoting on social media, you have a very specific strategy for social media. And you also are promoting in other places, because as I’ve said before, stand in the river where the money is flowing, right? So get into art shows, but you don’t want to do art shows I get that. But where can you stand where the money is flowing? Well, you know, I’ve got art magazines that have rich, rich, wealthy collectors who love art. And so that’s a concentrated audience of people who are going to buy paintings proven to buy paintings. So you know, you’ve got to get known there, build your brand, you know, that kind of thing. And those things matter over time. Now, if you are Deseret, you’re kind of like done with this, you’re at the end of your career, you just don’t want the paintings around anymore, you’re not going to paint anymore, I would, I’d probably just go to somebody locally who’s already set up, maybe it’s an art gallery, and just say, Listen, get rid of these, I need a minimum of, you know, X number of dollars for each of these, or, you know, I’ll sell you the whole bunch for X number of dollars, and let it become their problem. And they might have a big sale. Or maybe you can get somebody, if you have a list in you have people who have collected your art in the past, to a studio sale, you know, I’m retiring, and I’m getting rid of everything. And this is your big opportunity. And by the way, these paintings are going to be more valuable than ever, because I’m not going to pay it anymore. Right? So, and you need a story. Everybody needs a story. Now my rule is the story has to be true. You can’t lie. But you need a story. You know, I’ve decided to stop painting. You know, I made a great career and I had a lot of fun, but I’ve decided to focus on travel. You know, so I’m going to sell out all my inventory or you know, maybe you have a health issue and you can say I’ve developed a health issue. And my hands aren’t going to be steady for much longer. You know, you can come up with some story, but it’s got to be a true story. You can expand on it. You can enhance it. But don’t lie. Don’t lie. That’s important. Okay, that is today’s art marketing minute.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artist to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected] And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

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