Each week, Eric Rhoads answers two art marketing questions from listeners like you during the Marketing Minute Podcast. Browse the marketing minutes here to learn tips on how to sell more art.

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 117

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 Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares thoughts on thoughts on how to approach an art gallery that isn’t local to you, and traditional fine art collecting versus the move toward technology.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 117 >

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:
In the art marketing minute, my goal is to answer your art marketing questions. Send me your burning questions to [email protected] Or you can do a video question at artmarketing.com/questions. I’d love to have them. I have my producer read the questions. Amandine is from France. And she said that today she’s feeling a little extra overly sensitive about her accent because it’s her birthday. Oh, we need some. I don’t know if we have any birthday music or not. Let’s try it. Anyway, it’s her birthday. And we want to congratulate her, give her a thumbs up and an applause. And anyway, she was talking to her family back in France. And so she said she kind of picked up some of the more French. So obviously now you’re going to be overly self conscious about this. What’s our first question?

Amandine:
Thank you, Eric. So the first question is from Amelia Kintore from Costa Rica. We had a question from Amelia before. So this is a follow up question. I’ve heard you say many times to not approach a gallery through email. But what can we do as foreign artists to approach galleries internationally? I’m already a public figure in Costa Rica. I had many shows. I’m linked with real estate in national galleries. And one of my current 2023 goals is to find international representation, which do you think would be the most correct way to approach foreign galleries without contacts or the possibility to visit their shows?

Eric Rhoads:
All right, I think we got cut off there. They visit their shows and to meet them is what she was going to say. Well, first off, don’t listen to an old coot like me. Because if you know if you’ve got an idea, go for it. You know, don’t let me hamper you. But I do have ideas about this. I mean, here’s the real reason that I say this about galleries. I was sitting in an art gallery one time talking to the gallery director and he said, Do you mind if I open mail while we’re talking? Because I can’t keep up with it. I pulled out this big box. And I said what is that? He said, Well, these are all submissions from artists. He said I get 150 of these a month. He said I basically open them up peeking them and throw them away. And he said, I get 10 times as many emails he said, sometimes people drop in, I’ll be with a client that will interrupt me, I’ll kill a sale. He said, you know, artists don’t think about these things and how much time he said, you know, we spend a lot of time dealing with artists submissions that we don’t even want. And so you know this, this is something you need to be thinking about because you don’t want to get a bad rap or reputation with somebody in a gallery. Now, they’re inundated. And so in your particular case, because you’re International, or you’re you want to be internationally known, you’re well known in Costa Rica, you have a story to tell, and you might want to consider emailing him, but I recommend against best way to get into a gallery is to get invited in. That’s what I think and there are ways to do that. I talked about that in the book a little bit. But here’s here’s what we always want to do. You always want to think about who is my customer and what do they want. In this particular case, who’s your customer, it’s an art gallery, right? You want them to bring your work into their gallery so what Does an art gallery one? Well, first off, they want quality. They want quality. They want artists that are quality. So when you’re looking at websites, you’ve got to look at the quality of the work on their their website and say do I live up to it? Secondly, they want variety. And what I mean by that, you know, some galleries will do modern and traditional, most will do all modern are all traditional, but they want variety of subjects, and, and they want artists who can put together a portfolio of a lot of good work, you know, everybody, every artists can paint one good painting, but can they pay 50 or 100, and they produce enough work, that’s what they want, they, you know, you are inventory to them. They love you, they care about you, but your inventory. And if they if you can’t produce enough work, they’re not going to make any money on you. They want to make money. And they want proven artists who are easy to sell, and who have a national brand. Because somebody who has a national brand, somebody will walk into the artist and say, Hey, do you have a CW Monday? Or do you have a client ask IVIG that and, and that they can get more money, somebody with a big brand. And they want things that are big brand. And so if you don’t have a national brand, or you don’t have a strong enough brand, not every gallery gets all those national brand artists. But if your brand isn’t strong enough, no matter how famous you are in Costa Rica, it’s not going to help you in America or France or other places. It’s a story. They love stories, and it’s something they can talk about way if they decide they’re going to have you they can say, well, you know, this artist is in the National Gallery in Costa Rica, that that’ll help them sell things. But you know, the National Gallery in Costa Rica is probably a whole lot different than the National Gallery in Washington DC. So, you know, I think email contact is a disadvantage, because they’re going to filter you out your email might not even get to him. You know, I have people, I have two different people who do nothing, but go through my email and filter it out. Anything that that’s important gets to me, and when you send me something it gets to me, but you know, we all get a lot of junk mail and stuff. I don’t have to deal with as much of that now. So how do you solve this problem? How do you get galleries and other countries to want you? Well, the first question is, you’ve got to ask yourself, why? What do I want to accomplish? You know, sometimes we have these visions of what, you know what something looks like, and what is going to be happening there. But why do you want to do that? I mean, it when you’re, you’re dealing with other countries, now you’re dealing with special packaging, probably more difficult packaging, you’re talking about shipping things, longer distance, higher expenses. I don’t know if there’s any import taxes or things like that, that you are they have to deal with. But there are a lot of things you want to consider make sure you’re you really want it if that’s what you want. Now, I had a gallery owner telling me that he watches artists who advertise. Sometimes he keeps an eye on him for years, he said, and if their work is consistent or getting better, and he sometimes will call them and invite them into the gallery. He said he also secretly has a different name. And he watches them on social media and Instagram. He watches their behavior, he watches, what they’re posting, are they posting good things? are they posting bad things? Are they inconsistent? are they posting pictures of their, you know, their drunken parties and their head in the toilet? He said, because when I see that I instantly write him off. He said, Because I have to have people who are perceived as professionals. He says that artists who advertise prove that they’re good business people, because they understand what it takes. They’re increasing their value, they’re increasing their chance of success. They’re increasing their brand. They’re developing a collector base. And he said that way, we don’t have to do all of that for them. He said, That’s high risk. I want people that people already want I want them to come into the gallery and say, Hey, I need an Eric Rhoads painting, right? So the advantage for you if you’re building a brand, if you’re advertising yourself, you’re building a brand, you’re helping people become aware of you. But that’s not enough. You have to create interest, you have to create desire. And then eventually you have to create purchase. And that’s about longevity and consistency and always being there. Because what happens if somebody will see an ad one time, and they won’t act on it, they’ll just see it because you know, people flip through things. But they might go Oh, that’s interesting. And then they’ll go you know, next time they see it, they go Oh, I like that artist. And the next time they see it, they go oh, I liked that artists. I want to watch that artists and the next time they see it, they might go well, I you know, I’d kind of like to own something from that artist, you know, so now you’re getting them to interest and desire. And then at some point, if you keep reminding them they might see something. Oh, that’s the painting. That’s some I’m going to pick up the phone and buy. And you also have to understand that people are in and out all the time, right? You know, some people feel rich one day and poor another day, depending on what’s going on in their life, you know, they just inherit some money, or they just get a bonus. Or if they have to put a new roof on their house, they’re feeling poor. And so you want to always be there, because you never know when they’re going to be in the market, you know, it’s their birthday, they decide they’re going to spend some money on themselves. And they’re going to pick a painting in this magazine today, and you better be there and the one time you’re not there as the day you’re going to miss out on that sale. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a big game, you know, it’s something that has to occur. But what I want you to do is think in terms of your fishing, right, I’ll use a fishing scenario. So you throw your line in the water, and you’re always throwing your line in the water and you catch a fish. And then you take the fish off, and you throw it back in the water versus you take the fish off, and you throw it in your pond. And so you catch another fish, and you throw it in your pond and you keep catching fish, and you throw them in their pond, and they get bigger and bigger and bigger, and they reproduce and there’s more fish, and eventually you eat them, right and you have enough fish to to take care of you the rest of your life. Right? The whole idea here is you want to advertise to bring in fish. And then you want to get them to come to you. They want the ad to go to your website to sign up for your newsletter, you gotta have some special incentives to get him to do that. Now they’re in your pond. Now once they’re in your pond, you feed them, you develop them, you talk to them, you you can talk to them a little bit more frequently, you’re still advertising because people are in and out of markets all the time, but you still advertise to constantly bring more efficient, some of the fish in your pond are going to end up buying things, some of the fish outside of your pond are going to end up buying things but you’ve got to constantly be developing. So you can also tag your ads, you can tag them with things like credibility builders, you know, like I am in the national proud to say that I’m in the National Gallery of Art collection in Costa Rica. Or you can also say things like, I’ll be adding one new gallery this year, you could say only one new gallery this year, you want to create scarcity, you want to also not look like you’re desperate, you know, if you just say now seeking galleries, that feels desperate, but if you say not adding one new gallery this year, you know, and by the way, you can see me in these four other galleries that way, you know, it’s like, oh, this is special. And then maybe somebody will see that and say, Okay, I want to come on board. All right, lots more about that kind of thing. In the book, Amandine, what do we have next?

Amandine:
The second question is Felicia from Maryland has, as our world heads more into technology, and the younger generations don’t invest in fine art as their parents or grandparents? Where does that leave us artists who love to paint and draw? Should we start moving with the times into more digital times? How are things changing and advancing? And what does that mean for the fine art?

Eric Rhoads:
Well, Alicia, you know, do you really believe that’s true? Have you seen evidence of that? Do you have any data points? Do you have a lot of data points? You might be telling yourself a story? This is something we all do we hear a thing or two, we hear somebody say something next thing you know, we assume everything is like that. Now, let me give you an example. I used to be a radio DJ. And like one of the DJs that I worked with said, you know, we should be playing the song. Everybody’s calling for this song. Well, the reality was everybody wasn’t calling for that song. It’s just that he happened to pick up the line a couple of times, and he happened to catch somebody calling for that song. But we we had data points, we put checkmarks with every song everybody asked for. And that song wasn’t really getting requested, but he believed it because that was his story. So you’ve got to ask yourself, am i Believing story? Now, here’s the news. The news is that the grandparents and the parents who bought art at young ages, that didn’t really exist. I mean, it might exist in a couple of cases. But, you know, young people typically don’t buy a lot of art and the kind of art that they’re buying when they’re young. When I was, I don’t know, 17 1819 2017 I think I bought I saw this really cool poster of a man with a sword and a lightning bolt and he was sitting on a horse with wings. And I bought that poster and I probably paid $25 for it. I thought it was a lot of money. It was framed and I hung it up in my apartment. And that was my art my bigger Purchase. But what happens is our art tastes change. You know, when I was 20, I probably had different art up than when I was 17. When I became 30, that changed, I in my 30s, I bought photographs, because I was into photography. And in my 40s, I bought my first painting on a trip with my wife, we were walking through New Orleans, and we saw an artist and we thought, Oh, we’ve never seen an artist before. And we bought a painting, and it was probably 200 bucks. And it was a lot of money to us at the time. And then later, you know, as I got older, I started, we took a couple more trips we’d find decided to buy paintings on trips, we wandered into galleries, we’d buy paintings. And then as I got older, and I got more money, all of a sudden, I’m spending, I remember, when the first time I spent $5,000 on a painting, I was like really nervous. Because I thought, you know, how can anybody spend $5,000 on a painting, you know, now I look at that and go, Well, that’s a bargain, because that painting today is probably worth $50,000. But that’s a whole nother story. So everybody goes through these phases. And by the way, everybody’s in a different place. They’re in a different place. Mentally, they’re in a different place physically, you know, people have cycles in their lives. And we might assume that young people aren’t interested because they’re into digital art, and they’re into NF Ts. And that’s true. That’s no, there’s no doubt about it. But I have a friend who is a young tech entrepreneur, he’s probably not even 40 yet. He’s probably not quite a billionaire, but he’s close. And what does he do with his money, he buys art. And he’s buying it online. He’s buying it on auction sites, he wanders into galleries on trips, and he’s buying good art. And he is he told me, he says, you know, he was a little embarrassed because he asked me to go to lunch with him one time, because he wanted to know more about art. And he said, I’m a little embarrassed because I only can spend $25,000 a month in art. And I thought I said, Well, you know, you’re ahead of most. And, and so don’t assume anything. You know, there are cycles, there are interests in different communities and sub communities. You know, what people in New York buy might be different than people in Brooklyn or people in Chicago or people in LA or California, you know, there’s, it depends on your interest. You know, if you’re a modern house person, I know people who have vacation homes. And so you know, I have a friend that has come home and Telluride, guess what’s hanging in his house and tell you right? Western paintings, guess what’s hanging in his modern apartment in New York, modern paintings, guess what’s hanging at his house in Connecticut, traditional paintings. So you know, everybody’s got a little different tastes at different times. And so don’t get all freaked out about that. When you’re selling art, though. You want to think about this, you’re in a business. And when you’re in business, things are constantly changing. And you have to keep an eye on it. And you have to watch the data points. And there might be a time when nobody’s buying art, like you say could happen. And But things could change. You know, Kim Kardashian, all of a sudden starts talking about paintings everybody’s gonna want paintings, or Damien John, or you know, or whomever. And so, just think about that. And also, there’s a group of people who are what I call success driven people, right? They’re the people who buy Lamborghinis, people who drive Bentley’s, you know, we may or not, may not be able to relate to them, because we’re not doing those things. But the reality is that they will buy status items, because it makes them feel better. And they they want to, they want to kind of show off who they are. And so what what do they buy, they buy status items and art. And you know, they wander into a gallery and they see a painting that’s a quarter million dollars or a million dollars or half a million dollars. And they go I’ll take that, you know, make some feel great. And you know, it may be something that they love, it may be something that is a status piece because it’s famous artists, you know, you never know I mean so there’s just a lot of different things. But one thing that people do is they hang brands right? Those people they hang brands right they hang brand clothes in their closets and they have brand cars in their multiple garages and they have big mansions that you know that are branded mansions and and the artwork are brands you know if you if you own a Clyde ASPA big painting, that’s a big brand and that’s it’s something that hopefully the collector will go you know, I love it. That’s why I bought it but there are people who do buy paintings big because they’re famous, as a matter of fact, I have a friend of mine, who just passed away, was a billionaire. And he lived at the top of Beverly Hills in this big mansion that he bought from a famous movie director. And I walked into the house for a meeting, I walked in, first off his garage doors open, and there’s a Bentley, and there’s a rolls and there’s a sports car. And you know, there’s a bunch of things, we go into house and we had our meeting, and I said, I see you have a lot of art, can you tell me about your art? And he said, Well, yeah, I’ll walk you around. He said, I don’t know much about it. I have people who do that for me. And, you know, I thought, oh, and so he walks me around. He said, Well, that’s a Jasper Johns. I said, Well, tell me about that. He says, Well, I don’t really know anything about it. But I bought it from this guy, and I paid a million dollars for it. And that’s what was important to him. He ended up selling that painting for like $50 million, or something, which is pretty cool. But anyway, you know, everybody’s got a different reason not everybody’s going to be passionate for the same reason there’s no right or wrong. It’s just you have to don’t tell yourself stories. Now, dealers, art dealers have to keep up with trends and popularity, and what’s happening in Hong Kong or Chicago, or Moscow or wherever. And so, with the internet the way it is, everybody can see everything and everybody and so you can be discovered. But don’t get caught up in assumptions, assumptions will, will hurt you. I get caught up in assumptions I get wrong. Most of the time, you know, I’ll hear a little piece of evidence. And I’ll assume that’s true for everybody. If that you look for evidence, if there’s no hard evidence, then it may not be a trend. And I ended up making stuff up because I think I hear something and it changes my attitude. But be careful, because the stories that you tell yourself will limit your thinking. And if you think no one wants it, guess what happens? That will become true for you. So manage your mindset, read books on mindset, read, thinking Grow Rich. Manage mindset, and mindset has to do with this thinking. So it may be true, I don’t think it’s true. I just think the timing is is different. And by the way, there’s, there’s education that needs needs to take place. We have to educate consumers constantly. We have to get our stuff in front of them. And you got to look for creative ways to do it. That’s what I do for a living. That’s why people advertise in my magazines because they want you know, we have all these billionaires who read Fine Art connoisseur. They want to be in front of them. I get it. I have galleries that sell really expensive paintings to those people. Anyway, that is today’s art marketing minute.

Announcer:
This has been a marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com

Eric Rhoads:
Well, this has been fun today. And it’s really been an honor to have Clyde Aspevig on what what a terrific human being. And what I love about him is that he’s so humble. He’s accomplished so much, but he’s so humble. I hope that you guys will all come and join us at the plein air convention in Denver Clyde, if you’re listening, come on down. You can be my guest. We won’t even put you on stage. You and Karolina just come on down. That’s coming up in May. Watercolor live is coming up in like any minute. So it’s January 26 through 28th. And if you have not watched the video yet at watercolorlive.com about people who are a little bit insecure about their ability to paint, you should watch it, it might change you. And also go to pleinairmagazine.com to see the current issue of quite so big and you should get that issue but you also should consider subscribing. If you have not seen my blog where I talk about art and life and things. It’s called Sunday coffee. I do it on Sunday mornings, just because I feel about writing about something other than art. And so check it out at Coffeewitheric.com and also know that I’m on the air daily on Facebook. It’s called Art School live. And you can find it on YouTube. I’m on a 12 noon Eastern every weekday, and you can subscribe at YouTube. Just search art school live and hit the subscribe button also, if you don’t mind, give me a follow on Instagram and Facebook at Eric Rhoads as always. Everybody botches it, it’s R H O A D S There’s no E in there. All right. Thank you for tuning in today. I’m Eric Rhoades, publisher and founder of plein air magazine and fine art connoisseur. Thank you for your time today. And remember, it’s a big world out there. Go paint it. We’ll see you. 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 |2023-01-19T09:54:03-05:00February 3rd, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 115

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 >

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!
By |2023-01-05T07:27:51-05:00January 20th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 116

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 Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares guidance on when it’s the right time to approach an art gallery, and words of advice for newly graduated art students.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 116 >

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 Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the number one Amazon bestseller “Make More Money Selling Your Art: Proven Techniques to Turn Your Passion Into Profit.”

Eric Rhoads:
I answer your art marketing questions you can upload a video question at artmarketing.com/questions or you can email me [email protected] Amandine, my producer is going to read the first question. Last time we did a podcast, you were sick. So I guess you’re better now.

Amandine:
I feel better. Thank you. So the first question is from Jennifer from Jackson, Michigan. I’m learning and working on my craft, how do I go about building relationships with galleries? In the meantime, I don’t have any current connections to the art world. And I am wondering where to put my best efforts now. So that it might make it easier and quicker for me to get established with quality galleries when I’m ready. And any tips on what makes a quality gallery would also be helpful?

Eric Rhoads:
All right, that’s a great question, Jennifer, congratulations. I, I’ve got a lot of different conflicting thoughts on this. But let me just say something, I think that, you know, life is about a long game, not a short game. And one of the things that happens, you know, somebody I haven’t heard from in six years, contacts me and needs something. And, you know, it just feels a little like abuse. And I’m happy to do it if I can, but you know, if they were somebody who touched base once or twice a year, and, and I got to know them a little bit better, you know, then when they call and ask for something, it just feels a little better. So, in terms of having a perspective of looking in advance, you’re playing a long game. And so I think there’s nothing wrong with that. But I just want to caution you and everybody else listening, you know, you’re a new artist, you’re getting to the point where you’re just learning and you’re growing as an artist. And I wouldn’t really worry or even be thinking so much about gallery contacts, right now, you need to do one thing, and one thing only, and that is to get your artwork to a point where it is worth showing. And I don’t mean to be rude, it may be worth it now. But you know, we all have a tendency to fall in love with our work before other people do, most important thing you can do is get your work to a quality level that is worthy of being sold, and getting some feedback from others on the outside who are going to tell you lies so that you can know when you’re really ready to sell your work. Now, if you want to develop relationships with galleries in the meantime, I think it’s okay. But you know, galleries have their radar up all the time, because, you know, artists are always dropping in and what do they really want? Well, they really want to be in the gallery. So artists get art galleries get inundated with emails and packages and pictures, and visits and and they get very busy doing that stuff. And they don’t have time to do what they need to do. So you don’t necessarily need to do that. Now. If you want to establish friendships, get to know him. I think it’s great, can’t hurt to get to know some gallery people. But I don’t recommend being the artist who is only trying to get them to look at your work. As a matter of fact, it can hurt you if it’s too soon. Because that might mark you with their eyes, right? So I made the mistake, I contacted this gallery one time. And I thought I had just done the best piece of work I’d ever done in my life this a long time ago. And so I thought, well, this gallery really should carry my work. So rather than being direct about it, I called the guy and I said, Hey, listen, would you be willing to critique one of my paintings for me, and he said, Sure. And then once he got it, he was not very complimentary. It was is matter of fact, he told the truth, which I needed to hear. And it turned out what I thought was a good painting was not in his eyes, a good painting. And that was a very important thing for me to learn. But, uh, my, my hidden motive there was to try to secretly get him to say, Oh, I love your painting, I want to put it in my gallery. And of course, they’re on to that because everybody’s done that. So it didn’t work out that way. So I kind of marked myself and that created a little bit of a negative I suppose. So I don’t do it till you’re ready. And, and then be careful about how you approach them the goal and I teach this in my book, the goal is to get them to invite you not for you to push yourself on them. And as a sales, trainer and person, I you know, my tendency is to want to push but, you know, pull marketing is a lot more effective. If you get to a position of selling your art. Then you’re going to learn a lot more about what it’s going to take. So one of the things you could do is you could drop into a local gallery. If you have time on your hands and you could say listen, you know, I’m an artist. I’m not going to show you my work because my work is not ready yet. But I would love to learn more about art. And I’d be willing to volunteer here helping you hang paintings or helping you sell or helping you do anything, I don’t need any money for it. And I am never going to talk to your clients about my art, I’m not going to talk to you about my art. As a matter of fact, I’m not going to show it to you, because it’s just not ready yet. And if you volunteer and you say, Hey, I’d love to, to work, you’re going to learn so much because you’re going to encounter what they go through. And artists think that galleries don’t do anything and they complain about how much percentage they’re taking. They do so much. They do so much more than anybody ever even can possibly anticipate and understanding that will help you understanding what they go through to chase clients down to get them to buy something, understanding how people respond to artwork, when they’re looking at it and and how to answer questions that will help you a lot. So the other thing is, your taste will change. Most of us, when we first start painting, paint very, we try to paint very tight very photographically oftentimes, and our colors tend to be garish. And, and there’s a lot of things that will probably change as your tastes develops, and you have to develop taste. And the way to develop taste is to be around a really good gallery. Now you might go into a gallery that you think has good taste. Five years from now, you might think they don’t have good taste that’s happened to me, I have paintings that I bought, you know, 25 years ago that I don’t like anymore, because at the time, I thought they were good paintings, but now I look at them and say, not so great. But I think that if you develop tastes that will help you more than anything else. It’ll help you make your paintings better. And the way to develop taste is go to galleries, go to art shows, go to museums, study the art, find out what it is that you really respond to which artists do you respond to what style what color palettes, what moods so that you find things that really work for you that’s going to help you a lot. I’d also recommend that learning about art is really critical. And you know, I have become one of these guys. I read every art novel, I buy every art book, sometimes people send them to me, I just constantly consuming things not only looking at the pictures, but reading the articles and I read incessantly. I read Fine Art connoisseur, I really read plein air, I read my competitors, a lot of other things. But you know, you want to just really get to a point where you really understand art in a bigger way. And so that’s all about developing yourself. So anyway, I hope that’s been helpful. Next question.

Amandine:
The second question is from Glenn from Palmdale, California. Here’s one I get multiple times every semester from my student. What advice would you give to an art student between 18 and 24 years old? Graduating from junior college or four year college just starting out for the first time?

Eric Rhoads:
You know, that’s a great question. And that’s from Glenn Knowles. And Glenn is a brilliant teacher and a brilliant artist. And we got to know each other when he came on one of my painting trips to Cuba. What a great guy he is. And it’s a really terrific question. And he knows him because he’s been teaching for a long, long time. So so what happens is that young people will go to art school, and they’ll be all enthusiastic, and they’ll learn about how to create really beautiful artwork. And then they graduate from school, and then the struggle hits. And the struggle can really beat you down. The struggle beats down a lot of people and they end up not doing what they love, and they end up taking a job doing something else because of pressure from family or parents or something. And they fail. So let me ask you this question which is, which is better failing, are learning about the art business? You see, if you learn about the art business, you’re going to increase your chances of success. And that’s going to help you a lot of ways I have said to friends of mine that own art schools and affiliates. I will voluntarily come over and teach a class on art marketing or I will happily create a course on RT marketing and if you would require your students to watch it and know the responses. Well, you know, that’s not what we do. Well, the problem is, you know, it’s, it’s put yourself in a different world, you know, any, any school, let’s say it’s medical school, they teach you how to be a doctor, but they don’t teach you how to run your doctor business. And that’s something that should be part of the curriculum. You, you want to be learning these things. So here’s what I’m gonna tell you. It’s not what people want to hear. But the type of person who becomes an artist doesn’t want to do business, but they want to sell their paintings. But if you’re selling anything, whether it’s paintings or heroin, I don’t recommend that you’re, you’re in business, you’re selling something. So you need to invest in yourself in your education. And I highly recommend you do it while you’re in art school, because you have free time on your hands maybe, and start reading, you know, read everything you can get your hands on. Now, my best advice is, you know, what they call make your bed every morning. And there’s a whole book about that. Really, what it means is have discipline, you want the discipline of being a full time, business artist, meaning you pay your creativity, you paint what you love, you paint what you think is going to be what people want. But you also have to spend time, I think 20% of your week, one, one day a week focusing on your art marketing. And then you know, there’s other things like planning and bookkeeping, and scheduling and, and strategy and all of that other stuff. So you need to study it. And the way to study it is to read books, I have art marketing.com, which has hundreds of articles on it for free, I’ve got books out, I’ve got videos out. And there are lots of other people who teach marketing. I recommend you don’t focus on things that teach art marketing, even though that’s what I do, I recommend you take a course in small business. Think about reading some books on small business, read some books on mindset is critical. You know, start with thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and read it once every couple of years, the rest of your life, I need to do that. That’s a reminder, it’s very important to understand that these things influence you, but you got to go to work every day. You know, rather than staying up till three o’clock in the morning and getting up at noon, and going and painting again, you know, set yourself out a schedule so that you can do normal business so that you can be there available for calls with clients and galleries and things like that set a schedule of painting time set a schedule of work time, planning time, all of those things that will make a big difference. Now, I did a video about goal setting, which I put on Instagram around right before the beginning of the year, you can find that at Eric Rhoads on Instagram. Take, you’ve got to have goals, you got to break your goals out monthly. And I think you’ve got to break out your goals weekly. And you need to make them measurable meaning you can tell when you’ve achieved them, you know, a goal might be $1 amount a goal might be getting, you know 10 certain things done, you want to measurable. And I recommend, especially on the financial side, check your goals every single week. So let me give an example. Now I just wrote an article about this in the oil painters of America newsletter, which you can find online. And this video that I just did. But here’s how to think about this way. Let’s say I’m going to use round numbers that are easy. Let’s say that you wanted to make $10,000 a month. So how do you do that? Well, you break it down into $2,500. Every week, that’s you know, let’s say an average four week month, then you break it down into $500 every day. And then you have to have that discipline of if I’m going to survive, I have to make $500 today. Now, if you make $1,000 today that buys you an extra day, but if you fall behind, you got to make it up. And if you give yourself that kind of a discipline, it’ll make all the difference in the world. I hate that kind of stuff. But you got to do it. And it’s running a business. And I have a friend that’s a gallery owner or was you know, his salespeople have a certain amount of money they have to bring in every single day and he checks with him. And if they don’t, he gives him a hard time because that’s how he makes his numbers. You got to give yourself a hard time. If you can’t be accountable. Get somebody to make you accountable. I have an accountability group. I’m at a board. I have a board of directors, I have to go meet with them quarterly and if I miss my numbers, they give me a hard time. And they should because I shouldn’t miss my numbers and they give me advice and they give me help and it’s always good to get outside advice from people who know how to do this stuff. If you have a partner, a husband, a wife, a spouse, a friend and who you can say look after make $500 every single week, I want you to check in with me once a week and see how I’m doing. And when you know they’re gonna do that it’s kind of like working out, right? If you have a trainer who checks in with you every day and says, Did you do your setups, you’re not going to want to lie to him. So you’re gonna do your setups, it’s the same thing. So accountability, the world that you live in, kind of revolves around social media, gaming, things like that. You have to ask yourself, Where am I spending my time? Is it helping or hurting? Is it helping my attitude? Is it actually helping me sell my art? Or is it not? You know, not everybody’s world is about the same things your world is about. And if you want to sell art, you need to know that there are many, many tools in many, many places. And it’s not all about what you think is cool. And those things are cool. But just because you’re spending all your time on Tiktok doesn’t mean that everybody who’s gonna buy art is you need to be every place that you possibly can be. That has what I call concentrated art audiences, right? Concentrated audiences would be like fine art connoisseur, which I have all these billionaires and multimillionaires who buy a lot of expensive art. And they’re all art lovers. And they all like the kind of representational art that’s in there. And so when you’re advertising there, you increase your odds, rather than just putting it out on, you know, anywhere, right? So think about those things. Listen to your customers, find out what they want, they will tell you exactly what they need, and listen and try to do those things. Those are some core principles. There’s a lot of other things, but most importantly, discipline, and study. Now, study is a lifetime thing. You know, I have a I have kids, and one of my kids is like, I hate to, I hate to read, I read almost every single night, I listen to podcasts almost every single day when I’m working out in the morning, I buy courses, I join organizations, so I can learn more. I am constantly learning. And I know a lot, but I don’t know everything. And if you imagine yourself standing on a dock in front of the ocean, and you’re looking out over the ocean and the sky and above the sky. That’s how much there is to learn out there. You got to just constantly be learning, especially if you want to stay ahead in life. And if you want to be a successful art business person, then that’s what it takes. Sorry. I know you don’t want to hear that. Anyway, that is today’s on that positive note. That is today’s art marketing minute.

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

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.

> 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!
By |2023-01-13T08:25:26-05:00January 27th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 114

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 >

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!
By |2022-12-22T08:44:30-05:00January 13th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 113

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: “Should you hire a marketing specialist?” and “How can you implement TikTok as a marketing tool?”

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 113 >

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:
Amandine, my producer is going to ask the first question.

Amandine:
The first question is from Deb Price Kennedy from Centerville, Massachusetts. Should I hire a marketing specialist?

Eric Rhoads:
Should I hire a marketing specialist? Thank you Amandine, you know, should I buy a new car? Should I drink a coke at dinner? You know that? I mean, there’s got to be more to the question. So I don’t need to be critical, Deb, but it’s impossible to answer that question. Because I don’t have any data points. And one thing that you will learn, or you might learn if you really get good at marketing is that everything is about data points, right? Because you have data points that inform your decisions. You know, in my world, it’s like, how many people opened up an email? And how many people read that email and clicked on something, those are data points, and you are always comparing one against the other trying to better yourself and get those data points. I don’t know why you would be asking the question. So I’m going to assume a couple of things. But I don’t know what your situation is. And that’s why I can’t answer it for you exactly. But let’s, let’s say for instance, that you’re an artist, and you’re making $10,000 a year and I tend to use round round numbers just to make it easy. And your goal is to get to $20,000. Well, when you think about it, that’s doubling your business. That’s a pretty big deal. Most people can’t figure out how to double their business in one year. I’ve tried that many times, I’ve had a chance to do it a couple of times. So it’s not exactly easy. But you have to ask yourself, if Let’s assume I could go from 10,000 a year to $20,000 a year, how much would I pay to go to $20,000? A year? But you know, if I’m at 10, and I go to 20? How much would I pay to get there? Because that’s kind of how a marketer thinks now I would I would be looking at that and saying, Would I be willing to pay 10,000 to get 10,000? And most people go, Well, that’s stupid. Why would you do that? And the reason is, let’s say, for 10, last 10 years, I’ve been doing 10,000 a year. And next year, I do 20, but it costs me 10,000 To get that 20. But that’s okay, I’m still at the 10,000 I had, but now my baseline if I do 20,000 Every year for the next 10 years, I’ve paid 10,000 to get myself to a $20,000 range. And it might be worthwhile. And that’s where an advisor can help you now, most of us look for metrics that are not quite that extreme. So we might look and say hey, to get 10,000 would I pay 10% of that? Absolutely. Would I pay? 20%? Absolutely. Would I pay 50%? Maybe not as absolutely, but it depends on you. And of course it depends on your costs and cost of delivering these paintings and all the other things that do that but you’d be ahead of the game. And if I paid 10 grand to get to 20,000 and another 10 grand to get to 30,000 and another 10 grand to get to 40,000 if there was a way to do it, I would probably do it because then you’re getting your baseline hire. Now, I might say what am I willing to pay for that 10 grand increase. And it depends, you know, depends on it as the advice Good advice isn’t cheap. Now I charge $5,500 an hour for consulting. I try not to do it very much. And that’s why I charged $5,500 an hour because I don’t have an hour very often. But it’s time now for me to raise my rates. Because now that I’m in demand, I have to get my rates up. Because when you’re in demand, you have to get your rates up. I had a watch company it was Seiko actually hired me as a consultant for them on a tech project because I did that for a while. And they actually paid me enough money that they bought me a whole new house from that money. But the amount of money which seemed like a lot of money to me, to them, it was like, Hey, he he 20 XStar business, it’s certainly worth doing that. So that’s the way you want to look at it is what am I willing to pay? And but the first thing you’ve got to start, you got to backup because you’re way ahead of yourself. The first thing is, like, what is my target outcome? Where do I want to be? Because target outcome makes makes a huge difference. Now, there’s a lot of bogus, fraudulent HYPEE art marketing and marketing advice out there. And a lot of it is just complete nonsense. In my in my particular case, I hope it’s not nonsense, but most of it, I’ve learned by doing it, and I made a lot of stupid and expensive mistakes learning it. But there are two answers to any problem. What are those two answers? It’s two resources, you can either have the resource of time, or you can have the resource of money. If you’re busy, like I tend to be, I don’t have any time. But I have plenty of money. If I spend money to solve a problem, then I’m ahead of the game. Because if I don’t have to spend three months solving that problem, or six months or a year, then I’m ahead of the game, right. So a lot of us don’t have money. And so what we do have is we have time, you can oftentimes if you don’t have the money, you oftentimes have the time, you could spend time. So like I try to master things all the time, I want to learn things, I’m always taking courses, sometimes they’re courses that have nothing to do with anything I’m doing just because I want to learn it. But if I want to master something that I put aside some time, it might be a month, it might be three months, it might be three years. But I think anybody can master anything within about two years. And you know, if you focus all your time and energy on that, if you want to focus your time and energy on growing your business, then you can do that yourself, you don’t need somebody else to do it. And I think anybody can change their trajectory in life or their trajectory in business. In about 90 days, if you stop to think about it, you come up with a plan and you implement it, you can get there in a very quick amount of time now. I read like a madman, I buy courses, I buy lots of courses, I probably spent five or $7,000 on courses. You know, I have I people out there that buy a video from time to time to improve as a painter, I have other people who buy every one that I put out there, and to see the difference that they’re making in you know, in their work, because they’re studying, they’re really serious about it. So you can become an expert. The other thing you got to keep in mind is what was true in marketing a year ago isn’t even true today. Some of it is there are some principles that never change. But there are things that are changing fast and to be a pro, you have to invest your time to stay ahead of it. Now, why do I say that if you’re going to hire an expert, let them do it. The problem is that you need to be able to manage the person or people that you are having advise you, and they’re gonna see right through you if you don’t know what you’re doing, and they’re gonna tell you things that that some are gonna be honest, some are gonna be dishonest, some just don’t know. And so you have to learn the process. So you need to learn it yourself, no matter what you may not have to get the depth of knowledge that they know, but you need to know enough to ask the right questions and drive them in the right direction. Now I have lots of people who work for me, I have lots of people who are experts, some are employees, some are freelancers, some are agencies, but I got to know their business pretty well. Because I got to be able to stay on top of them and owning any business, a small art business included. You got to know these things. And so an expert might help you. But you got to know enough about it. You can’t just you can delegate but you can’t advocate you got to stay involved in the process. So the other thing is that really you gotta go back to the root of all of this room. Remember, anytime you want to do anything, you need to start with what is the end in mind, it’s real easy to say, well, I want to hire an expert. Why do you want to hire an expert? What do you want to achieve? How much money do you want to make? What else is important other than money? What is it about reputation? Or what is it about your pricing? Or what is it about getting into better galleries? You know, these things matter to they’re not always directly about the money? And so first, you got to start with, what do I want to accomplish? What’s my timeline to get there? How much is it worth it to me? If I spend this money and it doesn’t work? Am I bankrupt? Am I out of money? What if this expert isn’t any good, I hired an ad agency, no names, I hired an ad agency. In another country, they were supposed to be one of the best in the world, everybody was raving about them. I wrote them a very, very big check for a project that I was doing. And they completely bombed, they completely failed. I was completely disappointed because I really wanted to work. And, you know, sometimes these things happen, you know, they didn’t have any experience in the thing I was trying to do. But they believed that their system would work for that they were wrong. I was wrong. So anyway, that’s, that’s the long and short of it, you got to kind of know where you’re going first, and then what you want to accomplish. So that’s a long answer to a short question Amandine, what’s next?

Amandine:
The second question is from Gabriel from Lake St. Louis, Missouri, how to implement TikTok as a marketing tool.

Eric Rhoads:
How do I implement TikTok as a marketing tool? Well, Gabriel, you’ve stated this correctly, you see all things that involves tactics are tools. And using tiktok as a marketing is a tool, right? using Instagram as a tool, using a magazine as a tool using a website is a tool. Those are all tools, they’re tactics. And if you were working on your car, let’s assume you had some mechanical skill, which I don’t have much of, you don’t use a hammer to loosen a bolt. Why? Well, first off, you’re going to ruin the bolt, you might break the bolt, you need the right tool, right. So you need, you need somebody who’s going to hand you the right tool, or you need to go find the right tool, the right socket, or whatever. So imagine if you’re watching trends, and you’re watching and everybody out there in the world is using hammers to repair their cars. And it’s like everybody’s doing it, I got to do it. Why? Because everybody’s doing it. That’s kind of how we think it’s very seductive. You want to do what everybody else is doing. So you start using a hammer, even though you don’t need a hammer. The point being that you got to know what you need, we get seduced by things like TikTok and social media and Instagram and reels and all the fun stuff. Because we see these YouTube stars making millions and you see tik tok stars making millions, you know, because they’re just dancing. And they do it all the time. And what we don’t see is that these kids are spending 810 hours a day sometimes, you know, seven days a week writing, recording, creating their reels, and we don’t see the struggle that they had to get there. And some of them didn’t have a struggle. You know, what Mr. Beast does on YouTube takes a lot of time and a lot of writing and a lot of planning a lot of people to pull it off and a lot of money. But he makes it look easy. But it’s not easy guarantee that so a habit that we all have is to get seduced by shiny objects, like tik tok. But first you got to ask yourself, what needs to happen. It’s kind of like what I was talking about before goes back to the idea of goals. What do I need to accomplish? What are my goals? What do I want TikTok? Or Snapchat or Instagram to do for me? And are they the right or the wrong tools to get the job done? Just you know, marketing, we all tend to go for what everybody else is doing. Remember, got milk and everybody started copying got milk. That whole campaign did not move the needle on milk sales. And everybody thinks it did. So they started doing you know, got pizza. The whole campaign was developed because they wanted to make the Board of Directors feel like they were doing something to move the needle, but it didn’t work. And yet everybody copied it was unique. It was fun. Don’t copy until you know why the copying what you know what you’re copying because there’s more to it. Now, I have lots of big Instagram sites. Some of them have hundreds and 1000s of followers. It’s taken me a long time to get there. It’s taken a lot of effort. You know my personal page is only about 17,000. My plein air mag pages 120,000. My realism today pages 205,000. But my Tik Tok is still under 1000. You know, even though I’m getting 30 40,000 views, I’m not getting followers. But none of that matters unless you have a specific purpose. I have a specific purpose, I have a specific plan. I monitor metrics for very specific reason. But you got to keep in mind that you know, when you see somebody that’s got 100,000 followers, you go to I need 100,000 followers, do you really? Why? What are you going to do with it? How are you going to turn it into money? Otherwise, it’s just vanity metrics. Getting followers on social media is cool. But unless you’re accomplishing a very specific purpose from that, and it might be branding, it might be awareness, it might be actual physical money, it might be finding ways to get email addresses, you know, there’s a lot of different things you can do. But you need to understand it first. So you need what I call a conversion plan. How do you get them to buy? Just getting out on Tiktok? isn’t enough? You need to know what you know, what is the process? Now, you can easily do this on social media easily. It’s It’s simple. It’s not easy, right? I guess it’s simply do it on social media. But it does require a plan. And it requires a lot of work. Now, people don’t usually give you money until you ask for the order. So if you’re going to say I want to make money selling paintings on TikTok, you got to figure out how to make it work, how to get him to the right place, how to make them come to you to a place where they can buy your painting, right. So there’s a whole lot to that. But to answer your question, if you have put the time aside daily, you come up with a compelling content, and you start putting it out there. If it’s good, it builds and Tiktok and Instagram and others have an algorithm, if they start seeing a lot of heat and a lot of activity, they’re going to put it more front more people in front of it, because they want them to click on it too, because that increases their metrics. And so you know, you just got to get it out there. And there’s lots of courses about how to sell on Instagram and Tiktok. And I bought one of them once and it was kind of useless. And by the way, it’s constantly changing. But you know, it’s about frequency. It’s about posting frequently. I post daily on Tik Tok, which are cuts from my art school live daily on YouTube. And we just cut them into 32nd reels or one minute reels. And then we put them up there and we put them everywhere we, we repurpose them on Facebook, we repurpose them on Instagram and so on. We put them out on you know, everything LinkedIn, et cetera. So, but if I were going to do it, right, for TikTok, if I had the time, I would do custom content specifically for TikTok with a very specific purpose in mind. That’s not important to me right now. But that might be what you should do. Now, the other thing is, there’s a very big possibility. This is gonna sound crazy, but there’s a big possibility TikTok is gonna go away. How? Why? Because the US government’s trying to shut it down because it’s sucking data from people, including you. And it’s all going to China. I don’t want to get into political discussions. I don’t even understand it. But there’s an awful lot of talk about shutting it down. There was talk before it didn’t happen. Part of it got sold, supposedly, but data’s still going in. So TikTok may not be the answer. And by the way, you know, I mean, if you look back at MySpace, it was like the hottest thing and then it went away, it can happen now maybe less likely to happen with something that’s strong, but you know, there’s gonna always be something that’ll replace it. There’s always new shiny objects, the new social media, there’s some new ones that are coming out that are right around the corner. So define what you want to achieve. get exact detail as possible about what you want to achieve, what you stand for what you want to be known for. And then once your strategy is determined, then you go to tactics. TikTok is a tactic.

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!
By |2022-12-20T11:09:45-05:00January 6th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
Read More

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 112

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

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

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 112 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Art retreats
  • International art trips
  • Art conventions
  • Art workshops (in person and online)
  • And more!
By |2022-12-15T14:05:07-05:00December 30th, 2022|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
Read More

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 111

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 do you know when your art is good enough to sell?” and “How does entering art contests help one’s career?”

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 111 >

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.

Amandine 44:11
The first question is from John Roberts from Oklahoma City. How do you know when your art is good enough to sell?

Eric Rhoads 44:20
Well, John, thank you so much. And I love Oklahoma City. I’ve been there many times. I’ve got great stories, but I won’t get into them right now. I think one of two things happens, John, either you’re feeling your artwork is better than it is. Or you’re feeling it’s not good enough. I go through those moments. I have moments when I’m feeling like wow, I really think I aced it. I really think I did a great job on that. And then you have other moments like you know, I can’t even paint I’m not sure. And so you know the question about whether or not you’re ready for prime time You know, that’s a that’s kind of a loaded question. I remember a friend of mine out in California, Carol, Carol was working with her mentor and her mentor, you know, for many years and her mentor said, You’re not ready yet, you’re not ready yet, you’re not ready yet. And I looked at our work, and I said, I think you’re ready. And so she went out, immediately got a gallery immediately started selling work, and it was selling successfully. Her mentor was looking at it from a different perspective, which was, you know, you can be better. And by the way, you could, you can be better, you’re always going to be better, you’re always going to be growing. And, and you’re not always going to be completely satisfied with your work, I walked into my art gallery, one of three that I’m in, and this woman who worked with the art gallery has kind of given me a tour of my walls, and, and I saw a painting that I had done years and years earlier. And I cringed, right. So I thought, well, that, that doesn’t really live up to anything I do anymore. And I really probably should, you know, burn it. But I didn’t say anything, thankfully, and, and the woman said, This is my favorite painting in the entire gallery. And as a matter of fact, I’m making payments to own it. And I was like, wow. And that really said something to me. And I think it’s an important thing. And that is that no matter what your journey is in art, there are people who are going to come along on the journey, no matter where you are now, maybe if you’re doing, you know, sixth grade quality art, and you’re just really not not doing very well. You know, maybe that’s not quite ready yet. Although we’ve all seen art that makes us feel like that. I think that, you know, the best way to find out is to ask and what do you mean? What do I mean by that? Well, I like to have a panel of people who are trusted experts, you know, if you ask your mother or your father, or your brothers or sisters or your best friends, they’re going to tell you how wonderful you are because they love you. But how do you get somebody to tell you how horrible you are? Now, you don’t want to hear that. But that’s the reality, you need to hear if that’s the case. And the reason you want to have multiple people to ask is because I have three out of four say are wonderful, and one out of four says you You’re awful, then, you know, go go with your instincts on that, you know, somebody, again, may think well, you need to be developed to the level I am. Well, they might not be. So what I would do is first off, I’d say to myself, am I going to sell locally? You know, if I grow up in let’s say it’s Indianapolis, if I’m in Indianapolis, you know, how good do I need to be to be in Indianapolis? Well, I think you got to be pretty good to be in Indianapolis, my my take on it, but I would say I’m going to ask some local people. So I would call a gallery owner. And by the way, or, or curator, I would call somebody who is within the range of what you do. You know, if you’re a modern art painter, and you call somebody who does traditional realism, they’re probably not going to respond well to what you do. So call somebody who’s an expert in modern art, if you’re a traditional painters call somebody who’s a traditional expert. So locally, you know, call a couple of galleries, call curator call a couple of artists and say to them, and I mean this sincerely, and you have to be willing to do this to say to him, Listen, I need some help, I need to understand where I am. And I need some perspective, because I can’t see it myself. And I’d be willing to pay you for half an hour or an hour of your time, if you’d be willing to look at some of my paintings and give me some feedback on whether I’m ready. And if I’m not what do I need to hear. And by the way, I give you permission not to say anything nice. This is not about hearing compliments, I truly want to know where the problems lie, because you can’t see him. Or maybe you can but one, one way to see him is to put your paintings away for a year and then look at him a year later, sometimes you can see him, but I would do that if you’re going national if your goal is to be nationally recognized or worldwide recognized, then go for some people who are outside of that local market as well. And get some feedback from them. Because you know, depending on the level of what the local person is, is seeing, you know, somebody who’s at a national level might see things differently because there may be seeing a lot more artists a lot more work. And so find out from an expert, you know, how do you feel and remember to give them permission to be negative because you’re not trying to get compliments. As a matter of fact, just just rule that out say I don’t want any compliments. You don’t have to say anything nice, tell me what, what’s good or tell me what’s right, what’s wrong. And and that way I know how to improve and then Once you find that out, then you got to figure out, okay, how do I get there? How do I improve? How do I push through this? And you can figure that out. That’s something. The other thing that I would say, is be careful not to call on galleries that you want a foot in the door. In other words, don’t say, Don’t do this pretend thing of, hey, I want you to look at my work, I’m willing to pay you to look at it in hopes that they’ll say, Hey, would you come into my gallery, don’t even go to any galleries that you hope to get into? Because I think that that could backfire on you. And I don’t want you to do that. So that’s just one thing. Another thing is, I learned a really interesting lesson. Because as I went through my painting journey, there were people who said things to me, like, Oh, pretty colors, or Oh, interesting. approach or interesting composition, or, wow, that that tree really is nice, you know, and they’re kind of hesitating, you know, they’re looking for something nice to say. And, you know, we all want to have our compliments. But you know, you’re hearing that hesitation, or you’re hearing they’re not giving you what you would believe are genuine comments, it probably means there’s a problem. And the problem is something you can’t see. And so, you know, you’re trying to get around that problem. But what, what I noticed is, I had picked out a very prominent painter, and spent a lot of time with this painter and said, You know, I really need you to help me work on some stuff. Because I had done that I knew I knew where some of my weaknesses were. And I worked with this painter, and then I kind of stuck to just figuring this stuff out for a year or something. After about a year, I was getting unsolicited compliments that were not pretty colors. But wow, that’s, you know, that’s really a spectacular painting. Who did that? Well, I did it that’s like, oh, wow, I didn’t expect that. You know, there’s so you know, you want to look for things like that. So keep an eye out. And that will help you. Okay, Aberdeen, what’s our next question?

Amandine 52:08
The next question is from Christine, from Denmark, Iowa. How does entering contests help? They’re not cheap. So are they really?

Eric Rhoads 52:22
Well, the first thing you got to get over Christine is, is that, you know, competitions are quote, unquote, not cheap. You know, there is you got to ask yourself, Why am I entering a competition. And I have some very specific thoughts about that. And of course, I have the plein air salon competition. So I understand it pretty deeply. And I’ve been a judge, and many of other competitions, including the art renewal center competition. And I will tell you this, that there are good competitions, and there are not so good competitions, some competitions are just about getting your money. And you want to look at the quality of artwork that are that are getting picked and winning. And ask yourself, you know, is this something that’s living up to the quality that I like, and you know, if it is great, go for it. But you know, you can check it out, talk to people see what they like, and so on. The other thing is, the most important reason to enter a competition has nothing to do with winning the competition. Now, that probably sounds odd, but it’s about your head, it’s about your mindset. It’s about putting yourself out there. You see, if you’re an amateur artist, and you’re deciding to start working towards selling your paintings, or getting noticed or marketing yourself, then you have to have a different mindset. And that mindset changes everything, right? Because if you’re suddenly you’re about to upload a painting that you’ve done, knowing you’re going to be judged by a famous judge or gallery owner or something, and knowing that you’re going to be competing with some pretty darn good artists. Now you’re looking at that painting. It’s kind of like you never noticed the stuff in your own house until you have a visitor and then all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, I need to paint that wall. It’s got dirt on it, right? So it’s the same kind of approach. Once you feel and figure out that you’re putting yourself into the game, you’re going to treat your art differently, you’re going to try harder, you’re going to work to push yourself more, and that’s going to have a positive impact. That is a great reason. The first time I entered an art competition. That’s exactly what happened to me. There was like three or four weeks to enter and I was getting ready to upload it and then I started thinking about it thought, you know, this isn’t really there yet. And I worked on it for three or four weeks intensely until I got there. I didn’t even win an award. I didn’t get an acknowledgment, nothing happened. But I could see the positive impact on myself. Now, that’s one reason that you want to do it. And you want to kind of get yourself into a what I would call a professional mindset. Now, not everybody enters because they’re professional, you know, sometimes it’s nice to know that you’re that other people like your work or that other people appreciate your work, or that somebody who knows Art likes your work, even if you’re an amateur, that’s a beautiful thing. And that’s worth going for as well, because we all need recognition. But, you know, you say that, that entering a competition is expensive. But if you think about it, you know, most competitions are 30 or 40 bucks to enter. That’s a lot of money, I get it. But what if you became a finalist, and you got listed on some of the promotion, and maybe there was a page showing all the finalists and your work is seen and your name has seen that you’re buying basically an ad, that’s probably worth 1000s of dollars for 30 or 40 bucks. And even if you enter 20 times to get to that point, you’re probably still ahead of the game. And because because of that happens, and the more you enter, the better you’re likely to get, the better you’re likely to push yourself. So that’s another thing now. Also, as a marketer, and teaching marketing, there is the marketing aspect, right? If you’re looking for recognition from let’s say, a gallery, and let you want to get invited into a gallery, if if you could pay any amount of money, let’s say there was a top gallerist. And you were like, I wish I pay 100 bucks, I’d pay 1000 bucks to get that gallerist to look at my paintings, right? Because what if he or she likes it? And what if they pull me into the gallery that could change everything in my life? Right? So you know, you ask yourself, what would you pay for that? And so what happens is, I can’t speak for all competitions, but most competitions have relatively prominent people, curators, editors, gallery owners, top artists, and what would you pay to have that top artists notice your painting. And we have for instance, we always try to get a lot of, of gallery owners and gallery curators and museum curators. And we have had many, many situations where they’re judging a painting. And by the way, they don’t know the names and ever see the names. They’re judging a painting and they fall in love with a painting. And they you know, maybe they make it a finalist or something, maybe it makes it all the way to the end, maybe it doesn’t, but they’re paying attention. And I’ve heard from a number of artists who have entered our plein air salon who’ve said, hey, you know, that judge called me and invited me into their gallery or they called me and said, Hey, do you mind if I introduce you to so and so because I think your work is really good. And when you enter multiple paintings, then they get the impact of a body of work galleries love a body of work, and they’re gonna want something that shows that you’re consistent, you know, you can have one good painting and 20 bad ones. They don’t want that. So if they’re seeing, you know, I judged the aarC competition recently, and I saw several paintings from one particular artist and somehow I could tell it was the same artist. I didn’t know the name. But it was like, wow, this person is consistent and they’re good. I’m going to pay attention once the idol is names are announced. So I can do a feature on that artists in the magazine because I thought, well, this is great. And so that kind of thing happens. So this is gallery recognition. It could be publicity and other things. But you know, prizes and money are wonderful covers of magazines are wonderful. You know, if you enter the plein air salon, and you when you get $15,000 all cash, not pretend cash, but all cash meaning pretend cash is a lot of people will say, Well, we’re gonna give you $15,000 where the value and that’s just a bunch of stuff you don’t care about, but $15,000 in cash, and then you get the cover of plein air magazine? Well, you’re on the cover of a magazine being seen by hundreds of 1000s of people in bookstores and newsstands and all these subscribers and all that that’s a big deal. And I mean, that’s a big, big deal. There are artists who are prominent artists who have strived their whole life to be on a cover of magazine never done it and you get the cover of magazine that’s worth the effort. So, you know, the idea is about instant exposure. You can you know, I teach marketing and marketing is something that is a process that you got to do over and over and over again. But you can have explosive moments that will skyrocket a career. And one of those things explosive moments is winning something, I can tell you that there are many people who were unknown nationally, maybe known locally, who won our plein air salon, who became instant celebrities who all of a sudden, the minute they win, you know, we’re putting their magazine, their picture in the magazine on the website, you’re putting it everywhere. And all of a sudden they’re getting known in their painting is getting known. And all of a sudden, they’re getting calls from Art Gallery, say, hey, hey, we’d like to have you in our art gallery. They’re getting calls from somebody who’s doing shows, I remember one artist said, you know, the first thing that happened is I got called and invited to be a judge me a judge, I’ve never been a judge. And so there’s a lot of value to that. And, you know, it’s great if you win, but it’s, it’s and when you win, when you become a finalist, even in one category, like we have 20 categories. So if you if you were a finalist in the sunset category, and maybe there aren’t a lot of entries there, you know, you’re gonna get noticed, and you’re gonna have something to talk about something to put on your resume, something to forward to your list and your friends and put on social media. All of that is, is career building and marketing. And so, you know, it’s, it’s really not about winning, winning is really sweet. But what’s sweeter than winning, is building a career that is going to last a lifetime. And that’s why you do it. And that’s why we have hundreds of people who enter 5678 paintings every single time. And they will sometimes enter those same paintings, five competitions in a row, because one judge didn’t pick them, but another judge did pick them or another one after that, pick them and we’ve seen this happen. So you know, every judge has different things that they like. So anyway, I hope that you understand that this isn’t about the prize. This is about the journey. Anyway, that is today’s art marketing minute.

Announcer 1:02:00
This has been the marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com.

Eric Rhoads 1:02:08
Christmas is coming. Put out a hit that you’d love to go to the plein air convention in Denver in May. PleinAirconvention.com and or watercolorlive.com In January, or a subscription to plein air magazine. And by the way, if you’re a plein air painter and you’re listening to this, you really should have plein air magazine, just saying, you know, and by the way, if you get the digital edition, especially those you overseas, you know, we got 103 countries listening to this, if you’re overseas, you don’t want to wait for the mail. I’ve had people in Australia say You know, it takes six weeks to get here to get the digital. And that way, you get 30% more content that’s not in the print magazine. By the way, if you’ve not seen my blog, where I talked about art and life and lots of other things, it’s called Sunday coffee, you can find it at coffeewitheric.com. Also, I’m on the air daily on the air or on the internet daily anyway, on Facebook, and YouTube. My show is called Art School live. And there are hundreds of artists who demonstrations and talks and things like that we’ve done it every day since COVID. We did seven days a week for seven months now or five days a week we continue we’ve got hundreds of them. The entire archive is at YouTube and you should go to YouTube. Look for art school live, search, search for it and then subscribe and hit the little bell so you’re notified when we go live. And of course, if you don’t mind to follow Eric Rhoads at Facebook and Instagram. That would be cool. My name is Eric Rhoads. I’m the publisher and founder of plein air magazine. Thank you for your time today. Remember, it’s a great big world out there. Go paint it. We’ll see you soon. Bye bye.

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!
By |2022-12-20T11:57:38-05:00December 19th, 2022|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 110

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 >

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.

> 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!
By |2022-12-20T15:45:42-05:00December 19th, 2022|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 109

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 addresses how to know whether or not a buyer is honest, and how to prepare for your first plein air painting competition.

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 109 >

Art Marketing Minute Podcast

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

Announcer:
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 1:04:23
My goal here at the Art marketing minute is to answer your questions so that this is more about you and what you need and what you want. You can upload a question at art marketing.com/questions or you can email me [email protected] And I love to get your questions. My producer, Amandine from France always reads the questions Amandine, what do we got?

Amandine 1:04:48
So the first question is from Sophia from Miami, Florida. Your art marketing advice is great. A problem I have is the offers received on Instagram have been from buyers that want to pay by Check, do not want to pay for my website where I feel more secure. I should one know whether or not a buyer is honest and not a scam. I don’t want you to sales, but I don’t want to be giving my home address or personal info to strangers. Through my website, credit cards and PayPal are accepted.

Eric Rhoads 1:05:19
All right, well, I think that’s a really great thing. First off, you should know, Sofia, that there’s a massive scam that is going around, and I get emails about once twice a month. They’re always different people always different names, but they always say the same thing. They say, Hey, I was looking at your website, I love your artwork. And my anniversary is coming up and I thought I’d buy a painting for my wife. It’s a surprise. And I’d like to buy that from you. Can you reach out to me and contact me and we’ll work it out. So the way that scam works, the way I understand it, I may have it wrong First off, they they oftentimes send you a check. And sometimes that check is just not a legitimate check. But they want you to ship that painting. So the first thing to think about is it’s probably a scam. If it feels like a scam, it’s probably a scam. Secondly, is if they’re paying by cheque, you want to make sure that you go to the bank and and that you hammer that check. In other words, you get cashed beforehand. And you also need to find out from the bank. What happens if they the cheque ends up not being good. You know, does it come back on you? What is what does that work? I think the scam is that they actually send you a check, you actually cashed the check, and they send you a check for too much money. And then you end up going wait a minute, you sent too much money and then you send a check back somehow. And I’m not exactly sure how it works. But what I do whenever I get these, I forward them to the FBI, there’s a email you can forward them to FBI probably doesn’t have time to look into it. But they’ve got their own issues. But But I think you want to just kind of probably avoid those things. Now there, there are going to be things that come through that are real. You know, the trick is, if you’re selling on Instagram or Facebook, you might get a private message. And the question is, is it real and and I’m sure the scammer is going to figure out how to do it through those. My guess is, you know, the best thing is, if you don’t want to accept checks, just don’t accept them. And if you’re going to lose the sale, okay, that’s okay. If you want to accept checks, then maybe get a Pio box and nobody knows your address, or have it mailed to a friend or you know, something like that. But I think the the thing you got to figure out is how to get that cash, check that cash in hand that check cashed before you ever send off the painting and make sure of course, you’re collecting your shipping and handling costs and everything else like that. Now, the reality is, we sell a lot of paintings in a lot of different ways. Now, I’ll tell you a quick story. I was in a big show in Annapolis in a gallery there. And it was from our Cuba trip and I sold quite a few paintings in that trip. But I didn’t sell them all. Well, this, this collector reached out to me and he said, You know, I was at the show, I bought a couple paintings of yours. But I would like to see what else you’ve got from Cuba. And so I sent him pictures of what I had from Cuba. And he said, Okay, I’d like to buy that one. And so we worked out a transaction, and I don’t remember how we how he paid for it. But so I I sent it to him. And I know I remember when I sent it to him, I enclosed a little note, and I enclosed actual photos. Remember those actual photos of the other paintings. And I said, because you bought one before and because you bought this one, I will give you one of these two or either of these two at a at a 20% discount, just let me know he ended up buying a boat. And that was pretty cool. Now this can happen in any situation. But I look at things I always say look, I have someone who’s interested in me, I have a buyer, how can I turn that buyer into a collector and so you’re always looking at ways and you know when you oftentimes will go someplace and they’ll say hey, because you bought this will give you this at a discount there that’s called an upsell and they’re trying to get you to spend more money and they’re figuring Well, you know, it’s better to give them a discount now than to hope that they’ll come back and pay full price and so that’s kind of the methodology behind it. So you might want to think about how you do something like that. Now you ask about payment. You know I I like to have PayPal. When possible Apple Pay when possible. Lots of alternatives. There’s a bunch of places now pay pal for instance, you can buy it and then you can make payments and those payments. You don’t have to wait for them to collect them. You know you get your money up front, but PayPal collects the money. And even if they don’t pay, that’s pay pals problem or somebody else’s problem. So, you know, there’s you can do Venmo there’s a lot of different things you can do. But, you know, make it easy for people, you know, and there are people out there we have, you know, we have paint tube.tv And we still have some people who insist on paying by cheque. So we have our system, what I explained to you, and and we just double check that, you know, and and do we get burned very rarely, very rarely. But you know, once in a while you do so be very careful about that. Anyway, good question. You know, even though it’s not specifically a marketing tactic, you know, in terms of bringing people in the door, really, all of these things about business are important. And they’re important because you’ve got to make sure that your business is running smoothly. And my wife was telling me a story about she took our car into the car dealer the other day, and for some repair, and she said it was effortless. You know, she walked in, they handed her the keys to the to the loaner. She walked back in, they handed her the keys. I mean, there was no paperwork, there was nothing. They had all that figured out in advance. And that’s wonderful. I called a client the other day, my doctor actually I called my doctor and I wanted my prescription renewed. And I didn’t even have to give my name. They knew me because my phone number popped something up on the spirit string and on the screen, and they said, are you still on this? This percentage and this prescription? I said, Yes. They said, Okay, just click the button. I’ll renew it. It is going to this pharmacy, right. Yeah. Okay, Ahmed. And what’s our next question?

Amandine 1:11:35
Our next question is from Trey from McMinnville, Tennessee. Can you share helpful hints on mentally preparing for your first plein air painting competition, how to let go of insecurity and fear of not being good enough?

Eric Rhoads 1:11:50
Well, I know Trey, Trey is a doctor and he’s a plein air painter, and he’s been studying a lot with Bill Davidson, they become great friends. As a matter of fact, he’s good friend of mine. He’s become a really good painter. And because I’ve been watching him study relentlessly, so you probably have nothing to be worried about Trey. But here’s, here’s what I think. When we first started creating videos, the first one we did was Max Ginsberg, the great artist in New York. Max at the time was in his 80s, maybe early 90s, I think in his 80s. And Max said to me, I’m a little nervous. And I said, Well, that’s understandable. You know, you’re on camera, you got lights, all this other stuff. And he says, Well, I’ve been practicing for five days. He said, I said, Max, you’ve been painting for 65 years. Why do you need to practice for five days? He said, Well, within a couple of days, you lose your hand eye coordination. He said you got to practice all the time, he says, but I wanted this to be good. So I kept I practice portraits five days in a row to make sure and I practice talking. So I’m gonna make sure that I had my act together. Trey, I think the best advice I can say to you is your confidence comes from being prepared and being practiced. I know plein air painters, if they’re going to an event, let’s say they’re going to the Laguna plein air, they may go to Laguna two or three days before the event starts and scope out where they’re going to paint and find those locations and paint smaller paintings of them are maybe same size and they paint them one or two times just to make sure they know the landscape and they feel good at it and it gives them confidence. And it’s a great way to make sure that you’re practiced well rehearsed. You know, if you stop a couple of days, when I go to my my event in the Adirondacks paint the Adirondacks. And I usually haven’t painted for a week or two, sometimes longer. And when I first started out first couple of days, you know I’m really making a lot of mistakes and but after By the third day, I’m rocking it and all the things that you know, I have to remember I’m remembering and that’s the value of practicing right before you come in. You know, even if you’re practicing at home, just practice it’ll give you a confidence now, nervousness is actually a good thing. All the research says nervousness is beautiful. Now fear and anxiety, not beautiful. But nervousness is okay because nervousness makes you grow. It makes you want to get better. It helps you It forces you to push yourself out of your comfort zone. And when you get out of your comfort zone. That’s where the real growth occurs. Now, let’s talk about the you didn’t ask this question. But I think this is something to think about. If you’re an artist who is doing a tent show an art show where there’s a lot of tents, or you’re at an outdoor art show or you’re in an art show in a auditorium for Christmas or something. Or you know, you’re at a plein air paint out. Here’s some things that you can do. First off, if you’re at plein air paint outs, they all have rules and there’s certain things you you have to do. There’s a lot of stuff going around about people who are breaking those rules. And everybody knows who they are, you know, and I’ve even been asked to do articles and been given names. Now, I would never do that to somebody. But there are people who abuse the systems. And so for instance, there’s up there a couple of people who went to plein air paint outs. And as you know, at plein air paint outs, they stamp the back of your canvas. So it you can prove it was painted, they’re not pre painted. And a couple of artists actually glued those panels over another panel and put them in a frame that they had pre painted, and tried to get away with it, but got caught. And so they’ve been asked never to attend another event. And by the way, they tell everybody else, and then those people say that I’m not hire, I’m not bringing this person in. So your reputation is everything. So don’t do stuff like that don’t play games, like that’s just not worth it. The other thing is pricing is really important. And there are people who go into these events, and they they look around and they say, Okay, I’m going to price my stuff at half of what everybody else does. And they get all the sales and nobody else gets any sales. And then you know, it’s good for you. But the reality is, you’ve destroyed your reputation, you got to be part of the team. And so be careful about stuff like that. But in terms of when you’re at an event, here’s what I look at, first off, I’m at an event, and I have, let’s say 5000 people coming through the event. And there’s, you know, 3040 50 painters, there are booths or otherwise, and how do I get them to pay attention to me, because I’ve got to stop them in their tracks, like long enough to get them to pay attention, because you know, you’re walking through an art show, and you’re just kind of your eyes are darting around, and then something grabs your attention, and you stop. And you look now at that point, then the point at which they stop and look, you need some kind of an engagement mechanism, what is an engagement mechanism, the goal is you’ve got to get them to go deeper, right, you either want to get them inside your booth, you want to have a chance to talk to him, or you want to figure out how to get them to contact you or to get their email information, there are a lot of different ways you can do that. Now, I used to teach people how to do tradeshow booths, because I was expert at that. And a simple trick is I would put a bowl of wrapped candy, with a little sciences free help yourself. And I put it inside the booth at the back of the booth, but you could see it from the front. And people would walk in, and they take a piece of candy. Now there’s a thing called the law of reciprocity. And it’s kind of like well, now they feel a little obligated to pretend to be interested and you get a chance to talk to him for a minute. And sometimes just that one minute is an opportunity to kind of switch them and get them to think about something or get them interested. So, you know, look for little things like that. Now, how do you get people? How do you stop traffic? Well, in a plein air show, it’s about being different, you know, if everybody else is doing the same kind of painting, what can you do? That’s not the same kind of painting. And so you know, that’s why a lot of the people who are doing more abstract, more colorful, more different approaches at plein air events, like lawn brow or or Laurie Putnam and so on. I don’t think Laurie does those events anymore. But I think the idea is that they really stand out. And so that helps them get attention. So what can you do to stand out another thing, it’s an old gallery trick, but it’s very effective. A galleries know that if you have a great big painting that you see through the window, it really grabs attention, and then draws them in. So can you can you do a great big painting and hang that up? And yeah, you know, the bigger paintings are more expensive, and they may or may not sell. But the idea is you want to draw people to your booth. And so if you have a really great big painting of, of, you know, the town that you’re in, first off, somebody’s probably gonna buy it. But secondly, it’ll draw people in. So use something to draw people in. Now, if you’re at a tent show, you can’t do stuff like this at a plein air event. But if you’re at a tent show, you could have something outside of your tent to grab people’s attention. You know, maybe it’s a giant skeleton was something that dressed in a funny way with a funny sign. Maybe it’s something that people want to get their picture taken in front of for Instagram or Facebook. And you want to make sure that your signage is in there. So it’ll be seen when they’re getting their picture. And that’ll help you virally. But it also, you know, it also gives them your name. And if your paintings are kind of in that picture, and they take a picture and maybe they saw you at the 10th show and they walked on and they don’t remember your name which happens all the time. Now they go through their photos to go oh, there’s Eric Rhoads i That’s the guy that had that painting and you know now they go to your Instagram and now they figure out how to reach you direct message you etc. So there are a lot of techniques about stopping traffic. So look for something to put on your booth. The other thing that’s really a great idea is put you know, I first up I like big signage. That’s above people’s heads that gets people’s attention and get a QR code on there and give them an incentive. Right. So, you know, get my, my free book of all my paintings, just scan this QR code, they scan the QR code, they put their email in, you send them the Book of your paintings automatically, but now you’ve got their email address, so you can mark it to them, they may or may not be interested, there’s a whole chapter on that in my book, where you can kind of go into that kind of thing. Now, once you get their email addresses, there’s, you know, there’s a process and you want to be respectful of them. But you can get it through, you get their email addresses through a QR code, you can get them through a visitor book, which is kind of old school, you can do a drawing, where they can win something painting or you know, a prize or print or something. And the best way for the drawing is just a QR code, you know, when this painting, scan here, and now you’re getting their email address, and you know, you give away a $50 print, it’s not a big deal, and you get their their name and email, if you live in that town, and you’re marketing to that town, it’s always a good thing. But even if you’re, if you’re, you know, looking for a way to get to plein air collectors, you know, throw a QR code with a message in a frame and put it up with your paintings if you’re allowed. And that’s a really good way now, how do I get people to buy if I’m in a live environment? The first thing I want to say is I don’t like manipulation. You know, in the old days, car dealers, they’re manipulative people, I don’t like that. There is training that teaches us some things you can do to engage people. And you know, you’ve got to get them out of their, their, you know, I’m not interested mode. And so it’s not manipulation, it’s engagement. The first thing is never be dishonest, you’ve got to tell the truth all the time. The second thing is always ask questions. If somebody comes up to you and talks to you, for a minute, have three or four questions in your mind that you can ask people, and and just, you know, just to get them to keep them there longer, the more they talk to you the more chance you have of selling them. And you know, because they’re always like, guard up, I’m not interested. And so you just say, you know, hey, do you have? Do you have any original paintings in your house? And they’ll say, Well, no, I never had one. And then you can say, you know, say something about that, and then ask another question, and so on. But you know, some people are intimidated by original paintings. And so you can, you can talk about that a little bit. But it’s you can kind of guide them in, but ask questions. The second thing is, you can look for ways to create what’s called scarcity. And what is called urgency. So scarcity and urgency, like, you know, somebody’s looking at a painting. Now, don’t say this, if it’s not true, but if somebody’s looking at a painting, you can go, you know, you’re the third person today who’s been interested in that painting, you know, a lot of people have said, they might come back, I don’t know if they will or not. But it’s kind of interesting that at something about this painting is really resonating with people, it’s subtle, you don’t have to say you better buy it. Now, you don’t have to say that. They’re like, Oh, maybe if I want this, I better grab it. You don’t have to say anything more, it just want to plant a seed. Or you can say, hey, if you like that, if you want to hold it to make sure nobody else takes it, if you’re while you look through the show, I can take a you know, a $50 deposit or something, and then you can come back for it. But I can only hold it for 30 minutes, because I don’t want to lose the sale. But you know, that might be enough to pull them back, they’re going to at least come back for their money. Another thing you can do is find ways to talk about your credibility or show that people have interest in you. And that is, you know, it’s funny thing about that painting, I painted that painting. And the great art historian John stern came by here the other day and and he said this about the painting now all of a sudden, you’re building the credibility of you and credibility of the painting. And if you look for ways you can build your credibility when you’re having a dialogue with them without being braggy. You know, I you know, I’m modestly you can say, you know, I’m really excited because, you know, plein air magazine just did this article about me. And I think that’s really, you know, it seems like ever since then my paintings have been selling to more collectors, you know, things like that will give you credibility. Now, we all have to, you know, we’re a little uncomfortable with those things. And you have to decide what you’re comfortable with. Again, I don’t want you being false or lying or manipulating. In terms of scarcity, you can make it scarce, you know, a way to make it Scarce is you know, and again, tell the truth, but you can say hey, you know, it’s funny, my wife told me that if this painting doesn’t sell that we’re going to keep it in our personal collections because she thinks it’s one of the best I’ve ever done. Well, that could backfire. They might say, well, you should sell it to your wife, but you might also they might say well, you know, maybe this is good or you might look for other ways to make it scarce. Like you know, I’ve sold all my paintings to this last one. I’ve got this myself. My shows are selling out like crazy. I don’t know what’s going on. Um, but I’m really happy about it. And boom, you know, or I mean, you know, these are the the last two or something. And then you know, look for credibility builders like putting up the ribbons if you want an award or putting up a large copy of an article of you and plein air magazine or something that will help. Anyway, I hope these have been helpful to you. That’s today’s art marketing minute.

Announcer 1:25:22
This has been the marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com.

Eric Rhoads 1:25:30
All right. Well, you guys have been very patient. I hope you have a really terrific day. Get out there keep plein air painting. Join me at the plein air convention is going to be a lot of fun. Join me at watercolor live, that’s going to be a lot of fun. And subscribe to plein air magazine.com, you’ve got to have that, I should mention that. We also have an event coming up that’s called plein air live, which is going to be happening in March. And so we’ll be talking more about that in the future. If you’ve not seen my blog called Sunday coffee, I do it every week. And it’s kind of fun for me to write about things that aren’t always about art, but are kind of the things the lessons I try to teach my kids and, you know, we’ve had, you know, a huge number of people pick it up. last number I heard was something like 150 200,000 people reading it. I don’t know if it’s true. But I don’t know why anybody would want to read my stuff that many people would want to read my stuff, but I’m honored is kind of neat. I’m on daily on Facebook, and it’s called Art School alive. And now a new thing you can do on YouTube. It’s on YouTube and Facebook, you go to YouTube and just put in at Eric Rhoads. It’ll find my channel there. You can also look for art school live. And then you can subscribe on YouTube and hit the notification button. It’ll notify you when I go live. And of course, if you follow me on Facebook on Eric Rhodes publisher, or Eric Rhoads, my personal page, then you’ll get notified when I go live as well. But we’re there every day and we’re interviewing artists and most of those artists are doing demonstrations. And so that’s kind of a good way to learn. It’s kind of like in some ways better than art school because you’re getting you know, a lot of information packed tunes in that short space. You don’t have to wait forever. Okay, that’s a lot going on. I’m Eric Rhoades, publisher of plein air magazine. We thank you for reading it and thank you for your time today. Remember, it is a big world out there. Go paint it. We’ll see you soon. Bye bye.

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!
By |2022-12-12T14:24:00-05:00December 12th, 2022|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|1 Comment
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 108

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 addresses how to gain broader recognition if you live in a small town, and how to put together an art portfolio.

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 108 >

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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, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads 1:04:05
So the whole goal of the marketing minute is to help you help you learn if you’re somebody who wants to sell your artwork, if you there’s no pressure to do that, but if that’s something you want to do, my goal in the marketing minute is to help you do that. We also have the marketing minute podcast, which is the exact same content as this. It’s just we carve it out as a separate podcast for people who don’t want to listen to a plein air podcast why they wouldn’t want to I can’t possibly ever imagine. If you have questions, you can send me a video to a video question, artmarketing.com questions or you can just email me [email protected] And we have a really terrific blog called Artmarketing.com And that’s a really great place to go if you want ideas on some techniques and things a lot of the stuff that’s in my book is there. A lot A lot of the stuff that I wrote there got into my book. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not. So, Amandine, my producer from France is going to read the first question. But first Amandine, where in France are you from?

Amandine 1:05:12
I’m from the Champagne region. An hour and a half east from Paris.

Eric Rhoads 1:05:18
Okay, good to know. All right. Okay, here we go.

Amandine 1:05:22
So the first question is from Edwin Amelia Kentaur from Costa Rica. Even though I studied in the Florence Academy of Art many years ago, I’m living in a country with a tiny, tiny art scene and very few collectors, what would be your advice to gaining recognition in more important places or countries, when you’re stuck in a tiny country like this one with not many possibilities?

Eric Rhoads 1:05:51
Well, that’s a loaded question. There’s a lot to unpack here. First, congrats on going to the Florence Academy, one of my favorite art schools. I would go there if I could. But right now, yeah, putting kids through college. I think the first thing that I just want to say to you and I don’t mean to be disparaging by any stretch, but you might be telling yourself a story. That’s not true. This is something that we all do. I do it. We all do it. We make assumptions about things. And we need to test those assumptions and find out if they’re true. First off, you said you live in a small country, you’re in Costa Rica, Costa Rica is a small country compared to the United States. But what do we have in Costa Rica? We have First off, there’s 1000s, probably 10s of 1000s of expats who have homes there, some of them are pretty big homes. And what do they have inside those homes, walls, empty walls. And when you move into a house in Costa Rica from America first, for example, which might be fun, I’ve never been to Costa Rica, but I’m going to visit you down there. So you don’t want to drag all your stuff from your home in Texas or your home in Florida, you’re going to try to get something that feels local, right? So you’re going to buy local furniture, you’re gonna buy local paintings. And just because you’re telling yourself there’s not much of an art scene, doesn’t mean you can’t sell paintings there. And that’s, by the way, true of other places other than Costa Rica, you know, you live in a country, a country is filled with a lot of people, people who own businesses, people who have great jobs, people who work in medical centers, or legal centers, or courtrooms or, you know, I mean, there are a lot of a fluent people in every country and every city, every town, even the smallest little hole, Buck towns in the middle of nowhere, have some regular folks. And then there are some folks who have a little extra to spend, sometimes a lot of extra to spend, you know, you go into, you think you’re going into a small town in the middle of Texas, and you find out these people own oil wells, or have oil rights, that are getting checks. They call it mailbox money. Mailbox, money might be you know enough to buy 30 of your paintings. So be careful about the stories that you tell yourself that that’s the first thing to do. Secondly, is okay, let’s assume it is true. First off, how many paintings do you produce in a year? And assuming that you sold 100% of your paintings, which very few people do, but some do? How many paintings Do you really need to sell? Let’s just say that you’re really extremely productive. And you paint 60 paintings a year? All right, how many people do you need to buy 60 paintings 60 people or less, because oftentimes, people will buy two paintings. So if you got if sold two paintings, to everybody bought a painting, you only need 30 people, some people buy for six paintings, some people want to become your collectors. And so you can sell in a lot of situations. Now. Let’s just take the local example for a second. Let’s say you’re in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Maybe there aren’t a lot of wealthy people around maybe there are a few. And by the way, people people buy paintings they’re not they don’t have to be wealthy to buy paintings just depends on the cost of your paintings, right? So you might want to think about this. You need to make yourself a local icon. You need to say okay, how do I become known in my community? As an excellent artist, Rose Frantzen did this she lives in a small town. A coca was Makoto Makoto, small town in the Midwest, she went out and she decided to do a project where she was going to paint 50 or 60, or 100 or 150 of the local people in her town, and do a show out of it. And I don’t know if she pre arranged this or it happened afterwards. But she ended up in the National Portrait Gallery with the show, but she went out to local people and they came to her studio and she spent a day or two painting them and she get to know him, she got to know everybody. And she said to me, that she’s now known everywhere she goes into the grocery store, people know her. She’s the known local artist, I guarantee as she’s selling paintings, locally, she’s also nationally known so she’s selling paintings nationally. My friend Diane Leifheit, who lives in Saranac Lake, New York, at least now part of the year, she did the same thing, she started painting, a lot of local people did a show, that’s a great way you want to look for something you can do that will get you publicity, get the local paper, local media, local websites to write about you, you want to look for ways that you can get known get your name known, get yourself known, get your work known. I think charity events are a great way to do that. One of the things I talked about in my book, one of many is that you can a lot of paint, a lot of artists will contact me and they’ll say I don’t want to get people are always calling me and saying give me a painting for a charity auction. I don’t want to do it, because I can’t deduct it. That’s foolish, do it, do it. Because why? If it’s a charity auction, if there are the 50 or 100, most prominent people in your town there, if you can figure out how to get them to feature you on their postcard feature you on their website, make sure they hold up your painting, make sure they have you stand up and introduce you, then what happens is that you’re starting to develop your local celebrity, they see you at this charity, and the next charity and the next charity, all of a sudden, you’re a big deal. And now everybody knows who you are. And then you know, you have your local studio sale at Christmas and maybe another time a year and you do a show at the local restaurant or a local courthouse, you know, things like that, you’re gonna get known. And that’s how it works. And you can do that. And you can sell paintings in a lot of small places, and I have friends who do it, you can do it too. Now, if for some reason, you just don’t believe me, and you don’t think local is going to work for you, then you’ve got to go regional. And regional is just doing the same thing. Except maybe you live in an area that is a small piece of a bigger area, maybe it’s a whole state. You know, if you live in a small town, and let’s say Indiana, where I grew up, if that small towns not enough, and by the way it is but if it’s not enough, then you expand to the region, you know, the Northeast region or the southeast region, or maybe you expand to the whole state. You know, my friend, Rick Wilson, has become known as a pretty famous painter in all of Indiana. And why did he become famous, because he launched a project where he was going to do one painting in every county in Indiana, and then do a show at the statehouse and then do a book and that kind of a thing. And he got a lot of publicity all sudden, everybody wanted him because he got all this publicity. And so that’s the kind of thing you can do. Now, if you want, you can go for another country, or another state, right? So if you lived in the United States, and you don’t feel like the people in your state are going to buy your art and maybe they won’t because your art is a little different art or different level of sophistication or maybe it’s got to be maybe it’s really expensive. So then, you know, you work on getting a gallery. We’re going to talk about that in a minute. And then you get known in another area you there are a lot of people like yourself, who are painting in and sending paintings to other places. I met a young artist in Cuba, his fabulous artist. And he said to me I’m in galleries and you know, Lisbon, Spain and or Portugal and and Madrid and you know, he started naming all these, these countries where he was sending paintings to and so the key is getting representation in those places, finding people that want your work and again, we’ll talk about that in a second. And the other thing is, you know the world today is blended. The world today is all about everything right? It’s online, it’s offline, it’s in person, it’s, you know, it’s everything. So you don’t have, you can sit in a little town that has 30 people, and ship paintings all around the world and sell them online. And that can be very effective. Now, there’s techniques for doing that. It’s not always just about showing up online and posting things and say, hey, buy my paintings a lot more to that we don’t have time to get into that, um, that’s probably a day or two of teaching. But you can do that too. So you know, you can put your put your things on Instagram, and Facebook, and Snapchat and Twitter and you know, everything that that’s out there. And you know, there’s online auctions, there’s all kinds of things you can do. So you’ve just got, you just got to quit telling yourself stories, you can do this. And you can be successful, you can be as successful as you choose to be, but it starts here, in between your ears, so that you are telling yourself the right story and believing. And by the way, you know, right now, a lot of people are asking me a lot of questions about the economy, and can I sell paintings in the economy and inflation and all that nonsense? The answer is yes, of course. You know, I know people who this economy isn’t hurting as much as it’s hurting you or me. Right? I know people who, instead of maybe they’re not going to buy a $500,000 painting, maybe they’ll only spend 300,000 on a painting. Right? There’s always people with money. You just got to you got to figure out how to target them. Talk about that. The second okay, Aberdeen, what’s our next question?

Amandine 1:16:42
Next question is from Betty McLean Henderson from West Helena, Arkansas. Eric, how should oil painters put together a portfolio to present?

Eric Rhoads 1:16:57
Okay, how should oil painters put together portfolio to present the galleries Betty? Getting into galleries is kind of like baseball, or football. Right? You’re if you’re getting into galleries, you’re in the big leagues now. Right now, maybe you start out in the minor leagues. But even getting into the minor leagues isn’t easy, right? So you got the you know, the galleries are professionals. They want to be treated professionally, they have ways that they do business. And it’s very important to understand that a gallery is a business, and what is the most important thing to a gallery business. And that is that they are selling enough paintings, to pay for the lights and pay for the employees and pay for all the expenses and pay the exorbitant rent if they have rent and make a profit. That’s their goal. And so what are they going to do, they’re gonna pick the artists who have a track record. Because it when you pick a new artist who has no track record, and you’re taking up 5% of your wall space, that could be generating money. Remember it shelf space, and wall space is really important. So if you’re, you know, like, if you’re in a Kroger, Coca Cola will pay extra money to be on that end aisle space. That’s how much you know, visibility is. So a gallery a good gallery will look at every painting that’s hanging and ask if that’s taking up real estate and other painting would be better off to sell. And so they’re looking at you from the standpoint of Will you sell? Is this too risky? Is this person have consistent enough work? Do they have a good body of work? There’s a lot of other things like that. So you’re talking about preparing a portfolio, don’t waste your time. That’s my opinion. Don’t waste your time, because they don’t want to hear from you. I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear that. And I’m sure there are exceptions to that rule. But galleries don’t want to hear from you why I had a gallery owner tell me that he said I get roughly 2000 2000 pieces of mail every single year, from artists who are soliciting send me pictures of their works. I said what do you do with them? He said I don’t even open them. I peek into it. Make sure it’s not something else. And I throw them away. I said, Well, yeah, but these people have gone to all this trouble. He says, you know, if I spent five minutes with each one of those times 2000 I’d be losing money. And he said, and I get another 5000 emails and I have to have somebody clutter. declutter my email before he even gets my email. He says, If I have to sit there and delete 5000 emails a year, it’s costing me money. He said and then they call you and they waste your time and he’s And I, you know, people call me and they said, I’d like to be in your gallery and you say, what kind of work do you do? And they say, Well, I’m a, I’m a modern artist, he said, did you bother to look at my website? I don’t sell modern art, you know, so he doesn’t even take the calls. So they don’t want to hear from you. So if that’s the case, how do you get into their gallery? Well, there’s a whole chapter on that in my book, but let’s touch on a couple of key points. First off, think about fishing, you’re dropping a line in the water, you’ve got bait at the end of that line. And what you’ve got to do is to get them to bite on your bait, and then reel them in. But if you’re, if you’re just, you know what, think about throwing bait in the water without a line on it, you’re just throwing bait out there, you’re sending out your portfolio, you’re sending out all this nonsense, and they’re not even seeing it, right. Or maybe they’re maybe you’re throwing the bait not in the water, you’re throwing it in the grass. But the idea is you want to get invited in. So how do you do that? How do you get invite in? And well, you got to figure out how to make them look at your work without making them think that you’re trying to make them look at your work. Other exceptions to this. But galleries typically invite people in, they typically reject people that are just soliciting, because the majority of them aren’t very good. That’s it’s a fact it’s true. I know you don’t want to hear that. But where do they ask yourself these questions? Where does the gallery owner or the person making those decisions? Where do they spend their time? With whom do they spend their time? What is the most important thing to them? I think having something to sell and also protecting their brand and their reputation. They don’t want to be known for having crummy paintings. What’s in it for them always ask this question? What’s in it for them? And what is your bait? Well, there’s a lot of things you can come up with strategy. We could go in through 30 things right now. But it might be something as simple as you know, you follow the gallery owner on social media, and they make they post something, you make a smart comment, you say, you know, it’s really interesting that you say that about this John Singer Sargent painting, because I was researching this. And here’s what I learned. And you do that enough times, they’re gonna go, Hmm, I wonder who this Eric Rhoads cat is, right? And so but here’s what you don’t do. You don’t troll them. You don’t get out there and say, hey, you know, why don’t you look at my portfolio, come to my web page, or come to my FaceBook page or my my Instagram, you don’t say that. Because that’s just our Troy. So, you know, smart comments. And don’t do it all the time. Because if you’re doing it all the time, you’re gonna become obvious. So just, you know, once every couple of months, maybe say something. And then at some point, they’re going to be curious and going, I wonder who this person is. And they click on the Eric Rhoads icon and they look at your work, now. They’re looking at your work. And it better be good. And here’s what happens. A lot of artists post everything, they put it on their websites, they put it on their Instagram, they post things that are not complete, you know, this is in progress. But if somebody’s coming on there, and they’re checking you out, and they’re not taking time to pay attention to your captions, they’re just kind of floating through what’s on the on the photos, or the video, then, if you’re putting things that are not your best out there, you’re getting judged, because what is the gallery want, they want a body of work that is consistent and high quality. And so if you’re putting out things that are not consistent and high quality, you’re gonna hurt yourself. The other thing is, don’t put your dog vomit pictures on there that you know, your head in the toilet. When you’re at a party or you know, you’re you’re walking around in a bikini, or whatever, because the stuff that it looked for, ask yourself, what happens if somebody looks at this, and I’m going to turn them off. And don’t put your political views on there, because you will lose half of the people. And so avoid that stuff. That stuff and you’re like, Well, I have an artist friend who’s like, I don’t care. I’m gonna say my political views. I said, let’s find where you’re gonna lose half of your people. I don’t care if I lose them. I still need to say my views. That’s fine, if that’s who you want to be. I don’t have a problem with that. But just keep in mind if this is important to you. And you know that artists, by the way is so big that maybe it doesn’t matter. But be careful about that. Be careful what you’re putting out there. And next thing is you want to get invited in right? You see you are more powerful. Not that we’re in a power game here, but you’re more powerful if you get invited in rather than being 1000s of needy artists trying begging to get in. So who do you know that knows them? A good place to start is to look at the website, look at the artists, is there anybody out there? You know, if you know him, you call them. And you say, hey, I want to talk to you about XYZ gallery. But you don’t. I mean, it’s a best friend, somebody you really know, you can be completely forthright with them on that. But you know, sometimes you can’t. So you might just say, hey, you know, what do you know about XYZ gallery? And they’ll say, Well, you know, I don’t know. Why do you ask? So well, let me ask you this. Do you like dealing with them? Yeah, I do. Do they pay their bills on time? Do they give you your commission checks? Yeah, they do? Do they promote you? Yeah, they do? Well, then they’ll say, Well, why do you ask so well, I’m kind of thinking about targeting one or two galleries, because I’m going to add a couple more. But I’m really doing my research and my homework before I figure out who I’m going to target. And then that artists will say, Well, if you, you know, if you think you might want to get into that gallery, I’d be happy to make an introduction, or I’d be happy to tell them about you. And sometimes they won’t say that. And sometimes it’s too soon. And sometimes if you don’t know the artists, well, they won’t say it. And by the way, they may not respect your work and might not say it, so don’t necessarily expect it. You got to take these things slow. You know, you got to plan. It’s like a chess game, you got to play in 30 months in advance. And I you know, I’m not about playing games, I like to be as forthright as I can be. But you know, you don’t call up somebody met at a party last night and say, by the way, we loan me $100 It take it slow, right? You get to know them, they become friends. You know, once they trust you, you call them and say hey, would you loan me 100 bucks, though, like, yeah, if I can sure I’ll loan it to you. So be careful about that. And make sure your work is the best it can be. Don’t put the half cooked stuff on there. And this will help you. It’ll give you it will help you ultimately. Okay, that’s the 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 artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected] And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

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

> 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!
By |2022-12-07T11:29:19-05:00December 5th, 2022|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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