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,  addresses the practice of comparing yourself to other artists and overcoming the fear of being judged; and his thoughts on making the leap to becoming a professional artist.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 123 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

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
If you want to make a great living as an artist, you need to listen to this. You know, I don’t have all the answers. But I have spent my life learning marketing and like most of us didn’t know anything about it until I learned it. And I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of very expensive mistakes. And so my goal is to share some of that with you, and to help you with your career. So if you have questions, email them to me, [email protected]. Or you can do video upload if you want to as well. We’d love to see that. Amandine, my producer is going to read the first question.

Amandine
The first question is from Jenna Boyz from North Carolina. It is not exactly a marketing question. But it is a question that you do receive a lot. How do I overcome the fear of being judged? Comparing myself to others?

Eric Rhoads
Well, Jenna, get a therapist. Next question. No, no, wait, just here’s my take on this. Because your head has everything to do with your art marketing. Oh, I’ll take this on. But you know, if you have deeper issues, go see a professional. I am not a professional. I went through this and mostly overcame it. I have some of those issues. Still. I’ll explain in a minute. One day artists, Michael Ringer was visiting me at the Adirondacks and a really great painter, really great guy, very, very high level at the time and higher now. And we were kind of walking through the house and I had a lot of paintings out and I you know, he’d stop and look at a painting and we’d move on but I was, you know, I would make excuses for things once in a while. So when he was leaving, he said, Eric, do you mind if I just give you a little bit of feedback? I said, Sure. What is it? And he said, every painting we walked by that you created, you apologized for it? He said stop it. Just stop it. He said you’re doing good work. You’re where you should be. You’re gonna get better and except where you are, except the fact that you are gonna grow and stop making apology for your work, you just have to understand that this is where you are at the moment. And if you’re comparing yourself to me, Hey, I went through this too. So that was one of the sweetest most considerate things anybody’s ever done for me to actually take the time to say something to me about that. So I caught myself. Four years after that, I would start to make an excuse, you know, somebody be walking by a painting, I’d say, oh, I need to redo that. Or oh, I don’t like the clouds over. Oh, you know, you know, I wish I were better and, and I just would bite my tongue and stop it. And it felt better when I bit my tongue. And I got to the point where he stopped making excuses. Most of the time, once in a while, I will still do it. But I have to catch myself and stop doing it. I look. We all started out. We all did paintings we didn’t love we we have to look at each painting as progress. We’re learning something from each painting, you know, not every painting is going to be perfect. By the way not every painting, every artist who’s well known is perfect. You know, you’ve just got to get the practice, you know, Kevin McPherson talks about, you know, go out and paint 100 plein air painting small ones in 30 minutes or less just to get practice. So you just got to stop the negative self talk, you got to stop apologizing. And I looked this up just curious. I went to Psychology Today. And they said this measuring yourself against others is modus operandi of the human mind. And in some ways, it can be helpful. The inspiration you feel about someone else’s achievements can either rev you up to improve your own life. Or the recognition that your abilities are a notch above someone else can actually give you a boost your self esteem. But comparisons can be harmful when they leave you feeling chronically inferior or depressed. People aren’t uniformly at risk of negative social comparison. Surprisingly, those with low self esteem are more likely to feel that they don’t stack up. When we’re relying on others for our sense of self only feeling good if we get positive feedback or markers of status. We’re at risk for depression. So let that be a lesson go get a therapist, if that’s the case. But look, the worst that can happen is that you are judged. I mean, if you enter an art show what happens, you’re judged, and you’re judged fairly or unfairly or badly or good. But you’re judged. If you compare yourself to other artists, you know, who are you comparing yourself, you’re comparing yourself to Rembrandt or to Edgar Payne or to somebody at that level? How do we ever get there in our lifetimes? Some people do, some people don’t. But, you know, are you comparing yourself to Monet? You’re comparing yourself to another painter and your friend group. Who are you painting comparing yourself to? I sat up and painted two different times next to Richard Schmidt, the great artist, one time was in the garden, and I sat up next to him, so I could watch him paint, but I he wouldn’t let me watch. You wouldn’t want me just watch him paid. He said, You got to paint. And I want to see what you’re doing. Well, there’s nothing like pressure like that. And sometimes that pressure is good, because I felt like I really did for myself at the time a pretty decent painting. I look back now and maybe it wasn’t good. And then another time I painted a portrait standing right behind beside him, are behind him. And I was kind of monitoring what he did. And I do what he did and, and then he came up to me afterwards. He said, I know you’re such a good artist. And that was a nice compliment. And and while I said Well, it’s because I copied every brushstroke. He said nonsense, you were able to pull this off. It’s really nice. So you know, I was a little reluctant to let him see it to let him do it. But I did it and you got to put yourself out there and what I find I get a wonderful opportunity to paint with a lot of artists and I find that it can be intimidating, but what I do is I do not go look at their work while I’m painting. They may come over and look at mine I don’t go look at theirs because here’s what happens I’ll go oh, I liked the way they did that lead in and then I’ll come back and change my painting and that’s the kiss of death you don’t want to do that. So I just you know I will look at their work afterwards once I’m done but I don’t do it in the meantime. And I think that you know sometimes comparison is a real good thing it drives you you know when you know there’s a good painter next you I had some buddies of painting this past summer I wanted to really pull up my best because I wanted to look good right i That’s not unusual, but nobody was critical and and you know once in a while somebody come up say hey, I’ve got some ideas for you or some Sometimes I go up to them and I say, I’ve got some ideas for you, you know, we can all see things in other people’s work that we can’t see in ourselves. So help strive to be better, you know, try to set yourself to a new standard to get to a higher level. But don’t worry about it. Don’t compare yourself to others in a negative way, embrace it. As an artist, you are unique. You’re a unique individual, embrace yourself, embrace your struggle, embrace the hard work to get better. And know that people that are better than you went through this, they struggled, they did paintings, they weren’t happy with their painting stuff. And they probably compare themselves to others at the time, too. It’s a real natural thing. It’s okay, unless it’s hurting you in some way. You know, for instance, if you decided to stop painting, because you felt so bad about what you were doing, that’s just stupid. Alright, so I was in the studio the other day, and I messed up a painting I’ve been working on for two years, a big painting. And, you know, I had, I got a little too bold, and I was tired, and I started making some big mistakes. And I really screwed up this painting. So I wiped all the paint that I had just done down. Well, thankfully, of course, the dry painting underneath it was still there. And what ended up happening is that paint smeared, created this incredible atmosphere. And then what I did is I was just able to wipe out parts of it with my paper towel and retain some of the parts that I wanted. And then I painted on top of that, and I ended up doing one of the best paintings I’ve ever done. So you know, it’s gonna happen, you’re gonna, you’re gonna have mistakes, and sometimes mistakes lead to better things. Don’t beat yourself up, manage yourself, talk, treat yourself with respect, you would not tell someone else that they’re painting was awful. Don’t tell yourself that your paintings awful. Just tell yourself, look, I can do better. That’s fine, I will get better. This is their learning experience. I know that every artist, even the best ones, have messed things up from time to time. That’s part of the deal. Just deal with it. All right, next question.

Amandine
The next question is from Richard Mark Stone. Sorry about that from Colorado. For people with successful non artistic jobs, careers, who would love to make art for a living, but are fearful? What would you say to them?

Eric Rhoads
Okay, so what would I say to somebody who is not an artist but thinks that they’re already successful? They think that they would like to become a successful artist, I’d say go for it, go for it. This is kind of like head trash day, right? That we’re dealing with the heads. Why be fearful rich? Let me ask you this. If you decided to switch careers, I don’t know what you do for a living. Let’s say that you’re a woodworker. And that you decide you want to become a fireman? Would you fear becoming a fireman? Or you might a little bit What do you fear? Really, you fear the unknown you fear? Because you don’t know what you don’t know. But mostly, you would simply tell yourself, look, I don’t know this, but I can get trained on it. And once I’m trained on it, I can practice it once I practice it, I’m gonna get good at and you’re gonna apply for a job and you’re gonna get a job as a fireman, right? Well, what’s the difference really, as an artist, it’s no different. Except you’re not applying for a job because you’re self employed all the sudden. So what you might fear is quitting your existing job to become an artist when you’re unproven. Not knowing if you have the ability to paint or sculpt what you do, it’s just a matter of time, and not knowing if you can sell your work. So in my art marketing videos, and what I have often taught at the convention, plein air convention is, I often talk about being practical, practical about these things. In other words, you know, if you decide you want to quit your job and become an artist, you know, you’re it’s gonna take you some time to learn to be an artist and to get good. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take you everybody’s different. But let’s say it takes you five years, you don’t want to quit your job. And let’s say you have a job and a good job and you’re learning to be an artist and you have to take the time to do that while you have your job. And then you don’t want to just say okay, now I’m good at it are good at being an artist. I think now I’ll go start selling my paintings. Don’t quit your job. The goal is get used to painting, get used to selling paintings, get some proof that your stuff is going to sell consistently. And then get to a level of income that you’re comfortable even though you’re working hard because you’re really working two jobs now. Get to a level where you’re comfortable and that you know you can reproduce that level of sales month after month after month after month. And once you’ve proven it for six months or a year, if that’s when you want to quit your job. Maybe don’t do it. Maybe go to part time say okay you know I’m going to a friend of mine did this friend of mine was a physicist is Brilliant painter, and he had a good job. But he said, Okay, I’m gonna go to, I’m gonna start taking a quarter of my time off from work and then putting that towards painting. And then after a while it was half of my time. And then after a while, it was three quarters of my time. And eventually he stopped the one job by the time he got the other one go. And he was making plenty of money doing 3040 workshops a year, making, you know, making bank and so he was stable. And that’s what you want to go for is you want to be stable. So anyway, if you have the passion to become an artist, don’t tell yourself that you don’t have the talent or the skills that’s crazy. Everybody can do this, you just have to learn it, you have to get taught I have trained for my company has trained hundreds of 1000s of people through our our video library called paint tube.tv. We have trained millions of people, or at least a million people on the art school live daily on YouTube, we have taught a lot of people to paint who didn’t think they could, who figured it out because they got the proper training. You know, doing it on your own is okay, a lot of people are self taught, but you can burn a lot of time. That way you can speed it up and you get somebody good to teach you if you can get a good local instructor. That’s the best way. You get good national instruction, good workshops, good videos, things like that, that’s going to make a difference. And then get good at learning to sell and learning to market yourself. Those are critical parts of the process. Well, this has kind of been head trash day, so I guess I should be getting $100 an hour for each of these. Next patient. Okay, look, you’re your head is your worst enemy. And it’s also your best friend. Your brain wants to default to the negative, it’s natural. But you have to stop it. You have to constantly tell yourself that’s not like me. I am not a negative thinker. I am not going to think negatively. I’ve got some great books to recommend they’re classics, they’re really still true. Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, psycho cybernetics maxwell maltz. Unleash the Power Within Tony Robbins go to a Tony Robbins event. It’s not what you think it is. It’s not all positive thinking. There’s a lot of science behind it. I’ve been to a couple of them, they’ve been very helpful to me. Look, we’ll put links to those in the show notes. But take time to learn how to become a positive thinker. You know, your body reacts to your thoughts. And your body or your mind finds what your thoughts are saying. If you say it looks like it’s gonna rain, you’re gonna find rain. If you say it looks like it’s gonna be a beautiful day you’re gonna find a beautiful day. Now I you know, you’re not going to change the weather. But the if you get the point here is you’ve got to look for the positive spin on everything. You can’t be telling yourself you can’t do this. You can do this, you know, you just don’t know how. All right, anyway. Your mindset controls your success. These are things that will control the course of your future and your action and help you become what you want to be. Little prayer never hurts either, too. Okay. That’s today’s psychology minute. I mean, art marketing.

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.

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, shares thoughts on submitting art to virtual galleries; and how to price your art.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 122 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

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
You can send your questions by email to [email protected]. Or you can send a video question artmarketing.com/questions. All right. My producer Amandine is going to give us the first question.

Amandine
The first question is from John Tez from Georgia. I explore many galleries online and see they accept submissions virtually. Has your usage Do you believe those are taken? And as an emerging artist, Is it professional to apply to multiple? I know the best way to get in is being invited. So is applying virtually a good option worth devoting time to? Two different known galleries from overseas averaged out to feature my artwork, but required that I ship it. Is that the industry standard? And do you think the exposure is worth the exponential logistics? How would I verify that this is a legitimate gallery and not a scam?

Eric Rhoads
All right. Well, that was a great question. John Tez. I’ve got some opinions on this. They’re probably wrong. But first off, when galleries are saying they have they accept submissions online, I question that. Now, I think that there is a reason they might do it. And one of the reasons they might do it is because they’re trying to keep you from calling them emailing them or showing up at the door. Because most of the gallery owners I know, absolutely hate that. Because, you know, if they had 100 artists show up a year, and it took 10 minutes each or 20 minutes each, you know, they’d never get anything else done. I have a gallery owner who told me that he gets 150 to 200 emails a month. And he doesn’t even open them and look at him, if he can tell what it is he gets that many or more packages, unsolicited, they, you know, they have to open them because they don’t know what’s in the packages. And then they’re just throwing them away. If they’re a good gallery, they have plenty of artists. And every good gallery is always looking for another and maybe the idea of having submissions is good. But most of it’s probably just to kind of make you not call or email, I will tell you that there are a lot of galleries out there that operate differently, they have a different model. A lot of galleries operate, most of the galleries operate on a consignment model, where they pick artists invite them in, and they keep a certain percentage of the work in exchange for selling it. I you know, for instance, you know, a standard for a lot of galleries is is they keep 50% of the markup price, which is legitimate because they’re doing all the heavy lifting the work in the marketing, the lighting, the salespeople, the phone calls, you know, everything that goes with it, they’re earning their keep, usually, not always but you know, there are galleries out there that will look for artists that they can prey upon. And prey upon they do we have one particular gallery no names, who, every time an artist appears in our magazine, in a story in an ad anything, they pick up the phone, and they say we want you in a special gallery show in our in our gallery, and the artist gets all excited. And then next thing you know, they’re saying, Well, you know, it’s only this much money to be able to do that. And some of them do it. And some of them have given us feedback that it hasn’t been terribly productive. You know, usually, if somebody’s going to do a show of your work, they’re going to do a show of your work, because you’re already fairly established, you have a brand branding has a lot to do with everything. And you know, it’s like nobody really wants a brand new startup artist. You know, you don’t want to hear that because it’s easier to sell somebody who’s established. Now once in a while, they’ll take a chance and they you know, legitimate galleries do that too. But there’s got to be some good indicators of success, I believe, for that to happen. So I think you know, there’s a lot of different things now you asked a question about shipping going overseas. First off, how do you know it’s a legitimate gallery? I got a call or an email from somebody one time. This was not about my artwork, but they said, Yeah, no, we, we want you to be an influencer on Instagram, you got all these followers and, and we’re going to pay you for doing some ads. And I kept saying no to everybody, I get 10 of those a month. And for some reason, this guy got my attention, he got me on the phone, he did a pitch, he showed me a website, it was very, very in depth, it was very credible. And I ended up signing with him so to speak, turning over control of my account, right then and there. So they could do the first thing. And they took it over and took it away from me. Luckily, because I spent a quarter million dollars a year or more in Facebook at that time, I was able to get to Facebook and get their attention to get my account back real quickly. But you know, there are galleries out there, there are people out there contact you all the time that are going to say, hey, you know, it’s my wife’s anniversary, and I want to buy something nice. I saw your art and you know, they, they legitimately pretend to be buying it, you ship it out. But you know, the check doesn’t clear etc, that there are galleries out there who would do the same thing I want to put you in my gallery that might have a fake website, and then you ship them a painting? Well, my question is, do you need it hanging in the gallery? You’re going to sell it online and you’re going to feature it, I would legitimately look into a gallery? How do you look into a gallery? First off, you know, Google search it ask around, look for reviews, look for the artists that are in the gallery and find out if any of those artists happened to be willing to talk to you and tell you if it’s legit, did they get paid? Are they selling work, etc. So there’s a lot of things like that you need to be watching out for, you know, you can submit artwork to anybody and I, I you know, I don’t want to discourage everything, I just think it’s best to get invited because then you’re not begging. And then you’re in a strong position. But also because the gallery really truly wants you. They’re gonna work hard to sell, you know, if you’re pushing yourself on somebody, they may or may not push you on somebody else to try and get you to sell. So there’s a lot of little nuances to it all that I’m sure there’s exceptions to every real, every, every situation. So, anyway. That’s kind of the gallery thing. Next question.

Amandine
The next question is from Linda, Lydia, from Burg Virginia. The questions the most frequently comes up, especially with new artists is how do you decide how to price your art?

Eric Rhoads
Lydia, Lydia, Lydia, it’s the biggest question everybody asked us the hardest thing to answer. I don’t know. I mean, I have some feel for it. I’ve done it. I have coached people. Some of it has succeeded. Some of it is not. Pricing is all over the map. First off, pricing is a mental issue. What you have in your head as your value is your been a beginning point. And some of you have an inflated value in your head. That’s unrealistic. And some of you have a value in your head that’s too low. So you got to be thinking about that. Everybody has to start somewhere. Usually, you start modestly. If it sells, you start where you sell some more in this start building a collector base and you grow it that’s what galleries are really good at a good gallery will answer the question for you because they’re going to say, here’s what I think I can get for this. Now. I had a gallery who I believed How can I say this without getting into trouble? I believe they were underpricing my work. And I wanted to be more expensive and they would not agree to it. I was able to prove to them that I could get that amount of money and sell a painting at a higher price. And that convinced them but ultimately, they gotta believe it if they’re going to sell it. So that has a lot to do with a bit pricing. You know, if you got a good gallery trust the gallery if you’re selling direct, then you know there’s a lot of different things first off research, comparable artworks. Now the problem with that, of course is what’s comparable, you know, is an eight by 10 painting by Richard Schmid comparable. No. Why? Because it’s by Richard Schmid. Right. So before pricing, your work, research similar works and your genre your style, see what people are getting for it, check the prices, you know, some subject matters sell better than others. I know that seems crazy, but it’s true. Similar things you know, look for things that have sold find artists who are equivalent to You Be realistic, and see what they’re selling for and then Study? Do they have a big brand or not? You know, are they promoting themselves heavily? And because brand makes all the difference in pricing? You know, why is a Bentley a whole lot more money than a BMW, right? Well, it’s a perception issue, mostly, you know, you’re gonna say its quality, and there is some difference. But the reality is, back when I studied this, it’s been a few years. But back when I studied it, the difference to build BMW versus a Bentley on the same chassis was 18 $20,000 difference, but the price differentiation was 100, or $200,000. More. So you know, it’s about perception, a perception of, of a lot of things, elegance, and so on. So consider your experience, your reputation, your brand, that has to be factored into your pricing, if you’re well known. That’s one thing, if you’re emerging, that’s another it’s more appropriate to start with a lower price. More experienced artists are more likely to get bigger prices. But I got to tell you, I know experienced artists, who are brilliant painters who have not kept their brand alive and can’t get the prices they used to get. And they don’t understand that one guy called me said, Eric, why is my painting not selling anymore? I said, Well, are you doing the things that made you successful? He said, Yeah, I’m doing them all. I said, are Have you done any shows in the last five years? No, I haven’t done those. They’re a hassle. I said, Have you advertised in the last five years, he’s now now now everybody knows who I am. I said really? Well, you know, 10% of the people as attrition every year 10% of the people who know you don’t know you, in a year, five years from now, 10 years from now, nobody knows you. Five years from now half of the people that knew you don’t know you anymore. And you wonder why your works not selling because you’re not advertising you’re not, you’re not promoting yourself, you’re resting on your past your laurels. You’ve also got to factor in things like the production cost, the cost of the canvas, the materials, the frame, the time calculate how much money that went into each piece. And you know, I know an artist who gets a very large price for his money. When I asked how he gets it, he said, Well, I factored in, I could do this many paintings a year. And this is how much money I need. I divided it equally, you know, I could do this many paintings. And so that’s how he said his price. It works for some people. But he also had a big brand. And so he’s getting, you know, 100 $200,000 for pieces. Also, you know, you got to factor in the price per inch, you know, there’s ways you can figure that out. But you’ve got to have realistic prices, and prices are all very emotional. Every decision and purchases are emotional. And sometimes a low price equates to low quality. And I’ve told this story on here many times about a woman who came to an art show, she said, How much is the painting they artists at 4000. She said I’ll take it, she writes a check for 40,000. He says no, ma’am, that’s 4000, not 40. And she ripped up the checks, it must, must not be any good. So price does have an impact on perception. You increase your prices over time. You know, if you study pricing, there’s some great books on pricing. If you study how companies launch products, some people launch products at a high price. And if it doesn’t sell they back off until it does sell and that becomes their price. Others start at low and if it sells too easily, they move it up faster and up and up and up. So there’s a lot of different things. It’s experimentation is practice. You’ve got to communicate value and pricing your work, you’ve got to communicate the value of the uniqueness of the piece, the time that went into it, the value of your brand, etc. And I know painters who will charge more for one nine by 12 painting than another nine by 12 painting because this one took them two hours or four hours and this one took him took him 60 hours. So you know, it’s just kind of depends. And of course you have the opportunity in some cases to negotiate with buyers. And negotiation is a really great fluid tool. Because if if they want to buy something from you, but truly the price is too high. I start by saying hey, you know, that’s the price I’m sorry. And if sometimes they’ll say okay, and sometimes they’ll walk away and you know, you might be able if you’re willing you say okay, well you know what would you be willing to pay and then you try to find a middle ground, something that works for everybody. Don’t forget that pricing is emotional. Now the other thing I want to just tell you this is not about pricing, but it’s about average sale price and that is McDonald’s, you drive through the drive thru what are they always say? Do you want fries with that? Right? And why do they say that? Because they know If they can get everybody a drive thru to buy fries or to up up upsell to a different package, they’re going to make more money on it. So when you sell a painting, it’s the best time to get another painting sold because somebody is into you, they’re into your painting. And you can easily say, if it’s true to you, you can say, hey, you bought this painting, I have a rule that because anybody buys a painting for me, they’ll buy the second and third painting at a 20% discount. Here are two would you be interested in these? Or pick one of these five, and oftentimes, you’ll have an upsell and that’s an opportunity. Anyway, that is the art marketing minute.

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

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads, author of Make More Money Selling Your Art, discusses how to balance art making and business, and how to introduce a new style or genre of art.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 121 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

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:
Admit it I answer your art marketing questions or at least attempt to and you can upload a video question to artmarketing.com/questions or you can email them to me [email protected] And give Amandine a break because she has to read them. Amandine, what’s the first question?

Amandine:
The first question is from Thomas Michael Newman from Pennsylvania Yeah, how do successful artists balance the need to continuously create and improve their craft? And do all the necessary tasks required to sell their art?

Eric Rhoads:
Well, Thomas, that’s a big loaded question. And listen, I, first off, there’s no pressure to sell anything. And I think a lot of people think, well, that’s the next step, that’s what I’m supposed to do, you don’t have to do that. Unless you have to do that. I mean, if you want to do it, you want to do it to make a living, there are a lot of ways to make a living, you don’t have to do that. But if you decide you want to do it, the moment you decide that you’re going to be selling your art, you are really deciding to make a commitment and your commitment level needs to change. Instead of dabbling. You can dabble and sell art, right? You can sell a put a, put a little show together and sell something a couple of times a year and a little bit here and there. That’s fine. That’s dabbling. But if you really want to become a full time successful artists supporting yourself, then there’s a whole whole thing about that I’ve got a series of videos just on that particular topic. And you, you have to accept the fact that if you’re selling paintings to make a living, then you are a full time artist. And when you’re a full time artist, you’re running a small business. And like a lot of small businesses, myself included, when I first started is you are the product, or the product maker and the the product, business owner, right. So it’s not unusual, think about somebody who does something else thought let’s just pick like a category like easels, right? So you know, you have an idea for an easel, you design it, and you sell it and you make your own easels, you’re out there, and you’re woodshop making it. And then eventually, you get enough demand that you can quit your other jobs. So you can just do your your products all day, and make easels all day every day. But you know, if you just made easels, but you didn’t focus on how to sell those easels and how to make people aware of them, then you’re not going to be able to succeed. So you have to find the balance. In a business. As an artist, you’re wearing a lot of different hats, right? My dad always used to say this to me, you know, some days, you got to wear your accounting hat, some days, you got to wear your shipping hat, some days, you got to wear your negotiation hat or your sales hat, you know, you’ve got a lot of different things and gallery hat. But you’re you’re never going to change, you’re still an artist, you just have to develop muscles in other areas. And so you know, as an artist is, of course, if you’ve done this, you know, you’re in the shipping business, you’re in the framing business, you’re in the marketing and sales business, because you’ve got to sell people on coming in, and you got to pay the bills. And there’s a whole lot of stuff you have to learn. But I like to create what I call time budgets. And it’s a concept I use, I highly recommend it. And essentially you make start by making a list of everything that you have to do in a typical month. And you say to yourself, Okay, I have to do shipping. And I have to do shipping once a week. And that’s going to take me two hours, you budget two hours, and then you put up a two hour block in your calendar. And you say this is my shipping time. And you might have teaching you, you have to set aside time for teaching. This is my teaching time. This is my marketing time. And this is my accounting time, you know, you have to figure out what those things are? And what is it going to take. Now. You know, you’ve got a problem, though. And that is that you have to sell a certain number of paintings. Let’s say that in order to meet your financial needs, that you have to put 30 paintings out the door every single month. Well, that means you got to do a painting a day. How realistic is that? I mean, some people can do it, some people can’t do it. But do you really want to have to do a painting every day or two paintings some days and take the weekends off. And and if let’s say you need 10 hours to do a painting, and you got to do 30 of them a month, you don’t have time, you got maybe two hours left to do something else. And that’s already beyond an eight hour day. So what you’ve got to do is you got to figure out how to become more efficient and becoming more efficient is how can I paint this painting faster? Well, maybe you can’t, some people can some people can’t. But if you can knock two hours off the process somehow, then that’s a that’s two hours you’re gonna get back for relaxed time or for other types of work. But one of the things that a way to overcome that is to figure out how do I get my prices up? Because if I need a certain amount of income, and I need to sell 30 paintings, what if I could only do 20 paintings recapture all that extra time and How much money do I need? If I’m going to hit my numbers to do 20 paintings. And of course, you have to anticipate that if you do 20 paintings, not all 20 paintings are going to sell how many are going to sell every single month? And how are you going to make that happen, that means you’re blocking out time to devote to your sales and marketing, your advertising, discussions, all of the things like that. So anyway, it’s all about figuring out how much time everything takes, and allocating that time. And if you don’t have enough time, then you got to figure out either I gotta get some help. And of course, if you get help, you’ve either got to get volunteer help, or you got to have to pay for him. That means now your expenses are higher, you got to sell more artwork, or you got to get your prices up. And I think getting your prices up most artists underprice their work. And that’s a good place. The key to successful balance is to leverage, there’s a word leverage your business. For instance, if you get a gallery or two galleries or three galleries selling for you, now you don’t have to do the selling. Now you still have to do branding and marketing, because you want to keep that under your control. You want them to do it for you, too. But that’s going to help you look for ways to get people to do things for you, leverages, you know how getting somebody to help you out, help you with your shipping, or maybe you say to yourself, look, if I spend 10 hours painting, that’s productive time, if I’m spending five hours on shipping, I’d be better off to pay somebody, you know, $10 an hour or whatever to do that it’s probably not possible anymore. Anyway. Big and business is not for the faint of heart. But guess what, it’s a wonderful thing because it buys you freedom. You don’t have to work for anyone. You got to work for yourself, though. But it’s still better because you don’t have anybody screaming at ya, you know, at work, but you got to scream at yourself, you got to say, look, I gotta get this done. I have to have this discipline, because if I don’t do it, I’m not going to be able to keep going anyway. All right, what’s our next question? Um, indeed.

Amandine:
The next question is from Beth Cole sent from Maine, and well known for one style and genre, but want to know how to market to a new preferred style. Do I start a new website? Lower prices? Because this is a new style and genre? What should I do?

Eric Rhoads:
… So Beth, I would start by asking yourself, why do you want to launch a new style or a new genre, right. And there are really two reasons that I can think of one is you’re not making enough money with what you’re doing now. And you think maybe changing things will make it better? Or maybe you’re just bored. All right. And either one is okay, there’s no right or wrong. But let’s address these before I get to your question. If you’re not making enough money at what you’re doing now, what makes you think something new and different, is going to sell better, once you’re established, because you still have to weave you do something new and different, you’re gonna have to build name recognition for that, you’re gonna have to build awareness, you’re probably going to have to start at lower pricing, you’re going to have to build up interest in that. And the amount of time that takes could take, oh, 234 years, right. Whereas you’re already known in one particular area, maybe if you just get a little more excited about that, and pour gas on that make that work, you’re gonna make more money with it. So that’s one thing to consider if you’re bored. That’s a whole nother another thing. And if you’re bored, you just want to try something different, or you don’t want to do what you’re doing now. There’s nothing wrong. But if you are going to change your style, then you’re Are you going to drop the other? Or are you going to keep that going? And I look at that if you’re making money with one thing and you decide to drop it for another, you’ve lost an opportunity. How about you build that business, you figure out a way to keep it going keep it generating income, and then launch something new and build that business, but don’t give up one for the other. And the reality is you can have a different pseudonym for yourself and have it be two different artists. I know a lot of artists who do this and so they have one under their real name. They have a couple of different styles under different other names. And they have different galleries selling their work because you know people like me get bored i Some days I want to do abstract some days I want to do tight realism. Some days I want to do Impressionism and I could in theory, if I if I wanted to be aggressive enough, I could have different types. Have artworks go to different galleries, and that’s okay. But where you get into trouble is if you’re known, let’s say you’re known for landscape painting, and you decide all of a sudden I’m going to start doing abstract painting of portraits, your, your audiences likely to want to buy it. Now they might, if you’re really established, then you can start adding some new things and see how it goes. But if if people go to your website for one thing, and they see another thing, they get confused, they don’t buy anything, that’s a problem. You want to have that not happen. So anyway, if you decide you want to do this, if it’s about being bored, and just trying something different, yeah, you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to figure out what your business strategy is going to be, how are you going to sell it? Yeah, it might be a new name, it might be the same name. It might be a new website, it’s probably different ads, it’s a whole lot of different things. And you just got to build it and grow it. But I would, I would hang on to what’s working. If it’s not working, fix it first. If that doesn’t work, try fixing it again. If that doesn’t work, try fixing it again. That doesn’t work, then maybe try something new. But something new is sometimes got to be more problematic than just fixing something. So avoid confusion with your value your galleries and your followers. And make sure that you’re not confusing the world. And that I think solves your problem. Anyway, that’s the marketing minute.

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

Eric Rhoads:
Kathryn Stats for being on here today. Thank you. And I hope that she will come and join us and hang out and paint at the plein air convention. We would love to have her. Even though she wouldn’t be on stage teaching. She just loves being there. We love having her around. So if you want to come to the plein air convention and hang out with people like her, everybody’s very welcoming. You don’t have to be at a certain level to come. You can be a beginner, you don’t even have to paint to come you don’t have to paint on location. If you don’t want that pressure. You know, we’re just there having fun and everybody is accepting. So just come to plein air convention. It’s coming up in May and it’s going to be in Denver, it’s going to be incredible. PleinAirconvention.com is where you find out about it. And by the way, if you’re not following us, by having a subscription to plein air magazine, I think you’ll find it to be a really wonderful place to be a place to spend your time because you’re going to learn more about the plein air lifestyle is stories about art artists, techniques, collecting all kinds of things. So that’s at plein air magazine.com. Also, you know, I’m on the air daily on Facebook. It’s also on YouTube. It’s a show called Art School, live 12 noon Eastern time daily. Just go to YouTube, look up art school alive and hit subscribe. That’s the easiest way to find it. Got a little over 100,000 subscribers there now. Thank you for that and just follow and we’d be loved love to teach you about art and a lot of different ways. And also, if you don’t mind giving me a follow at Eric Rhoads. Spell it rho A DS on Instagram and Facebook. Okay. And if you’ve not seen Sunday coffee, that’s my blog. It’s out every Sunday morning and I kind of write it for my kids to kind of impart some lessons but everybody has been passing it along so I started letting everybody see it. Anyway, it says Sunday coffee and you can just go to Coffeewitheric.com and subscribe. It’s free. Also. That’s all I got for today. Thank you again to Kathryn Stats. I’m Eric Rhoads publisher, and founder of plein air magazine. And I’m getting excited because as you’re listening to this, we’re getting started with plein air live. You can still join us late just go to pleinairlive.com And you can watch replays if you missed any of it. It’s gonna be great Kathryn Stats is going to be on there doing critiques by the way. So thank you for watching today. And remember every day painting is a good day so it’s a big world. Go paint it. 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.

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, shares advice on how to build a body of work; and thoughts on paying to advertise on Facebook.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 120 >

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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 I answer your art marketing questions. You can email your questions to me [email protected]. Or there’s other ways you can do it too. Now, I gotta tell you, we have the art Marketing Podcast separated so it tags the end of the plein air podcast, but it has its own podcast as well. If you’re somebody who’s not into plein air, that’s a way you can get it. Alright, Amandine, my producer. What is the first question?

Amandine
The first question is from Gary from Minnesota. I’m head down and neck deep working on my 2023 goals. One of the first goals is to build a body of work by the end of q1. I’m obsessed with plein air painting and working with a well known local artist under a mentorship program he’s helping with is helping me with my journey in finding my voice. So right now, my body of work is pretty much studies in a bit all over the place. That being said, I do feel some are worthy for show. And so my questions to you are, what is your take, take on building a body of work? Do you start with a formal plan a theme or style or let the style just evolve and come through as I go? Lastly, how many pieces is considered a body of work?

Eric Rhoads
Well, there’s a lot of questions in all of that and I’ll try to answering the best I possibly can. Gary. I’m glad that you’re obsessed with plein air painting. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a lot of fun. More people are doing it every day, Gary You know, you have to make some decisions about what you want to do with your life. If you have the intention of selling artwork, then you’ve got to start thinking like a business person. And let’s say that I was, let’s say, I decided I was going to start selling Scissors, scissors at the farmers market. And so what do I have to do before I go to the farmers market and sell scissors? I gotta make scissors. And I got to anticipate how many scissors I need to sell to cover my cost of the farmers market. I also need to say, Okay, how much profit do I need to make. So let’s say the Farmers Market, I’m using a silly analogy, of course, but let’s say the Farmers Market table cost you 100 bucks, and your scissors are 10 bucks each, you’ve got to cover 10 pair of scissors just to cover your cost, right? But covering your cost is of no value. Because your if you go to the farmers market and you sell 10 pair of scissors, and you cover your cost, you haven’t really got any value of that time. Now you’ve got to ask yourself, what is my time worth in making the scissors? What is my time worth and putting them in packages? And what is my time worth for standing at the booth for 10 hours on a weekend or 20 hours on a weekend? And then okay, now what’s my time worth? Now you add that to your costs, because that’s really a cost? And then on top of that, you’ve got to say, Okay, well, how much money should I make? Now, when you’re selling something, there’s a thing called a cost of sale. A cost of sale could be involved in your marketing costs. So in your particular case, if you’re at the farmers market, right, the cost of sale is the cost of paying for the farmers market paying for everything else, that you know your time there, it’s not going to include your cost of the scissors, but but you need to keep that in consideration. So if you want to make money as an artist, you got to start thinking about those kinds of things. No matter what you’re going to do. Now, you’re not likely to be selling at the farmers market, but you might be selling at an art show a tent show as I call them. Or you might decide you’re going to sell in a gallery or or otherwise. Now, you might say, Okay, I’m going to do only originals. And you might say I’m going to do originals plushy clay prints, or other kinds of prints. You know, people who do art short shows, like to have something that people could buy for 50 or $100. And so they have print bins, and they’ll have prints of a big hanging painting. And maybe they never sell the original. Maybe their intent isn’t to sell the original, but they you know, they have those prints handy. You got to kind of decide what’s right for you. I’m going to talk galleries today, because it kind of relates to your question. If you want to get into a gallery, then a body of work is critical. Most anybody can do one good painting, you know, I see a lot of people who show a painting that they did. And it turns out that they didn’t really do most of it because the workshop instructor did most of it. But there’s their signatures on it, right? But and galleries know this, but can you provide them with dozens of consistently good painting, see, galleries want to know that you’re consistent that you’ve got a body of work, and they also want to bring you on knowing that you can provide consistent work and provide enough inventory to sell because they’re in business to sell product, right, and you are the product. So yeah, you need a body of work, but not just for galleries, you also need a body of work for yourself, if you plan to sell in any way, whether you’re selling direct online, whether you’re selling art shows, whatever your method of selling is, you have to have some inventory. Because if you go to an art show, and you you know, you don’t take enough paintings, you don’t cover your expenses, you got to go to the art show with more paintings than you think you’re going to sell. And what have you sell out all of those. So it’s always better to have some more in your truck, right? Same thing with your, your warehouse, if you’re selling online, you know, you’ve got to have some paintings tucked away so that you you know, so I start by doing projections, I start by saying how much money do I need to cover my expenses? How much money do I need to make now, you know, you could say $100 million dollars, and that’s fine, except it’s not likely to happen, at least not right off the top right, you got to kind of take it in steps. So if you’ve never sold a painting before, you’ve got to get used to selling a painting, you’ve got to probably start out at a lower price point, establish a collector base, etc and get to where you want to be. And so you’re really I don’t want to be crass about this but you’re really selling inventory. You’re creating inventory to sell your scissors right your inventory Uh, your earlier living is dependent on your inventory. And so if you want to make, let’s just I’m gonna use round numbers or not real numbers, but let’s say you wanted to make $50,000. And let’s say you sell your paintings for $1,000. Well, you just need to sell 50 paintings. And by the way, if that’s $50,000 net that you need after taxes, then you got to sell, you know more than that, because taxes are pretty high, depending on your bracket. So, and you also need to know that not every one of the 50 paintings is going to sell. So you need to do more than the 50 paintings. So I’d start there, in terms of a formal plan or theme or style. I’m kind of a shoot from the hip kind of a guy, I’m not big on spreadsheets, I use them all the time, I have to use them in business. But I don’t know that you have to have a completely formal plan. But it is a good idea to have some goals and try to hit those goals. Because if you don’t have any goals, you don’t know what you’re aiming for. But let’s say you want to get into a gallery in three months. Well, that’s a whole nother topic getting into a gallery, I’m not going to address that now. But let’s say that you have a plan and you have somebody who’s going to look at your work in three months, they want to see your body of work, then you’re gonna have to do 20 to 30 Good paintings. Now, a gallery might say, Oh, I only want five paintings, but they might also say, hey, I want to do a show, I got a contact from a gallery, they want to do a show. And I’m like, No. And they said, why I said, because I don’t want to do 50 paintings. I don’t have that much time. So I turned down the show. But I think that you know if you have that opportunity, and you can do it, do it. But let’s say they want to see 2030 Good paintings, and you have to do 10 a month for three months. That’s not likely, because that puts you under a lot of pressure. Most of us can’t paint 10 Good paintings in a month. Some people can, especially if you’re a plein air guy, and you’re really really fast. And your plein air work is sufficient. But determine how many you can do and then set a goal Oh, and let’s say your goal is in the year 2023. I want to have a body of work that I don’t touch that I’m going to offer to a gallery or to and I want to have 30 paintings, 30 good paintings by the end of the year, then set that goal and then you say to yourself, Okay, how many do I have to do once a month. Now, my friend artists, tiny Hertwig once told me, you can’t make money at painting unless you learn to paint fast. So you might keep that in mind. But don’t don’t sacrifice quality for speed, you know, you’re learning you’re growing, you know, maybe some point you’ll get there. But take it take it appropriately at the pace you need to. But produce what you need by setting up a body of work. Now. You also asked about theme, you know, some artists will do a theme for a show. You know, maybe they’ll do a theme on Volkswagens or something I don’t know, I had Rusty Humphries. I gave him an idea. He did a theme on 3030 on 30 of us 3030 bards on 30, or something like that. It was a gimmick, but it was it worked. It was effective, it got attention. So you might want to think about that. But the one thing that I think is important is and this is a question that comes up a lot. And that is that you want to be known for one thing and doing one thing really, really well. This is very important to a gallery. I had a friend who did this gallery show, and he had not shown The Gallerist what he was doing beforehand. And he decided to change everything he painted, he changed his subject completely. And he put it up at the show and it bombed because he was known as a landscape artist and he was doing figures or portraits or something. So you got to get buy in from your gallery. But you got to become known for one thing and doing it well. Let’s say it’s because you’re a plein air guy or you want to do landscape painting, then be really known for your landscape painting. Don’t throw portraits in don’t throw other things in. After you get established. You can do that a little bit, maybe a lot more. But right now you got to be known for one thing, because if you’re not, it’s gonna hurt you. Just pick one thing and do it really well master it. Okay, I’m gonna do and what’s our next question?

Amandine
The next question is from Anthony from Metro Detroit, Michigan. I’ve been paying for Facebook ads for months now with no sales, and I believe I’ve tried just about every method you could think of. I have spent well over $2,000 with no sales. A year and a half ago, an online art gallery reached out to me and I signed with them to sell my art. They take 50% of all sales. They’ve sold four of my paintings, including my most expensive piece at a time for $5,000. My question is she Should I just stop paying for ads myself, and just rely on the online gallery to sell my work? Or keep paying for ads until I figure it out?

Eric Rhoads
Anthony Anthony Anthony Anthony, I’ve got lots of things to tell you on this. There’s a lot of questions in your question. Where do I begin? Well, first off, you might think your advertising is not working. But how are you measuring? What’s working? Are you measuring the number of people that are visiting your Facebook page? Are you measuring the number of people visiting your website? Are you do you have a method of capturing people, once they visit your website, do you do know that they’re, you know, you, you’re, you’re measuring it purely on sales. So you know, they’re not buying. And so it’s not working from that standpoint, but it might be working in another way. And you may just need to tweak things a little bit. The other thing is that social media and all advertising, quite frankly, ads don’t work until they work. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have, we do lots of ads, 1000s, probably 10s of 1000s of ads in a year, in terms of placement, but we do lots of different creative, and we will test everything we’ll put, we’ll put an ad up on Facebook, we’ll see how many responses we get, or how many click throughs, we get, because the first thing you’re selling, your whole goal is to sell a click, the only reason to do an ad is to sell a click. Now, if you’re trying to get them to buy a painting, from a click, it’s not likely to happen, it’s just not likely to happen. So you’ve got to take people through a process in the process is sell a click, get them to you know, so you’ve got to entice them with something on that click, and then you’ve got to once a click, then they’ve got to see something that’s going to sell them the next piece of the process. You know, Facebook is kind of known as a five to $25 medium, meaning you’re not likely to sell anything over $25 In a Facebook environment. But if you’re, if you’re buying a lead, and then you can develop that lead. So think about this, I look at all of this, like fishing, I’m not a big sportsman. But fishing so right you, you throw your line in the water and you pull the thing back and you you hope to catch a fish. Well, what you everybody wants a big fish, right. And a big fish takes bigger bait. In that case, bigger bait is more money, better creative, etc. But really, what you really want to do is you want to catch a lot of minnows, right, because if you can take a net and scoop up 1000 memo men mid minnows, then you can put them in your own fish tank, and then that fish tank, you feed them and you grow them. So what I’m saying is if you can pull leads in and and then get them on your newsletter, and then you develop them by sending your newsletter or telling them what’s going on in your life and showing them I’ve got a whole thing on newsletters in my book, showing them your latest artworks, and so on getting them more familiar with you, then that’s a very good thing to do. Now, you don’t want just anybody you want to write your ads so that they repel people as much as they attract people. Because you don’t want to pay to get people first off, you’re paying per click usually. But you don’t want to pay to get people who are never going to buy a thing from you, you know, you don’t want 12 year olds coming in. And even though it might be a nice ego thing to have somebody looking at your art, you know, you only want people who are gonna buy your art in your particular case if you’re trying to sell art. So there’s a whole lot of different things here. But you know, one One strategy is to offer something for free like an ebook. And then that you know, ebook and my 50 Best paintings, and then that they get that ebook, you get their email address, you say, you know, I’m sending you the book and I’m adding you to my newsletter list. And then you send them your, your newsletter, and then maybe you send them some promotions from time to time. If they leave you you have to stop sending him stuff legally. So that’s one thing. The other thing is, I try as I mentioned, lots of different copy testing is everything, test everything, you know, test two different versions of your ad two different images or two different headlines and see which one pulls them in better and then that’s what you call your control. Once you get a good control that’s working then you always try to beat that right so test everything. I have probably spent more than a million dollars on Facebook alone and I’m not an ad spurt, I employ experts. And I talk to them all the time. And I know a lot about selling on Facebook and Instagram and other things. But you know, the big issue here is that you are you might be fishing in a pond that doesn’t have any warm fish. What I mean by that? Well, there are two types of audiences there are warm audiences and they’re cold audiences warm means that they are they know you real warm, they know you and they like you. And they trust you, you know, the warmer they are, the better they are for you, and the better or more likely, they will become a customer for you. So it’s kind of hard to get warm audiences in Facebook, now you can get them, you can retarget people who follow your Facebook page. But you don’t know if they’re buyers or not. You can retarget people who visit your website, if there’s a certain you have to have a certain number to be able to do that. And then then you’re being able to warm them up. And so you put things in front of them. And sometimes a strategy for advertising, by the way is you don’t want clicks. And so for instance, if you, you just want to put artwork in front of them, so they’re seeing your latest artwork. And you’re warming them, you put artwork on there, but you don’t put a call to action on there, because then you’re not paying for the click, but you’re getting the exposure, right. But Facebook is onto this. And they know that if they’re if you’re not getting clicks, they don’t want to put you in front of people, if you’re getting a lot of clicks, they’re gonna put you in front of a lot of other people. So there’s a different strategy there. You know, there, the key to warm audiences are you want warm audiences who like and trust you. But secondly, you want people who already want to own your work or they love your work, they’re going to be likely to buy your work. And the way to do that is to look for places that are more likely to advertise where you’re more likely to advertise where there are warm audiences. And so like, you know, I have this magazine called Fine Art connoisseur, I have all these art collectors really, really, really, really rich art collectors in many cases. And so what you do is you go in there, and you expose yourself to them, maybe the wrong term, but you you give yourself exposure. And then what you do is you you just stay visible all the time. Because here’s what happens is, if you’re advertising to sell a painting, that should not be your primary goal, your advertising should be to brand yourself, and to brand yourself so that you can get a higher price you see, branding, gets them aware of you. And people go through this process of awareness. I’m not aware. And then I’m aware now I’m interested. Now I’m interested enough to consider buying now I’m interested enough to buy, right, so you got to take him through that process. And some people that take seven impressions, some people it takes 10 impressions, some people it takes 30 impressions, everybody’s different. But you gotta that’s why you got to stay there constantly and be in front of them constantly. We have a lot of artists who do branding, who have built their names and reputations. And when you do branding, you’re also appealing to the emotions of the of the people you see because emotions are what sell products. And so status is an emotion, right? How do I compare, you know, to my neighbor, if I own a you know, George Carlson painting, that’s a big deal, right? So everybody’s like, wow, you want to George Carlson painting you feel good, you can beat your chest. And so that’s status and status comes from branding, you know, George Carlson’s brand was built up over lots of successful wins that art shows and successful sales and things like that, you know, that’s, that all builds brand. And so you want to take that as a process. Now, it takes time to build a brand, it doesn’t happen overnight, you can still sell paintings through that process. But if you you get a good brand, you get more money for your paintings, you get more demand, you get invited to more things. There’s a lot of other things going on. So this is very complicated. I recommend you read my book as a starting point. Don’t think of advertising as making a sale. Think of it as getting leads. You’ve got to track your numbers develop a cost per lead strategy, you know, what percentage of your painting sold? Are you willing to give up for advertising? Well, it should be somewhere about 10 to 20% In the beginning, maybe even more in the beginning. Because you have to establish yourself, you know, like some people will pay half of the ad that a gallery runs and that way you know you’re you’re branding yourself with that made You’re a gallery you go to that gallery and say, Listen, you’re you know, you’re I’m on your, I’m in your gallery anyway. And I’ll pay for half of the ad. And the gallery gets the attention, but they’re promoting you that makes you look better. They had helps them sell, that helps them brand and you know, it’s a win win deal. So there’s a lot of things you can do, you know, choose cold or warm audiences, but I always try to go for warm Facebook targeting is probably not enough. Facebook isn’t selling a lot of art for a lot of people, but it is selling probably the place that’s selling the most is people who follow your actual page. You know, here’s the latest painting I’ve done. You know, a lot of artists buy paintings and a lot of collectors buy paintings. The key is how do you get collectors, real collectors to know you and follow you on Facebook. And the way to do that is to go on LinkedIn, to collectors groups, and start commenting on posts. Don’t ever promote yourself just comment do smart things. Then they start looking for you. They look you up on LinkedIn or they look you up on Facebook or Instagram. They follow you and the next thing you know they’re buying paintings. There’s a lot to all of this. You paid a high cost of marketing for that online gallery 50% But that’s what we all pay for galleries, you know, most of us pay 50% for our galleries on consignment. And that’s that’s worth doing. So I recommend you keep your online gallery try to get a couple more galleries look for other ways. You don’t ever want to have all your eggs in one basket because sometimes people drop eggs right? So galleries go out of business. Things change for online galleries, you know, there’s a lot of things but try to spread your risk. Anyway, that is today’s art marketing minute.

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

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 how to balance the practice of making and selling art; and what it means to have a “title” as an artist.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 119 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

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 you can send them in or upload a video question art marketing.com/questions. Or you can email it to me Eric at art marketing.com. Most people email them. And my producer Amandine, who is French, has the questions for us. Amandine?

Amandine
The first question is from TJ Pruitt from Virginia. If your primary purpose with your art is not monetizing, how best do you showcase art that you want to reach people, but are not primarily concerned in selling? For me, I enjoy when my art brings joy to others. So I want you to give it the best possible exposure for that cause.

Eric Rhoads
All right, TJ, I’m gonna tell you a story. Great question. I hold these week long retreats. I do one in the Adirondacks every June although I think I’m going to stop doing it pretty soon because I you know, this is like the summer will be like the 12th one and I’m kind of sick of doing it. I want to go somewhere different. I don’t know if I’ll stop or not. But I might. Anyway, I hold these retreats to do another one a fall color week and one time we did fall color week and in Canada ask us Park Banff Lake Louise in Canada, and we had an unseasonably early snow and a massive snowstorm. And a lot of people didn’t want to go out. So we were painting out looking out the windows and painting indoors. Some of us went out and painted part of the time. But I offered some personal coaching to people because I teach marketing. And a bunch of people took me up on it. And this one guy wanted some time and we started talking about him wanting to sell his art. And he was asking how to do it. And I could sense that his heart wasn’t really into it. So I just said, you know, why do you want to sell your art? And he said, Well, I guess because I thought I was supposed to and I said well, there’s no supposed to Why do you really want to sell art? He says, I don’t know. I said do you need the money? No, I don’t need the money. I retired at a great job. I don’t need the money. I said then why do you want to sell your art? He says Well, I guess I don’t really want to sell it. He says I what we finally figured out is I asked him a bunch of questions. And we figured out that his need was that he wanted to contribute somehow. He wanted some recognition. For his art. It’s always nice to be validated that somebody else likes your art, which is not always the case. You know, sometimes I’ll give a painting to a family member and they’ll go Oh, thanks, you know, with gritted teeth. Because you know our it’s a personal thing, sometimes, you know, they’re not going to like it so we crafted a plan for him to market his art but not to sell it. At the end we determined that he wanted to leverage his art to help organizations and charities that he loved. So we worked on a plan to get him involved in those charities in auctions and we find ways to help his art help others and we left he was on fire with a mission now. I go into a lot of that stuff in my book. There’s a lot of different things you can do to get involved but essentially, if your charities local, then you need to become famous locally. And you have to follow a marketing plan to become famous locally because they want your art and in your art will raise more money. If you’re putting A piece of garbage art into an auction, it’s not going to sell, that’s going to be embarrassing. So you got to be good, you got to make sure that you’re you’re living up to it, you know, and, and I did that one time, when I wasn’t very good, I put a piece of art in, in a auction for the kids, elementary school, and nobody bought it. And so that just reflected badly on me. So you know, now I’m really, really careful, I had a moment, one time, it was really a great moment, when I had this great big painting, I did it just because I loved it, it was one of my better ones at the time. And I just gave it to this charity auction, and it ended up you know, it was the number one fundraiser for that auction, they had me stand up, you know, they’re holding it up, and I got a lot of recognition, it was kind of cool. And, and at the same time, the charity made a lot of money. So that was really the goal. So find a cause, find a cause or two. And there’s no rule about a painting has to make you money. You know, painting is about bringing you joy. Most people don’t start painting because they want to make a living becoming a painter painter, most people want to paint because they love painting, they want to get good at it. And then a lot of them say, you know, I kind of like to make a living at it. And a lot of that goes back to the recognition. But a lot of it is about, hey, I don’t want to work in this crummy job anymore. I want to I’d rather paint all day. And if I can paint and make my living, that’s even better. So you might consider depending on the quality of your work to explore, leaving a few select pieces to sub select museums, you might not get into the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the LA or Chicago museums. But unless you’re really already famous, and even then probably not. But you know, there’s hundreds of small local community museums that need art and art donations. And I’m actually working on a lifetime plan to build a museum of plein air and of realism. Because those are two areas that I’m really, really, really excited about all I need. All I need is somebody with a lot of money to fund it. I need a building in a major city. And I have all the art and some of the art I need to get yet but anyway, that’s the kind of thing you can do is, is donate art. And you have to put some stipulations whenever you donate anything, you got to put stipulations. Now there’s a guy by the name of Alphonse mukha, great painter, was really known for his art nouveau work. But he was a brilliant painter, he did this thing, this series of paintings called the Czech epic, or the Slav Epic, or something like that. And I’ve seen them, but they have been in hiding, because he gave them to the city of Budapest, and said that they must show them but he never said when or how long. So they sat in a warehouse for 100 years before they were shown. Now they’re starting to get shown a little bit, but you want to make sure you stipulate, you know, here’s what to do. You can’t sell my paintings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Next question Amandine.

Amandine
The next question is from Eugene Fama. Why does striving for titles from one’s peer group create unnecessary stress? Does it distract from the essence and joy of painting for pleasure? Are there any benefits to a title? What are the negatives, I see people spending a lot of money chasing the dream of a title.

Eric Rhoads
Now Eugene, because you didn’t specify what kind of title I’m gonna have to guess I’m not sure what you mean by titles, I can think of a couple of things. One is to have a title in a local art club, you know, like President or treasurer, but I don’t think that’s what you mean. I think what you probably mean is a title from an organization. For instance, there’s one called the oil painters of America, there’s the one called the American impressionist society, there’s lots of them. If you mean a title from one of those, let’s explore the pros and cons. Now, these titles are typically not political. They can be but usually not, you get them from winning a certain number of awards annually. And if you win a certain number of awards annually and so many years in a row, and you get to accumulate a certain number of awards, that adds up to getting voted in and getting a title. Oftentimes, it’s a master title or a signature member title. And that way you can sign your paintings with that, that master title so for instance, for the oil painters of America Opa, you sign your painting, you know, Eric Rhoads comma op, an OP AMR OPM, and the idea is that you are an OPA master, right? And so, that means you’ve earned that title. Now there is prestige to that huge prestige among painters who know how hard you work to get there. And they know that the standard is high that you don’t get those awards. And when those awards by putting together crummy paintings, you get a good standard. And but you have to enter a lot of paintings until you get to the point where you’ve elevated yourself. Now among some collectors and some galleries that is also very prestigious. So that’s a pretty big deal. So keep that in mind. Now, the reality is there are big names out there brilliant masters, who we all know and love, who don’t have any titles. And there are some who have them, but they don’t use them. It just depends on on what you want to do. The process of getting a title takes a lot of commitment and time. And hopefully it elevates your standard of work. And when you don’t, when you learn, you grow, you try harder next time. And you keep trying more and more to win. Now, competitions of any kind make you stronger. In our own plein air salon competition, which is monthly by the way. It’s not by though it’s also not all plein air, it’s all kinds of painting portraits, figures, everything. But because it’s sponsored by plein air magazine, that’s, that’s why it’s called that. But anyway, I’ve seen the quality increase over the years because the people who enter get better and better and better and better and better. And so and by the way, there are top artists who enter their new artists who enter their new artists who win their top artists who win, you know, there’s no rhyme or reason. But when you compete, you get better. And the same is true when you enter these organizations. If you’re a member first you got to belong. I, California art club does this too. They have I don’t think they have titles. So I’m not sure anyway. I’ve never tried to get a title, I’m not so sure that I have the time to try to get a title because it’s not really all that important to me. But I don’t have to make my living selling my work. And I think I could make a living selling my work without a title. But it might be come important. At some point in my life. If I ever decide to paint full time or something which I don’t think I’ll do. But you never know. We all have to make our own art journey about our own goals, our own interests, our own time, not somebody else’s desires for us. I paint because I love to paint, you probably paint because you love to paint, I don’t send the galleries a lot of work. Because I don’t do a lot of work. I don’t want the pressure I don’t I turn down shows. Because I don’t want to pressure creating shows, I just want to paint I want to have fun. And if I get some good ones, I’ll send them off to the galleries. I don’t even care if they sell but they do sometimes. And sometimes they don’t. If I were making my living full time, I would care a lot more, right. But I make my living publishing art magazines and conferences and things like that. So it’s not about that. I love that I can just paint without pressure. And that might be you. You might want to just paint without pressure. Nothing else matters to me. I don’t need awards. I don’t need titles. I don’t care what happens. I just want to paint because I enjoy it. And you know, and I like to paint so I can hang out with my friends and I want to be good enough so that I don’t completely embarrass myself. But do what you want to do. Follow what you want to do. Don’t follow up Pied Piper. All right, that is today’s art marketing minute.

Announcer 1:13:23
This has been the marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com.

Eric Rhoads 1:13:31
And I also want to remind you to join me at plein air live coming up in March. PleinAirlive.com Join me at the plein air convention. You know the it’s pleinairconvention.com which is coming up in May. And if you’re not already a subscriber to plein air magazine, man, you will love it. You really will love it. I know I am not being humble about that. But I hear so many so many people just say they can’t wait. You know, some people have had it for 10 years. They just can’t wait for it to come in. I hope that would be the case for you. And if you don’t love it, you can cancel but nobody ever does. Well. There was that one guy one time. If you’ve not seen my blog where I talk about art and life and stuff and things, it’s called Sunday coffee, you can get it for free weekly at Coffeewitheric.com We got a big, big, big audience on that. I don’t know how many but I know it’s big. People keep forwarding it. That’s nice. Also, I’m on the air daily on Facebook shows called Art School live where hundreds of artists do demonstrations and talks one every day five days a week I’m on noon Eastern every weekday mostly live sometimes replay. You can subscribe on YouTube by searching streamline art and hit the subscribe button. Also, please follow me Eric Rhoads on Instagram and Facebook and by the way, I don’t have it here to show you. But I got my Instagram. I’m not my Instagram. I got my YouTube plaques. designating they’ve got 100,000 followers. That’s a pretty big deal for me. It’s a plaque, you know, it hangs up somewhere and gets dust but it’s kind of nice to get recognition. Anyway, it’s a, it’s a great thing to, to see a lot of people get something out of it. Anyway, I’m Eric Rhodes. I’m the publisher and founder of plein air magazine, among others. Thank you for tuning in today. And remember, it’s a big world out there. Go paint it. 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.

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

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

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads, author of Make More Money Selling Your Art, answers the questions: “Should I start an LLC or get a business license before selling my art?” and “How do we engage more art buyers?”

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 115 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 114 >

Click here to listen to the Art Marketing Minute!

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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