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 shares advice on the idea of setting out a tip jar while painting in public, and marketing tips for getting into fine art galleries.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 36 >>>

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 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
Here’s an anonymous question from a listener and I don’t know the name. It came from social media. It says I paint outside a lot, and I get a lot of compliments. But I’m wondering if it would be okay to set out a hat, much like street musicians where it can collect tips. What do you think?

Well, I spent a lot of time in the direct marketing world and they have a saying, test everything. I think it’s well worth trying it and testing it. But keep in mind that if you encourage more viewing of your performance, then it might be disruptive. I test it though I put out a hat, throw some money in it to private so to speak, so that no one wants to be first, right? They want to see that social proof that somebody else has put money in. I’d also try a hat with a sign that says something like I make my living as an artist or I’m a starving artist, anything you can do to help any typical help and try it both ways and see which one works. I think it’s worth trying. Why not? And of course if you want to gather people around And have them watched that’s fine too. You could also put on your side you know paintings are available for sale and of course you could put some out that are for sale if you want to do that. There are really no rules. I think everything should be tried and tested if you’re comfortable with it, as long as it’s ethical.

Now the next question comes from Peter in New York, who says I’d appreciate listening. I appreciate listening to the podcast on YouTube, the as we put it there to any marketing tips for getting into fine art galleries would be interesting. Thank you.

Well, I’m happy to help Peter. We’ve talked about this a lot. We continue to, you might want to do a couple things. First off, listen to some other art marketing podcasts, and also our marketing minute podcast and also go to artmarketing.com where I’ve got a lot of articles and things about this, but the first thing is to put yourself in the shoes of the gallery. What is it they want? What are they trying to do? What do they need, what will make their job easier. They want artists who are going to sell and sell well Who are going to make money for them who don’t sit and take up valuable wall space without selling? So how can you prove to them you’re that artist. Next ask yourself what their life is like. My friend at a gallery in New York is annoyed by all the email and mail and packages he gets from artists soliciting him. Most of it goes in the trash without ever looking. Now he can find artists on his own and he can get referrals to artists. And this looking at all the emails and packages is a giant time suck. So he just doesn’t do it. He just ignores it. Now most artists don’t do their homework. He says that he doesn’t sell any modern or abstract paintings yet more than half of the artists who send in are sending in modern or abstract painting, so it’s just more of a waste of time. So do your homework. I have a whole volume on getting into galleries in my video series and I touch on it pretty heavily in my book, make more money selling your art, but the best thing to do is to get invited to not push yourself now sometimes you can but it can backfire. on YouTube, so somebody too pushy, somebody doesn’t want to deal with you. You need a strategy to get invited in and I go into depth on that in some of my videos. But the bottom line is how can you get them to invite you without ever calling them without ever emailing them? And without ever mailing them a bunch of stuff to make them aware of you ask yourself that question, how could I get them to invite me in? There’s actually a lot of ways Why don’t you sit down and write down six or seven or eight or 10 or 20 ways that get somebody to invite you in without calling, emailing or or mailing? Now if you can answer that question, you’re going to solve the problem. I’ll let you think about that.

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

Remember to Submit Your 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.

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 explains how to handle it if the gallery representing you isn’t focused on selling paintings, and how you can educate “art voyeurs” to become art buyers at galleries and festivals.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 33 >>>

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 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

In the marketing minute I try to answer art marketing questions from you. You can email your questions to me [email protected] By the way, there’s a lot of content at artmarketing.com. A lot of ideas for you. So here, this listener said he’d like to be anonymous. I assume it’s a he but I actually I know it’s a here because, I saw his email. And he says, My art is in a new gallery, but the gallery owner is focused on creating her own art. And as far as I can tell, isn’t focusing on marketing the gallery. There are no Facebook campaigns, no ads, no email campaigns, there’s nothing going on. And all the people coming into the gallery are the owners, friends and artists, I’m not seeing a lot of activity. So the first part of my two part question is how do I advise and help this gallery owner, reach out to the local market and help educate them about buying local landscape paintings? And what main steps should she take? I don’t know if the gallery has other than landscape paintings, but the answer is going to be the same no matter what and that is, first off, you gotta you gotta learn marketing and I can help her with that. You can point her to some of my marketing stuff, but I even have a blog for galleries, but I don’t want to be now. Negative so forgive this. But if you own a business, any kind of a business, but especially in this case in art gallery, it cannot be a hobby, or it will fail unless you’re independently wealthy. On the other hand, a gallery that knows how to promote an advertising is more likely to succeed. Now, my gallery works very hard for its artists and for itself, it’s always getting local stories in the newspaper on local websites, it’s always advertising, it’s doing direct mail and social media. They’re really working it they sell a lot of art. As a matter of fact, I sent a piece in and two weeks later, it was gone. They sold it. One of the reasons I selected this gallery is because they’re aggressive. The worst thing is the gallery that does nothing and hopes people will walk in and buy something, but that’s kind of the old days It doesn’t work that way very much anymore. So yeah, there are gallery owners out there that have people walk in and but the traffic is typically not enough. So one gallery I, I know one owner, I know actually makes calls all week long to potential and previous buyers, you have to work it, gallery owners have to work hard. That’s why I say, if you’re in a gallery and you’re in a good one, they’re earning their money, don’t be so worried about paying them their commission, they’re earning it, you know, you don’t want to be the one that’s on the phone all day trying to drum up business do you. Chances are if the gallery owner is serious, she would be doing all these things now. Now maybe she needs to learn them. And maybe you can offer help and suggest that she do some things but the way I would approach it is say, hey, I’ve noticed I’m not seeing a lot of marketing and so on. Would you be willing to let me help you with that? Or would you be willing to let me give you some ideas if she or he says no, then move on. You will spend a lot of time frustrated that they’re not working for you if your paintings are in that gallery. So in that case, If you don’t believe they’re going to work it, move on, because it’s not going to do you any good paintings are going to sit on the wall and not move, you don’t want that. You want a gallery, that paintings are moving off the wall all the time or as much as possible. So this goes to the point about selecting a gallery. We artists think it’s up to them to select us. And to some extent it is because you want to be invited in. I have a whole strategy on that in one of my videos but I tell artists to develop their wish list of galleries that they want to be in and I give them very specific information on how to promote yourself ethically and appropriately to them. But in your target list, you’ve got to do your homework. Is the gallery advertising and are they doing it frequently? are they sending out invitations to shows? you should get on their list. You should get on their email list and find out are they doing a lot of shows? Do they generate publicity? Are they properly working social media and I say properly because most social media strategies are flawed and most of the things that people think they’re doing a social media strategy is not working for them. And they can’t tell. They can’t see because they assume everything they post is getting out there. The reality is only 2%. Now 2% of everything you post, let’s say you have 5000 people on your Facebook, and you post your assuming all 5000 people see it, no 2% see it. It’s not always the same 2% but usually these days, they’re repeating a lot of the same 2% so there’s strategies around that. But the social media advertising can be effective if it’s done right, but it’s just not a matter of pressing boost post. It’s not a matter of doing what everybody else is doing. There’s a whole new realm of technological developments and new ways of making social media work. We’re doing a lot of it. And we’re using some experts to help us with that. Most people don’t know about those kinds of things. But when interviewing a gallery asked them about their process, how do they sell Who does the selling? How do they present their work to buyers? What happens when somebody walks into the gallery? How do they get visitors? How much is sold online? How much selling do they do via the phone? And how often are they selling artwork? If they say, well, we’re selling one or two pieces a month, you have to ask, Well, how are they paying the rent? Well, if they’re expensive pieces there, they can pay the rent. But if they’re inexpensive pieces, they’re eventually going to be out of business and you want to hang with winners, you know, you could be friends with people and I have a lot of friends that are not necessarily successful at what they do. They’re still friends and I love them. But I’m not going to put my career in their hands. I’m going to put my career in my own hands and in the hands of people who are going to succeed and that’s what you want to do. So do your homework. Your second question says, I find that many art lovers who attend art galleries and festivals are art voyeurs who visit as a form of entertainment instead of for the purpose of purchasing art. How do we educate this fan segment and convert them to buyers? I think your term art voyeurs is interesting. You know, I used to be an art lawyer, I would go to art shows because I liked art. And once in a while I’d buy a piece. I never ever went intending to buy a piece. And I don’t think most people go intending to buy a piece. They go to see things to see what they like. And if they see something they like, they might buy it. I have been literally to hundreds of art openings. And I can tell you that a good gallery can convert what you call art voyeurs into art buyers, and a poor gallery doesn’t know how to do it. And I think it’s about the gallery and their sales process, the training they give their people and how they engage people. Clearly, you start by inviting past buyers, known buyers, people who have spent money in the past because you want them they’re spending money again, second, you target people who have money and you can Find people through various lists. You can advertise in targeted places affluent magazines. For instance, my magazine. If you’re thinking a national strategy, my magazine Fine Art connoisseur is the most affluent art collector magazine in existence. It’s got billionaires and multimillionaires and no it doesn’t have tons and tons of them. It’s got probably three 400 billionaires and 1000 multimillionaires. How many do you need to buy a painting? Really? I have one gallery tells me every time he advertises he sells an average of $80,000 worth of artwork because he’s selling pieces that are expensive. Now that doesn’t work for everybody but there are places that you can go for affluent people. And so you want a gallery that’s working every show, all their sales people are they’re working, they’re engaging customers appropriately, asking them questions, engaging them about art, and they gently nudge someone into a decision. Now, other galleries I know are not working it. They sit and they drink with their customers, they socialize, they’re having a good time. But they’re not doing any selling. They’re just hanging out with people and you need to do some selling. And that doesn’t mean you have to be inappropriate or nudge people too hard or be obnoxious. There’s very appropriate ways to do it happens all the time. And and if you go to a good gallery, and you observe how they do it, you’ll see that these people are pros and they know how to do it. So don’t do it the wrong way. Don’t be pushy or obnoxious. Everybody though, needs a little bit of a nudge. You know, sometimes they just need to be kind of help realize that they love it and they want to take it home. Chances are these art voyeurs you call are coming to the gallery that you described, and chances are, they’re probably not serious about buying, but they can get nudged into it. The gallery that you described doesn’t sound like they’re serious about selling. So they’re going to be serious about it when they can’t pay their rent But by then it’s too late, of course, because, you know, when you’re once you’re out of money, you’re out of money. And it’s hard to fix that. So you got to be proactive and get ahead of this. So it’s important for everybody, whether you’re an artist, whether you’re a gallery, whether you have a business, it’s important to understand the principles of selling and marketing. Selling in marketing can make the difference. I was in a meeting today, and we were talking about a strategy that would make certain things that we do even bigger, and it’s all always about selling and marketing. So keep that in mind. I hope this is helpful.

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

Remember to Submit Your 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.

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 shares why you might want to reconsider writing exhibition proposals to get into art galleries, and how to build your own mailing list.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 32 >>>

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 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads
In the art marketing minute I try to answer your art marketing questions from things you send in email your questions to Eric at art marketing.com. Here’s a question from Carolyn Hancock. It doesn’t say where Carolyn is from, but she says Eric, I’d love to get your feedback on writing an exhibition proposal. I’ve created a body of work that should be exhibited as a whole For the full impact, what is the best way to introduce today’s galleries or museums or nonprofits? Thanks for all you do for supporting artists. But Carolyn, I gotta tell you, I’m not big on writing proposals. I got it. I have spent so much of my life writing proposals and having them rejected and not having them even read in some cases, that I decided I’m just not doing proposals anymore. I think it’s a big giant, waste of time. Now, there are certain environments where proposals are necessary. You know, like if you’re doing proposals for a grant or something, absolutely got to do it. It all seems very formal to me, but I like to think that we tend to hide behind email and proposals and PDFs and things like that. The reality is that if you want to get something done, it’s best to either get face to face or phone to phone. Let me explain why. Let’s imagine for a second that you’re a busy gallery or music Director, you get hundreds of emails a week. everybody’s asking you the same question. Everybody wants to be in your gallery. You know, gallery owners tell me they get 1500 2000 unsolicited artists who are reaching out every every week or every month to try to get into their gallery. Well, you don’t want to do what everybody else is doing. You want to be different. And so if you’re busy, I was with a gallery director. We were having a meeting and while we were doing meeting, he was opening up glancing in and throwing things in the garbage. And I said, What is that he said, you know, artists proposals people have sent, he said, and I get 150 emails a day. He said, I if I spent all my time doing this, I never get anything else done. So to them, it’s, you know, it’s important, but they have other things they have to do too. So if you’re busy and you have to sort through things or you have your assistant if you have one sort through things. Well, what’s left is about 2% to get their attention, if you open your own email, and your goal is to get Through it fast, you’re looking for certain keywords or clues. So you can hit Delete fast, right? I get dozens of proposals. Every month, I get proposals for articles. I don’t hit Delete in those cases, I just forward them to my editors because I don’t make those decisions they do. It’s up to them. And I get proposals for tech stuff. Sometimes I forward it, sometimes I delete it, you know, I get probably dozens of people every month say, you know, we want to do SEO for you or we want to build websites for you. I already know we have that covered. So I just hit delete, I don’t even respond. I can’t possibly respond to everybody. I’m not trying to be a jerk. But these are people who are coming unsolicited. If I know somebody, I’m always going to respond anyway. People are looking for ways to eliminate work. And so if you’re one of the many proposals coming in the door, chances are they’re not going to read it or if they read it, they’re going to read the first headline and if the headline doesn’t grab their attention, they’re gone. So I scan things that come through. So guess what never happens though. Nobody ever calls me. It’s very rare. Once in a while people will email and ask for an appointment once it all somebody will call. And sometimes I give appointments to people that way but it’s got to pique my interest, you got to get my attention, you got to get their attention. And if not, you’re not going to get an appointment. Now I’m not trying to sound difficult. It’s just that there’s a lot going on and I can’t do it all. So you gotta kind of pick and choose. So what you say in your email or your headline or your subject line has to pique interest if you are going to do a proposal. You need something in that top headline in that proposal that’s going to sound exciting and get them interested. And it shouldn’t be about you. It should be about them. In other words, what is this going to do for me this is going to draw crowds. This is going to get a lot of attention. This is going to get national publicity Look at what it’s going to do for them always shift this to what’s in it for them, or what’s in it for me, right? So don’t make things about you make things about them. If you can get a meeting, then you can sell yourself on your idea and you can overcome objections when they come up. I was at a meeting the other day and somebody brought up a couple of objections. I said, I’m glad you mentioned that, because here’s why. That’s not a problem. And then they went, Oh, yeah, okay. But you can’t do that when they’re reading a proposal. And most people are not going to give you the time and attention to call you and ask you those questions. They’re just going to move on. So tailor your presentation to people’s needs to so you want to start by asking them, what are they looking for? What are their needs, if you’re doing gallery shows what kind of shows you looking for? What do you want them to accomplish? And then when you’re doing your proposal, you can say what you mentioned that you really need something that’s going to generate a lot of publicity. Here’s why this is going to generate a lot of publicity. See, that’s how it works. selling yourself In person is the best way you don’t have to take any sales courses. You just have to be yourself and be willing to tell people what’s on your mind. But always listen first, remember, you got two ears, and one mouth, use two ears and listen, stop and listen and then adjust your course as you go. And of course, if you know someone who will introduce you in, you’ve got an 80% chance of increasing the likelihood of getting a meeting. So I hope this all helps.

The next question came up in our figurative art convention marketing sessions. It says the question is about how and why to build your list. Well, what would your life be like if you owned your own media? Let’s say you’re me. Let’s say you own Fine Art connoisseur magazine and plein air magazine and realism today and American watercolor and fine art today and Plein Air today or the Plein Air convention of the figure convention, or the video companies, streamline and Liliedahl and creative catalyst. All of those are platforms and their opportunities to promote. So if you could advertise your own in your own media for free, it’s a real benefit, right? Well, I can do that. Other people pay a lot of money to be in my media, but I can advertise my own stuff for free because it’s my company promoting my company, right? So what if you could do that? Well, building a list is like having your own media. When you have a mail list and email list and and by the way, both are a good idea. You can email them or mail them as much as you want. Of course, you want to be respectful. You don’t want to over mail, you want to be careful about that. You want to make sure they’ve opted in to receive things, but you can do anything you want. So now you can email things like new painting announcements, workshop announcements, newsletters and things Like that, whereas you could still buy advertising and you still should buy advertising. But this is a way to expand on it. So I like to say, look for everything you do to drive one particular initiative and that’s building your list. I try to do that very much. on your website, you should have something that makes them join your list on your social media talk about it, you should have business cards to talk about it. You should have it on the signature of the bottom of your email talks about it on your you know, everything that you do talk about build my list. Well, the way to do that is to create an incentive product. Let’s say you want to do the 20 best paintings you’ve ever done or 25 best paintings, you can say I’ve got an ebook of the 25 best paintings I’ve ever done in the stories behind them, takes you 10 minutes to create it. Make a nice cover, put it on your website, they click on it says you know free, just enter your email address. Now you have the ability to to email them and and talk to them. And this is the way to build customers for whatever it is you’re doing. And if you want something very specific, build an E book that’s specific to that. So if you wanted something for painters, and something different for collectors have a different subject for each and that collectors will go with the one subject, the painters will go with the other. Of course, we’re finding today, a lot of collectors are learning to paint, so you might get them to do both. Anyway, I hope that helps. But having your own media is a beautiful thing. So if you can, you could do that. That’s a great thing. And the nice thing about email is that you can control it a little bit more, right, you can mail it now, there are things called open rates. And so if you get like a 18 or 15% open rate that’s considered pretty good. Not everybody’s going to open every email. And so you know, that’s in a social media only 2% of the people on your newsfeed ever see what you’ve put out there. Only 2% so if you’ve got 10 thousand people, you’re getting to 200 people. And we all think that everybody sees everything, but it’s just not true. So this is something you can control a little bit more. Now you got to have the speaking of headlines and subject lines, you got to have powerful headlines and subject lines on your email subject, and on your headline because if those don’t draw people in, then nobody’s gonna pay attention to it, so you’ve got some homework to do. Anyway, I hope that’s been helpful. I want to remind you that I’ll be doing art marketing three mornings live at the upcoming plein air convention and also the upcoming figurative art convention. It’s kind of fun to do live because we can interact and you can ask your questions. So come and join us. Anyway, that is today’s art marketing minute.

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

Remember to Submit Your 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.

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 gives advice on quitting your “day job” to become a full-time artist, and the best way to approach established art galleries.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 22 >>>

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 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads 0:23
Thank you Jim Kipping. And thank you for joining us today. My goal is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists. So let’s get right to today’s questions. Here’s a question from Barbara H. of Suffolk, Virginia. My art is selling and I’m becoming better known in the art world. When is it time for me to quit my day job and go into art full time. Well, I did a product. I don’t mean to hype you on a product here but I did a product how to quit your job and become a successful full time artists and I go into about three hours of depth in how to do that and what the time is. should be. And basically the idea is you want to have this overlap, you want to get to the point where you’re consistently replacing close to your or maybe all of your other income as a part time artist, or at least having the confidence that you’re about to get there. Because starting out, you know, you’re gonna have to spend some money on marketing. And it’s better to spend that money on marketing. When you’ve got a job and you got some extra income. You got to build yourself up, you got to make sure that you’re working all the all the different angles. By the way, I’m going to talk at the plein air convention about a guy I met recently had lunch with just a few weeks ago, who is making $5 million as an artist, and it’s a great story, and he does everything the opposite of everything everybody else does. And I’m going to tell that story on stage in art marketing Bootcamp, because it’s so interesting and I learned so much from him and how he built his business to $5 million. This is a guy and artist and $5 million. I mean, you know, he’s rolling in it, this guy is rich. So anyway, not that it’s all about being rich, but it never hurts, right? So, you know, if your works being represented by a gallery, or you lost a gallery, maybe you can get the gallery person to give you a recommendation or a letter or something if you have to switch galleries. The other thing is you never want to have all your eggs in one basket. Because if you’re in one gallery, and they go away, guess what happens to you. Now you’re scrambling and now Now you’re going to have weeks months without any sales until you get somebody till you get them up to speed until they can market you and get their people familiar with you. So I like to have three. I think three is a nice manageable number. You can have more than that, but not too much more. Some people do four or five, but it depends on how much work you can produce and how much quality work can produce. So you want to have a couple so you have some security. And you know, if you want to get into galleries, then well the best way to do it is to get invited in that means they need to invite you That’s not you calling them because, you know, there’s a sense of begging. And by the way galleries get dozens, sometimes hundreds of calls and emails and packages, and they just kind of get sick of it. So you want them to reach out to you. And I have a lot of strategies in my book and some other places in my videos that where I talk about how to get them to reach out to you. So one of the ways to get them to reach out to you is to get referred in so find other artists who are in the gallery and talk to them and get to know them. And then maybe at some point, once you’re comfortable with that, ask them if they’d make a recommendation, and they oftentimes well.

Eric Rhoads 3:35
Next question is from Sandy, in Colorado. Hi, Sandy. All right. So one day, we got to figure out how to get these people to actually call in and do it like a talk show and then I’ll, be able to interact with them. That’d be more fun. Anyway, Sandy says I’ve been in a series of local galleries that have closed, what is the best way to approach major established galleries? I think I just answered that question in the The above. But you know, you got to get references you got to get invited in, you’ve got to ask the owner of the gallery to contact people who purchased your artwork, if a gallery goes out of business, at least you could do is see if they’ll possibly give you the list of people who bought your artwork, so you can contact them direct or give them to another gallery. And I like to have the galleries Give me the names, I have an agreement with them as I’ll never approach them or I’ll never violate the agreement with the gallery but I like to send them a thank you card. And so they’ll they’ll send me the note and say, I’ll write a note to them and and send it on and then I have the address and I’m not going to ever do anything with it until the gallery goes out of business. And I don’t anticipate my gallery going out of business knock wood. But anyway, I think that it’s a good practice. And you also want to put your website and stuff on the back of the on the panel and burn it in there with a wood burner so it doesn’t get covered up and that way people can kind of go to your thing, get your newsletter, get on your list and stuff like that. So I hope that helps. And anyway, I wish you luck. Sandy in Colorado.

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

Remember to Submit Your 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.

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 advises if you should ever pay to get into a gallery, and what to do if a hot lead seems to suddenly disappear.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 18 >>>

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 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads 0:23
Thank you Jim Kipping. And thank you for joining us today. My goal is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists. So let’s get right to today’s questions. So here’s a question. This is from Kim cast in Cape Elizabeth main. As an artist, Eric, should I be paying to be in a gallery? Well, this is a loaded question. We hear from a lot of galleries that charge artists to be in them. Some of them are legitimate. Some maybe not so legitimate. You got to do your homework. You want to talk to the artists look on the website. Talk to the artists they feature too. They sell work, do they market their artists? What else are they doing for you? Is it worth doing? You know, what does it end up costing you ultimately, can they be trusted? It boils down if they work or not work, you know, are they selling or not selling. Now there are some legitimate pay for play galleries that people go into that work. But keep in mind if your work is ready, you really should be able to find a gallery to represent you who will take a commission and sell your work on consignment, usually that’s 50%, sometimes less depending on the stature of the artist. The goal here remember is to sell art and for selling art, nothing beats getting into a really good gallery with experienced salespeople a client base of collectors so they can help build you up. And a gallery who’s advertising and promoting themselves and their artists You know, that’s what you want to look for. You can also look for a local artist Co Op gallery might be a good place to start. So you pay by giving your time you know by working in the gallery part of the time But you’re not putting money out of your pocket. The question I always wonder is if I’m putting money out of my pocket, if I’m paying you, you know, what’s the likelihood that I’m going to have you sell my art? So I think that’s a good question. Thank you for asking it.

Eric Rhoads 2:13
Next question comes from David Terry, of Jacksonville, Oregon. I know David. David’s a fabulous painter and a fabulous commissioned painter, and he did my portrait. So David says, I have a prospective client call about commissioning a painting of his granddaughter and had great conversations about it, but all of a sudden, nothing. I followed up with an email saying I look forward to working with him, but I’ve had no response. What’s next? Well, you know, people tend to run in hide when they don’t want to deal with something. So there’s something in this discussion that went wrong. If somebody shows interest and then disappears, chances are he or she liked your work. They liked what they’d seen on your website. And so maybe the problem Was price. And so I think what I do is I’d phone him. And I’d say this Listen, you asked me about a commission for your granddaughter, and I’ve heard nothing from you. So I’m guessing maybe my price was too high. But I’d really like to find a way to do it. That’s a win win. Could we sit down and meet in person, no obligation. Let’s see if we can work something out. I won’t be offended if the price is too high, but maybe we can come up with an idea. All right, and then try to get him to meet with you. If you invest time in somebody. chances are they’re going to give you their money, right? So ask him to bring his five favorite photos of his granddaughter, and then also anybody else you might want to have painted, bring some photos of them, then you meet with them. And you say listen, show me the pictures before you even talk prices to them, show me the pictures. And you look at the pictures and then you say okay, I want to pull out some of my paintings, and you show them paintings. In your portfolio of full body paintings, you know, head to toe you show three quarter you show portrait you show You know, just neck above and so on. And then you show different styles and you say, okay, which of these do you like? Which of the ones do you not like, which are the ones you know, are have the feel that you’d like to see hanging in your house, and so on, get him engaged, get him to start talking about it. Well, I like this, I don’t like that and start writing that stuff down. Now that he’s engaged, he’s more likely to do it. Now. After that. You can just say, Hey, listen, we’ve kind of talked about this, but the elephant in the room is probably the price. I you know, you disappeared on me, which I’m thinking is probably my price was too high. What What do you really want to pay? And just be quiet, don’t say anything and say what he wants to pay. And he’s gonna say, Well, I really didn’t want to embarrass you and I didn’t want to make you feel like your stuff wasn’t worth it. But I couldn’t possibly pay that much money to say, Oh, that’s okay. I understand that this happens all the time. What do you want to pay? And he’ll say, Well, I’d like to pay this or somewhere in this range. And you could say, well, that’s great. More than I, you know, this less than I normally would get, and but maybe we can figure out a way to get there. So, you know, you might say like, what if I did this one and did one other at the same price? You know, if I got two Commission’s I’d be willing to lower the price for that or, could we compromise and not do such a big portrait? Could we do a smaller one and we can come in at your price? Look for something like that. And chances are you’re going to get it and chances are they’re going to be happy and you’re going to be happy because you have it now. You have to make the decision. Do you want to violate your pricing and sometimes we all have to do it and sometimes, you just can’t have to make that call. So I hope that helps.

Eric Rhoads 5:40
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 and 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.

Remember to Submit Your 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.

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 shares advice for licensing your images to sell more art, insider info on if collectors care if you have a “day job,” and ideas for at least finding a job in an industry you love.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 11 >>>

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 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:

Here’s a question from Jane in Truckee California.
Jane says: I have a question about art licensing. I was contacted last week by a company that is interested in licensing a collection of my artwork as a wholesaler of Giclees. I currently sell my originals and Giclees of my artwork at two small galleries here in the Tahoe/Truckee area. After thinking about it I have decided that the only way I could do it is to create a new collection of paintings only for the purpose of licensing the images and keep it entirely separate from my other work. I don’t want to get any static from my current collectors. Do you know anything about licensing and what do you think I should do? Do artists commonly do this? Will it help or hurt my career?
Jane…. Licensing is a very good opportunity. Imagine what could happen to your career if your paintings were on mouse pads, mugs, calendars, and so on. Its a big deal to be invited in. I’m not sure I’d be too concerned about a new series, they see something they want, consider giving it to them. Get a good attorney to represent you and cut the best deal. It can bring steady income for years. In fact next week I’ve got an atty on that can give you some clues.
I have friends who do this and love it, some years they make a ton of money, some years its more lean, but they always are getting found money they would not have made. I’d go for it. Its an honor to be invited.

The next question is from Anne in Nashville Tennessee.
Anne says: Is it okay to get a “day job” to help pay for my bills? I worry that this makes me seem more like an amateur, than a professional artist.
Anne…. I’m not sure anyone cares if you’re an amateur or a professional artist. They care about your work and what you’re producing.
We all have to pay bills and do what ever it takes. Many well known artists quietly have other jobs to help pay the bills. There is no shame, and no one needs to know, and frankly no one cares. We all do what we have to do to make ends meet. And why not get a job doing what you love… if you could be working with paintings, or doing paintings for hire, or working at a gallery it will inform your work and make you a better artist.

I hope that helps… this has been the art marketing minute.

Remember to Submit Your 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.