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 whether or not you should do art prints, and why or why not you’d advertise in group ads.

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 126 >

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:
Great living as an artist, the thing that every artist needs to understand is that marketing and understanding marketing and understanding the business aspects is really critical. Because like it or not, you are a small business and you need to develop some muscles in different areas of business. Like you know, like you’ve had to develop muscles in shipping and framing as an artist, right? Same thing. You can send your marketing questions into me email [email protected]. And the first question comes from Kate. I’m gonna botch this name Kate, ha run tests in Garden City, New Jersey. She says I’ve been invited to place an ad in a magazine because my work was accepted into a juried exhibition. I think it’ll be part of an article talking about the participants in the exhibition. And the ad will cost $550 For a quarter page ad. I’m new to this, and I’m not entirely sure can I afford to lose $550 Yeah. But however, I’m not at the point in my career where I will start advertising on a regular basis. So my personal goal at this time is to build up my name, my brand, and I’m listening to your podcast and reading marketing books, I’ve entered my most recent drawing into four competitions I’ve placed in all four of them, which I’m so grateful and happy about at this time, I’m looking for professional validation, and recognition that hopefully will play into my success in the future. That being said, I do not wish to waste my $550 I understand that you do not possess a crystal ball and obviously cannot guarantee anything. What would you do if you were me? Well, I do have a crystal ball, actually. What’s your name? Kate. Kate. Okay. So my crystal ball is called experience. I’ve been marketing for decades doesn’t seem like that’s possible. I started marketing way before I got into the art world, building businesses and learning how to market and I did that by making a lot of mistakes. And by spending a lot of money I didn’t need to spend. But you know, the problem is you don’t know what you do. And you don’t need to spend which is what you’re going through right now. I’ve wasted a lot of foolish money. But I’ve also made a lot of money based on some things I thought were foolish. That turned out to be a good thing. So I’m very qualified to be the closest thing to your crystal ball. Before I answer this, though, I want to tell you one thing and that is you know, my business does this. We sell ads. We sell ads, my company streamline has fine art connoisseur, plein air magazine, multiple newsletters, you know, et cetera. And so we you know, I have a conflict of interest. So if I tell you something that favors my feathers, my own nest, you’re not going to believe me anyway. So I have a bias. I’ll tell you that upfront. I’m going to tell you this and my sales team would probably shoot me Don’t do it. Yeah, don’t spend the $550. Why? Because you do not yet have Kate, you don’t yet have a marketing plan or a specific strategy. So running an ad with no strategy has no value to you, or anyone else. If you run that ad and you have high expectations, you’re going to be disappointed. And then who are you going to blame? You’re going to blame me or whoever you’re advertising with. The reality is that publications like mine, always, always, always deliver the audience that we have, we always deliver them. But we can’t control if somebody picks it up and reads it. And we can’t control if they’re going to respond to it, we can’t control if they’re going to flip by it. And so there are a lot of things that we can’t control. But there are things you can can do that will help you control it. Typically, ads fail, because there are no readers. That’s why you got to be careful who you’re buying. Ads fail because they don’t stand out, ads fail because you don’t have a specific strategy. Ads failed because they lack a call to action. And ads fail because they don’t get enough repetition. All advertising requires repetition. Otherwise, you would see an ad on TV One time, and you never see it again yet, you know, you see a Nissan ad over and over and over and over and over again, you’re sick of seeing it, they keep running it. Why because it works for a certain group of people every time you know, I don’t know how many times I saw my pillow ad probably 1000. And then one day, I picked up the phone and bought one. And so I mean, you know, you just you got to reach people at the right time, you never know when the right time is you got to be in the right mood, you know, repetition sells single ads typically do not. Now, if you had a strategy, maybe you could run an ad in a group session. Or maybe you could run it to support the group to show your support of it to be visible in there. But let’s dig a little deeper. This is nothing about more than an ego stroke. At this point. If you buy an ad, you’re thinking, wow, you know, I’m in the head and then 10,000 People are not going to call. That’s the reality. So you got to have a strategy. So the other thing you need to know is who’s the audience? Who do they reach? Is it part of my strategy. For instance, let’s say you know that all your buyers are muscle car buyers, maybe because you paint classic market muscle cars, I just made that up. Anyway, if you advertise in a gardening publication, you’re not likely to reach a lot of muscle car buyers, right. But if you advertising a muscle car buyer publication, then you’re likely to reach him. Alright, so that’s where the audience fit matters. There’s a thing called Media Marketing, media fit, marketing, fit and message. So, you know, you’ve got to know where you’re advertising. And you got to know what the topic is. Now, we do these special sections. They’re designed to sell ads, and they’re designed to also help people get highlighted after being in a group show. And that’s good, because sometimes people will track a group show they liked the show, they want to know more about it. But there are a few things to think about if you’re going to run it. First off, what do you want in return for your $550? And what is the realistic possibility you’re going to accomplish that goal? Now, the reality is, you don’t really want more than one buyer, right? You want to sell that one painting. So even though there may be you know, 10s of 1000s of people who see it, you really only want one of them to buy it, but you got to help with that process. Most of us will convince ourselves that we’re going to sell several paintings from one $500 investment, that’s a pretty big ask, you know, if if you sold a painting through a gallery, you would pay that pain, that gallery 50% of the cost of that painting. They mark it up 50% You’re paying them 50% To get you a sale. $500 is a lot less than that. 50% I’m guessing unless you sell your paintings for $1,000. So here’s what I think in terms of strategy. Artists need strategy. Ads are designed to fuel your strategy and nothing more ads can do the following. They can build your brand recognition, branding takes time takes repetition, one ad will not brand you you know like let’s say that out of 10,000 people, only five people noticed your ad or looked at it or read your name, but the other people might not see it till the next time and then Next time in the next time, one small ad, will brand you a lot less than a big ad, right? A big ad stands out more than a small ad because a big ad just naturally does. And you might not get noticed with a small ad. And you also can when you’re running small ads, you can get pigeonholed by the artists who run small ads. I know that seems crazy. But friend of mines a marketing guy, a big, big author, he says you get known for the smallest thing you do? Not the biggest thing you do. Because as you get known as the artist who runs the small little tiny ads, that’s who you become, and what does that say about you? Are you a full page quality advertiser? Are you a two page quality advertiser Are you the you know, whatever. Now if I run small ads, I by repetition, you know, so sometimes I’ll buy three or four small ads in one thing, because I want those small ads to stand out because they see him four times, sometimes that can be more powerful of a strategy. And a small ad is going to brand you less than a big ad. So anyway, in a group ad, bigger, let’s see, the group ad will bring you’re in a group,, you got a lot of artists in there. Let’s say there’s 50 artists in that group, add those pages, what do you want to do to work to your advantage? Well, the section is going to bring attention to you. And all the people in the ads, people are gonna flip through it, but the bigger ads are gonna stand out more. And you might want to make a statement that you’re one of the bigger artists in the group or you might not. But if you want to make a smaller ad stand out, then you have to have exceptional creative. You know, Debra Huse was talking about that, where she said she worked for an ad agency. In the creative department, their whole job was to get people to read ads to stand out to come up with headlines and graphics that stand out. You know, headlines make up 80% of the success of an ad. Did you know that? And you don’t want to do what everybody else does? What does everybody do in their ads, picture of painting and their name? whoring All right now sometimes you can’t do more than that if it’s a section, but you can look for ways to stand out with headlines with colorful graphics with something different, or at least a really, really, really powerful painting. Now, when I can only get smaller ads, like I said, I’ll go for repetition. Another strategy is how do I use my ad to get people to look at my work in the future. So that’s when you go into the idea of building a list. So maybe your ad has a picture your painting, and as a little tiny call to action that says, join my newsletter by coming here to this website or get a free ebook by coming here. That way they get on your list, they see your newsletter on a more regular basis, your repetition. That way, you’re getting people to join your list. And that’s going to help you a lot. That’s what I recommend in all things. But sometimes it’s so small, you can’t do it. So but usually, you need an incentive in there anyway, what can I offer to help people want to give me their name in exchange for something. So let’s do the math. Let’s say that you’re willing to spend $10 to get a name knowing that you’re gonna get that $10 back and more over the course of the next two years, how many names will $500 bring you? Well, that’ll bring you 50 names to break even if those 50 names are interested in your work, get on your list, and you talk to them more frequently, they’re more likely to get you your $500 back, it’s not necessarily immediate. It’s not about selling that painting. It’s about selling a painting that eventually speaks to them that they see in your newsletter. So that’s how a spine tiny ad space can work to your benefits hard it can be done though. Another strategy to sell paintings. Most ads don’t sell paintings, they sell artists, they sell an artist’s brand. There are very specific words you need to say to sell paintings, including calls to action to get people to buy and making sure they understand you’re assuming just because it’s in an ad, people think that that painting is for sale. But they’re not assuming that because the research has been done. A lot of people look at ads as part of the editorial content. Oh, that’s a pretty painting and they move on. But if you say this is a beautiful painting available from Debra Huse gallery, Huse Skelly gallery, that all of a sudden, they’re gonna go Oh, I thought of that. Okay, I know. It seems like people should be smarter than that, but sometimes we’re not. Anyway, the goal is build your reputation your brand, your value to the market depends on your brand. Which would you rather own? Would you rather own a job On Singer Sargent painting, are in ERIC Rhoads. Of course, it’s going to be sergeant. Which would you rather have? What are their own? Would you rather own a Debra Huse painting? Or John Singer? So I mean, John Singer Sargent painting. Sorry, Debra, you’re gonna want John Singer Sargent, but which would you rather have it Eric Rhoads or Debra Huse, you’re gonna pick the Debra Huse because she’s more visible. She’s out there. She’s known as a great painter. So the idea is you’re building reputation that takes years and lots of repetition. But that’s how you do it. Now, you can also sell your appearances at an event, you know, like your ad could say, Hey, I’m going to be at this event. Make sure you come by my booth, make sure you come visit me, I’ll be at this gallery show. is buying the smallest, cheapest ad the smartest thing? Not necessarily for me, I’d buy the biggest ad. And I’d buy a second smaller ad to reinforce my bigger ad, in case you didn’t see it, you know, just reinforces it. That’s a very effective strategy. Group ads can be very effective. But the be the biggest you can be if you can, if you can’t, you got to decide, is it going to be worth it? And yeah, it could be worth it. But it’s not always worth it anyway, I think they’re effective, but you need to know what you want out of it before you spend $1 and anything, don’t spend $1 in anything until you know what it’s going to do for you.

All right. Next question comes from Veronica Brown in Missouri. The pros and cons of licensing your work for printing. All right. So I made for prints. Okay. Veronica, one of my core principles in marketing is to sell when you are sleeping, meaning if others are selling my work while I’m sleeping, then you’re making money while you sleep right now. That’s why you want to use an art gallery. That’s why you want to have an automated online strategy. That’s why you do licensing, right? Licensing is a big deal. Thomas Kincade. I had dinner with him one night, and he told me he was the most licensed painter, artist of all times, exceeding Norman Rockwell. He, he held the licensing record at the time. I don’t know if that’s still true. And of course, Bob Ross is everywhere. And that’s through licensing. You see jigsaw puzzles. You see, bobbleheads Bob Ross company isn’t producing those. They’re licensing his name and his images. So my friend, I won’t use names, but my friend is licensed by a big printmaking company. And they also license his paintings on mugs and mouse pads and puzzles and prints and other things. And then he worked with a big licensing firm who got him this deal. And he sells images all the time to these companies. Now you don’t get much you get maybe one or 2% of what’s being sold. But so what you know, somebody sells 100,000 mouse pads. That’s real money. And so you can hire licensing firms, there are licensing lawyers there to licensing conventions that artists friend of mine, I just sent to it is going to be licensing his stuff. Most artists don’t get rich, doing licensing, but you can get extra income my friend, Charlie, you know, he’s making some extra money. And so why not make that extra money every month? Okay. Now, this brings up the subject of prints. Many print companies will license work, that’s good money for you. And then of course, there are companies that sell prints to hotels and stores and corporations, separate companies, typically sometimes they buy licensed prints. You want to reach out to those companies, should you do prints Well, you know, if you go to an art show, a tent show, you know, city city art show, you want to have a bin of prints because you got the big original on there, and a guy like me might go I really liked that. I’d like to remember that. And you don’t want to take a picture of it. And you would like to have it but you want to buy the $50 print not the $5,000 painting, so at least you’re making something off of it. And you may never sell the print the painting but you might sell enough prints to make it up. Now Thomas Kincaid told me his biggest regret ever was selling his originals and not retaining the licensing rights. That’s tricky. But he spent the last decade of his life trying to get all of his originals back for his museum. You put the time into creating an original you can sell it if you want, but you know if you get the better stuff, you might want to sell it but you want to make sure whenever you sell things, you have the proper copyright information on the back of the painting that says copyright 2023 Eric Rhoads all rights reserved that way they can’t sell the licensing on Got it. And if they do, you can go after not that you would but you might. So selling prints yourself, you can make some money I think that’s fine. But if it depends, you know some galleries don’t like it if you do it so talk to your gallery owners see how they feel about it you know there’s a whole whole bag back industry discussion going on about prints so you’ll have to find out you know, if it doesn’t work for you, you can sell Giclees which are bigger reproductions on Canvas, in a lot of things like that. I don’t know I don’t sell my prints. I mean, I don’t make prints. I don’t sell them. I only sell originals, but I don’t sell enough paintings. You know, I I have another job full time. So I only provide a few paintings to a few galleries and they sell what they get. But I you know, I don’t. I don’t want to get into prints. That’s just a personal choice, but I don’t see any downside. Anyway, I hope that helps. That’s the art marketing minute.

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

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

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 pricing your work and getting into galleries, and mistakes that could quickly make you irrelevant.

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 125 >

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
So my goal is to help you I’ve been marketing my entire life, which is a long, long time. And I learned a lot about marketing and I did not learn about art marketing. And so the principles that I teach really are not art marketing principles. They’re just standard marketing principles, right? I mean, I have picked it up over the years helping a lot of artists helping some of them become just super successful hopefully. Anyway, if you want to make a great living art marketing minute is a good place to help you do that you can email your questions, Eric at art marketing.com Or if you you want to send in a video we have a video first timer All right, we have a video. Let’s let’s run with it.

Speaker 1:
Hello, Eric and Amandine. So from Canada, I started painting in February 2017 to work on my phobia of painting. But four months after I started painting, I was commissioned for an art piece just by showing random little projects I was working on after selling that first piece the idea that I could eventually maybe make a business with my art. And so I decided to do this I sold two small eight by eight paintings for $1370 I have a website where I sell prints and and merch And those two, but it’s not really, it didn’t really get started. The problem is I’m getting self-conscious. It seems I was more now even doing things more spontaneously. But as I go, I realized that I’m selling at higher prices than than most would do, and hearing our professionals saying that you can’t sell for higher than that when you start. And so I’m wondering, is it can it be detrimental for me to sell at those prices?

Eric Rhoads
Don’t let them get you down. The one of the first and important principles that I learned in business, is that everybody always tells you all the things you can’t do. You can’t do this, because it’s not done that way. You can’t do that. Because nobody does that. Just ignore it, you know, just follow your heart and do what you believe in. There’s not a right or wrong. There’s not a manual. I’ve tried to write one. But you know, there’s really not a manual, most. Most importantly, is you put yourself out there, you started out at a higher price. You’re getting a decent price for first time paintings out there. You mentioned, I think you said 900 or more, and you’ve sold some. So what’s wrong with that? There is nothing wrong with that. Now I can understand why some people might say, Well, you got to start out slow, it is start, you know, edge up. Why? Why edge up? Why should you have to do that. Now, a gallery might want to say, look, we have to edge you up and build a collector base, and then increase your prices over time. That’s where that thinking probably comes from. You’re not selling through a gallery, you’re selling direct. And if you don’t want to sell in the gallery, I’m gonna talk about that later. But that’s, that’s just fine. So you said that, that in your original comment, I don’t think you said in the video. But I read your question, too. And that is you said that $900 is a lot of money? Well, it is a lot of money to some people. But it’s not a lot of money to other people. Right? So we tend to get hung up on perceptions of money. A lot of artists do this. The big problem that I have constantly, I’m constantly coaching artists to say, Look, your prices are too low. I had a world famous artist staying in the world famous artists cabin recently. And I said how much are these paintings? And she told me and I said, wrong, that you they should be selling for four or five, six times this amount of money? And they’ll sell? Well, I don’t know, I don’t think so. And I said no, no, no, you you have to have that confidence. They’re fabulous, you don’t realize the the importance of your, your ability and your career. So we get hung up on these perceptions of money. If especially if we never had money, right, so the one thing that we as many of us as artists never grew up with anything. And so, you know, so to us, you know, spending $900 on a painting may not be possible or may not something we want to do. And yet there are people who will drop 900 bucks like you and I would drop a 10 And so you have to understand that now the key to this is environment environment plays a huge role in selling if you’re selling at a flea market you know, you’re gonna have to attend dollars is a lot at the flea market, right? You’re not going to sell a Rolls Royce. at the flea market, Rolls Royce is going to be where they’re going to be at the Palm Beach art show or the LA art show or they’re gonna be where the money hangs out at the country club or whatever, you know, they’re looking for environment environment makes a difference. Well, why aren’t you looking for environment? Sounds like you already found it. You found people willing to spend money. So there’s lots of different levels in money, right? So you know, my cardiologist is probably a really wealthy guy. But he’s not wealthy, compared to Elon Musk, right? I can’t imagine. But he’s still a wealthy guy. I mean, this is different levels of wealth. I have a buddy that I grew up with who has become, I’d say probably a billionaire or pretty close to a billionaire. You know, he’ll he’ll drop 40 $50,000 Over dinner with movie stars and people like that. And you know, buying $10,000 bottles of champagne. I mean, it’s just money to him. And so it doesn’t affect him. You know, I’m not doing that. But that’s why hitting money targets is so important if you’re selling works that you want to price well, I’ve had dealers tell me that my magazine Fine Art connoisseur has sold million dollar paintings. And because we have, like three 400 billionaires who read it. And I sold, I had a real estate company sell a $20 million house from two ads in that magazine. And the person who bought responded to the one of those two ads, and ended up it was $20 million house that was 10 years ago is probably equivalent of $100 million house today. And it was, by the way, a billionaire. So you just never know you got to be in the environment. So where you advertise matters, where you hang out matters where you, you know, they always talk about the people you hang with influence how you are, you know, if you want to sell to rich people, you need to learn about him, you need to hang out with them figure out you know, go go do a lessons at the country club or something. So you know, rich people don’t need bargains, everybody wants bargains, but they don’t need bargains. Some people need bargains. So your question, is it detrimental in the long term? No, probably not. I think, right now, you’ve only sold 234 paintings at these prices. But you’ve got a consistent track record. So now what you got to do is figure out how to sell more paintings, if that’s important to you. And it might not be but to increase volume, you might lower price. But there’s something people don’t understand. There’s a great book, I wish I could remember the name of it, it’s on pricing. And it says that if you reduce your price by 10%, let’s say you have something that’s $100, you reduce it by to $90, you have to sell 18% more volume to make up the amount of money. So be careful with that because otherwise you’ll price yourself out. I think higher prices are generally good. You need to build a brand, a brand helps you get a higher price. Now brands have different meaning McDonald’s is a brand that’s a low price brand. Louis Vuitton is a high price brand. So you need to figure out what brand do I want to be where do I build my brand? How do I build it? Where do I stand out where where do I want people to see my my ads, my stories, things like that, because you want to be where the rich people are, if you’re selling to rich people, if you want to, you want to sell to school teachers and you know who who are not going to spend $900 Sorry, I don’t mean to be a little school teachers, not my point. But the idea is, you know, then advertise someplace that they’re reading. But the idea is that you want to you want to go where the standard, the money where the river is flowing is always say, Look, you need to feel that you deserve it. And you did that you set a price because you feel you deserve it, Bravo for you. You tried it, it worked. Congratulations. Now raise your prices more keep going up and see how see where you get price resistance, you know, if you, you go from 900 to 10,000, you might get price resistance. I was once in a gallery, I said I want to be the most expensive person in the gallery. And they said, but nobody knows who you are. So I know that but somebody’s gonna walk in there and they’re gonna see two paintings and they’re gonna see one that’s $10,000 in one that’s $2,000 in aid like them both, but the one that’s $10,000 must be better. I couldn’t get the gallery owner to agree to it. So I don’t know what what would have happened. Anyway. Good job. Congratulations. I’m proud of you keep it up. All right, next question, Amandine.

Amandine
The next question is from Laura, from Berlin, Maryland. How does one get into a gallery when you’re not an already established artist? I’m told not to approach a gallery but how else can one do it?

Eric Rhoads
Well, you know, again, just because I say something doesn’t make it true. And I have some strong feelings about this. And I have strong feelings because I was sitting in a gallery one day. gallery owner said Do you mind while we talk I go through the mail and he’s going through mail. It was actually kind of rude actually. Now that I think about it, but he’s going through mail so what are you looking at is he look at peeking something and throw it away peeking something, throw it away, and he had a stack a big status, what are you going through? He says, Oh, we get 50 100 submissions a week. And I feel obligated open them in case there’s something in there that I should see. But he says, I don’t even look at the artwork. You know, I can’t do it. He says, I get hundreds of emails soliciting the gallery I people, he says I was the other day I was in front of a customer, the customer is ready to buy. in walks this guy, he interrupts us. And he says, hey, you know, I’m kind of interested in being in your gallery, I’d like to talk to you about that. And meanwhile, the customer walks off, he loses the sale. Alright, he says, I don’t want somebody walking into my gallery to talk to me about this stuff. You know, the reality is that galleries are they’re a business. Right? They’re busy. And what questions to galleries ask themselves? Here are a couple of them. Is this artist good? Is this artist consistent? Do they have a body of work? And they do one good painting? Or can they do hundreds of good paintings? Because I have to sell a lot of work. I can’t make a living from one artist and one painting typically. Will it sell? What price? Will it sell for? Is it a price that fits my price point in the gallery? Is it too low? Is it too high? You know, and how much is my wall space worth, you know, shelf space and wall Smith space is worse something I got. If I have a small gallery, and I got to meet a you know, let’s say $100,000 a month, I and I can put 10 paintings up, I know I have to be able to get $10,000 a month out of each of those paintings that are hanging there. That’s wall space. Right? So can I make it with this artists? Can they do it? Do people know your brand? Do they know who you are? Is this artists selling well elsewhere? What’s the evidence of that? Can I make a lot of money on her? Can I make a lot of money on her over the next 510 20 years. And I had a gallery owner say, you know, I told him about an artist. He says yeah, I’m aware of that artists. But quite frankly, you know, he’s good, he’s very good. But I don’t think I can get 20 years of business out of him. So I would rather invest in somebody that’s going to be around for 20 years. Sad, but true. So you know, everybody thinks differently. So now, if you do want to go through and being a gallery, by the way, there’s no rule that says you have to be I like the idea of having a gallery, I have three of them. And I like it, because they’re talking to me, they’re talking about me, they’re selling me when I’m sleeping, right. And I don’t have to do all that work. Now, I don’t sell anything direct on time, I barely have time to paint for the galleries, I have scarcity, I have that because I don’t have much in the galleries, and they probably don’t push me very much because they know they’re not gonna, I’m not gonna give him enough stuff. But if you want to be, then keep in mind a couple of things. First off, you are handing your future over to a gallery, which I think is stupid. Now, I’m not an anti gallery live galleries. But what I mean is, don’t rely 100% on any gallery. First off, you want to spread your risk, you want to have two or three, ideally, minimum, some people don’t. But if if you’re going to have exclusivity with a single gallery, you know, then you want to be in someplace like forum in New York, or a kta Gallery in New York, because they are gonna make you a lot of money if they get behind you. And so you want to make sure that you still have control, you want to make sure you control the circumstances, the deal, the stakes, you got to motivate them, you got to help them, you got to cooperate with them, you got to brand yourself, still control your branding, you got to have other outlets to sell if they let you some artists will have like a certain category or a certain amount of money. So you’ve got to control everything, because the minute you lose control, if they all of a sudden they stop working for you, you’ve got a bigger problem, right? So you don’t want to have that. So I would say if you want to be in a gallery, I like the idea of getting invited in and the way to get invited in. I go into excruciating detail in my book, but the the essence of it is find somebody who knows them. Ask them to evaluate your work, ask them if you feel that you would be a good fit for their gallery. And if they do ask them if they would be willing to mention you to somebody don’t push it. You know and you have to your call it a favor. So you got to be kind of careful about that. But that’s overall one of the best ways now. Here’s the other trick that nobody realizes which is probably the biggest way that galleries find artists. Well It used to be just ads. Now it’s Instagram, Facebook. That’s why I always say don’t post unfinished paintings. And don’t post your bad paintings. You know, we all do bad paintings don’t post your bad paintings. Why? Because not, you know, people are flipping through and they see a bad painting and they see your name, what do they do? They say, Oh, Eric does bad paintings. So put your best work out there. And then, of course, we have I had a dealer, I interviewed one time and he said, I watch who’s advertising in your magazines. And I said, why? He said, because I want people who are committed to their career, they’re so committed that they’re willing to spend money to brand themselves to try and sell on their own. And also, they’re going to eventually keep spending money. And they’re going to mention my gallery and their ads. And I’ll mention them in my ads. And so it’s it’s a win win. And he says, I’ve got this one guy, I’ve had my eye on him for five years. Since I’m about to go with him. His work was a little inconsistent. But it’s getting better and better. And now I’m about to go with him. So be patient, you know, there are people watching, you don’t know or watching. So I’ve also seen galleries and this is the thing I alluded to earlier. And that is that I’ve seen galleries who have decided not to work with established artists, what why would that be? Well, there are people out there who established themselves, you know, 1020 years ago, 30 years ago, they became big deals, they were known they were household words, were household names in the art industry. And they’re no longer keeping up. They’re no longer promoting themselves no longer doing shows no longer doing ads. Because they were, they thought they could rest on their laurels. But the reality is that unless you stay at the forefront, you’re no longer going to sell. I heard from an artist who called me one day since you know, five years ago, 710 years ago, he says I was making so much money I was selling just I couldn’t believe it. And I said, Well, what are you doing now? Are you doing ads? No. Why? Why should I do ads? Everybody knows who I am. I said, are you doing shows Nice. Too much work. Everybody knows who I am. You know what, through the whole thing. And, and I said they forgotten you, you know there’s a thing called attrition. Right? So every year, a gallery loses 10% of their audience. Every year, artists loses 10% of their buyers, right? attrition. People die, people move people retire, people don’t buy paintings anymore. People get sick people change their tastes, you know, there’s a lot of things that happen. And so that’s 10% a year in 2008. When a bad economy happened, it was like 60% in one year, right? So you have to constantly be bringing new people in and galleries have to do that. And that’s why people keep advertising because you’re always bringing people in. You know, if you lay low for 10 years, you’re gonna feel it. You’re gonna feel it after a year, quite frankly, you feel it after six months I I have a very well known artist who, who advertised with us. And the discussion was, Well, I think I’ve been advertising a long enough time. I’m just going to stop and I said, Okay, that’s fine. Here’s what’s going to happen. Oh, no, that’ll never happen. Everybody knows who I am. I said, Okay. Six months later, phone rings. You’re right. phone stopped ringing gallery stopped calling sales stopped happening. I said right out of sight, out of mind. Anyway, those are some thoughts on galleries. Bottom line is you got to build your brand. You got to control your brand. You got to get invited. That’s best. Don’t just barge in. If you do decide you’re going to go that route, at least email call, try to get an appointment and explain to them the answers to those questions, why you’re a good investment, why they’re going to sell give them evidence. Let them watch you. And also make sure you’re producing the best possible work. You can you know, some of you are not gallery ready. And some of you think you are you know, it’s just something you’ve got to get advice from other people to find out. Anyway. It 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 week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads, author of Make More Money Selling Your Art, shares creative strategies to sell online and ways to bring new business to you as an artist.

New in 2023: this podcast has been named one of the “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web.”

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 124 >

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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
So there’s poetry in marketing you know, it’s it doesn’t need to be ugly, it doesn’t need to be manipulative. It doesn’t need to be awful you know, you’re not selling used cars, you’re selling beauty and if you can use your marketing to help people find you and and if they can find you, they can have the pleasure of having your artwork hanging around them. And so that’s why marketing is so important. So if you have questions for the art marketing minute, email me, [email protected]. And remember Feedspot just gave artmarketing.com A high marks top 25 Art Marketing podcast. Let’s strive for number one. Amandine, my producer, what is your first question?

Amandine
The first question is from Greg Mayer from Wisconsin. I am following your book as closely as possible. It is now time to set up a website. When doing so I plan to send original watercolors with an option to buy two different sizes of limited edition prints. What I’ve noticed is that many many artists may have a price listed for their original art, but they do not have a convenient way to purchase the art online when the potential buyer is interested. They add an extra step of contacting me to purchase this art or something similar? My question is, is there a compelling strategy or tactic behind this in art sales? Like negotiating the price? Or upselling? Or are they just too hesitant and don’t want to deal with managing technology? And online sales?

Eric Rhoads
Okay, well, Greg, thank you for that. Thanks for getting my book. Glad to see you taking action, glad to see that you’re paying attention. Action is the key to every problem, you know, and, and you just got to be proactive, and you’re being proactive. So I think that’s good. I can tell. Look, there are no right or wrong. Like painting, there really are no right or wrong. It’s about feel it’s about testing. I test everything. You know, what may work for you may not work for me, vice versa. So you have to test everything. There’s not a right or wrong, but I do have an opinion, because you know, usually I do. So just for kicks, when I was preparing for your question, I went on Amazon and I actually Googled, what is the most expensive thing for sale on Amazon. I was just curious. And what do you think the most expensive item would be? Well, turns out from what I found, it’s a rare one of a kind hockey card, kind of like a baseball card. That was $818,000. Just click here to purchase? Hmm. Yeah, you wonder if those things sell or they’re there just to create attention? I would imagine they sell. So imagine if every time that you decided you wanted to buy something from Amazon, you had to call them first. You go, oh, you know, I like this color wheel. Instead of clicking to buy, you have to call them first, would you do it? No, of course not. You wouldn’t do it, you would never buy anything. So there’s a big debate about this. And it goes something like this, an artist, or a gallery will say, Well, I don’t want to list the price because I need to talk to them first to find out if they’re a legitimate buyer. Or if they think the price is too high. I have to help them overcome their price objections on the phone. I think this kind of thinking is completely like antiquated. It’s 1920s thinking. It’s like the early days of the web. I had a friend who worked for a newspaper. And he started the websites for his newspapers, a major newspaper in America big name. And they said to him, don’t put the story on the website until the newspaper has been out for two hours. It’s like, Yeah, but we haven’t now and we can beat everybody to it. And no, you gotta wait for it to print overnight, and then it gets delivered. And then you know, and so like, he couldn’t make them change their minds. So he left them and went to somebody who would say, look, let’s put these stories out now. So that’s kind of antiquated thinking, right? It’s the same kind of thing. So I am sitting up at two o’clock in the morning, because I can’t sleep and I see an ad for your gallery or for your artwork in let’s say, in Fine Art connoisseur magazine, which I own. And you want to buy that painting or you want to learn more about the painting or something so you don’t want to wait till midnight to buy it I mean until daylight to buy it right. So I want it now I want to buy it now I don’t want to go to any effort. I want to buy it my change, my mood might change by morning, right? So this is called creating friction. Don’t make people think or work. Have a buy button have a buy this now button. You can explain the shipping or it is or isn’t included. Or you could say ally any purchase over a certain amount of money, you’re gonna have to wire the money if you’re worried about that. But quite frankly, if their credit card goes through, why do you worry? Then they have a way to buy it. You solve all their problems, don’t make them work. Because if you do, you’re going to increase the friction and you’re going to lose more sales than you gain. People are impulsive. Use that to your benefit. I if I’m watching a television show, and I google something, or I’ll see something I was watching a show the other night I saw something I thought well that’s cool. And I put I put it into Amazon and I flipped through and I found it and I bought it. You know if that had been the next day I would have never done that I would have not waited I would have forgotten about it. I would have lost interest. So I know this dealer no names. This dealer had a call me policy online. Now this was kind of early stage of internet, so I understand it. And he was dead set against the idea of a direct sale online. So I challenged him, I said, Listen, this is a stupid policy, no offense in the nicest possible way. You’re not stupid. It’s a stupid policy. And I said, you need to put the price of your expensive paintings on the on the website and have a buy now option. He said, I will never work, I got to talk to these people. I said, Look, just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it’s always going to be that way. So to his credit, he said, Well, I’ll test it. So he went in, and he put everything available online for sale, including some very expensive things a week went by, he did not get a single purchase. And so we talked. And he’s like, Oh, this isn’t working, you’re wrong. I said, just give it some time. Just hang in there. Let’s see what happens. A week later. He came in in the morning, and he found an order for a piece of art. Get this a piece of art, it was a piece of major sculpture from a major sculptor, it was $650,000. And the email up and he had put it on there, you have to wire the money, the email came in, that they had wired the money overnight, he had $650,000 in his account, because he had a buy now option, he would have never got that never would have gotten that or might not have gotten that anyway. And so you know, you’ve got to find a way people do not worry about that today. Now, there’s one thing that’s really, really important in this messaging, and that is, if I’m going to put my credit card in or if I’m going to wire money. And by the way, I don’t want to wire money. Because that’s too much friction. But if I’m going to put my credit card in, I need to know your legitimate. I need to know you’re not a scam. And that’s why you need to have things that are credibility builders and testimonials on your website. give people confidence. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this. But there’s a term called the term is con man. Do you know what con man stands for? Confidence man, they would build confidence with people so they could fraud them out of their money. Now you’re not a scam. But competence is important. You need it no matter what you’re doing. So you need to send things that show that you’re being trusted. So sell online direct be where your customers want to be, you cannot buy a Tesla by going into a dealership unless it’s a used car dealership. You can’t buy a Tesla by calling. You have to go online, you go in and you pick your colors. You pick everything, and you click the button and you put a deposit down. It takes 10 minutes to buy $120,000 car. Why would you make me go through something for a piece of art, that’s a fraction of that price? Probably. Now, don’t assume there’s a limit on prices online. If I’m a billionaire, and I have a platinum Amex card and I can buy a Bentley online, I should be able to buy a Sargent painting or a Rembrandt for millions. And if I know who I’m buying from if it’s a trusted source like Sotheby’s or Christie’s or bottoms or heritage. I’m not going to have a problem with that. All right, next question.

Amandine
The next question is from Gary from Minnesota. I have a prospecting question for you. Since we’re all basically in sales, we should be continually prospecting, as you say, stand in the water where the money is flowing. I have an idea to approach the high end homebuilding arena, upscale homes are in a nice river of flowing money. I’m connecting, I’m connected with a few artists and home builder here in town. They build big, beautiful homes with blank wells walls just begin from my artwork. My thought is, the contractors pride themselves on really getting to know their clients on a personal level. Many clients are art collectors, what a perfect personal gift it would be to purchase art from an artist to present at the final walkthrough of the home. Since it takes several months of or more to build the home. It could also be a good opportunity for commission work as well. My question is, how would you approach contractors for an idea like that Do you have a script or an outline for setting such a conversation?

Eric Rhoads
Gary, you’re a good student, you’re paying close attention. Thanks for reading my book, let me talk about the concept of the river. So everybody understands it. You don’t catch fish in a dry riverbed, I always say stand in the river where the money is flowing. Or the equivalent would be stand in the river where the fish are flowing a fish are customers in the art world, and all world’s rivers dry up, and new rivers flood. And what I mean is that, let’s say you’re in an area where business is booming, people have more money than ever imaginable, money’s flowing, you know, it’s 1980, again, and you need to be where the money is flowing. So, sometimes you have to move to a different river, you know, like, the money could be flowing. So let’s use an example. I don’t know if it’s a relevant example, I’m just kind of making this up. But let’s say you live in Silicon Valley, and everybody in Silicon Valley is just flush with cash, everybody’s making money, there’s tons of jobs, everything’s happening, people are buying everything, right. They’re just buying lots of stuff. So if that’s where the money is flowing, then I want to be in an art gallery where the money’s flowing, or I want to be an art gallery, where they’re going, you know, if they’re going to why I want to be in that art gallery, right. But six months later, there could be a crash in that sector and people getting laid off and massive layoffs and nobody’s spending, maybe the billionaires are spending. But do you give up? No, you move to a different river, you might keep that river, keep fishing there, but you move to a different river. So what if all the rivers dry up while they never do? Even in the past recessions, I had a friend at a New York gallery, he said, you know, the billionaires are still buying paintings, they’re just not spending as much on paintings. They’ll only spend 50, or $100,000 instead of $500,000. Okay, so he had to adapt, he had to have a lot of $50,000 paintings, people who have money, still have it add in recessions. There are people who get really, really rich. Not everybody is struggling. And not every community is struggling, some parts of the country are fine. Some people spend crazy money. And so you know, there’s like, there’s a movie, I can’t think of the name of it. But it’s about the wealthy people, and how they live in China. And these mansions in these Bentley’s and fancy cars and fancy art, and they’re spending money. So you know, one of the places where the river is flowing in money is China. Right? So how do you get yourself into that river? How do you stand in that river? How do you get there? So I like the creative thinking that you’re you’re coming up here with Gary, and I think you’ve got a great idea. I think it’s not a new idea. But I think you’ve got a new twist on it. So let’s say that, first off, there’s an old marketing principle principle, it’s Zig when others zag. So if everybody else is standing in this river, you know, how do you get? How do you get the fish, when you go up river before the fish get to them, you know, a more inconvenient spot, you have to work harder, you have to work differently. You Zig when others are zagging. You don’t want to be in the same place everybody else is, right. So you know, if you’re in if there’s a millions of fish in the river, and there’s 5000 people fishing for him, you’re not going to get as many fish. But if you go up river, you’re going to be all alone. So you want to be upstream, you want to be standing in a different place, so to speak. So I’ve advised some artists to do this exact thing. And here’s exactly how to do it. First off, study your market and the builders. The level of cost matters because if it’s $100,000 House versus a million dollar house versus a $10 million house is a big difference. And so you talk to some builders and you ask their advice. Don’t try to sell them right now. Just say how much do you spend you give gifts to homebuyers? How much do you spend on that? What do you give them? What have you done in the past? What do people love? What do they not love? Trying to understand your marketplace. Understand the level of spend, you know, some will do $100 gift basket. That’s a whole lot different than a $2,000 painting. Once you’ve identified your prospects, figure out who your best prospect is, and have a painting delivered to that owner of that company. In gift wrap, the big beautiful bow around it beautiful, elegant gift wrap with a note attached. And it says in the note, dear Mrs. Builder, I’ve been studying new home developments in the area and have chosen you because of the quality of your work and your design. I’ve taken the time to visit homeowners in your community to find out about their art preferences. And I’d like to give you this painting as my gift. And I’d like to propose a meeting no more than 20 minutes. So I can show you how I can help you stand out over all the homeowners in the area and sell more houses and create buzz. And you can keep the painting no matter whether you take the meeting or not. I painted it just for you. But I would love for you to take the meeting, I’m going to show you how you can explode your business even more. Now, if you really have your act together, then you’ll actually find out where the builder lives and do a painting of his or her house and send that to him, that’s going to really get their attention. Because you know, not everybody likes what you’re going to paint. But they’re all going to like what you’re going to paint if it’s of their house. Now, there’s a couple of things going for you here. First one is the law of reciprocity. If I give something to you, you’re gonna feel obligated to give something back to me. So I give you a painting, I’m probably going to feel obligated to give you a meeting, right? I’m not going to maybe nothing more than that. But I’ll probably give you the meeting. So here’s what you do. You go in you say listen, I have a lot of big corporations that buy my paintings as retirement gifts. Now I have friends who have this happening. And my friend, I can’t mention the company because he asked me not to. But there’s a big corporation in his town, he went and did exactly this, he sent a painting to the CEO of the Corporation. And he said, This is my gift to you. And I want to show you how you can use paintings as retirement gifts. People love them. And so this company, as 30, or 40 people retire a year, and every single one of them at an executive level gets a painting with a little plaque on it say, you know, to Bob and Mary, thanks for 30 years of working at a company X will remember you always and you know signed James Jones, the CEO of the company, right? So that, you know, he’s leaving them with a nice memory and nice gift. People love it. People love it. And no, of course words travels to other employees. So you could say, you know, I do this for corporations, if you do, we can do the same thing, somebody buys a house, they get a painting with a little plaque with your builder name on it. So it says to camera commemorate the roads, new home at 123 Green Street, presented by XYZ homes. All right, that little plaque goes on that painting. And you hand it to them when they turn over the house. So imagine how it feels to a customer, you say this to the client. Imagine how they feel when they close on a house and you hand them a wrap box. And you say I want to thank you for your business and congratulate you on your new home. Now you don’t have to have them open it in front of you. But when they open it, they find a painting of the new home that they bought. And you’ve done it in advance. And then they say to you, Hey, listen, you might stay in this home forever, or you might move on and a few years, but you’re always going to remember it with this painting. That is so cool. Now, here’s the other thing I have taken, I’m the home builder, I’ve taken the liberty of emailing you an image of the painting, and with the artists name and contact information. So you can post it on social media and say, Hey, here’s our new home. Here’s a painting of our new home. And here is a beautiful gift box with 50 note cards with a picture a painting of your house on the cover. And on the back. It says you know the new so and so home at 5311 Indiana Avenue. That’s my old address. And and you know, built by just so and so builders, right so now they’re sending cards to their friends, thank you cards, they’re sending invitations to their parties, because what do people do when they buy a new house? They have parties and they invite their friends and their friends get to see the new house and they get to talk. They see the painting and they’re going to talk about the painting. How do they get them in the house they send them an invitation on the painting card right? They put the image on the cards and so when you send a note cards, your names on it, the builders names on it your names on the painting, you’re creating buzz and your career getting more customers because they now want to deal with somebody like, you know, I visited a new home of a friend. And everybody was buzzing about the new flat screen TV, which was a big deal in those days because nobody had them, the real estate agent had bought them a new TV for their new house. And everybody’s like buzzing about this real estate agent. And they, they contacted that real estate agent we did, we contacted that real estate agent to list our house, right. So that’s a really cool thing you could do. Now, you could also do just paintings, instead of customized paintings. But you’ll have a higher likelihood of this being successful if you do paintings of their new house. Second thing you can do is you can say listen, I would also like to decorate your models with my paintings, no charge as many paintings as you need. For however long you need them, all I want you to do is to have a small sign somewhere that says they’re my paintings. And, and of course, if you’re giving away paintings, I’d like to be able to send a note to them about you know, congrats on their new house, and congrats on my new painting that way, maybe they’ll buy more paintings from me. And, or you could say when they close on the house and you you could say come into the model, and pick out any painting you want. And I’ll give it to you as my gift to you. That’s another option. And of course, then the builder pays you for whatever they picked out. So it’s a way of selling paintings. You can have your little art show there your QR code and people can instant purchase. You know if they see your work when they’re going through house. Most people who go through house don’t buy a house. But you know, my wife and I are always going through houses just for entertainment. We see paintings we like we take pictures of them. Wouldn’t it be cool if we bought something people will do that? Anyway, this has been a really great discussion. I think it’s been a lot of fun, Greg, and congratulations on that. I want to hear the results and we’ll feature it in the future when you tell us. Okay, these have been good questions today. Fun stuff. 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 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 >

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 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 >

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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!