Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 127

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 the best place to begin to market your art; and what not to do to drive up your prices.

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 127 >

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 the goal if you want to make a living as an artist is to figure out how to do it. And it’s unfortunately it’s not just like the what was that Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. It’s not true. If you paint it, they won’t come you have to invite people in you have to learn marketing to do that. It doesn’t have to be harsh. It doesn’t have to be sleazy or greasy or salesy, but it is a good skill to learn because otherwise, you’ll have skinny kids. So the first question comes from Patricia Tabor Perry, in Massachusetts. And the question is simple one, where is the best place to begin to market your art? You know, that’s a that’s a loaded question, Patricia, because there’s so many answers to that. I think, first off, I think a very first piece of this is to find out if you’re ready. I, I certainly wasn’t ready when I started marketing my art. And I struggled with that. Because you know, it’s it’s kind of like, if you’re, you’re manufacturing a product and your product isn’t good, you’re gonna have a hard time selling it, you know, so you got a car where the doors don’t work, you know, nobody’s gonna buy it. And so I like to I like the idea of getting some advice. So find some trusted advisors, who will tell you the truth. And the way I have always approached it is I don’t want you to say anything good. I want you to tell me the bad stuff, because I need to know what I’ve got to work on what I’ve got to fix. And ultimately, the question is, am I ready? Now there’s different levels of people, right? So if you were to ask Cindy Baron, for instance. You know, she’s at a very, very high level know, she’s a very generous person, and she will, you know, be very kind to you. But, you know, her standards are high. And someone else who asked their standards might not be as high. So you want to ask people who have standards that are high, because I think that’s important. Now, you might not, you know, you might go out there anyway, because you might not get to that level right away. But one thing I like to do is ask gallery owners and I did this recently, I sent a picture of a painting to a friend of mine who’s a gallery owner. I said, Listen, I have no intention of asking you to go into your gallery. Because I this is not a ploy to have you secretly discover what a great painter I am. I just said, I, I don’t know if this is ready, and I don’t I need some feedback. And he was very generous. Now you have to do it with somebody you know, and trust if you can. And he was very generous and he gave me some really great feedback, some things that I couldn’t see. And that’s the nice thing and I have friends that I will contact that I paint with. And I’ll send them an image when I’m painting I’ll say something’s not right. But I can’t tell what it is. And you know, somebody will say, well move that tree. I was doing a self portrait. And Max Ginsburg said, Well, you know, there, you’re missing. You’re missing the enough darks on this side of the face if you just change that one thing, and he was completely right, and so but I couldn’t see it. So look for somebody to give you feedback. Now, the other thing you’ve got to do is start with some questions. The questions you got to ask yourself is why do you want to market your art? What what is your purpose? You know, I did some coaching at fall color week, one year, because it was snowing and nobody wanted to go out. And so I killed some time by offering some coaching one on one with some people. And a couple of people said, you know, I want to sell my art. And I said, why? And they said, I don’t know. Cuz everybody’s supposed to do that. I said, Well, that’s not true. I said, Do you need the money? And in two cases, they said, No, I don’t need the money. I have plenty of money, I retired, I put my money away. I said, Well, why do you want to sell your art? And then they realized, well, it was really about recognition. And they wanted that validation that somebody was willing to pay for it. I said, Well, can you get that validation some other way? Like, could you get it by donating your art or charity auctions or things that others will appreciate it, but you don’t have to feel like you have the pressure of marketing and selling your art and advertising? And so that resonated with those people, but you got to figure out why do you want to do it? What do you want to accomplish? Why do you want to sell it isn’t about money? Do you want to make a living? If it’s you want to make a living? How much of a living Do you want to make? You know, do you want to replace the income you have? Now, you know, if you’re a heart surgeon, and you’re making, I don’t know how much heart surgeons make, but you’re making that much money? I’ll go talk to a heart surgeon today and find out. They’re never going to tell me the but the idea is, is that a little money is a lot of money. Is it a retirement income? Is it a full time gig that influences all of the things that you’re going to have to figure out? You know, what about recognition? How important is that, that validation? And then you know, you dig into those things and try to understand what it is you really want to accomplish, because a lot of people chase rainbows that they don’t really want to chase and they get there and they go, Oh, right. And, you know, I’m really busy. And I don’t like being busy. You know, so find it, talk to other artists find out what their life is, like, you know, if you say, Well, I want to do I want to be like this artist or that, like artists call that artists and say, Hey, what’s your life? Like, you know, and they’re, they’re like, Well, you know, I’m on the road seven months a year doing plein air shows, and I never see my family. And you know, it’s a hard way to make a living. I like it. I love it. But, you know, are you willing to do that, so you got to be thinking about those things in terms of once you get beyond all of that, then you’re going to have to think about, you know, how do I ease into this? What’s my strategy? You know, I think just start small, start easy do tests, I love tests, you know, like, a really great way to start is just to do a little art show, you know, local cafe, local restaurant, go to the owner, set something up, give them a piece of it, if they need that, you know, the goal is to just find out, you know, this isn’t always about making money. It really never is, that’s a side benefit, I think because you do what you love, and the money will typically follow. But there are things that you have to do disciplines you have to do so start small, do a little business, a little art show in a business or a cafe or something, try that or maybe you know, try a little gallery test, you know, maybe there’s a community gallery you can try out or maybe you know, you start talking to galleries, but I would find out first if your work is marketable before you do that, see what works. And then kind of start there. You know, the, the ultimate answer to that question that I always say in my art Marketing Bootcamp, is I talk about okay, very first thing you do is you start building your list, because if you build a list, then you can get more contact with people. As you know, somebody signs up for your newsletter, you give them an incentive to do that, and so on.

Now, the next question is from Emily Feeney in Illinois, would publishing the name of high profile buyers drive up prices? Well, Emily, I’m going to tell you a little bit of a story. I had a really wonderful artists friend in Carmel, who had her own gallery, and she had a lot of famous people who bought paintings. And she would take pictures with those people, and she would blow them up and frame them and put them in the gallery. And that was an implied endorsement. It said, well because Pierce Brosnan or Oprah Winfrey or Tom Cruise or somebody bought one of my paintings. And there, here’s my picture with them. That’s an implied endorsement. It’s not an endorsement, but it’s implied. What I told her to do, I advised her to do is I said, you need something that you can actually talk about. She said, I said, Well, who famous? Do you have that is not on the pictures on the wall that you’d like to be able to talk about? And she told me a very famous director. And I said, Well, do you have any way to contact that person? She said, Well, I have his contact information. But these people are hard to get to. I said, Well, why don’t you do this? Would you say, you know, you were in the gallery send a little, little tiny painting. So you were in the gallery a couple years ago. And I just, I’m so honored that you own a piece of mine, I was thinking about you, I thought you’d like to have this little painting as well. And then wait for a response. Don’t ask for anything upfront. And then wait, once you get a response, then you can, if they send you a note, or they give you a call, or somebody calls for you, then you can open the door and say, Hey, would it be okay? What I have your permission, if I could say I’m in the Steven Spielberg collection, or I’m in the Oprah Winfrey, correct collection? And some of them will say yes. And some will say no, because people like their privacy. So always ask if you can get a picture with somebody and you can say, Hey, are you okay? If I post this? Or are you okay? If I put it up in my studio or my gallery, then that gives you something and you know, I went to a hairdresser one time, and he was like a hairdresser to the movie stars. And he never said anything about it. But there are pictures of him with all these famous people all around. It’s like so you know, what’s the story you tell your friends? Oh, the hairdresser, I go to does, you know, Donny Osmond or something? Right? Anyway, I think that, you know, it’s a good thing to look for every possible advantage that you can have. And getting high profile buyers will help your branding, it’ll help your pricing. It will make other people want it. Because celebrity works now, if it’s hope high profile in some other area, you know, a sports celebrity or something else, it doesn’t matter. But it should be people that, you know, people know, I mean, if you’re saying, Well, this is Bob Jones, and he’s the CEO of SpaceX or something and then, you know, maybe, maybe you have to tell people who they are everybody would know if it’s allowed musk, but the idea would be get their permission, don’t do anything without them. I used to have a different take on that. But I don’t anymore. I want everything to be on the up and up. I don’t want anything to be at all questionable. Because, you know, eventually they’re gonna find out and you don’t want to make a mad and you don’t want to offend anybody, and it’s just the best thing to do. Anyway, that’s today’s our 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.

By |2023-05-11T07:23:40-04:00May 26th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 105

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

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads explains the best way to approach and get representation from an art gallery; and whether or not you should list the price of your paintings on your website.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 105 >

 

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads:

The marketing minute I try to answer your marketing questions and you can always email me [email protected]. Be sure to mention where you’re from your name and your town, right? Because sometimes they don’t like a couple of them I’ve got today. So here’s one from Fernando Mitchell. Misha Misha Lee, Fernando missionally. Sorry, Fernando. He asked, What’s the best way to approach and get representation from galleries? Well, the best thing to do is to put yourself in their shoes, any time you want to sell somebody on you or something, put yourself in their shoes. Imagine that you’re working in a gallery, you’re trying to get things done, you’re talking to customers and the phone rings or somebody walks in the door. And they says they say hi, I’m an artist, and I’d like to discuss getting into your gallery. Well, when you’re busy, it’s annoying. And I know you’re gonna say, well, it’s their job. Well, their job is to sell art. Their job is to find artists, but they have all the artists they want and need anyway. So they’re always looking for somebody a little extra good or something that’s unique. But they’re getting 50-60- 100 emails a week they’re getting unsolicited packages, I watched a gallery owner open and trash 50 packages while I was sitting there with him, people sending unsolicited packages about their work. And he just said, you know, I have to go through it. But I don’t read it. You know, it’s just too much. He said, I get twice as many emails as this. It’s really annoying. Most galleries are looking for artists who will sell and they’re solicitations from you are bothersome. So how do you get around that? Well, I have in my art Marketing Bootcamp series, a whole thing on how to get into galleries. But one of the s essential things is you want them to see you. And you want them to invite you in. For instance, I met with an artist this week who was in town shooting a video, he’s running ads in our magazine, fine art connoisseur, and he said to different galleries contacted him about representing him. Now, it didn’t happen immediately. Because they want to watch you they see your work, they say Oh, it’s good work. Let’s see what he puts in next time, or she puts in next time. And they watch you one gallery owner told me he was been watching a couple of artists over the course of a few years. And at some point as they develop and they get better, he might contact and put them into the gallery. So that’s one thing, it’s always better, if they call you it puts you in more of a position of power actually, and you want to be invited in being invited in is a lot better than kind of pushing your way in. So look for ways to get them to invite you. Now there’s a lot of ways to do that. For instance, you can get to know other artists who they know who maybe they can suggest you etc. They’re watching for your consistency, and the variety of things. And they’re looking at it sometimes for years. So be patient, but really understand that they’re evaluating you from the standpoint of will this sell, because if it’s not going to sell, they’re not going to sell it.

Here’s another question from David Cruz again, I don’t know what town David, shame on you got to tell me the town. Anyway, David says I have a question about selling art online. It seems that most artists websites don’t give prices for the work. But rather ask the potential buyer to inquire with the artist. Do you think it’s a good idea good strategy? Or is it better to clearly state the price on the website? Well, David, it’s a matter of philosophy. People want people to call why. So they have a chance to sell them to talk to them, maybe to get their name, maybe to justify the price. There’s an old philosophy. And that philosophy is whenever the price is mentioned, before value is established, you never get your price, you have to establish value. And that’s why people do this. Establishing value is building credibility by talking about your awards, your shows your collectability, maybe who collects you getting the fact that you’re already getting these high prices that establishes value. So you can understand why people want you to call. But this is an internet world. And quite frankly, you know, I’ll look at things and I’m sure you do too, in the middle of the night and you’re like I don’t want to have to call he always see you know, call for inquiry or you know, you have to fill out a form. I never do any of that stuff because I don’t want to do it. I just want to know what the price is. And so if somebody says call for price, I move on. Now again, it’s a philosophy but you’re probably losing for everyone that calls you’re probably losing 5050 that that won’t call. So if you’re selling online, I think you look for a chance to establish value right there where the painting is being seen. You know where you’re talking about the value of you as the artist And when they’re looking at your site, and some will buy online, I know a gallery who sold a $650,000 piece of sculpture to a foreign country. The person went online, put the saw the price didn’t negotiate, put their credit card in and it was shipped to him. Everything worked beautifully. So you obviously don’t want to ship it to make sure until you make sure the credit card is going to go through. But I think that you know, today in this world, you have to be willing to operate the way people want to operate.

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

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

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

  • Art retreats
  • International art trips
  • Art conventions
  • Art workshops (in person and online)
  • And more!
By |2022-12-14T16:50:51-05:00February 7th, 2022|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 83

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

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads explains how to handle rejection as an artist; and how to come up with a price on the spot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 83 >

 

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads:

In the marketing minute I try to answer your art marketing questions and all you got to do is email me your questions, [email protected]. Question from Marcia in Philadelphia who says, Can you speak to handling rejection as an artist rejection from an art gallery or rejection from a show? Thank you Marsha. rejection is a part of life. rejections a good thing because it gives us a thick skin, we get used to it, that it doesn’t bother us. But as artists, we take everything so personally, because we’ve personally invested ourselves in creating our art. But if you understand that rejection is part of a process, that it’s nothing personal, that it’s supposed to happen. You never got 100% on every test, when you were in school. That’s, you know, that’s kind of like rejection. That’s self rejection, I suppose. But it’s nothing more than things just aren’t a fit. So don’t take it personal. For whatever reason, you’re not a fit for a show, maybe you’re you know, maybe you’re not ready, you want to know if you’re not ready, rather than looking at it as Oh, they didn’t like my work looking at it as well. Maybe either I wasn’t a fit. Or maybe I need to work on my work a little bit more, you know, we all have to get better. I have this friend who’s a sales trainer name is Pam Lantos, she would stand to people on stage one of them she would stuff their clothes with $100 bills sticking out of their collar, their pockets and everything else. And she would say to the other one, ask him for the order. And she’d say, that person would say, well, will you buy this from me? And that person would say no, every time they said no, that person would pick 100 pick $1 bill out of their clothes. And she kept asking, and they or they kept asking and they kept saying no. And they kept getting $100 or the 100. They kept getting the dollar bill, I’m all confused. Anyway, the idea is to train you to understand as a salesperson, and it’s really true for an artist to the more times you ask, you’re going to get a lot of rejection. But if you get rejection, it’s going to lead you to more dollars. So you just got to keep asking and just look at rejection is one more step towards getting into a show or getting into a gallery or getting the money. So anyway, I think that’s a very important point to consider. rejection is part of life.

The next question coming from David, in San Antonio, who says I just sold my first painting to somebody who was a pastor by when I was outside painting. I was working on it. I had no idea what to charge. So I just made up $100 price was at a good price point. What should I charge in the future? Well, David, congratulations, you sold a painting outdoors when you were painting. That’s a beautiful thing. selling off the easel is wonderful. I’m proud of you. You made a sale. Great. Congratulations. The reality is there’s no way I can answer your question. Is it a good price point? Is it good for you is the question. You know, if you’ve never sold a painting, and you got 100 bucks, congratulations, you paid for your paint and your canvas and a little bit of your time. So that’s a beautiful thing. If you sold a painting, it’s a beautiful thing. Now, if you put a couple hours into it, you get the satisfaction of knowing it’s sold and you got 100 bucks, you can buy yourself dinner. Hey, why not? It’s not bad. Now, the question is, where are you and where should you be? The real lesson here is that you need to be prepared for that question when you’re outdoors painting. You see, it happens all the time. You probably felt a little bit lost, because they asked you and you weren’t expecting it. I’ve sold paintings off the easel a few times the first time was kind of like he just did the little bit, but I didn’t know what to say I was blindsided. When and and i caved in, and I gave a low price just like you did. And you know, that was cool. But when I started planning for it, I decided to try some techniques that I learned when I was younger man when I was in sales. For instance, there’s a concept that suggests you never want to be the one to offer the first price. You want them to offer the first price. So somebody asked me and you can be ready for this. They say hey, how much is your painting? You can say well, I don’t know. What are you willing to pay? Yeah, the reason that’s important is because it can go any direction. Now, they will always tell you a lower price than they’re really willing to pay and you’re always able to say You know, that’s really not quite enough, maybe you could offer a little bit more. And usually there, they’ll bump it up, because everybody always starts low. I know you, you probably do I usually do. Now, what if somebody walked up to you? And they’re thinking, Oh, man, I’d love to own that painting. And if it’s $500 or less, I’m going to buy it. And they walk up to you, and they say, how much is the painting? And you say, it’s 100 bucks. They just saved themselves? 400 bucks. But if you said 500 bucks, they might say, Yeah, okay, cuz that’s the perceived value that they had. Now, here’s another thing you can do. Because there’s a, there’s an old theory called if you talk price, before value is established, you lose. So here’s something I might do. somebody walks up to me and says, Would you be willing to buy your painting? I might say, Well, what would you be willing to pay? And they’d say, Well, you know, I’m willing to pay this, I will oftentimes say, listen, usually, when I finished this painting, I’m going to take it back to the studio, let it dry, I’m going to put some varnish on it, and I’m going to put it in a beautiful frame, and I’m going to ship it to my art dealer, my art dealer would sell this very painting framed for 20 $500. And but as you probably know, the art dealers usually keep about half. So here’s what I’d be willing to do is I’d be willing to sell you for half of that. Because I don’t have a frame on it. Now, they might then say, well, would you cut another 50 bucks, because you’re not giving me a frame? And I might do that. But if you’ve established value, you’ve said, I’m a painter who’s in a gallery. I’m a painter who would normally get 20 $500 for this. I’m a painter who deserves it. And now they might say no, and go away. And that’s okay, too. You have to decide what’s the price point before anybody walks up, you have to know in your mind, but if you just say you blurt out, it’s 20 $500 or it’s $1,000. They don’t know you. It’s it’s like, if they know you, if they have some credibility, if you say, hey, look me up. Let me show you here on my website here. Let me show you on my gallery website. Look here, this, this sells for 2020 $500, the same size. So this is going to go to the gallery. But if you want to buy it from me for half, I’d be willing to do that because I’m only going to get half anyway. But that way you’re not really discounting. Anyway, the point is that you want to be ready. Now there’s other things you probably want to be ready for things like do you give lessons so you can hand them a card or something like that. And so you always want to be prepared for what you’re going to encounter.

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

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

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

  • Art retreats
  • International art trips
  • Art conventions
  • Art workshops (in person and online)
  • And more!
By |2022-12-14T16:50:44-05:00September 6th, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 77

Is it okay to sell paintings at a higher price than other artists? What are some ways you should be networking locally? Eric Rhoads answers in this week’s Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

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

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 77 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads:

In the marketing minute I answer your art marketing questions you can email them to me, I hope you’ll do that. Here’s one from Jen in Ohio who says I’ve recently decided to sell my art congratulations. And I’ve been doing research on pricing structures for my paintings. I know it’s important to research the market. But a lot of other paintings, I find her price fairly low, going between five and $800. I don’t understand how they can possibly make a living off their paintings. Even if they sold all of them the price point that I found in order to make reasonable salary seems to be in the two to $7,000 range for moderate sized paintings. Is it okay to sell paintings at a higher price than other artists? Well, there’s a whole lot of stuff in there, Jen. And let’s just kind of go through them one thing at a time. First off, every artist has to start somewhere now. You can. There’s a lot of stories. I remember asking George Carlson how he got his prices so high. So he said, Well, I don’t know, ask my wife. And I asked her and she said, Well, I just took the amount of time that he puts in how much we needed, and divided that by the number of paintings. And so that’s how they did it. But George was already famous as an artist as a sculptor. So he had a big brand, your brand matters, the more that people know, you respect you trust you, and understand who you are, the more your price goes up. I mean, think about Hollywood, right? There’s, you know, Brad Pitt, he’s probably getting top dollar or George Clooney top dollar. And then there’s, you know, some upstart, young and young upstart artist or, or what am I looking for actor who, you know, they’re just kind of getting internet, so they’re getting union scale. So you just have to understand that you’re gonna have to ratchet it up. Now, I do have some interesting feelings about that. And, and, you know, you know, that there are people out there who are selling too low. And you know, you’re you can’t help that you can’t worry about what other people are going to do. You know, people might compare or they might not, it depends on the environment. So environment is everything, if you’re in a really great gallery, a great gallery, that st, selling for fairly high prices, and then you’re likely to be able to get a higher price in a gallery like that. But that gallerist is going to give you advice, a gallery knows their market better than anybody. And they’ll say, well, maybe we’re going to start you out at this price. And then we’re going to ratchet you up over five years to this price, and this price, and so on. Now, you could just, you could say, Alright, I want to make a certain amount of money a year, but you got to be practical about that. And this may or may not work for you. Because again, it’s about advertising and building your brand and being known and so on. That stuff really matters. But let’s just say you took you said alright, I want to quit my job. And I’m making $50,000 a year, and I need to make $50,000 a year as an artist, well, then you got to ask yourself, right? How many paintings? Can I paint and be good quality? How many can I do per month? And if you say, Well, I can only do two per month, and you know that you’ve got to have $4,000 a month, then, well, you got to have $2,000 a painting, right? Well, the problem with that is that you don’t really know that because if you’re selling a direct, then you get to keep both of those $1,000. Right? If you’re selling it through a gallery, then you only get to keep half of it. So that means you probably need four paintings. But, I turn to my galleries for pricing, because I would love to get high prices. And I think high prices, send signals. And I’ve got a whole lot of stuff about that in my book. But the idea here is that they know their market. So if I just recently sent a painting to my gallery, and I said, What should I charge for it? And he sent me a note, I sent a painting to my other gallery I said, What did you charge for that same painting size? Because I I had forgotten or didn’t know. And, and she sent me the exact same number. So when I heard two people say, well, that’s the number. Well, that’s pretty good. Now, I’m not the best artist in the gallery. And there are artists in the gallery that have the same size painting, and they’re getting, you know, twice, three, four times what I’m getting, because maybe I’m not as famous as they are, or not as accomplished as they are. So there’s a lot of factors into it. So you know, if you if a reasonable salary seems to me a two to $7,000 range for moderate sized paintings, you know, if you’re taking a nine by 12, and saying you want $7,000 for that painting, it might be difficult, especially when you’re starting up. But if you get established, it might be a too low. So take it easy, take it slow. Now if you have a job, I have a video out that talks about how to I don’t even remember what its title is we’ll have to look that up. But it’s an art marketing bootcamp series. And it’s how to quit your job and become a successful full time artist. And and it basically talks about a system for ratcheting up and getting … you don’t want to just go cold turkey, you want to get some experience and you want to get out there and try selling some things before you just quit your job right because you want to get to the point where you’re making enough money with your art that you can quit your job. Anyway, I hope that helps.

The next question comes from Aryana Husselink in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’m from Indiana. And hustling sounds like a good German Name, that’s a good Indiana thing. Aryana says, I know it’s important to be online. But what are some ways that I should be networking in my local community? I think that’s a great question. The first thing to understand, and I think everybody needs to understand this. And that is if all of your marketing is dependent on a single thing, and that single thing no longer works, then you’re in trouble, right? So a single thing might be if you’re selling all your paintings through one gallery, and that gallery closes down, you’re in trouble. So you got to have two or three galleries, ideally, to have some balance, but what if all the gallery business dries up? You know, and so alright, so you’re doing some social media strategy. And by the way, there’s a whole lot of misunderstanding about that. I talked a lot about that in my book. And so you want to have other things like, you know, you’re networking, you can sell a lot of paintings through networking, and networking in your local community is really a good thing to do. So what what are some of the ways? Well, I have in I think, in my book, I, somewhere I wrote, I think it’s in there a whole chapter on this kind of thing, and networking and taking charity work to the next level, and so on. I like to do things like I like to donate paintings to charities, for silent auctions, I will do that from time to time, I don’t have very many paintings anymore, because I don’t have a lot of time, but I have done it. But when I do it, I say look, I’m going to give you I’m not just going to give you a small painting, I’m going to give you a big one, that’s worth a lot of money, so you can advertise it. And so let’s say I’ll get my painting worth $10,000. And they can put, I’ll say, Look, I’ll give you this painting on the condition that you put me as a highlighted, you put my painting on the postcards, you send out the top of your website, you put my name on it, you introduce me at the event, and maybe even have me say something for five minutes, because I want to get something out of that. Because if I say something, all of a sudden, I’m a magnet in the room. And I have all these people that will talk to me otherwise, you know, it’s harder to do that. But I you know, I think charity events are good. There’s all kinds of events, there’s school events. What you want to do, though, is you want to stand in the river where the money is flowing as my saying and I think the idea is that the river where the money is flowing is where people have money to spend, right? So if you’re doing a silent auction in, in something that’s just, you know, let’s say it’s to raise $300, for the kindergarten, you’re not going to make any money on that. Now that’s okay, you might get visible if it’s a, if it’s a school where there’s a lot of high end people, and it can’t hurt and it’s good experience to try. But you know, I want to go if you know there are charities trying to raise big money. They’re trying to get all the wealthy people in town together, I want to be in that auction because I want those people to get to know my name. And I want to do 10 or 20 or 30 of those auctions, you know, some cities like Palm Beach, for instance, big auction town, they have lots of lots of events going on in the wintertime. So people go to an event every night. So if you had if they saw your name at event after event after event after event and at high prices, all of a sudden you’ve packaged yourself as a high price person and then that affects your pricing to the previous question that that might help. Anyway, I hope that kind of gives you an indication but yes, absolutely. Look for different ways you can network in your community and remember to stand in the river where the money is flowing.

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

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

By |2024-02-19T07:38:10-05:00July 19th, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 69

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

How do you price a commissioned painting? What should you do if your painting is stolen? Eric Rhoads answers in this episode of the Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 69 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads:

In the marketing minute I try to answer your art marketing questions. And usually there are questions that kind of aren’t always aren’t marketing related, but sometimes they are. email your questions Eric at art marketing.com. Also check out Art marketing.com because it’s a really great place to get a lot of resources, a lot of articles there. I just wrote one on how to build email list in 2021. Go to artmarketing.com. for that. Here’s a question from Amanda Dodd in Montgomery, Alabama, who says, How do you come up with a price for commissioned painting? Well, pricing is the most confusing, often most misunderstood thing on earth for artists and probably pretty much everybody else. Picking prices, you know, if you were selling widgets, the way you would set your prices is you’d start out by saying okay, you know the cost of the metal is this much and the cost of the labor is this much. And the cost of the marketing is this much and the cost, you add up all of your costs. And let’s say your cost is $100. And then from that point forward, then you have to say okay, as somebody selling this for me, like if it’s if it were a retail store, then they’d say, Okay, well, then we got to add in that, that that amount of money, but you also have to add in your profit, you know, how much is it worth it to you? Now you have to be reasonable, you don’t want to be greedy. But let’s say you’ve got $100 in materials and you’d like to make it you know, some amount of money on it, you have to determine that it’s 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever. And then on top of that, you know, what is the market going to be able to bear? Well as painters, we’re not creating widgets, but there are some clues that you can ask yourself first off, how much time do I have to spend on this and let’s just say that you had an average painting and your average painting took you five days and you could sell that average painting for $2,000. So okay, so you know, you know five days of your time is worth $2,000 and you’ve built in your materials and your frame and your canvas and all that stuff into it. Let’s say somebody says well I want you to do a commission and you start thinking about okay well Commission’s a little different, right, or it could be, let’s say they want you to paint their grandmother and their grandfather. Okay, now there’s two figures in it. And how much time is this going to take you? It’s going to take you potentially a lot more than what a typical landscape painting might take you, for instance, now if it’s a landscape painting commission, different story, but let’s say you said, right, alright, this guy is going to take me instead of 10 days is take me 20 days, well, if you know that, you’re normally going to get a couple $1,000 for that 10 days, and it’s going to take you $20,000, and maybe you charge a couple, it charged twice as much. I mean, that’s kind of how the thinking is, and, and I, I have done commissions and regretted them. I had a commission I did, it was double portrait, and I never realized how much extra time it was going to take me. And it was because I was less experienced in that area. But also, there was all this back and forth of gathering photos. And then I had to do sketches because the photos were no good. And so I had to do sketches, and then I had to kind of put my own light in and try to you know, try to make it right, you know, and then I’m touching base with the person all the time, I spent a lot of time on it. So when you when you start thinking about those things, first off, you got to try and anticipate how much time am I going to spend on how many iterations you know, if you’re doing a commission, usually there’s going to be a preliminary sketch, you know, I’m going to show you a sketch, you’re going to approve it at that point, you’re going to pay me a little bit more of the money you owe me, you’re going to start out by saying, Okay, what, you know, half upfront, and then I need another quarter, it’s a preliminary sketch, and then you got to pay the rest on the finished painting that kind of a thing. So, you know, figure out, you know, how much how much you need to create that piece. Now, on top of that, you’ve got what I call your brand value, you know, if you’re, let’s say, your Nelson Shanks, the late Nelson Shanks, who was getting, you know, 8090 $100,000 for a portrait, you know, he hits, you know, it’s not so much about his time as it is his reputation and the value that he brings, because, you know, it’s a status item to own a painting of his he did my portrait. And so I think the idea is, you got a base, you know, your time, the quality of your brand, you know, if people are highly aware of you, you’ve got a good brand you’re more sought after, then that’s going to increase your value. And you know, there are people out there who are getting that kind of money. But if if it were me, and I came out there, and I said, Hey, I want 80 or $100,000, for my portrait, people would laugh at me. Because I don’t have the reputation for doing that. And so, I mean, you, you might be able to get it with the right person, but chances are, you know, you’re working through somebody else who knows the market, what the market will bear and so on. So, I know, I know, I didn’t really completely answer that. But that’s kind of how I would answer it if I were gonna go into that direction.

Now, here’s a question from Christopher sites in Phoenix, Arizona, whose question is, what do you do if your painting is stolen? Christopher, call the police. You know, there’s no more data in that question. I don’t know how it was stolen, what kind of painting it was, whether it was something he did, or something somebody else did, whether it was at an art show, you know, there’s a lot of different circumstances what to do. But, you know, you, you and also, what’s that painting worth? You know? And is it going to be worth the time to pursue it? And I can’t answer that question, only you can answer it. But, you know, I’ve heard stories of people going to art shows, you know, you’ve got a tent show where you’re, you’re showing things and people slip in and they steal something, and they run off, you know, you’re going to go call the police. And you’re going to go to the police at the Art Show. And you’re gonna say, hey, somebody ran off my painting, but you know, you’re not likely to have any video of it happening in big crowds, it’s gonna be hard to, to do much about it. And so, you know, you just have to, you have to build these things in you know, I have a friend that used to be in the software business. And he worked for one of the big software companies back when you know, software, you’d buy it in a box, and he said, you know, we built in theft into our pricing. So we, we knew that, you know, 10% or 20%, or whatever of our stuff was going to be stolen and copied. And, so we just built that into our cost. And so that’s how they dealt with it, but you’re gonna you know, first thing called the police Now, also there is a thing called the art loss register. Now, that’s more about museum quality paintings that have been stolen from things like, you know, great museums and so on are collections. They and paintings always, almost always show up. And as a result when they show up, you know, a dealer, if it goes to art loss register, he says, You know, I got this painting for sale, I want to make sure it’s not stolen, you go through there and say, Oh, there it is. So I don’t know that they would do that for contemporary artists. And it would probably depend on the quality and the reputation of the artist and the value of the painting. You know, if it’s a big expensive painting, they might so I don’t know you probably We aren’t going to be able to make much progress on that unless you know more you have video or something like that. And then I think the other thing is, you know, it, it’s painful to have things stolen, I had a bunch of camera gear stolen at a, I was photographing at an event and I had all this stuff under the table when I wasn’t using it, and it disappeared, somebody saw me put it under there. Probably it was an inside job from the hotel or something. But anyway, you know it, you feel very violated, but not much at the end of the day, you might be able to turn it into your insurance company, if you have insurance on your paintings. And I don’t really know anything about that, quite frankly. But I think that’s something to think about. Anyway, that this was kind of an unusual or not a bad question. Just an unusual question for our marketing minute. Oh, by the way, here’s something else I would do. I would say, Alright, I just lost a $2,000 painting because it was stolen. How can I get $2,000 worth of value out of that? I would turn it into a promotion, I would look for a way to you know, talk it up, put it on social media, you know, run ads, you know this, this painting was stolen. If you know anything about it, contact the artist Eric Rhoads in and you know, it’s just a roundabout way to get people to look at your work and to see something and to go to your website. And you know, it’s going to create some buzz and some talk and so, to turn everything into an opportunity. That’s that’s about the best you can do. Anyway, that is the marketing minute.

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

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

By |2023-11-30T14:45:45-05:00May 24th, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 61

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

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads addresses if you should give discounts on your paintings; and overcoming the fear of rejection when approaching a gallery.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 61 >

 

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads:

In the marketing minute I answer your art marketing questions and you can email yours to [email protected] which also is a resource. Lots of blog posts there on marketing. Here’s a question from Omar Schmidt in Carlsbad, New Mexico who says, should we do discounts on our artwork, even with discounts? I’m not selling, but I advertised several of my oldest beginner paintings for free and they were claimed within an hour. Yeah. Oh, Mark, don’t do that baby. Look, advertising paintings for free is a great way to never sell another painting because you’re establishing that there’s no value to them. If you want to give paintings away for free, that’s fine. Do it privately. Do it quietly but don’t do it publicly. And certainly don’t advertise it. Because that’s going to make it harder for you in the future to sell anything. Now. People will take us dental floss for free if you give it to him. So paintings, same thing. But you’ve got to find people who value paintings you got to go to the right places. Look, I don’t know how you’re trying to sell. I can’t comment on your discounting. But discounts are not the reason people typically buy. Now there are people who if they’re in the market for something, they find it for a discount, they’ll buy it. But most people won’t even spend money on something they don’t want. If it’s discounted, paintings, or emotional, somebody falls in love, and they’ll pay what they think is a fair price in their mind. The key is understanding that and matching it, clearly discounts can work, but they can also wound you. There’s a time and a place like Nordstroms does one sale a year, I typically do a Black Friday sale, which is coming up. But I don’t normally do discounting. I’ve been doing it during COVID. Because everybody needs a break right now. And quite frankly, we need the money too. So we figured that was a win win, and the artists need the money. So we’re helping them but people who always see you discounting your prices always going to be a discount price, you might not get them back to pay the full price. So some restore retail stores do that right? Every time you walk into certain stores, it’s always 40% off and you just know that they’re marking it up so they can mark it down. But again, that kind of depends on what you’re selling in the art world that doesn’t tend to happen much a starting point Omar is to find out if your works any good. Is there somebody out there who can give you critiques of your work? be objective and not don’t look for all the good stuff? Look for only the bad stuff? You don’t want to hear all the all the compliments? You want to hear what’s wrong with it. And is it marketable? And can you improve it so you can find out if you’re ready? discounts are usually signs of desperation. All right, giving things away is fine. But don’t be public about it. Chances are people who got them we’re not in a position to be cash buyers anyway. But they’ll take them for free. So the other thing is, do you really want paintings out there that you did early that have your name and your signature on them? Be careful about that, because they will haunt you down the road, right? Someone will show up an auction or something and then you’ll be like, ooh, I want that out of the market. I don’t I’m not proud of that. Right. So you got to find a market gotta find a place to sell your work and be seen by buyers who appreciate fine art. I can help you with that by reading my book. I think that’s a good place to start.

There’s a question from Lee Branton, Evansville Indiana. Lee, I’m from Indiana. Lee says can you speak to overcoming the fear of rejection when exposing your artwork to the public or a gallery? Oh, Lee, I’m all over that. Because I am like Mr. rejection. I was talking to a psycho therapist today. And she told me that the number one problem is lacking self esteem. self esteem, of course, can be situational. There are some people I’m totally confident around, I could stand in front of 1000 of them and dance on stage and not have any problem. There are others. I’m like, shy and reserved around I know, that’s hard to believe. But, depends on certain levels of respect or where they came from, some of my early mentors and people that I looked up to, I’m still a little intimidated by some of those. So, and there’s just certain people so keep in mind, it’s situational. When I first put my work in a gallery, I was uncomfortable. And I was making lots of excuses. And I was insecure. It felt very on like me, a rejection is really fear. But why do you fear? Why don’t you embrace rejection? Can you flip it around and say I actually want rejection? Why would you do that? Well, first, you know that every painting has a special person for it, right? It’s not going to appeal to everyone, just like not every painting appeals to you. paintings or emotional reminders, memories, childhood places, things like that, they’re not going to appeal to everybody. And so let’s say that you know this and you know that you’re going to appeal only to one out of 20 people all as soon as you get those 2019 people to reject you, maybe you’ll get to the 20th and you get to a sale sooner. So the faster you can get the rejection. That way you’ll embrace it, you’ll say, Okay, I got a rejection. Good. check that off next. That way, you’re closer to a sales. That makes sense. Alright, a friend of mine is a sales trainer. She stops her pockets with hundred dollar bills. And she says to a person, okay, ask me for the order. And every time she says no, she says, Take one of those hundred dollar bills. And then, they asked for the order 20 times, she finally says yes. And they get to keep all the hundred dollar bills they plucked off of her. I think the idea is, to make the example that you got to ask a lot, you got to be willing to ask and effort in order. And so some of that is is training that you could stand to have, when you’re dealing with artwork, we’re always or at least often insecure about our artwork. It’s normal. But why? Well, maybe we don’t think we’re good enough. And if that’s the case, if we’re insecure about our work, then maybe we need to have it evaluated to look at it and say, Is it good enough? Should we be out there yet? can we improve and always look for ways you can grow and improve? That’s why videos and workshops and seminars and conventions and things like that are really, really helpful. Don’t think of this as rejecting you. They’re not rejecting you. They’re just not clicking with that particular painting. It’s nothing personal. So as soon as you understand that, and That the faster you’re going to get beyond that fear, people are generally kind they want you to succeed. Look for the bright side and everything and don’t look at them as being critical of you or your painting. It just has an appeal to them embrace failure, as lessons that bring you closer to the success that you want. I think I could write a whole book about that topic. Well, that’s the marketing minute.

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

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

By |2023-10-03T08:49:32-04:00March 29th, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 60

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

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares how to get your work known on a larger scale, and ideas for increasing the price of your paintings.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 60 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads:

In the marketing minute I answer your art marketing questions you can email yours to [email protected] and I read these sight unseen never seen them I answer them without a script because I just got to do it off the off the top of my head because that’s how I roll question from Christina Hillen in Buffalo, New York who says please keep the marketing minutes coming. They’re very inspiring. Thank you, Christina, what’s your question? My question is, I have no idea how to get my work known on a larger scale. Where do I begin? Well, I don’t know if you mean larger scale, meaning larger paintings. But assume you mean, how do you get your work known on a larger scale, I recommend that every artists have two strategies, and sometimes three, but let’s start with two. I think as an artist, you start out local. And you really get well known locally, we have a product that we created called art market in a box. It’s really designed to get people to become kind of the known artists locally in their community, and really be the person that everybody relies on for charity auctions and getting your name out there. And anytime there’s an artist mentioned in the media, it’s you and anytime that anything’s going on, it’s like – we want you to become a local star. That’s very important, because you can sell a lot locally. And there’s a lot of things you can do locally, you can’t do nationally. But the downside is that sometimes local doesn’t work. Let’s say you live in a community where, your community just isn’t, the jobs aren’t there, people aren’t making any money. And so, if you are relying entirely on one marketplace, then it’s a problem for you. That’s why we recommend also a national strategy, which means getting into some art galleries, or selling nationally in other places. Now, what I try to do is I try to put myself or I try to recommend that you go into galleries where things are really crushing it where people are making money and people are doing it, like a place like Silicon Valley, for instance. Because or, sometimes it’s a different place. Some markets get hot, for whatever reason, try to be in those markets, or maybe places that people go on vacation when they’re allowed to go on vacation. But let’s say you had a gallery in Hawaii, and everybody was going to Hawaii and now nobody’s going to Hawaii, well, you’re not going to make any money from that gallery. So that’s why you want to have two or three, I don’t recommend more than about that, some people will do more, but you’ve got to have enough quality that you can send to the galleries. And so having two or three galleries in two or three different locations around the globe, so that you’ve got a little economic stability can be a really good thing. And so I think the way to scale to get known on a larger basis, first off, get yourself a way to sell and that is through a gallery. Now you can sell direct as well. And there’s a whole nother dialogue about that. But the idea is that you’ve got to help your gallery, you can’t rely on them entirely, because it lets say I’m in a gallery with, I’ve been three galleries now. And I’m in a gallery with 30, 40, 50 other artists in some cases. And so, what’s gonna make me stand out, and the thing that’s gonna make me stand out is my name my brand, right? So you want people to seek you out. And the way to do that is you got to build a brand. So that’s when you start your advertising strategy. That’s when you start a social media strategy. Although I caution you that social media tends to be our friends, tends to be people who are not necessarily art buyers, not always, I mean, you can get them but you’ve got to have a specific strategy to get them. And then, you’ve got to work it and you’ve got to work at constantly, you got to just keep it out there year after year after year. As long as you’re in business, you’ve got to be working on your advertising and, your visibility, your publicity, things like that. So the way to begin is, start out by building your brand, getting known and getting used to selling things, maybe ramping it up locally, but then starting out nationally.

Now, here’s a question from Sean Stanley in Charleston, South Carolina. Hello, Sean. Sean says recently, my local art center had a blowout sale, you could ask $10 to $100 for your paintings. I took lots of smallish ones 11 by 14 being the largest. I’m a hobbyist I made about $300 people love some of some of them. It helped build my confidence a lot. What should my next step be? Well, there’s nothing like selling a painting to build your confidence, Sean , congratulations, I think that’s terrific. And, everybody has to start somewhere. And pricing is one of those difficult things, you know, I’m not a big low price person. But I also know that when you’re starting out, you’re not going to command a higher price until you get to the point where you’re a little bit stronger, and then you can start commanding. But I think just getting used to being able to sell paintings is a really good thing. And so do more of that. So what I recommend is you get yourself an art show at a local restaurant or something, you may or may not be strong enough to do that yet. But get some experience, set up a little sale, maybe set up a sale at your house for your friends, or an open studio, get used to selling get to the point where you’re selling. But all of us need to always work on getting better, because it’s getting better. That also builds our confidence. It’s nice to sell paintings. But it’s nice to sell paintings at higher prices, ultimately. And when you start getting, instead of $100 for painting, you start getting 200 and then 400 and then 1000 and 2000 and 5000 and then 10,000, then 100,000. That’s gonna make a big difference. Now, some of us never get there. But a lot of us do. I’m not. But I think that means that you want to be constantly pushing yourself to elevate your skills. One of the ways to do that is to enter competitions, because now you’re up against other people, and it does something in your brain, it clicks something off in your brain and makes you try harder and makes you step up and makes you say, can I make this painting better. So I think that’s a good next step, trying to art get some art competitions, and you get that validation if you win. Now, not everybody wins. And a lot of people enter many, many times and never win, and sometimes they do. And so that helps build confidence. But I think, starting out with a little local thing, I would do something at a local diner restaurant, something like that, and see if you can sell some more hundred dollar paintings. And once you get some more under your belt, maybe you can develop relationships with the people who bought those paintings and sell them some more and then gradually ratchet up your prices 250 to 200 and 300 and so on. And, if you’re a hobbyist and you only want to be a hobbyist that’s cool, too. There’s nothing wrong with that. So congratulations. I applaud you on that.

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

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

By |2023-09-27T10:28:09-04:00March 22nd, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 52

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

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares new advice on if you should list your prices on your website, and thoughts on fame versus success.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 52 >

 

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads

In the marketing minute I try to answer your marketing questions. I haven’t been stumped yet but I’m sure somebody will stumped me at some point I’m it’s bound to happen right? Anyway, email your questions to me [email protected]. And if you want to check out the website artmarketing.com has tons of articles I’ve written about art marketing. Here’s a question from Kathy in Indianapolis who asked Is it a good idea to list your prices on your website for your paintings or on your social media? And if so, why or why not? I’ve always wondered this because if people don’t see the price, how are they supposed to know how much it is and some artists don’t do it? Some do it. So what’s the right way? I don’t think I can say there’s a right way or wrong way. I think that the way to say it is you got to make your choices. Now I will tell you a story. A dealer friend of mine in the I’ll just say into Texas dealer friend of mine in Texas, was having this great debate about whether or not he should put prices on his website because no dealers were doing that at the time this a few years back. And I said, I think you should I would put my prices on there because the internet is all about instant gratification. And if I am in another country, or if I’m sitting up at four o’clock in the morning, I browse around, I see something I want to be able to buy it. I don’t have to pick up the phone and call you. And his argument was, yeah, but I if I get them on the phone, I can talk to them and talk them through it and help sell them. And my argument was, yeah, but you might not get them on the phone. Most people don’t want to get on the phone anymore, and some will some won’t, but you need to be able to sell it anyway. So he took a chance on it. He did an experiment and he put his prices on the website right away right away. I just felt so totally vindicated here, right so right away. He gets a An order that came in at like four o’clock in the morning, just like I said it would happen it was from some foreign country. And the order was for get this $650,000 for a big piece of sculpture. This is a top tier gallery $650,000. Now, when he arrived the next morning, he had a wire transfer for the money in his bank account. And he was able to confirm it and be able to send the sculpture and pack it up and send it to wherever it was Brazil or something, I think. And and so, from that point forward, he always put his prices on his website. Now some dealers still don’t do it. Some artists don’t do it. I you know, I think it’s debatable but I think, in this this culture, we’re going on Amazon and we’re shopping for things we want to be able to have instant gratification and I think that art is Really is the same way. And so I would do it, that’s what I think is the proper way to do it. And you also can have opportunities to upsell for framing or you know, pick a different frame or things like that. Most of the website providers provide things like that now, so I think it’s a really good idea. I, you know, again, it’s debatable, but I think it’s worth a try. And if you have a reason why it’s a bad idea, let me know, I’d like to hear it.

Next question comes from Randy in New York City, or Randall, who says it seems that the best artists rise to the top and are working and that working on your art and getting to the highest possible level of development is the most important thing to become famous. Would you agree? Well, I think there’s a couple of things in here. First off, this sounds like a trick question. I know it’s not random but the famous you know, what’s more important? Is it more important to be famous or is it more important to be successful? Is fame successful, you can be famous and not make any money is that You want? Do you want to be famous and successful financially, you know, you got to figure out what you want. But here’s the problem. It seems like it should be the case. I mean, you would think that the universe would do that you spend your life working on your work, you get really good at it, and you put it out there, and then it just automatically gets recognized. And that happens sometimes. I mean, people do get discovered they do get recognized from the quality of their work. And clearly quality tends to rise to the top and gets the higher prices. But if you don’t put it out there, sometimes it’s not going to be seen you know, what if you don’t just get discovered what if you don’t get a gallery? What if you don’t find an agent? What if you don’t get seen? I have seen so many instances and learned about so many people throughout my career of people who are brilliant painters who have never been discovered. I had I was had an opportunity I was asked to come to England to try and talk a particular painter into getting out there and going into the market. And because he was so shy, he didn’t want to do it. And he had, it was a brilliant artist, and he wouldn’t even sell his work. And he’s in his particular case, he just didn’t want to do it. And but there have been so many instances of people who wanted to do it, but they didn’t, that, you know, they just never got anybody interested in. Um, so I think the thing is that, that selling your work is a lifetime effort. As long as you’re going to be selling your work, you’re going to have to be somewhat assertive, some would say aggressive, you have to be willing to put yourself out there. I mean, let’s say you’re at a cocktail party, and you meet an art dealer and you’re so shy that you won’t even say hey, I’m an I’m an artist, and I’d like you to look at my work. Well, first off art dealers get that so many times they may not pay attention to it, but they also might say, Yeah, I would like to look at your work but some people are social You know, marketing is sometimes just a matter of raising your hand and telling people what you’re up to. It doesn’t have to be anything beyond that. But a lot of people think marketing is something they don’t need to do. They don’t need marketing skills. They think marketing is crass, for some reason, but some have been lucky and gotten out there. Some have not. So I would say that you’ve got to be really sensitive to the idea that learning marketing is important. Let’s let’s say this, you know, I think a great thing for an artist is to eventually get a two or three great galleries, maybe more or to get a great handler, maybe somebody to work for you, maybe somebody to be your your agent. But you know, the reality is that usually you have to do some marketing and build some some awareness before somebody wants to do it. It’s like galleries want to go after successful people. They want proven people sometimes they’re not willing to take the risk and so you got to get out there. So learning and discovering marketing, go to artmarketing.com. Check it out. See if You can find some things that might be of value to you. I think you might find it to be helpful. Anyway, I think that’s, I think that’s the answer.

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

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

By |2023-07-06T14:41:05-04:00January 25th, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 51

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

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares advice on where to begin when it comes to marketing, and how to change your limited perception of what buyers are willing to pay for a piece of art.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 51 >

Art Marketing Minute Podcast

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads
In the marketing minute I answer your marketing questions you can email me anytime, Eric@artmarketingcom. Here’s a question from Jacob in Cincinnati who says Where do I begin when it comes to marketing, social media, advertising, having a website? Well, Jacob, I get this question a lot. It’s a very normal question. And it’s an important question because nobody knows where to begin. It’s like what do I do? I’ve got to start selling my work. I think the most important thing is to ask yourself what you want to accomplish, set some goals and try to figure out how you’re going to accomplish those goals. Now you don’t have to set giant goals yet. Just set some goals. You know, what’s the number one thing you want to accomplish? You want to sell paintings. You want to build a brand you want to do Something else get names for your website so that you can email people your newsletter, try to figure out what it is you’re looking for. Once you set those goals, then you’ll have an idea what you’re going for. Because you cannot do any marketing, until you really understand what you’re marketing to accomplish. But if you have a framework, let’s say you know that your number one goal is branding, you’ve got to build your name, while you’re going to think differently about branding than you are about how to capture names for your website, so you can send them emails, or how to how to sell specific paintings. It’s all different. So the very beginning part of everything is set some goals figure out your strategy, what is it I want to accomplish? How am I going to accomplish it is more after the strategy because that’s tactic. But strategy first is what do I want to accomplish? Now it’s easy to say, Well, I want to accomplish everything and I get that But the reality is you can’t accomplish everything all at once. You’ve got to start somewhere. And I think that what you’ve got to do is figure out what’s the most important thing for you to accomplish. It’s I can’t answer that for you because it’s different for everybody, but start there. Good question. Thank you.

The next question comes from Beatrice in Sedalia, Sedalia, I believe Missouri. Beatrice says I feel like I have a limited perception about what buyers are willing to pay. Can you speak to this in regards to pricing? Well, the best way to understand this, Beatrice is to understand that there are people who have more money than I have or more money than you have. And we tend to base our pricing based on what we would be willing to pay or what we could afford. But what if somebody has 100 times more money, or 1000 times more money or 10,000 times more money. Suddenly, those Things change. And so what you want to do is ask yourself, first off, what do I need for this painting? What What is my dream price for this? You may not get there in the beginning, but you want to start and ask yourself, where do I want to be and then you want to craft a plan on how to get there. Now, galleries will tell you that they don’t want you to start out too high because they want to build a collector base. Get those people to keep investing in you more and more over time. If you’re selling direct online, it depends on the environment you’re selling in. If you’re selling in a high end online gallery, for instance, that sells big expensive paintings and you’re really really low priced, it actually might hurt you instead of helping you versus if you’re the most expensive thing and a low end, you know, kind of a crummy online gallery or environment then it might hurt you. So again, it comes down to understanding your strategy. I realized a long time ago that only A lot of people had a lot more money than me and I would limit my thinking by that I would say, Okay, well, I’m only making $40,000 a year, how can I possibly sell something that’s gonna somebody’s gonna pay $50,000 for that’s more than I make in a year. And yet there are people out there who would look at a painting and say, Well, what do you mean? It’s it’s $2,000 It can’t be any good if it’s $2,000 it but if it were $20,000 I might consider it and it’s hard to believe that people think that way because you know, everybody, including wealthy people want a bargain. But why does somebody who’s wealthy buy a Mercedes instead of buying a Kia? Well, Kia is a great car. It’s a good looking car, but it doesn’t have the brand that Mercedes has right and why is it somebody will buy a Rolls Royce instead of a Mercedes? Well, the people who buy Rolls Royce probably look at Mercedes as a low end brand or a lower end brand. Why is it some people will buy a Ferrari for a million dollars instead of a Rolls Royce for 250 or $300,000. And again, it kind of goes back to their stature in life. So a lot of that depends on who you’re talking to where you’re talking to them what your environment is, all those things matter. So you need to understand that. So start by asking yourself, where am I selling it? If I’m selling it on my own website, that’s a little bit of a problem because you have to establish some relevance to the buyers and you don’t even know who’s visiting the probably so you want to try and figure out who’s visiting where you want to be. I look for ways to put myself in front of fluent people. You know, my magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur has over 300 billionaires that read it, and lots of upper one percenters very affluent people. And so I know that if I put something expensive in front of those people, they’re not going to blink twice. I mean, yeah. Maybe if it’s too expensive, but what’s too expensive, you have to a billionaire. Now, not every person is going to buy that painting. They have to look at it and say, This lives up to my perception of quality. But you may be telling yourself stories about I’m not good enough yet, and maybe you’re not, but you might be good enough. And if you are good enough, somebody looks at that and says, Well, this person’s got, you know, a $5,000 painting, that’s no problem for me. And you might be thinking I’d never pay $5000 for a painting, I could only pay $200 for a painting. Well, I get that. And that’s part of where we all have to kind of get our mindset in the place. I have a saying that I say in my book, Make More Money Selling Your Art and that is always stand in the river where the money is flowing. We tend to hang out with people that we hang out with. If we don’t have a lot of money, we tend to hang out with people who don’t have a lot of money. People who have a lot of money tend to hang out with people who have a lot more money. And so you want to make sure that you’re standing in the river where the money is flowing. Anyway, I hope this helps.

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

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

By |2023-06-27T11:41:29-04:00January 18th, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 41

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

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares insights on unconventional ways artists are selling paintings now, and pricing prints versus originals.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 41 >

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mywy7AykXCE

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

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

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

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

Eric Rhoads
In the art marketing minute I try to answer your art marketing questions. And you just email them to me [email protected]. Here’s a question from Bob Ragland, says I’m interested in knowing how artists are selling their art in untraditional ways. Well, I’m interested to I’m always keeping an eye on that. Bob the untraditional quickly becomes the traditional once it works, as you know, we’ve observed because of Coronavirus, we observed a lot of people doing some new and interesting things. One thing I saw recently is an artist doing a raffle for a painting and they’re selling tickets at 10 bucks or 20 bucks each and the goal is to sell enough tickets to cover the cost that they would normally get and got a lot of entries and did a raffle and then it’s doing another one. Another artists I saw is doing an auction. Where you don’t actually see the painting? You’re buying an unseen painting and you’re auctioning for it. And lo Papa did this and started the idea. Laguna plein air painters and I was in it as a matter of fact, they raised over $20,000. So it could be done by an artist as well. And and of course, lately, lots of people are doing virtual art shows with links to buy. And that’s been very effective for very many a lot of galleries and artists doing it so I think it’s something that will probably continue. I like to see people thinking outside of the box hate that term though.

The next question comes from an anonymous person in Las Vegas, who says do prints that are the same size as the original devalue the original painting I worry that some people won’t know the difference? Well, prints are controversial and some hate them. Others love them. I’ve watched a lot of artists make some money with prints. I’ve watched them do licensing to print companies. Which is not as much money but you’ve got somebody working for you, night and day and and selling that for you. So I think that’s a pretty good thing. I think prints are a nice thing. Because a lot of people cannot afford an original but they go into a gallery or they see your work, they’d like to own it, but they can’t afford it original. I don’t know that that’s going to stop somebody from buying an original. Obviously, it’s going to be priced considerably different. And quite frankly, some people say, hey, if I never sell the original, but I sell 100 prints off of it, I’m making more money than I would have from the original so it doesn’t really matter. Some galleries love them. Some galleries hate them, you got to have a talk with your gallery about that. I don’t know if size matters might not be a bad idea to vary the size a little and quite frankly, it’s nice to have different sizes. But if you get too small, then you’re going to have a minimum price that you might not want. Remember, you want somebody walking out of the gallery out of your booth or whatever spending a decent amount of money and you want to make sure your prints are valuable but also that you’re making money on them prints are not cheap to make not good ones not by the time you put them in a What do they call that, I want to say a frame but it’s thicker the term matte There we go. Anyway, sometimes it takes a little time for those words to enter this old brain. Anyway, Matte and then of course piece plastic or something to put it up and and I think it’s something to talk to your gallery about, but I don’t see any problem with doing it. I used to think there was a problem. I’ve changed my tune on that a little bit. I think anything goes today you got to survive. You just got to make sure you’re being ethical.

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

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

By |2022-12-14T16:50:27-05:00November 9th, 2020|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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