You don’t have to be a starving artist. It doesn’t have to define you.
A successful artist is one that can balance their creativity and commerce.
Stick around till the end for a little bonus tip.
Don’t forget to like subscribe and watch the other videos I have the the artist starting their art career.
Stick around till the end for a little bonus tip.
TIP 1 - If you’re watching this that means you don’t know that much. So the tip is : Learn as much as you can. Being an artist you have to learn Business. It sucks, its not creative and you probably suck at it. I know I definitely did when I started. But you have to start somewhere. The biggest mistake I made was that I didn’t actively go out and try to learn. Take a business class, ask questions, read books. You have to take the business side seriously if you want to move forward with your art career. Hate to break the news to you, but the chances of someone coming along and doing the business for you and letting you just create are slim to none. Most artist have to spend a lot of their time on the business end of it. But do you know how they manage that? The get so good and quick at their art and formalize it that they can spend time on the business. Read Books, Study artists and what they do. Do art festivals, get your art into galleries and shops and start selling. All this will help you get going. The Business side of your art career
INvest in yourself
You don’t know so learn understand that art business can be difficult but so is painting so just start. You will get better
2
Start keeping track. Money. Data. Sales. Anolog or digital. How much comes in. How much goes out. My weakness was always ballparking and wanting it to work so bad I would make the numbers work. Don’t do this. It won’t help your business. Your time in the beginning is your least expensive thing because you want to do this more than anything else. Take the time to do it.
3
Don’t stay under the table. Pay your taxes. Start your dba then lock then a corporation.
Can’t grow unless you’re playing by the rules
4
Learn how to make sales. Sales tactics. The better you get at sales the more you will make. The more you make the easier business is to run and operate
5
Figure out when you’re good at making business stuff work. Ie first thing in the morning or late at night. When is your brain in business mode and when is it in creative mode and don’t mix. Designate the time for each.
Discipline is a big part of art, but also business. Take the time to read a book. Take notes. Try and learn. It’s ok to mess up when you’re getting started. Don’t worry. We all do. But don’t get discouraged
Recommend reading
Art money success
How to win friends and influence people
Bonus tip - Get off instagram and spend that 10 min you save reading about business and sales. The time ads up and after a few months you will see a lot of improvement on your mindset and confidence.
Is the idea of selling your art terrifying? Are you avoiding doing an art show or art market because you’re scared to stand in front of your art and try and sell it? Well you’re not alone, I’ve been there too. It took me years to just get to my first art market, and you know what? I wish I started sooner.
Selling art is uncomfortable for most, if not all artists, but at a certain point you need to get over that fear so you can make a living doing what you love. No one is going to sell it for you, at least not yet.
These are my 5 tips for selling your artwork. I learned this through some brutal trial and error, but I can assure you that if you apply what I am teaching you will grow your confidence and art sales. Maybe not over night, but you will get better I promise.
So here we go, My 5 tips for selling your art for the beginner artist
Have a Great Product
The best and easiest way to make art sales if have quality art product. Have your art finished and ready to hang, have great art. Make everything about your art pro. Make it look like you care about every detail of every part of your art, which you should.
Not only is your art the product, but so are you. Get a haircut, take a shower, wear some nicer cloths. This will help the collector believe in not just the art but you as well. No one wants to buy a piece of art from a scraggly stinky dirty artist. Get your shit together. Get your art together. Be a finished product and sell a finished art product.
Be Present
Listen to what the buyer is saying, you can learn a lot about what they might be interested in if you listen. Be positive. Everything that comes out of your mouth needs to be positive. No one wants bad energy on their art that they will be putting in their home. All positive vibes. People might try and drag you down, but stand firm. Be the light. Be confident, at least fake confidence till you get real confidence. Make eye contact, shake hands. Be engaged. People rant just buying art they are buying you. Be something worth investing in. Ask questions, how they are what they have going on in their lives, all this info will help you understand what they might be looking for.
People will ask you the same questions over and over again. Start getting these answers dialed in and practiced so you don’t have to think about them or talk for too long. There is other stuff more important to think about when having to sell your own artwork, so minimize the amount of thinking on your feet you have to do and dial in the answers to the questions you know you will have to answer.
Be able to Close the Sale
Make the transition from talking about the art to payment. Its easy to get into that area where the collector is thinking about buying or just needs to be nudged a little. Use any of the phrases below to transition to getting payment for your artwork.
Transitional phrases
“Can I ring you up”
“Ok get lets get this all wrapped up for you”
“Would you like to pick out a gift with purchase?”
“Will I be shipping this piece will you be taking it with you?”
“Would you like me to make a dedication for you on the back?”
These are all phrases that will help you move from talking about the art to the point of sale.
Use The Right Verbiage
Along with staying positive and using positive verbiage, there are some word to use while selling art and some words to not use when selling art
Cheap vs affordable.
Limited edition vs only made a few
Original artwork vs unique/handmade/1 of a kind
Reproduction vs copy/print
Collector vs buyer/client/person
collectors list vs email list
Return collector discount vs deal/discount
The way you use words can help create value to your artwork or create less value to your artwork. Make sure to use words that elevate your art brand, not diminish your art brand
You have to push a little.
This will look great in your home”
“Such a good way to remember your stay”
“Doesn’t it make you happy“
“Art makes a house feel like a home“
“Your daughter will love it“
Phrases like these can help move the collector into the buying category.
Don't Let Them Walk Away Empty Handed
If someone seemed close to buying something or very interested but is walking away you can alway do a couple things to possibly gain a future sale. You can hand them a 5x7 info card that has a image of your art on 1 side, and bio/ information/ contact on backside. These are great because they are cheap to make, look good in your booth and they are something that someone will actually take because its basically a free 5x7 print of your art.
You don’t have to offer a discount, but you can offer the collector a gift with purchase if you are really trying to close the sale. This can be a matted print, or something affordable in your booth. This can often push someone into buying. We do this in our gallery when a collector buys an original, they get to have a gift with purchase limited edition aluminum giclee, or a gallery credit of that equal amount.
At the very least, if someone seemed generally interested in your art, talked to you for a while, but didn’t purchase anything, it’s fair to ask them to sign up for your collectors list. This will be just an email list in a guest book at your booth where they can write their name and email. You can reassure them you don’t send out many emails. This is a good way to start building your email list and at least getting contact info for a collector that has shown interest in your artwork. Remember you will make 100k a year for every 1,000 legitimate emails you have on your list.
Motivational Art Speech
Selling artwork can be difficult for artist. We as creators pour so much of our should and energy into our work that it can be hard to put on the salesman hat and make sales. I understand that these 5 tips wont change your sales overnight, but learning the art of sales takes time. Hopefully these tips on selling art can steer you in the right direction and motivate you to keep learning and trying. This is a baby step and congratulate yourself for taking it.
No one will sell your art better than you. Its up to you to become so good at selling art that you can teach the art dealer at the art gallery how and what to say. You might feel like it is tacky to sell your art or not artsy, but those thoughts are just because you are in secure about your artwork, and thats ok. All of us artist go though tons of insecurity about our art form. It is part of the creative journey we chose to go on. Practice your art. Become undeniable, and soon the sales part will get easier. Now get out there, make some rad art, learn some more and always stay inspired.
So I get asked this question a lot, "How much should I sell my artwork for? and When should I raise my prices?" Now, this is a pretty tricky little topic, but I think for beginners this article might really help you out and get you through the first couple of years when trying to sell your artwork and for how much. These are 12 things to consider about the prices of your art and when and how to raise prices.
MAKE A QUALITY ART PRODUCT
UNDERSTAND THE COST TO MAKE YOUR ART
HOW MUCH EXPOSURE YOU HAVE CREATED
HOW MANY ART PIECES YOU MAKE AND SHOW
YOUR AUDIENCE DETERMINES YOUR PRICES
RAISE YOUR PRICES EVERY YEAR
YOU CAN ALWAYS RAISE PRICES BUT NEVER LOWER PRICES
OK TO BE A STARVING ARTIST... FOR A LITTLE BIT
SHOW YOUR COLLECTORS WHY YOUR PRICES ARE GOING UP
PRICE YOUR ART TO BE ABLE TO BE IN AN ART GALLERY
ITS NOT YOUR MONEY
ADDING PRINTS AND REPRODUCTIONS
MAKE A QUALITY ART PRODUCT
You can't charge a ton of money for a piece if it's not really finished that well or, it's just kind of in that beginner stage or poor craftsmanship. So, you know, you need to have your name on there, title of the piece written on the back, ready to hang a finished quality, something that you just something that you ran out of time on. This is going to play a big role in what the buyer is going to see and how they're going to value your artwork.
UNDERSTAND THE COST TO MAKE YOUR ART
The cost to make your art is important. If it costs you $100 to make it, you don't want to sell for $80. You also might not be able to sell it for $3,000. So you kind of have to figure out where a little happy medium is. If you spend $50 in paint/materials, selling at $100 is great. Yeah, you might get not that much money for your time, but we're talking about those early steps of getting out there, start establishing prices and figuring out what it costs you to make it and what the collector will pay for it.
For me, my work is really expensive to make and it's very time consuming. So in the beginning when I was charging not very much, maybe $80 for an 18 x 24" original, I was losing money or barely breaking even. But I was able to sell a lot of pieces, gain experience from practicing sales, and getting exposure. I was also getting feedback from collectors, I was able to keep the art business moving forward, even though I was making very little profit. But the knowledge I gained from that time and confidence i got was priceless.
(R) Retail: cost of art online, in galleries, at art markets and festivals
(W) Wholesale: The amount of money the gallery will give you for your art.
(M) Manufacturing Material Cost: How much it costs to make art, cost of materials, studio space, etc
(L) Labor in Hours Making art: How many hours to paint your artwork
(CL) Cost of Labor: Up to you but be real and start as low as possible.
(S) Selling Labor: How much time do you spend on selling your work, art festivals, galleries, online, instagram
(P) How Much you would like to profit. Its ok to not profit for a little bit while you grow your business. Don't quite your day job
R = W x 2
W = (2M +10%) + (L x CL) + S + P
Use this equation or one like it (I'm not a math expert) to figure out your prices. You will see your retail goes up real quick the more you cost per hour gets as well as when you start having to wholesale to the art galleries.
HOW MUCH EXPOSURE YOU HAVE CREATED
Another thing to consider is how much exposure you've received. If you've gotten articles written about you, if you've done a lot of art shows, if you're showing your artwork in galleries, art festivals, coffee shops etc, all these things help contribute to how much you can sell your art for.
It always goes up in slow steps. So don't think that you got one article you can triple your prices, you really want to inch your way up. How much exposure you have does play in to how much you can charge for your art, but at the end of the day, if you're not selling, your art is bad and or your prices are too high. Slow and steady wins the race. Exposure is great but also be careful. If someone asks you to do a project for free, but the "Exposure will be great for you" I would say that is often not the case. Exposure for you is only good if it can result in sales, traffic to your website, or get new collectors emails.
HOW MANY ART PIECES YOU MAKE AND SHOW
How many pieces do you make? if you only make one or two pieces a year because you're kind of just a hobbyist, you're going to have a hard time raising your prices, or getting the prices you think you deserve. People want to collect from an artist who is committed to the art game.
The more art pieces you make, the more you're going to be able to show, get feedback on them, sell them. All of this is going to help you raise your prices. If you only make ten pieces total, it can be really hard to charge a lot for them. Make more art. Get more experience. Show more art. Slowly raise your prices.
If you're making hundreds and hundreds of art pieces, it becomes easier to charge higher prices for them. And a lot of it just comes from confidence of having experience, being written up in magazines, doing art shows, selling art, and doing all the stuff that helps give you the confidence to raise your prices. You get more the more you make. The more you make the better you get at it. The better you get at it the more you can charge, the more you charge the more you can spend on making better art. It fuels itself.
YOUR AUDIENCE DETERMINES YOUR PRICES
It's not just how much your artwork cost to make, it's if collectors are buying it. Your audience and the people collecting your work determine how much your artwork is worth. You may think it's worth $10,000 and your mom does too, but that's not what people are willing to spend on your art, at least not yet. The collectors determine how much your art is. If you start selling your artwork at a price point where no one's buying it, then your cost is probably too high. The audience really gives you the feedback of what you're able to charge. That is why you need to get out there and start showing and selling your work. Start low, start humble. Slowly raise your prices when you can t keep your art in stock. Selling out means that you're doing something right. Don't raise your prices the second you sell out. Be busy, stay busy, get over whelmed with too much demand. Be back ordered for 6 months to a year. Then raise your prices 10% then stay busy for 6 months then raise them again 10%. Slow and steady if you are busy.
RAISE YOUR PRICES EVERY YEAR
I generally raise my prices every year. Every six months we kind of increment our way up to higher prices. Now you don't have to double or triple your artwork price every time. Doing small increments along the way can help you get confidence and raising prices your prices at a steady rate like 5% or 10% is a safe number that wont discourage collectors. Try 10$, try 25$ a little bit can make all the difference. Now you can buy that expensive brush, or buy 2 canvases for everyone you sell. Every penny helps move the needle forward.
YOU CAN ALWAYS RAISE PRICES BUT NEVER LOWER PRICES
You always can raise your prices, but it's really difficult to lower your prices. Spend a year not making much money on your artwork, but able to grow from there, versus trying to come in hot and being like, "This piece is $700", but no one buys it. Then next time you're at a show, you're like, "This is $600" and then no one buys it or the people that are looking at your work and having interest but your prices going down. This is not a good sign in my opinion.
I think you should start low, sell your artwork, get it moving, get practice selling it, get practice with the collector, closing the sale, doing all that and then you can raise your prices. People often overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in ten years. So don't think of this as a short term thing. If you want to be a professional artist, you're going to be doing this the rest of your life.
OK TO BE A STARVING ARTIST... FOR A LITTLE BIT
It's okay to spend a year in that sort of starving artist situation, but remember, that's just a phase of being an artist, and it's usually in the very beginning when you're figuring out how much to sell your artwork and you might not be making very much money or just breaking even. But you can grow from there. The more artwork you do, the more shows you do, the better you're going to get at it. Don't let the starving artist persona define you. People want to see their favorite up and coming artist succeed. They will be happy for your success because it will confirm what they believed. That you are a talented artist and they made the right choice in rooting for you.
SHOW YOUR COLLECTORS WHY YOUR PRICES ARE GOING UP
It's going to be hard for collectors to see the value in new higher prices if you don't improve. Always be improving your work, getting better at it, making a better product for collectors and the art galleries. If your art is improving, getting better, quality is going up, more exposure, better art booths, your confidence is growing, you are becoming a better all around artist, the collectors who have been watching you will take notice and see the value in your art prices increasing.
PRICE YOUR ART TO BE ABLE TO BE IN AN ART GALLERY
Art galleries generally take around 50% of the total sale. So if you get into an art gallery, you will want to raise your prices up. And you also don't want to compete with the gallery, you don't want to go to an art festival or art market and sell your prices at wholesale, or less than the art gallery is selling them for. If you do, you're going to burn that bridge real quick with the art gallery and probably not get into any other art galleries in that area, why? because all the art galleries talk to each other. It's a small art community, so play it safe. be cool, the only person who is going to get short changed is you.
You'll have to sell all you artwork at. the same retail price as the art gallery, no matter where your art is, even online. Getting into galleries is a good way to help you raise your prices and help you gain more confidence when you're selling at those higher prices.
Now, you won't be making the retail price of $300 out of the gallery, you'll be making $150 from the gallery. So it' might be a little pay cut from what you're used to making at the art markets, but you're in a good position to grow and start raising your prices. Now more people will see your art and getting more collectors interested in your work.
ITS NOT YOUR MONEY
When you are pricing your artwork, it's important to price your artwork in a way that it doesn't deter people from buying it. Remember that it's your not your money that's being spent. Often when you're starting out as an artist, you're often pretty broke. So $500 can seem like a fortune to you. But for someone else who owns their home and has a steady income and they want it, art makes them happy and they love looking at it on the wall. $500 isn't that much. Remember it's not your money that is being spent on your artwork. Collectors have a different relationship with money than you do.
A good way to price artwork is going to Art Fair and look around and see what other artists are charging. If you're going to go do an art festival, it's great to have seen that art festival before. Find out the prices of other people. Try to figure out where you sit in as a new artist. It's it's really good to have an understanding of what people are selling around you. It's going to give you a really good baseline of where you should start out. It's okay to go to your first show and sell your artwork for rock bottom prices and sell out your work. You're going to be so stoked.
Yeah, you might just break even, but when you're a beginning artist it is a huge win. It is going to give you confidence and motivation to keep going and to get better at it and work on it and make more artwork.
ADDING PRINTS AND REPRODUCTIONS
Adding reproductions to your your line of artwork is a great way to increase how much money you're making. Start raising your prices is when you have another product to come in behind it and help support those lower, more affordable price points. If you start selling matted prints, you can raise you original prices. If you add aluminum or canvas giclee, you can raise your originals. It’s great to have artwork in all the price points for collectors to become fans no matter what their budget is.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you dedicate yourself and work your butt off and get out there and start showing your work, start low, work your way up, you'll be as surprised of what you can achieve. And it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in a year. It takes a couple of years to get to a point where you're starting to be confident in your shows. But you have to start somewhere. Start now, find out the closest and cheapest art craft fair, art market you can get into and sign up. You’d be amazed how quickly you can go from your first art fair to making $50,000 a year selling your artwork.
If you dedicate yourself and have a lot of discipline in how you approach your shows, your artwork and just learning about the business in general, you're going to find that it goes really quick. Be prepared for that. It's super fun and I wish you the most of luck.
For more information about becoming a professional artist check out my website Welzie Art
