Please visit and bookmark http://artprintissues.com. You wil find all new posts there, and very soon this blog will be taken down.
Your interest in this blog is appreciated!
Cheers,
Barney Davey
www.ArtPrintIssues.com
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Color forecasting is not an exact science as indicated by somewhat contrasting reports included here. Regardless, for artists, there is value in knowing the trends.
Colors trends can be found in many leading consumer products, including paint, home furnishings and fashion.
Manufacturers of automobiles and appliances also follow trends to help make color choices. Quite often, similar color trends straddle large segments of consumer products.
Companies such as Benjamin-Moore, which is a leading manufacturer of residential paints, provide clues to new colors. In an ad hoc manner, painting trends tend to inform home furnishing trends. As such, it's not unusual to find common color trends between painting manufacturers and fashion forward home furnishing retailers such as Crate & Barrel, and many others.
Color of the Year 2013
Benjamin-Moore predicts colors in 2013 will come from a pastel palette, including Lemon Sorbet, which it announced as its Color of the Year with this statement:
Luscious lemon sorbet (2019-60), our Color of the Year for 2013, is the perfect transitional color between the mid-tones and saturated colors seen in today's home furnishings and the softer, lighter pastels which are emerging for 2013.
This beautiful yellow harmonizes with other trending pastels in the mint, coral, pink, blue, and vanilla families. Uplifting without being overpowering, lemon sorbet (2019-60)complements almost any color palette and provides a unifying element for diverse spaces.
Benjamin-Moore predicts these color combinations will be popular in 2013:
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Color Marketing Group, a leading international association of color design professionals, predicts that Blue will dominate the color movement for a number of years. The number of BLUES represented across all CMG’s regional color forecasts is a key indicator of its importance. What is driving the rise of blue? Blue is a stable, comfortable, and a well liked color that is always present in a color palette.
Global/environmental issues regarding water and the political atmosphere are driving factors in the movement. Mineral blue pigment mines are becoming scarce. There is a push toward use and acceptance of synthetic blues which are cleaner, mineral blues more complex. The pricing of pigments is an issue.
Warmer, tropical, watery, blues with a touch of green dominate the movement. Blues are regarded as relaxing and calming, but when not careful with tone, they can become depressive and distant. Previous blues have been cleaner, more political, Olympic, and historical/traditional. Now people want warmer more aqueous blues. Blue is a popular color in many industries, but has met
resistance in others. Blue is popular across ages and demographic ‐ it is a reliable color. Our best color friend.
“Color needs to reflect our mood, desires and state of mind. This fresh, true blue can be as energizing as it can be soothing. It's just the right hue for moving forward." says CMG’s President, Mark Woodman of Global Color Research Limited.
“RE” plays on several key lifestyle trends: REcycling, REnew, REmember, REwind, REcalibrate, REward and is REliable. RE‐BLUED works well with all colors of the palette; from warm and cool.
Blue is embraceable. As we move away from denim and indigo influences, this mid range blue takes over as the new desire. Its reliable nature comes from its ability to bridge generations, products and finishes.
In my book, How to Profit from the Art Print Market, there is an entire chapter devoted to trends and inspiration. I don't expect any independent artist to slavishly follow painting, home furnishing, or for that matter, other trends. However, there are clues to help you sell more art all around you.
Start making a habit of being aware on a conscious level how color palettes are changing. If your learn to let these influences inform you in ways that make sense for what you are doing with your art, you may find it easier to get more of it sold. This is particularly true if your market includes art prints, posters, giclees and the licensing market.
There has begun an interesting dialog on this post in the comment section below. Scroll down to read. Your thoughts and opinions are welcome.
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If we have faith in humankind
And respect for what is earthly
And an unfaltering belief
In peace and love and understanding
This could be heaven here on earth
Heaven's in our heart ~ Tracy Chapman "Heaven's Here on Earth"
Sometimes you just can't find words to say it better. Such is the case with this post. This is my annual reprise from a 2007 Thanksgiving post. I must fully credit the sublime Tracy Chapman for her inspiration in communicating a simple, yet powerful, idea so eloquently and artfully.
From the moment of creation when each of us became the specific person we were endowed with unique and incredible, special gifts. We the lucky ones who have beaten the tremendous odds in nature's selection process to become alive. Who cannot be thankful for the opportunity being alive?
You and I are greatly blessed. For there are so many who will neither glimpse nor experience the privileged lives we lead with our computers, smart phones, cars, warm homes, plentiful food in abundance unknown by previous generations.
I am grateful for what I have been given. To me, the greatest gift of any parent is the one I have known and possessed all my days. It is unconditional love from them, my siblings, extended family and close friends. I will be in the company of part of my family again for this Thanksgiving holiday. For that too, I am grateful and blessed and am eager to bask in the warmth of their love and friendship. No material gifts nor money can match such a magnanimous rewarding gift.
Reflecting on Thanksgiving and family brings to mind the powerful poignant lyrics of Tracy Chapman's "Heaven's Here On Earth" from her New Beginnings
You can look to the stars in search of the answers
Look for God and life on distant planets
Have your faith in the ever after
While each of us holds inside the map to the labyrinthAnd heaven's here on earth
We are the spirit the collective conscience
We create the pain and the suffering and the beauty in this world
Heaven's here on earth
In our faith in humankind
In our respect for what is earthly
In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding
I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise
Of ordinary people leading ordinary lives
Filled with love, compassion, forgiveness and sacrifice
Heaven's in our hearts
In our faith in humankind
In our respect for what is earthly
In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding
Look around
Believe in what you see
The kingdom is at hand
The promised land is at your feet
We can and will become what we aspire to be
If Heaven's here on earth
If we have faith in humankind
And respect for what is earthly
And an unfaltering belief that truth is divinity
And heaven's here on earth
I've seen spirits
I've met angels
I've touched creations beautiful and wondrous
I've been places where I question all I think I know
But I believe, I believe, I believe this could be heaven
We are born inside the gates with the power to create life
And to take it away
The world is our temple
The world is our church
Heaven's here on earth
If we have faith in humankind
And respect for what is earthly
And an unfaltering belief
In peace and love and understanding
This could be heaven here on earth
Heaven's in our heart
Have a blessed safe holiday if you are celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend. Wherever you are, regardless whether at a splendid celebration, or a late fall weekend in a place where the Thanksgiving holiday is not celebrated, please take a moment to rejoice for your blessings, your gifts and your little piece of heaven here on earth all the same.
Please know I also am grateful, thankful and honored to have you as a reader of my blog.
Wam wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving!
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Editor's Update: The steady traffic this post generates shows the interest in the secondary art market remains high. This repost updates some broken links and outdated information.
While prices may not be as inflated as in the past, particularly in the art print market, it is easy to see why the work of some artists stays constant on the secondary art market.
In order to address the question of what constitutes the secondary art market, you must first know what makes up the primary art market.
The answer, as with many things in the art market, is complicated. Since the broad secondary art market includes very expensive work by old and contemporary masters to relatively inexpensive four-color offset lithographs, you will find the terminology is used differently depending on circumstances.
The essence of a primary sale is the first transaction where art is sold, in most cases. However, complexities arise when you examine the distribution chain.
It is simple when a transaction is made between artist and collector. The situation is less clear when an artist makes a wholesale sale to a gallery that then offers the work at full retail. In this instance, the retail transaction made by the gallery is considered the primary market transaction. Of course, there are other methods of first sale to consider.
Defining a secondary market sale
A secondary market sale occurs when the original buyer
decides to put the work for sale a second time. Whereas this sale is most often
initiated by a collector seeking to sell the work, there are cases when a gallery
will put pieces directly into the secondary market. This generally is not good
because it means the gallery has too much inventory and too little demand for
the work. No gallery is going to sell through the secondary market when it has
buyers for pieces in the primary market.
The venues for the secondary art market range
from the toniest auction houses and private dealers to established brokers and
galleries all the way down to eBay. In November 2009, The
Economist ran a story titled “New or Secondhand?” that
accurately depicted the upper end of the market. The information and concepts
the article discusses do not apply to most readers here. Alan Bamberger has an useful,
illustrative article, "Retail
Gallery Prices May be More Than Art is Worth," on his ArtBusiness.com Website.
The art print market is divided
For our purposes, we are here to discuss the secondary art market as it pertains to the art print market that includes selling reproductions as prints. In the art business, there is a split, or bifurcation in the print market. That is, there are those fine art prints made in time-honored fashion, which by the nature of their creation are limited. These would include etchings, woodcuts, aquatints, engravings, serigraphs, stone lithographs and so forth. See Wikipedia for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printmaking
The other component of the print market primarily is made up of reproductions
of original art. Some would call this the decorative art market while others reserve
that term for the open edition and poster market. How you describe it has as
much to do with what end of the market you derive your income as anything.
Art terms are much like driving laws in Boston, which is to say suggestions.
If you are an artist, dealer or collector involved with etchings, your view of a giclée is likely to be a decorative reproduction. On the other hand, if you make your living selling giclees, or some other form or fine art reproductions, you may take issue with your work being called decorative art. Unfortunately, you can only control how you market your work.
Different processes create different perspectives
If you study the work and promotional information offered
over the years by artists and galleries at the New York ArtExpo, I know you
would not find exhibitors characterizing their work as decorative art –
especially those who sell limited editions. It is completely natural they would
use descriptions better suited to help sell their work.
The International Fine Print
Dealers Association (IFPDA) also holds an
annual show in Manhattan. You will find this small, but important, group of dealers generally eschews
representing much of the work found at shows such as ArtExpo New York. Most
will argue, as does gallerist Kathryn Markel on her website, where she defines
such work as “wall decor."
While not stating wall decor is necessarily a dreadful
thing, high-end dealers do not encourage buyers to participate in paying set
prices for higher priced work at ArtExpo. Their reasons are the works typically
are reproductions, and that much of it these days are digital art. And, there
you have the bifurcation in the art print market.
The diminishing secondary art market
When it comes to the secondary market, there is an active
market for many artists whose work is found at shows such as ArtExpo New York.
You will also find many other artists whose work has transcended the "wall
decor" mentality. In other words, it is a mixed bag. Arguably, the best
example of a secondary market player is Art Brokerage. It carries a vast selection of both originals and limited
edition prints from a wide range of artists, including many who have exhibited
at ArtExpo over the years, and many others whose has never been exhibited
there.
There is an implication that art reaching the
secondary market will have appreciated in value, and thus have become more
collectible along the way. For some artists, this is accurate, but for the few
who enjoy seeing their art selling well above initial prices, finding an active
secondary market for most is not a reality, especially in their lifetime. It is
one of the reasons I have argued for not having limited editions of fine art
digital reproductions.
There is a bit of a conundrum here
In today’s market, if an artist is productive and continues
to put new editions in the market place, it tends to reduce the resale prices of
earlier pieces. This is different from the previous boom decades. If artists combats the problem of lowered prices on
the secondary market with small editions, of 200 or less, they cap their income
for that work. This leads to the need for higher and higher prices for their new
work, or to put more editions in the pipeline to maintain a steady income, both
actions have consequences.
Should artists be paid a resale royalty?
When it comes to the secondary market, artists do not
participate in the inflated prices. Only California has droit de suite laws
where artists are legally ensured a share of the proceeds when it is resold in
the state. The legislation is known as the California Resale Royalty Act, which was struck down last May as
unconstitutional. Resale laws are common in
European Union countries. I doubt there will ever be a movement within the
U.S.. beyond the now failed attempt in California.
Until the past few years, you could go to the
back of Art Business News or Art
World News and find several pages of
small ads from dealers in the secondary art market. In a sign of the times,
those publications have fewer ad pages with secondary market ads almost
vanished. Coincidentally, in another telling sign, if you research art prints,
particularly giclee prints on the sites of secondary market art brokers, you
will find many pieces being offered well below their original price.
In the art business, more than secondary market is hurting
A factor in the market that has diminished with trade magazine ad pages are secondary art market websites offering works while having little inventory. Attorney, Joshua Kaufman, a long time columnist for Art Business News, wrote, “The Online Secondary Market: Resource or Parasite?” It is an informative piece details the business methods of rogue operators who put a negative effect on the market place. It also warned that much of the way they were operating was illegal.
While we like to think it was the industry policing itself that drove many shady characters out of the market, it was eroding market and economic conditions that took away their incentive. What remains to be seen for the industry is whether the market will return to a place where artists using the giclee medium will see an active market with rising prices for their work on the secondary market.
Where is the print market headed?
My opinion is it will be difficult for the market to bring us back to the old days of a booming profitable secondary art market for several reasons. First, most artists working in multiples these days are using the giclee or digital printing format. I do not think the public clamors for limited edition giclees. It is a supplier driven product.
I think most of the public would rather pay a little less and get to enjoy the art as an open edition. This hypothesis is supported by evidence some longtime publishers in the giclee market are moving away from creating limited editions, or using the term "giclee." Lastly, once there is an established pattern of digital prints not increasing in value, it will be difficult to reverse such a trend.
This may be a market with a beautiful creative product, but it also a business that follows trends. If the trend grows stronger to open editions, it will depress the secondary market for fine art print reproductions. That is not all bleak. I think it will force the art to be sold for its enjoyment rather than the implied wish it will increase in value.
Buyers of giclees found, before the current economic crisis, that they could not recover close to the sale price of prints they bought when they tried to take them back to galleries, sell them on eBay, or through an art broker. Things certainly have not improved in recent years. The upside for artists is they are freed from artificially limiting their income with the limited edition marketing model.
What should artists thinking about getting into the print market do?
I think giclees offer artists a powerful way to sell more work. Rather than looking to maximize the sale of a limited edition, I recommend keeping the edition open. There is no reason the pieces cannot still be numbered using your own open numbering convention. If the artist’s work does become collectible, then the lower numbers will probably have some higher secondary market value than original prices.
For those who feel a need for limited editions, I would consider producing a small edition of 200 or less that is hand-embellished by the artist. I think if it is clearly stated the edition will be accompanied by lower-priced open edition pieces, there would not be conflict with buyers. Certainly, recently retired artist, Terry Redlin, was able for decades to sell both open and limited editions of the same images without creating a problem for his self-publishing company or the dealers who carried his work. I am guessing, and would suggest, that in such a situation, with both open and limiteds, the limited edition have exclusive dimensions.
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A domain name’s primary purpose is to add a human readable factor to the numerical address of a website. It is easier to remember BarneyDavey.com than some number such as 97.74.108.xxx. A domain name has advanced uses that permeate through all aspects of modern marketing.
Domain names and real estate share comparisons. Real estate is essentially a plot of land somewhere. The location of real estate can be the difference between dirt-cheap (pun intended) and millions of dollars. While you can buy a new domain for under $10, art.com would cost you multi-millions on the aftermarket.
When considering domain names for artists, you need to consider various options. If you are new to launching your own website or blog, then your choices are easier. An artist’s name is both a searchable keyword phrase and a branding component. Your name in your domain name helps with search engine optimization (SEO), and with both online, and offline marketing.
The primary way your collectors will search for you and your work is by your name. Secondarily, they may search for you by the medium you use and the city or region where you live.
Keeping domains short is important, so achieving primary and secondary aims is usually not possible. You can use SEO copywriting throughout your site to get search engine rankings for secondary terms. If your firstnamelastname.com is not available, then include another short descriptor such as barneydaveyartist.com. Use a combination of your creativity and google.com keywords to make this just right.
Domain names are a commodity meaning there is no value in paying more for one. I recommend using a low-priced provider such as OptimaWebTools.com. It offers domains for only $8.99 per year for.com domain names, including renewals and transfers. Its prices on other extensions such as .net and org extensions are very competitive. You get a free email address with your domain and 24/7 free phone support.
When I launched Art Print Issues in 2005, I did not know the blog would become a business blog for all visual artists, and would eventually extend its editorial well beyond the art print market. I did also launch a website with my name. In retrospect, I should have launched the website and used the subdomain blog.barneydavey.com for my blog. That would have cut down on marketing two domain names, and been less confusing to potential readers not familiar with the blog’s content. I may someday change the name, when I have time.
You can find lots of excellent information on picking and using your artist’s domain name, here are some useful references for you to further your knowledge:
Strategic Planning for Artists with Jason Horejs of Xanadu Gallery and Barney Davey.
Click Here to register, or for more details.
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The download and resources are now available here:
The Main Thing Is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing. ~ Stephen Covey
Attaining success requires getting things done. The only way to get important tasks finished is to make a plan and stick to it.
The easiest way to ensure you get things done is to determine their priority and schedule them for completion as needed. How you go about this can be described in one word – "planning".
Planning is the process one goes through to organize actions necessary to achieve a desired goal. Planning is essential for any artist who truly is interested in reaching their goals in the most efficient manner and the shortest time.
The pace of our society continues to evolve faster and faster. It seems our business activities continue to get busier. No one can be blamed for feeling overwhelmed at times. This makes the need to stay focused on those tasks that will lead us forward in the shortest distance.
As an artist entrepreneur, it will be so helpful for you to learn how to improve your task management skills. Just learning a few tricks will help you keep your focus on your big objectives without getting bogged down in the daily grind of small details.
Join Barney Davey (publisher | artprintissues.com) and Jason Horejs (owner | Xanadu Gallery) for a lively discussion on the importance of planning. Barney and Jason will cover planning tools they use to plan and how to incorporate them into your daily business activities.
To make sure you are sent an email with information to participate in this free webinar, you need to register. Click here to go to the webinar registration page.
As always, if you have questions, comments or suggestions for the podcast, email them in advance to: Jason@xanadugallery.com - please write "Planning Podcast" in the subject line.
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You can walk on water, you can walk on the moon
You can walk through Memphis wearin' blue suede shoes
When the walkin' is over, at the end of the road
It ain't what you done son, it's who you know
Yeah it's who you know ~ lyrics to Trace Adkins' "It's Who You Know."
A somewhat ugly truth about your art career success is that it often is less about what you know, and more about whom you know that matters. Thus proving the axiom, “Life is not fair.”
Study the art career of any affluent or acclaimed artist and you will find benefactors in the equation. NO ONE is self-made. We all have had help.
True enough, you can make your own luck as a residue of smart, hard work. However, an introduction from the right person to the right person or situation can enhance your prospects beyond anything you can do on your own.
As a young man in my early thirties, I had a mentor who saw me headed for a burn out at a job with no real future. He took me aside to tell me to put in a resume at a company looking for just the right salesperson. He also gave me a recommendation for the job. Of course, I had to prove I had the skills to get the job, which I did. However, I would never have gotten the job without his guidance.
I stayed there five years and tripled my income from when I started. That led to another job where in my first three years I tripled my income again. It should be no surprise I stayed on for fifteen years. That last job was my entry into the art business. You are reading this blog post courtesy of the vision and generosity of a person seeking to help someone like me get a leg up.
From the outside, you would never know that one person had such an powerful effect on my career. He led me to a door I didn’t know existed. He helped me open it with his recommendation. That was the “Who you know” part. My own skills and ambition are what turned opportunity into success. Those traits were my “What you know” contribution to a very successful, prosperous career. Without the “Whom you know part”, my future would have faced a very different outcome.
If you think you can generate art career success just because you make the best art, you sadly are deluded. How often do you see artists whose work you deem inferior, but whose career you have to look up to? How does this happen?
It comes down to three things:
I will never discount the importance of making great, compelling art. Nevertheless, regarding success, there is more to it than creating great work in the shadows of obscurity. Marketing merely, but importantly, creates awareness and opens the door. Once inside, sales skills get your art bought.
Networking introduces you to people, resources and opportunities you will never have, or even know about if you fail to make use of its power. When marketing, selling and networking are combined and put to good use, you have a potent formula for art career success beyond your imagination.
It is helpful to have a list of potential people for you to know, but not critical. It is more important to get started. My story above is about good fortune as I was aware of a need to change, but didn’t know how to tap the resources at my disposal. You should not be waiting for luck to come your way. Instead start making plans and goals to get introduced to the right people.
If you have a grand plan for the outcome you want from your networking, good for you. If you lack the vision for how networking can help you, you need to do some serious brainstorming to determine your art career outcome.
Begin now, be persistent, helpful, positive and constructive. Learn to reciprocate from a genuine spirit. These attributes will take you far. Search the 500 posts on this blog, and countless others across the internet for help on art marketing and how to sell art.
Consider downloading my Art Marketing workshop. A chunk of the four-hour webinar, recorded live with Jason Horejs of Xanadu Gallery, is devoted to ways artists can effectively network their way to success.
CLICK HERE to get regular updates to Art Print Issues emailed to you.
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For some artists, developing blog topics is cause for a creative stumbling block. Variety will make your blog more interesting and appealing.
Sure, it's great to write about your work. I always encourage offering glimpses of works in progress. But, your blog can't be just about your latest pieces.
Search engines love new, fresh information. Blogging is the best way to create a steady flow of news and views for your readers, and for search engines. A good blog is an invaluable marketing tool for artists.
Readers have made my first post with suggested blogging topics for artists, titled, "52 Blog Topics for Artists - Get Started Now!" one of the most popular among the nearly 500 posts on this blog.
You need to mix it up to keep your readers engaged and interested. I suggest running contests for whatever you think would be fun. For instance, a blog topic contest could be for a suggested title of a new piece. You could do a survey, or show the same piece in different frames and ask for a vote.
The more creative and fun you make reading your blog, the more valuable it becomes to your readers and to you. Here are some more ideas for kickstarting your brain for new ideas for your blog posts.
Bonus Point:
If you have not setup a blog yet, or are unhappy with your current blog software, consider using WordPress. It has become the de facto blogging software for small businesses, and also is widely used as a website builder. If you want to learn how to build a website or blog with WordPress, get this 40+ WordPress Video Training Tutorial series for only $9.95. The videos are short, concise and well-produced. The make for great training if you hire someone to help you with your WordPress blog or website.
My friend, Jason Horejs, owner of Xanadu Gallery, broadcast "Blogging Tips for Artists | Art Business - Art Marketing Podcast" last May. Use this link to download the podcast. There are valuable reasons to blog, and numerous ways to go about blogging. We covered as many as possible in our podcast. You can find numerous posts I have published on blogging for artists. Use the link to find a custom search list of posts about blogging for aritsts on Art Print Issues.
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The most successful artists, galleries, and art dealers know it takes repeated exposure to convert a prospect to a buyer. Settings and situations vary in selling art.
Here is one scenario that will help you sell more art. It is one of those practical ideas that costs very little, but will help you from losing some sales. I call it the “Be Back Offer.” It combats something all consumers do. That is, get momentarily excited about buying something only to get cold feet and promise to come back to make a purchase.
Sometimes this with good intentions, other times to save face, we promise the salesperson we will "Be Back." Having an effective "Be Back" offer can combat lost sales for you. It won't always work, but it will always give a you better chance than if you just let a prospect walk away with a only a "Be Back" promise.
For the nearly 20 years, I sold booth space at some of the biggest art tradeshows in the industry. I wanted my exhibitors to be successful and satisfied, so they would come back next year and buy more space. When it worked, as it often did, it created a virtuous circle resulting in win-win-win for exhibitors, buyers and me.
One powerful and affordable idea for my exhibitors was to have a "Be Back" offer. This works any time you, or your salespeople, meet a prospective buyer. A tradeshow booth is a perfect example. A buyer comes in, is shown the latest and greatest, but is not ready to commit now. In most cases, the best that happens is business cards are exchanged, and sales materials supplied, with promises to be back from the buyer.
That is a bad way to do things, in my humble opinion. I think business cards should be called blow off cards. They provide an easy way for the buyer slip out of making a buying decision now. Sales materials are a little better because they have images, are larger and bulkier and maybe get some extra attention later on from the buyer. Neither are effective, in fact, nearly useless.
At shows, and in any selling art situation, I recommend having a “Be Back” offer ready to provide to a buyer. Never leave your offer in plain sight. You do not want a buyer to see it unless you give it to them.
Some suggestions for your offer are:
Get a commitment from your be back prospect. When are they going to be back? How long are they going to be at the show? I suggest handwriting a time limit on the offer. It could be good until the time they plan to leave. Or, you could extend it for a week or two depending on how you want to structure the deal. The point is your offer should be encouraging and enticing with a definite deadline.
If your "Be Back" offer extends beyond show closing time, ask for permission to send a reminder email prior the offer expiration. That gives you a specific reason to contact your buyer at a specific time. When you keep your committment, it shows your professionalism and dedication. If you use this idea, make sure it says in your subject line states something like this: Special Offer Expiration Reminder. Doing this informs and encourages the buyer and encourage thems to open your email.
You can create “Be Back” offers for almost every selling art situation you encounter. It won’t always work, but no matter. It’s an easy, inexpensive selling art tool that can only help. It could cause a prospect to take the time right now to make the purchase immediately.
Give it a try, I bet you will be glad you did.
If you like this idea for selling art, Sign up here to receive new Art Print Issues posts.
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This is a repost from October, 2008. Its relevancy proves the paradox no matter how much things change, they stay the same.
I offer consulting via email and in one-on-one sessions. Today, I'm offering the first ten readers who send me their selling art prints question a free email consultation.
Send your questions, I will reply. The answer and reply may become a future blog post. You will have the chance to remain anonymous in the process, if you choose.
Here is my post from October, 2008:
Occasionally, I get questions from readers that are good sources for blog posts. That is, they are general enough in context to help most who read this blog regularly.
If you have specific questions, I also offer consulting in the form of hour sessions by phone or via email. In either of these consulting cases, I urge you to first read my book because it may have the exact answer you need, or it will avoid you spending time in consulting on what you could have easily and more affordably learned by reading it first.
Should we proceed from that point, by having read my book on selling art prints, you'll be better informed to ask better questions and get more from the experience.
For those of you who have not read How Profit from the Art Print Market, my book on how to sell art prints, you can download a free copy of Chapter One. Click Here to Get Your Free Copy
Here is a great question posed to me via email:
My name is Kasie Sallee and I'm a young artist and mother. In the past year I've been focusing very seriously on my art with the hopes of building a career. I recently bought and read your book "How to Profit from the Art Print Market" and I truly want to thank you for writing it.
The book is a treasure trove of information that I will be referring to over and over again. In the past year I've begun a series of work, promoted my art through a blog, and very recently have set up a website.
I have a question about the best path forward and was wondering if you had some advice.
My ultimate goal for the future is to license my work or to work with a publisher. My question is: If this is my ultimate intention, will selling prints on my own, say through a site like Etsy, cause publishing companies to not want my work?
I guess what I'm trying to say is will publishing companies want to work with images that I have already printed and sold? Thank you so much for your time. I'm a long-time reader of your blog and I sincerely respect your advice.
Dear Kasie:
Thanks for your kind words and question. You are on the right path in setting up a Web site and accompanying blog. They are both integral components of a solid marketing plan for an emerging artist.
Both are works in progress and investments in your future. That is, neither are likely to immediately begin to return a substantial income right away. However, if both are properly maintained they will be invaluable components of your marketing efforts for years to come.
Your goal of licensing with a publisher is a good one. If you are thinking posters or open edition prints, you have to realize the income from such a situation is likely going to be minimal, especially at first.
If you are thinking about giclees, your income could be more substantial as price points are far greater. As a way to broaden their lines, many poster publishers are now also offering POD print-on-demand reproductions. These are usually open edition and lower priced than limited edition publishers.
Overall, it is a most challenging time for poster publishers with no real relief in sight. I think it will take more than time to revive the market. [Ed. note: Now in 2012, poster publishers are showing positive signs of growth.] Many poster publishers are also active in the third party licensing arena as represented by such tradeshows as Surtex and The Licensing Show.
Surtex is where one would primarily find find companies seeking images for stationery, wallpaper, linens and so on. The Licensing Show tends to run to the animated and action figure images and less to fine art, but both can be important as sources of tertiary passive income for artists. The royalties are small and it can take a few years to make it worthwhile, but for artists with the right look, it can turn lucrative over time.
To be successful in getting a contract from publishers, you need to determine where your prints fit into the market, then determine which publishers are the best fit and most likely candidates for you to contact. It takes researching time, but it is just part of what you need to do to pursue appropriate publishing opportunities.
Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, said, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."
Regardless of the outcome, the education will serve you well throughout your career. You have to make an informed conscious decision about what you want from your career and use it as a North Star to guide your underlying decisions. To answer your questions about being on Etsy, Fine Art America, or other online sites that can sell your work, I will say no, in general, it does not affect your ability to land a publishing deal.
If anything, if you have some demonstrable success with online art sales, you will give most publishers more confidence they can move your images to their customers. That said, publishers are not going to accept you competing directly with them for the same images, if at all.
There are some high-end publishers you would expect to look down their noses at artists doing business on Etsy, but if your research is effective, you would have ruled them out as unlikely candidates to approach anyway. Some publishers will want an exclusive on the images they want to run. Others may want more exclusivity.
You have to be aware of the quid pro quo to make a good deal for yourself. This means making negotiations with publishers. I recommend you read at least one book on negotiating, such as Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
A couple of caveats here. If you paint slowly, it could be a problem for you if you have to create a new line for a publisher who in most cases will expect to be fed a steady stream of images. The other is if in your researching, you find the publishers most desirable to you frown upon seeing your work online, you may need to reassess your online strategies and marketing efforts.
The best situation for artists working with publishers would be the publishers immediately finding a bevy of repeat buyers for your line. The more likely scenario is you have to grow into your role with a publisher learning along the way what its needs are and what its buyers needs are.
Conversely, a good publisher will seek to understand how to best work with you. I would hope you get a publisher that will allow you to publish your own work. In some cases, artists use a Nom de Brusse (alias) to avoid having a conflict with their publisher. There is no hard fast rule regarding any of these situations.
You must keep in mind you need to do what is best for you. You have to know whatever you are going to invest your time, talent and energy into that you stand a decent chance of getting a reasonable return for your investment. With that in mind, do what you can to further your career, to sell more work regardless of the source. In the end, it's up to you to make it work.
Having a great publisher to help you get started is wonderful advantage and great learning experience. As with many, if not most, things in life it is not where you start, it is where you end up. That is, did you fulfill your dreams and talent potential? Making the right choices for yourself is a key to your future success and your own self-satisfaction. You see examples of this all the time.
The music industry is easier to relate with this concept because much of what happens is on a national or international scale. Think about song choices and how that affects an artist. No matter how talented, ultimate success requires making good choices for content, style and ability. It's the same with visual artists even if it is harder to judge how things are going for visual artists.
Visual artists don't have the equivalent of Billboard Top 100 list to let them know who is moving up the charts, and who is just treading water. Nevertheless, if you consistently find some artists tapping the zeitgeist who are getting great results with a steady stream of print sales over the years, you can be certain they have not only an eye for art, but an instinct for what their buyers will want to own and display in their homes and businesses.
I hope these thoughts help others, as well as you Kasie, gain a better understanding of how to sell art prints!
All the best to you,
Cheers,
Barney
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Much of the world is plunged in darkness. By comparison, we live with bountiful, abundant
To become a successful artist-entrepreneur today is challenging. It requires mastering many skills, not the least of which the ability to create art that continuously sells well.
It takes talent, dedication and skill to make art and get it sold. This always has been the case, and it will never change.
We are witness to an incredible moment in human history as we experience the greatest advancements in technology, communication, and product distribution ever seen. The pace and scope of significant developments in these fields is increasing. Among these changes are tremendous opportunities for artists ready to seize them.
As an artist, you don’t have to master, or use all the items mentioned above to be successful. However, the more you use to help you get your work seen and sold, the more likely you are to achieve the success you see for yourself.
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Vision without Action is a daydream.
Action without Vision is a nightmare. - anonymous
In the creative side of your art career, mastering techniques requiring perspective is crucial. Without it, you can’t create a realistic, representational image.
Having perspective in the business part of your art career is equally indispensable. Used properly, perspective helps create an achievable, believable vision for how your business will evolve over time.
Perspective is not to be confused with goal setting. Rather, proper perspective creates confidence in the reasons why you have chosen your goals.
When you are climbing the ladder of success, make sure it’s leaning on the right wall. - anonymous
Art career goals without perspective are like looking at a map and a destination, but being clueless on how to use the map to help you get there. Perspective avoids disappointment of taking too long to arrive, or being disappointed because it is not what you expected when you do arrive.
If you are setting goals based on how you visualize your art career without getting external input from other sources, you likely have a skewed perspective. Learn to cultivate positive outside influences to help model your art career.
Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you wanted. - anonymous
It comes in many forms. Finding a mentorship with a successful artist is a tried and true way. Studying the business practices of successful artists is another. Being a student of the overall art market is another.
You can read art-marketing books, attend workshops and webinars, listen to free art marketing podcasts, such as those that Jason Horejs and I regularly present. Hire a coach, or an art-marketing consultant. All have the potential to make you a more effective art marketer.
The point of doing any of the above things is to learn from the experience of knowledgeable others who can guide you in the right direction. Too often, I see artists pursuing a plan of action that is not the best course for them. Often the reason is they lack perspective and are chasing the wrong goals.
If you are working on more than two or three major art career goals, you have bitten off more than you can chew. - Barney Davey
Use your established goals to measure against any project, idea, suggestion, partnership, business deal or other temptation. If pursuing any of them will derail you from your major goals, dismiss them from your mind. Using a disciplined and determined, yet open-minded, approach to managing your goals will take you far.
The more vigilant, dedicated and determined you are with pursuing only those things that fit your primary plans, the more sure you are to achieve them in less time with less stress.
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Barbara Markoff is one of the most well-established and well-connected corporate art consultants in Southern California. Also, she and her husband, Rob Markoff, have owned and operated a successful picture framing shop in San Diego for decades.
In 2010, Barbara wrote Becoming A Corporate Art Consultant
For visual artists, I believe there is no better guide to reverse engineer how they can get their work picked up by a corporate art consultant.
In 2010, I wrote a blog post about it titled How to Become a Corporate Art Consultant. Vibrant readership in the post continues to drive frequent traffic to it. This indicates a strong ongoing interest in learning about corporate art consultants.
At Barbara's suggestion, Natalie Blake, a ceramic artist, inquired about a guest post. She explained she had recently worked with Barbara. They collaborated on a successful installation of her work in the healthcare fine art market.
The guest post below is written by Barbara. In it, she describes the job and working with Natalie, including accompanying photographs. While this job entailed using ceramic art, it nevertheless illustrates the possibilities for any visual artist who can deliver quality works designed for specific installation purposes.
Besides the income from the job, which had to be a nice boost for Natalie, the residual effect of having one's work daily exposed to high income earners in the healthcare market is huge, as is having the installation on one's resume.
Barbara Markoff, has been a corporate art consultant for 31 years, she owns Artrageous!, an art consultancy based in San Diego, CA. Here is her guest post:
The following case study was written to highlight how I chose Natalie Blake's handmade, ceramic wall art tile (www.unaluntile.com) for this prestigious healthcare project.
As an art consultant I am often presented with challenging situations where art is required to hang. This project, the new North Tower at Methodist Hospital of Southern California, in Arcadia, CA was new construction.
The six story building is the newest addition to the hospital’s campus which originally opened in 1957. The state of the art facility houses the Hollfeld Emergency Care Center on the first floor, a 20 bed ICU unit on the 2nd floor, 40 medical/surgical beds on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th floors and a cafeteria in the basement area.
The theme for the new tower at Methodist Hospital of Southern California was to celebrate and embrace the splendor of the southern CA landscape. Within a 100 mile radius of this facility are mountains, valleys, vistas, deserts, beaches, lakes, lagoons, rivers, parks, gardens, and a variety of vibrant and interesting native plants. The artwork on each floor of the hospital had a specific theme.
The challenge for this project was finding an artist who could create unique, theme-specific artwork for a circular recessed wall in a hospital setting. My client was looking for a series of tiles that would convey an ocean theme and fit into a circular space.
For this project I needed to find artwork that was three dimensional, light weight, would protrude from the wall no more than 4”, and would fit into a 72” circular recessed wall across from an elevator.
A perfect solution was to suggest ceramic tiles by Natalie Blake (www.unaluntile.com). Knowing that Natalie would customize the tiles in terms of glaze color and subject matter made her work an excellent choice for this project.
An art committee comprised of two project managers, the chief operating officer, and hospital staff (total of 12 all together) reviewed each artist for the overall art program. Budget concerns were a factor as well, and Natalie’s work was well priced meeting their allocated cost for the recessed wall. I recommended a series of 8, 12” tiles to span the area. Each row of four had a contiguous design.
When I showed her sample to the hospital art committee everyone was thoroughly impressed with her ability to produce what was needed. In this hospital project there were four, 72” recessed walls within the facility and the decision makers requested a different artist and different art media for each floor. Unquestionably, Natalie’s work was the ideal candidate for ceramic art.
This project was my first one working with Natalie. Having visited her website and seen images of other projects, especially in the field of healthcare, helped relieve any reservations I had in moving forward. The tile sample and accompanying photographs showing other ocean themed works also made selling her work to my client fairly easy.
From the start I found Natalie and her staff to be professional, communicative, responsive, and experienced in handling every facet of the commission. I especially liked seeing each phase of the project unfold as I was sent images of the unglazed tiles and later images of them glazed. At all times I was kept abreast of the progress.
When the tiles arrived they were well packaged and beautifully executed. Once installed at the hospital the feedback was very positive; in fact they among the art committee’s favorite art pieces.
My company offers art in all media and began working with Natalie only recently. I hope to continue placing her work in my projects. Many of my clients are in the healthcare sector, and Natalie’s work fits right in with nature themed artwork.
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Whether you are are first-time visitor or have been reading this blog since 2005, your participation and interest are appreciated.
This blog is here for you and all visual artists. It's simple mission is to help you become more successful.
For more than 20 years, I have advised visual artists on how to sell more art and effectively market their work.
Much of what I know on how to boost art careers and succeed in the art print market is free for the taking. You can find it by drilling down through the nearly 500 posts here on the Art Print Issues blog.
Want to keep a fresh perspective? Then follow the ongoing Sucessful Art Career series of posts here. Eight have been published thus far with no end in sight:
You will find nuggets of useful information by listening to one the podcasts I've co-presented with my good friend, Jason Horejs, owner of Xanadu Gallery, on his RedDotBlog.com blog.
Here is a link to recent blog talk radio podcast I did with Connie Mettler. She is the engaging founder of the very popular Art Fair Insiders website. A must stop for any artist interested in what is happening on the art fair circuit.
My topic for the podcast was: Pricing & Marketing Your Art - Don't Think Small! I am proud to report that within a few hours it quickly became the most downloaded Art Fair Radio show. CLICK HERE to listen on Blog Talk Radio. Or, you can download it to listen on Itunes by clicking here.
If you want to dig into details from this talk order the "Get Seen and Sold" webinar download below.
Order any of the above books or webinars to help you take your career to the next level. You will be glad you did.
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Are You Working Your Warm Market?
How much of your art sales come from your warm market? If you don’t know, it’s a sure bet the answer is not much.
If you depend on marketing to strangers to first develop awareness about your art and you, and then build interest and desire to own your work, you are adding degrees of difficulty to your marketing efforts.
In a post here last January, I coined the word, “Strafranger.” I use it to describe all the friends , followers, likers and other such social media platform terms for describing your digital relationships with people.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is true value in digital relationships, and know that in some cases they can blossom into actual real, live friendships, business acquaintances, and devoted fans. I just don't advocate chasing them as your primary source of new business.
The average person has somewhere around 250 people in their circle. Yours could be larger or smaller, it doesn’t matter because you can easily expand it.
Thinking deeper about your warm market circle, ask yourself how many own your art. How many in your circle know you are an artist? Among those who do know you are an artist, how many have you given marketing materials and asked them to share with their circle?
Warm marketing is not just about who you know, it’s about the people in your circle know, and then extending to your exposure to contacts in the third circle. Exponentially, the numbers are staggering. You only need a fraction of a percent as buyers to sell all the art you can make. If you are persistently marketing to total strangers and online strafrangers without first marketing right in your own backyard, you have put the cart in front of the horse.
In today’s market conditions, you need to be as self-reliant as possible. I can’t think of a better way to lay a solid foundation than to use your contacts in your warm market to help you further your art career. I cover how to go about this with class, integrity and results in my Art Marketing Workshop.
P.S. There are some interesting comments on this post. Scroll down to read them. You may need to click the "Comments" link to read them.
If you want to learn more about all things art marketing join Jason Horejs, owner of Xanadu Gallery, and me on Tuesday, September 11 for a free art marketing podcast. It is an open Q&A session, so you will be able to ask questions during the broadcast. Alternatively, you can ask your questions in the comment section below this post.
A free download of the podcast is now available at:
http://www.reddotblog.com/wordpress/index.php/ask-the-experts/
CLICK HERE to get regular updates to Art Print Issues emailed to you.
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Learn How to Get Your Work Seen & Sold — New Art Marketing Webinar
If you answered, "Not enough of the right people see my art and know about me", then you are right at home with most artists. I began advising visual artists on art marketing in 1988, and I've found the #1 reason artists' sales don't match their potential is their marketing is unfocused and inconsistent.
Lack of proper funding aside, study after study show the reason most small businesses fail to succeed is their marketing is missing or misdirected, or both. If you want to learn how to sell more art, reach and influence the right people, and make the most from your marketing efforts, then sign up for my video-on-demand (VOD) “How to Get My Art Seen & Sold” webinar.
Having the webinar available as a download means you watch and learn at your pace. You can study the material, and to view repeatedly at any time it is convenient for you.
Here is a brief 15-minute overview. Read the testimonials in the box below to find out what past attendees had to say about the workshop.
Whether you want to sell more art, build your reputation, or be more profitable, you will find this webinar made to order for you. As a participant in this nearly four-hour intensive workshop, you will learn how to:
You can do all these things . . . and more. I know you can!
The system you will learn in this webinar are geared to help you build your business without having to rely on sales from the Internet to make you successful. There is nothing wrong with making sales through your Website, blog, or social media. I'm all for it and will give you suggestions on how to go about it.
Your real success in sales should come from your network of real people, not strangers who friended you, or who follow you via social media. Learn how to make that part of your business an extra layer of profit, but not the driving factor in building a successful art career.
Register today. Then be prepared to find yourself on the path of reaching your sales and marketing goals. In this unique workshop, you will benefit from my decades long art marketing expertise. I am a bestselling art marketing book author, a blogger and workshop leader whose advice has helped thousands of visual artists. Perhaps you have read one of the many art business articles I’ve written for The Artist’s Magazine, Art World News, and Art Business News.
Although you may want to weave Facebook, Twitter or other social media into your plans, you don’t have to use social media to develop an effective marketing strategy to promote and increase sales of your work. You will discover how to use proven techniques that have stood the test of time.
Art Career Goals
Assessing Your Resources
Making Work that Sells
Marketing You
Grassroots Marketing
Networking and Referrals
Evaluating and Harnessing Marketing Tools
Strategic Synergistic Marketing
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This was a splendid webinar — completely worth the time and monetary commitment. So much information was made available to us…the webinar was invaluable. S. Ketcham Creating an Ideal Weekly Plan – I think this will be a tremendous help to keep me focused on the right thing at the right time and reduce the creep of low priority distractions. A. Rimpo Probably that I now have a direction. I have been faltering, as I did not know what to do next. The sheet with the list of tools, I think will be very helpful and I plan on implementing many of them. I think to start with mapping my week will be most helpful in getting a focus. So many distractions keep me from creating and then it takes so much time just to promote yourself. B. Venosdel The whole webinar was very informative so its tough to single out one thing, but the section on social media probably answered the most questions.- A. Bartos The importance of focusing on local market. I had been lured by the notion that the internet will allow me to skip that part. K. Doner Barney Davey’s Webinar was worth every penny and more! His information is current, yet tried-and-true, relevant in today’s quick-passed world. By focusing and closely following the advice he gives to artists, he also gives hope to artists that want to sell their artwork, but don’t know how to go about overcoming the marketing obstacle. I am an artist that produces a lot of work, however, I did not know how to “get it out there” to be seen and sold. Exposure is everything! Thank you!!! S. Pierce |
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(Disover how many ways you can get art marketing help here.)
As an artist and an entrepreneur, you are required to summon courage when needed, especially when things look bleak, or facing difficult decisions.
Macbeth:
If we should fail?Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail.
It is not just for war heroes, police and firefighters, although no one would question them. Courage is a small child finding a way to stand up to a bully, or a parent with a sick child being brave for both of them.
Courage is an artist who aims to break out of creative and career ruts despite having to leave a comfort zone to get there.
Courage is the resistance to fear, the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear. ~ Mark Twain
The dictionary describes courage as having the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty. There is no doubt if you want to realize what is possible in your art career that you will need to be courageous in actions and decisions regarding it.
If you are not familiar with the above phrase, click the link to learn its meaning. For some artists, courage is overcoming the fear of pursuing a creative outlet, or the indifference of unsympathetic, unsupportive family and friends. Sad as it is to say, many find their art careers or pursuit of creative endeavors lacking enthusiastic backing. For others, it is taking the scary steps towards leaving a job or career with a steady income and benefits.
Moving beyond getting started with an art career often requires courageous actions. It can be summoning the guts to cold call on galleries, to learn how to sell face-to-face, to speak in public about one’s art, or a host of other actions for which there is little training on how to accomplish these things,
Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain. ~ Mark Twain
Courage isn’t always some heroic act in the moment; it often is a series of nearly imperceptible steps that lead to something monumental. Artistic courage is found in creating controversial, challenging art. Perhaps it is taking steps that expose an artist to criticism or rejection by one’s followers, or peers. When you take risks, it can leave you with a frightening feeling of being alone. That is when it takes courage to persevere.
As an artist and entrepreneur, if you don’t recognize it outwardly, you nonetheless instinctively know you need to carry your own water. Sure, you may have a support team to help you, mentors to guide you and supporters to cheer you on, but at the end of the day, you have to be your own champion because those others are more likely reliant on you than vice-versa.
Take your time to set your realistic career goals, both artistic and personal. Review them to make sure they are what you want to achieve. Then intelligently pursue with passion and courage, and just as Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth says, “We’ll not fail!”
Suppose you do fail. So what? Failures are the way to success. You can fail all the way to the top. Without learning to embrace and learn from your failures, you will likely never succeed. Often it is the fear of trying that keeps us back. Don't fall prey to your fears. Use your courage to overcome them and let it lead you to the success you deserve!
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Among nearly 500 posts published on Art Print Issues, this one on art careers, originally published in 2010, is poignant and personal for many artists, which has made it very popular. Perhaps it resonates because it comes from my personal experience, and from the heart. You may see a similar reaction when you get poignant and personal in making your art.
(Photo by madame.furie, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.)
For certain, each of us comes to embrace a career in the arts in a unique way. For some, success seems to come almost too easy, for others achieving financial independence as an artist seems a distant pipe dream. There also seems to be no set pattern as to how these differences come about.
Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. - William Shakespeare
From my perspective, you could line up the unsigned best works of both very successful artists and other highly talented ones toiling in obscurity, and neither a majority of collectors nor critics would be able to tell you which work belong to either category. If you buy into that theory, then you also must accept that there are intangible, or extenuating factors that mitigate the outcome.
If you have read my book, How to Profit from the Art Print Market
You see the same thing in music, too. That is, there are innumerable players who can pick up an instrument and play a song as well as the original artist. Just spend some time on YouTube to see what I mean. There are dozens of unknowns who can play and sound like Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton and other iconic guitar players. However, the talent to emulate and replicate is not the same as to create. Therein lies a huge part of the difference between obscurity and success. Other factors, including ambition, timing, geography and luck often play a part in the equation.
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. - Joseph Campbell
Creativity is more than innate talent. Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book, Outliers: The Story of Success
The example of the teen violinist brings to mind this well told joke:
A man on the streets of Manhattan approaches a stranger and asks, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”
The stranger thinks for a moment and replies, “Practice, practice, practice.”
It is agreed then that success comes to those who take their innate talent and work very hard at improving what is already above average at the outset. Basically, combining a great work ethic with talent and desire is the key to climbing to the top of your profession. The reality for most of us is life gets in the way.
Making realistic and unselfish decisions that keep us from pursuing our dreams is not necessarily a bad thing.
Although we desire to have the success we feel is possible, we find ourselves strapped to some other reality, like having a growing family, or aging parents, or just needing a steady income to maintain a lifestyle wherein we are most comfortable. Or, maybe we just need the assurance of having affordable health care for us or other family members.
There is no shame in accommodating other needs in your life. It is just the way it is for many of us, me included. It would be fabulous if this blog and a few more books and other projects I have in mind would pay all my bills. In fact, given the time to develop I know they would. The problem comes from the immediate need for a steady income and good health benefits. I am neither able nor willing to trade those for the chance to grow my business faster.
All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure. - Mark Twain
Often times, the ones who crawl to the top are able to ignore the worries of no health insurance or the fact that there is no guarantee of a check in the bank next week. Do you imagine The Beatles had health insurance while toiling away in Hamburg? I am sure they did not. A risk they took as young healthy men perhaps ignorant of the potential for disaster should a medical calamity come their way.
Gary Vaynerchuk, the social media sensation and bestselling author of Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
I get that idea and resemble the concept. In many ways, it is the business model I have followed for the some years. I work during the day and come home to have a meal, walk the dogs, and spend some time with my wife. Then I get to my other job. That is writing blog posts, editing my book, and working on the other projects at the top of my list.
Though your ambitions may be large, to be successful, keep your list short. - Barney Davey
The one thing I have found useful is I keep my list short for those things getting my attention. It is painful to have to let some things go, or to put them off longer than I wish, but it is the only way to move the dial toward completion on those things I have determined to matter the most to me.
That is not to say I don’t have other plans. I have a huge list of things I want to do. But, the reality of being constrained by time forces me to focus on just a few items. I liken it to triage. I work on those things that are both most likely to advance me towards independence and those things that are most easily achievable to do given my limited time to work on them.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. - Stephen Covey
If you are a painter, it might mean working on those images that you know will get the fastest and best return on your time investment. That is not to deter you from the massive masterpiece lurking in your mind. You should keep sketches and ideas in a log to maintain your interest, but not give in to spending time on such a project at the expense of those things that have a more immediate need for you.
For those who have 12 – 16 hours in a day to work on the things they love to do, you can fit in churning out the work that will pay the bills and still have time to spend on the longer term projects. For the rest of us, we have to learn the patience and humility of biding our time even though we are chomping at the bit to throw ourselves into the projects that we know will propel us to independence and new levels of greatness in our careers.
He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat. - Napoleon Bonaparte
The one thing we cannot do is succumb to fear. We cannot fear failure, or just being mundane. We have to maintain the upbeat attitude that in the long term we will prevail. We have to accept we will get sidetracked, or completely derailed at times.
When we are down, we are not out. It will be in keeping the faith in our ability and creativity and staying in touch with our desire to succeed that will be what pulls us back online, syncs our actions with our goals, and drives us to our ultimate success. There is a oft-used cliche, “What the mind can conceive and believe, the body can achieve.” It applies as much here as in any where or in any other way it could be used.
With patience to pace ourselves, we can climb the highest peaks. Welcome to the journey, I will see you at the top!
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The truth is art marketing success is not about secrets, it's about smarts, savvy, ambition, and a generous amount of art that is like compelling catnip for buyers.
In my decades of art marketing experience, I have found successful art marketers share these seven attributes:
While it is okay to put your intentions into the universe when you are seeking new things in your life, it works much better when those intentions are backed by more than wishful thinking. In other words, before you set your sights on getting your work in the MOMA, it’s advantageous to know you have a realistic shot. So, make a brutal self-evaluation of your skills, talent, and prospects, then proceed with vigor.
Let’s face it. None of us is unique. The universe may not be unique. Scientists now seriously consider multiverses where among trillions of other universes you may have an exact double. If that is the case, then surely there are other artists succeeding at making work closely related to yours. It’s okay because competition is healthy, it raises awareness for everyone in the same genre. And, if there is only enough room for your art in your marketing world, it is guaranteed to be too small for you to get big and rich. So, know what the other guy is doing, and make your art and your marketing better.
No one has endless hours and dollars to throw at marketing. Smart art marketers have dialed in what works best for them. They have researched available marketing options and use the ones that produce the best results. They keep testing alternative methods and quickly incorporate the winners. If you are not doing this, you have put yourself at a competitive disadvantage.
Finding enough time to make art and market art takes discipline. Set a schedule for both and don’t cheat yourself on either. If you fall behind on production, your sales and potentially your reputation will suffer. If you fall behind on your marketing, you will not need to worry about your production. Commit to yourself. Get it in writing and do it. No whining.
It is much easier to find the time to perform necessary tasks, especially the mundane repetitive ones, if you have a larger goal in mind. Goals are necessary, but they are just words. Desire is about actions. The more you consistently act on your goals, the more your success becomes reality.
It does no good to pile on the action with fervent intention unless guided by details. Do you know what you are supposed to do on Tuesday? Do you know all the steps required to get your next newsletter together? Having a systematic routine that provides a pattern for critical tasks is how you achieve monumental things. We got to the moon by a million little steps performed in sequence.
Being in tune with customers, whether art buyers or galleries, is a key to providing art they will be excited to sell for you, or to own. Although taking clues from developing trends is worthwhile, having instincts to know what will please your customers is the real secret.
Steve Jobs didn’t ask his customers if they wanted to hear music on an iPod. He knew they did because he was a music lover himself. As such, all he needed to know was he would love one. The same applies to the iPhone and iPad.
When you can tap into what delights your buyers, you can use your marketing smarts to hit home run after home run.
1. Smart marketers will sometimes use catchy headlines, as I did with this post, that arrest attention even if there is a twist on what the headline implies.
2. They are not afraid to ask for the business, or ask for help. You can't get it unless you ask for it.
With the above bonus points in mind, I would first like to invite you to my How to Get Your Work Seen and Sold Art Marketing Webinar on Tuesday, August 21. It is an intensive four-hour session that will help you get focused on what is important to your art marketing succcess. A download will be available if you can't participate in person.
Secondly, would you kindly forward this blog post along to your artist friends? I will be humbled and honored if you do. Hope to see you there. The workshop is sponsored by Xanadu Gallery, you will register on its site.
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Making art is a wonderful, magical, creative pursuit. The more you do it, the better you get at it, the more you want to make.
Besides the pure joy in making art, there is the added pleasure of sharing it with others. The icing on the cake comes when as an artist you can earn a living making art you love to make.
There are thousands of books, classes, tutorials, videos and workshops all aimed at helping artists make better art. Surprisingly, there are precious few ways to learn how to get your work seen and sold. This workshop is one of them.
My name is Barney Davey. I began helping artists to develop the business side of their careers with marketing and advertising strategies in 1988. This was at a time when the fax machine was innovative technology. The upending disruptive advances in distribution, communication and consumer buying habits since then bring to mind a Grateful Dead lyric, “What a long, strange trip, it’s been.” While the challenges of today compared to 1988 are strange and financial times uncertain, new opportunities exist for artists willing and able to seize them.
As an artist, you are, among many other things, an entrepreneur. As such, the tasks to manage and market your small business are on you. To be successful as an entrepreneur of any sort is a daunting task. Because artists make work that falls into the discretionary income category, operating a profitable art business is a doubly difficult task.
The previously mentioned disruptive changes we all face and embrace today makes selling art complex. The facts are it was not easy to sell art in 1988 when I got in the game. It just is a different kind of difficult now. If anything, as an artist-entrepreneur nowadays, you have more affordable, available tools at your disposal than ever. Moreover, today’s consumers are willing to buy direct from you. Your job as an entrepreneur is to determine how to make the best use of the wide range of tools at your fingertips.
It should be no surprise to know you are on your own in getting your work sold. Don’t feel alone. The truth is none of us can expect others to carry our water these days. You can choose to run with this reality, or shrink from it. If you are the running sort, I can help you.
In 2012, it is both complicated and intimidating to sort out how to market your work. Do you find yourself asking questions like these?
In this four-hour intensive webinar, you will learn the answer to the above questions and many more. The mission for the online workshop is for you to come away with a clear understanding of how get the results you desire from your marketing efforts.
Here are seven things you will learn:
You did not learn to excel at making art in a day. It is a cumulative learning process, and so it is with art marketing. The good news is it won’t take years of training to become proficient at art marketing. You just need to identify the tools best suited for your situation, create a believable, achievable plan to use those tools, and execute on schedule around your plan.
Just as you would expect to eat a fancy five-course meal one bite at a time, you integrate your art marketing plans into your daily life one-step at a time. By breaking the process into manageable phases, you gain confidence in your ability to institute and complete the steps needed to accomplish the goals your set for yourself.
The point of marketing is to make your art visible to the people most likely to buy it. Your goal is to strive to reach and influence as many potential buyers of your art as possible. You want to inform them about you art and encourage them to buy it. As you achieve success with your goals, your sales and ability to build and sustain a full-time living as an artist will improve.
This webinar is sponsored by Jason Horejs, owner of Xanadu Gallery. Register on Xanadu's site.
| What's the start time in your timezone? Timing can be a bit confusing- use this table as your guide for the start time in your timezone. There will be one, four-hour broadcast and it will begin at: |
| Start Time - |
| 8 p.m. Eastern |
| 7 p.m. Central |
| 6 p.m. Mountain |
| 5 p.m. Arizona |
| 5 p.m. Pacific |
If you are ready to learn how to implement plans to help you make the most from your marketing, then sign up now and get this webinar on your calendar. There are no current plans to run the webinar on future dates. You will need to participate in the live webinar as it will not be available as a future download.
Webinar Agenda:
Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
Part Four:
About Barney Davey
For two decades, Davey worked as an account executive for art business magazines and tradeshows where he advised visual artists on marketing, advertising and tradeshow strategies. He uses his experience studying how top selling artists managed their businesses to help other artists.
Davey publishes the highly regarded Art Print Issues business blog for artists. He is the author of How to Profit from the Art Print Market, and is near finishing his new book, Art Marketing: How to Make a Living from Making Your Art!
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When you start looking at things in a certain way, you will find the number three comes into play over and over, and over again.
For a topical example, how about Gold, Silver and Bronze? Or, perhaps you have heard of the Rule of Thirds, the Rule of Three, or the Goldilocks Theory.
As an artist, to apply the Rule of Thirds, you divide your image into nine equal parts using two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines. Then you use the intersecting points to focus your most important visual elements to them. The result is your composition displays with greater tension, energy, and interest.
Scientists use what they call The Goldilocks Theory to explain how life is possible on earth. Our planet is a perfect 93 million miles from our sun. It is neither too far away, nor too close to the sun's warming, powerful energy. Instead, it is in a “just right” middle spot that maintains the right conditions for survival.
Headline auction prices aside, the art most likely to sell is the in the "just right" range." In real estate, you do not want the highest priced house on the street, or the lowest either. The same is true with art prices. Pricing your art in the sweet spot makes it the most attractive.
Thomas Jefferson and Steve Jobs both understood the power of three when it came to communication. How easy it is to remember “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? Jobs thought in threes and believed the triad of Mac, iPod and iPhone were crucial the success of Apple. Its stock evaluation today testifies to his theory.
In 2010, Jobs introduced the first iPad tablet as a “third device” bridging smartphones and laptops. The iPad came in “three models”: 16, 32, and 64 GB of flash storage. When the iPad 2 hit the marketi in 2011, it was billed as “thinner, lighter, and faster” than its predecessor. How many ways can you incorporate the power of three in your marketing?
Designers often use groupings of three in placing objects or art in settings. Think about creative ways to offer suites of art in groupings of three. In the print market, it's widely understood that most hotel rooms design jobs are specified to have one large piece of art and two smaller complementary pieces.
You can find numerous examples of the power of three in business, economics, science and the arts.
A three-act play is not by chance. In an article by Amy Guth in the Chicago Tribune, she says the best way to use the Rule of Three in social media is:
Bestselling author and authority blogger, Chris Brogan, suggests using the Rule of Thirds this way:
"Spend 1/3 of your time prospecting for new business. Spend 1/3 of your time working on your existing deliverables and execution. Spend 1/3 of your time supporting your customer base and doing administrative work. What I see most times are people working on the 2nd and 3rd parts of this equation and forgetting the first, because they feel so overwhelmed with what they have… But it is the first third that matters."
The Rule of Three applies to creating art that arouses passion. Artists whose art is strong enough that one-third will love, one-third will hate, and one-third will not know about it, use the rule to drive their business. They know there will be more than enough ardent fans who will acquire all the work they create.
Perhaps this plan will not work for you. You will know if it does. You will not have to think hard about artists whose work fits the description. You will not find abstract art, graffiti art, steam punk art or most other genres have a universal appeal. However, for those who do love the work, they usually cannot get enough.
CLICK HERE to get regular updates to Art Print Issues emailed to you.
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The Art Fair Insiders website is the network for artists exhibiting at juried fine art fairs and art festivals. It provides information on best craft shows, and calls for artists nationwide. It is published with a companion website, Art Fair Calendar, which ranks #1 on Google for the highly valuable "art fairs" search term.
Both vehicles are published by Connie Mettler. For more than 25 years, Connie earned her stripes as she traveled the art fair circuit exhibiting at juried art fairs all over the U.S. She retired from being an active participant on the show circuit and used her vast knowledge and experience to start an online business.
It is a vibrant social networking website with more than 7,500 artists members. They use the site to share information and make online discussions about everything related to the art fair business. A check of the primary discussion topics shows thousands of entries on the information art show newbies and veterans alike can use to enhance their show experience.
ArtFairCalendar.com is the only online calendar with listings of the nation's top art and craft events. Connie's mission is to stir interest from art patrons to the events to partake and support the talented artists on today's circuits. With more than 15,000 subscribers, the Art Fair Calendar is the primary online tool to publish art fair news for art patrons, artists and show organizers.
As if Connie were not busy enough in her "retirement," she also is a consultant who uses her extensive experience and contact to work with art fair organizers on upgrading and improving existing events and the plausibility of launching new one. She also finds time to work with individual artists to help them maximize the most from their investments into the art fair show scene.
A few other noteworthy and useful items Connie produces for artists are the Art Fair Insiders Blog with 3,100+ entries. It is loaded with great useful information for artists on the show circuit. Artists can also glean insights on shows from her ArtShowReviews.com and CallsforArtists.com websites.
Finally, last but far from least, there is the Art Fair Radio Podcasts. In this format, Connie interviews and talks with leading figures whose perspectives on the art fair show market are invaluable to artists seeking to make the most from their own art show experiences.
If you are seeking new ways to boost your career, then attend my four-hour art marketing workshop. Market conditions have changed, in some ways it is harder, in other ways you have more control than ever to manage how your work gets to market.
Let me help you develop a marketing strategy that you can implement in stages to create more sales. It is not about fancy programs, or spending more money. It is about learning how to take advantage of the tools at your disposal.
CLICK HERE to register now or get more details. This will be a limited seating workshop. It is sponsored and held by Art Expressions Gallery. Act now to reserve your space.
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San Diego, CA – Saturday 9:00 am - 1:30 pm, Aug 18, 2012
Do you wish for better results from your art marketing efforts? Is it frustrating to realize you could sell lots more art if enough of the right people saw it? Are you ready to learn how to get the most from art marketing tools and techniques at your disposal?
In this intensive four-hour workshop, you will:
Come join Patty Smith, owner of Art Expressions Gallery as she welcomes Barney Davey to present an intensive four-hour art-marketing workshop with information you can use to boost your career.
2645 Financial Court, San Diego, CA (858) 270-7577
Mark your calendar for Saturday, August 18 from 9:00 am to 2:30 pm.
About Barney Davey
For two decades, Davey worked as an account executive for art business magazines and tradeshows where he advised visual artists on marketing, advertising and tradeshow strategies. He uses his experience studying how top selling artists managed their businesses to help other artists.
Davey publishes the highly regarded Art Print Issues business blog for artists. He is the author of How to Profit from the Art Print Market, and is near finishing his new book, Art Marketing: How to Get Your Work Seen and Sold. It will be available for a pre-publishing discount at the workshop.
SESSION ONE Art Career Goals
Assessing Your Resources
SESSION TWO Making Work that Sells
Marketing You
Lunch Break 12:00 — 12:30 (Approximately) You can bring a brown bag lunch, or purchase a roast beef, turkey or veggie sandwich with chips, dessert and beverage. The cost is $8.00
SESSION THREE
Grassroots Marketing
Networking and Referrals
SESSION FOUR
Evaluating and Harnessing Marketing Tools
Strategic Synergistic Marketing
REGISTER NOW – Limited Space Available This special learning opportunity is only $79.00. The ideas & information you gain will pay you back for years to come.
Contact the gallery for directions, location, to order lunch or general questions. Call (858) 270-7577.
For questions about the workshop or to request topics you would like Barney to cover, email: barney@barneydavey.com
“WOW! I’m reading your book a second time with hi-lighter in hand checking every resource and scouring the web for every scrap of information.” – David Randall, HIlton Head, South Carolina
Barney’s advice has been a treasure trove for me. He tells it straight. By following his suggestions, I avoided numerous costly mistakes and uncovered new profitable opportunities.” – Michael Geraghty, Laurel, MD“
Barney Davey’s honest commentary about the art world (from mom and pop frame shops to prestigious museums) and his willingness to express that there are exceptions to just about every rule and suggestion he offers, is both refreshing and entertaining.” – Andrew Darlow, New York City“
Davey informs with great wisdom and wit, and makes a book about marketing as much of a page-turner as some of the fiction novels I read!” – Laurel Knight, Bend, OR.
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As an artist, you are an entrepreneur who has chosen to launch and grow a business around selling your art, and, in some cases, related products. How you perceive your business, and how you plan for its growth, has a huge impact on the outcome of its success.
While the wise saying, “Fail to plan is a plan to fail” holds true for visual artists, there is more to success than that. You not only need plans to follow in order to grow your business, you need a vision that underpins your plans.
Although your plans do not have to be over the top grandiose schemes for you to become the next Damien Hirst, they need enough meat on the bone to insure your success. In other words, you need to think big. There is nothing wrong with small successes if they are stepping-stones to larger ones.
When you stop asking, "Is this all there is?" you are dead in the water. It is possible and most likely you will start small. Just like acorns into mighty oaks, we can all trace to humble beginnings. Unrealistically shooting for the stars from the outset can be as bad as thinking small.
The point here is to routinely examine what you are doing and where you are heading. Take the time to think it through. You need to see clearly where the path you are on is taking you, and to be ready and willing to change course when you realize what you are doing is not going to get you where you want to go. Just because you are having modest success at doing something is not reason enough to continue doing it. There has to be a bigger picture.
Talent and ambition are keys to success in any creative endeavor. Your talent will help you to get noticed, but your ambition is what will power your art career. You can have misguided ambition in that you may be seriously pursuing a goal, but the goal is mired in small thinking.
If you can step away and see with the same amount of effort directed at a higher goal that you could have had a greater outcome, and then you have had an epiphany telling you to set a different career course. It is never too late to begin anew. Whatever you have learned up to the point of your epiphany will help you gain traction and grow faster on your new career trajectory.
The first step towards change is the recognition that better opportunities are available and within your grasp. The second step is to muster the courage to make the change. You may have gotten quite comfortable doing what you are doing. You may have achieved a certain amount of celebrity and success. To have the courage to step away from these things and take yourself out of your comfort range is what will free you to reach for the stars and take your career to new heights.
Get Art Print Issues delivered in your email, Click Here to Subscribe to Art Print Issues.
Patty Smith, owner of Art Expressions Gallery in San Diego is sponsoring a special workshop for visual artists. If you want to learn new ways to help you take your career higher, SIGN UP today for this intensive four-hour workshop.
San Diego Photo Compliments of Ace Clip Art
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As a small business owner, you are self-reliant. For the most part, if you need something done, you do it yourself.
A key component to operating a successful small business is to grow consumer interest in it. You can and should work at promoting your business in a manner befitting it.
Consistently working to build awareness for you and your work is necessary to develop a successful art career. Self-promotion is simply acting on opportunities to spread the word about your work.
Self-promotion can be done without braggadocio or acting in any way that feels unauthentic. In other words, you can learn to promote your art career in a low-key, professional manner that lifts your reputation rather than damages it. And, you can do this regardless of your personality type.
Join Xanadu Gallery owner, Jason Horejs and art marketing and promotion expert Barney Davey for a free webinar Tuesday, July 31th as they tackle the Art of Self-promotion.
Many visual artists rate self-promotion right up there with public speaking on the list of things to avoid. Many incorrectly fear it can cause them to lose credibility as a serious artist, or simply don’t understand what self-promotion is.
Both Horejs and Davey have long experience with helping artists understand how to use promotional tools to advance their careers. Sign in for a lively discussion fueled by the different perspectives Horejs and Davey bring to the podcast.
To make it more personalized and informative for you, we invite your questions. Send them to Jason@xanadugallery.com. We will answer as many as possible during the podcast.
Register now (free) to secure your spot. Don’t worry if you can’t tune in live, Xanadu will provide you a download link for later listening.
A note about start time: Because listeners are registering from all across the country (and a number from around the globe) start time always causes confusion. There is just one broadcast and it begins at 4:00 p.m. Arizona (which doesn’t observe daylight savings time) – this corresponds to 4:00 Pacific, 5:00 Mountain, 6:00 Central and 7:00 Eastern. Check the chart below for your start time.
| Time Zone | Local Start Time | Local End Time |
| Eastern | 7:00 | 7:40 |
| Central | 6:00 | 6:40 |
| Mountain | 5:00 | 5:40 |
| Arizona | 4:00 | 4:40 |
| Pacific | 4:00 | 4:40 |
| Join us for a Free, Live Podcast on Tuesday, July 31, 4:00 p.m. – 4:40 p.m. Pacific |
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Don’t Worry if you Can’t Attend Live -
by registering you are also signing up to receive a recording of the session. When you register for the broadcast it will show you registered for 4:00 Pacific – you will simply need to remember to translate that to your time. We will send out a reminder on Tuesday with the start time again, so please don’t panic when the broadcast system sends you the reminder in Pacific time. |
There is no escaping that successful art careers require recognition. Effectively marketing your art means utilizing every available resource to help spread the word about you and your work.
With the right attitude, or attitude adjustment, and the willingness to do a few things that will help you market your career, you can give yourself more opportunities build awareness for your work.
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Bad Ass Awesome Sauce is a way to describe your confident attitude and unique style. Pour it on. Make it good -- no excellent -- no superb... well, you get the drift.
Often what differentiates good and great is a thin line. Some artists seem to have an ethereal essence that propels their career. The culturati use, "Je ne se quois," to mean "I know not what."
In today's lingo, you hear "Bad Ass" to describe something extraordinary and "Awesome Sauce" to describe that which is spectacular, wonderful; or the best it could possibly be.
If using Awesome Sauce sounds hokey or contrary to the notion of fine art to you, that is to be expected. The point of it is to get you to shake off your lethargy, get out of your comfort zone, think about doing things a different way, and to approach the marketing of your art as a fun experience.
The NYTimes.com piece, "Forgeries? Perhaps Faux Masterpieces," exemplifies the thin line in art. KenPerenyi is a versatile artist with obvious great technical skills. For decades, he made a small fortune from fine art forgeries. Apparently, he lacks the awesome sauce for successfully making original art.
Use your awesome sauce to create and promote your work and shape your career. You can make your career what you want it to be. The more you define it, the less others can do it for you.
To define your career, you need a realistic assessment of how your art fits in the matrix. You do not have to accept where you are now. The awesome sauce you bring extends beyond the creation of the art. For career success, you as an entrepreneur artist, must apply it to your marketing and your personal brand.
The thing is the more you bring your awesome sauce to everything you do, the more likely you are to break that thin line between a talented unknown and one who is well-known and regarded as extraordinary.
Certainly, if you are quiet shy person you cannot instantly become the life of the party. Some artists are shy or introverted, but that is not an excuse. It is a only reason not to try, and perhaps to fail. Don't let that happen to you.
Whatever your personality type, do not let it stop you from exuding confidence about who you are, and the art you make. Learn to take compliments gracefully.
Confidence is sexy and alluring. It doesn't take a "big personality" to show it. Displaying confidence is a learned trait. Study and practice how, it will amaze you.
You are passionate about creating your work, so be just as passionate about sharing it. Use a marketing plan that exposes your art to as many people as possible. Put something of yourself into your marketing. Go ahead, pour on the awesome sauce.
People like to buy from people they like. If art buyers know you, or know personal things about you, they are more inclined to take your art home.
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As a blog devoted to the art business, and how artists can create a career in the print market, it is only fitting it would cover a print-on-demand website such as Fine Art America (FAA).
FineArtAmerica.com is an online marketplace and social networking site for painters, photographers and other visual artists. Artists can use to the site to connect with collectors and other buyers. As its founder, Sean Broihier, says, “Fine Art America puts the business side of artists’ careers on ‘autopilot,’ leaving them more time to create art.
As I checked it out, I found FAA provides visual artists, photographers and galleries an extensive and impressive array of the free art marketing and e-commerce tools. At $30, its only upgrade to Premium paid option is a bargain. I also found an inspiring human-interest story on its entrepreneurial roots and growth.
FAA’s success proves providing consistently improved products and services with competitive pricing is a hard to beat business model. Although FAA has only three full-time employees, it successfully competes with companies that have had substantial outside investments and large staffs. This is due to using a fully automated system, and outsourcing printing and framing services to named US-based topnotch professional partners.
The basic service is to allow photographers and artists to upload an unlimited images where art buyers can order them through a complete turnkey operation. This includes print-on-demand services for canvas, paper, and acrylic prints with a variety of framing options. The orders are fulfilled and quickly shipped within days and includes a full 30-day refund policy.
Here is a list of the free services for artists and photographer members:
I uploaded and ordered a framed sepia portrait of my father and could not be more satisfied with the quality, shipping and fulfillment for it. In its niche, providing full services print-on-demand printing, online sales and order fulfillment, FAA stands out as the leader. No wonder it has 100,000 artists and millions of web hits each month.
For only $30 per year, artists can upgrade their free membership to paid status. For this, they get a free artist website, earn 5% commission on accessory sales including framing, substrates and assembly charges, have their images placed on Amazon.com, and art licensing opportunities to get their work shown on television shows, such as Desperate Housewives, with ABC Studios.
Artist, Bob Nolin, in a blog post about FAA mentions how customization on other print-on-demand websites is difficult, and often requires a solid understanding of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). He found FAA’s website to be remarkably easy to use for implementing the customized header he created in Photoshop, which gives his site a unique look.
Broihier provides artists with a neat slideshow widget, which you can see over on the right here on my blog. When I add artwork to my gallery, the slideshow automatically picks it up. The slideshow’s movement attracts the visitor’s attention, and shows off my work at the same time. I think it’s really useful.
FAA also automatically provides buyers with color swatches based on the main colors in a piece of artwork. Again, I can’t think of a similar site that does that. Along with visitor counts, there are visitor comments. These help build buyer confidence.
Spontaneous art sales are out-of-the-norm flukes. If your business model is hoping to convert new, prospective buyers to paid customers on the first encounter, it is fatally flawed.
You need to connect with your prospects and buyers on a regular basis. You cannot rely on your buyers to seek you out. It takes an organized systematic approach to create steady art sales. To do these things, you need to use available tools.
FAA provides a host of useful tools to help you stay in touch with your customers. These include such things as your FAA website, blog, event announcements, unlimited free broadcast email, and press release services. If you already are a member and haven’t started using them, then you should. It only takes your time.
The free broadcast email service is unrivaled. FAA gives you free unlimited email marketing. With a small list, you would pay $10 - $25 per month for this service. Larger lists can run to hundreds of dollars a month. It’s here for the taking all you have to do is use it.
The Artwork Ordering Catalogs FAA makes available are a powerful sales tool. These essentially are PDF sales sheets. You create them online and can print extra copies yourself or at a copy center. Get them in the hands of buyers. Give them to your family and friends and ask them to pass them along to interested buyers. Take them to art shows and fairs.
Get creative. Put copies in public areas of convention and tradeshow hotels. Let’s say you paint dogs, a highly popular subject matter, and you learn a dog show is in town; then find the designated hotels and leave copies in public areas, or where other literature is distributed. This is just one wild, creative idea for uses. How many more can you come up with?
There is so much to explore and use with FAA, and this blog post will not come close to covering it all. It is a massive asset for artists in the print market. When you get most benefits free by joining, there is no reason not get started using this service.
I respect there are artists who want a higher level of production than can be met with a maximum 20 MB upload. They also want to work closely with their printer to assure the final prints meet their exacting standards. It comes down to those artists are working to fill the requirements of other buyers, with different expectations and price points than buyers who have mass-market needs.
Fortunately, it is a sizeable market with opportunity on multiple levels. In its niche, FAA provides a tremendous service for artists on a budget, or with no staff to help them, or who primarily want to sell in the open edition market, FAA is a perfect print-on-demand fulfillment and marketing partner.
I mentioned FAA is an entrepreneurial inspiration. Sean Broihier founded and built the FAA website. His story is one right of Gary Vaynerchuk's bestseller, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
As mentioned above, he manages massive numbers of artists and photographers, uploaded images and order fulfillment by using well-respected outsourcing partners to handle most of the tasks required to get the art in the hands of its buyers. In the first of my multipart series on art marketing, Making Successful Art Careers Happen | Part One, I mentioned using kaizen, or continual improvement, in making your art and building your career. In Sean's hands, FAA is a kaizen exemplar.
Broihier works to make constant improvements and additions to FAA. Some of you might notice, such as adding art business and art marketing blogs to the weekly FAA newsletter. He is trying to help his artists and photographer users learn new and better ways to market their art. Or, it could be he is working on improving critical and highly competitive keyword rankings which helps buyers find your art on FAA.
In talking with him, I found him open to new ideas and eager to implement those that will improve the FAA site, or help its artists to sell more art. If you are working your day job with a dream of moving to full-time status as an artist, you can use Sean Broihier as an example of how to juggle your job and your passion until you get to the point where you no longer need the day job. If you wisely and diligently use the array of tools FAA makes available, you will leverage your ability to get to the top and full-time status quicker.
For those of you interested in learning other ways to market your art, check out How to Profit from the Art Print Market. It is a 300-manual on how to successfully get your work into the lucrative print market. Right now, it comes with a bonus e-book titled How to Price Digital Fine Art Prints. Combine the FAA marketing tools with the knowledge you gain from my books, and you can leverage what you are doing to take your art career to new heights.
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Unless you live under the proverbial rock, you have repeatedly heard why as an artist you should be blogging. For instance, you may have listened to or downloaded the podcast on blogging for artists I recently did with Jason Horejs.
The primary reasons for blogging by artists is it helps find new customers and retain existing customers. Blogging gives your customers a chance to know you on a different level than you can achieve through a static website.
It allows your other interests and personality to come through, which makes buying from you more likely. Besides there is no other tool that is as easy and affordable to use. It's a great way to build your email list, too.
Plus, blogging is a key component to gettng higher Search Engine Page Ranks. Search engines love new, fresh content.
Like the rest of us, search engines like to ask, "What's New?" Because providing relevant content via your blog is beneficial to search engines, your customers, and you, it is all the more reason to make it blogging as an artist a disciplined, routine habit.
You just haven't given it enough thought, or you haven't had a push with suggested topics like thos in this post. It's been three years since I first posted this Art Print Issues Classic. With summer in full swing, it's time once again to present to you:
(If you have some good topics for a future Part Two of Blog Topics for Artists, please comment. If I use yours, I will credit you with a link to your site.)
1. Why I support xyz charity
2. The most inspiring art teacher I have known
3. How I came to know being a professional artist was my career path
4. Why I love working with xyz medium
5. What you can learn from the traveling exhibit at the abc museum
6. Four galleries I would love to carry my work and why
7. Five contemporary artists whose works inspire and inform me
8. Clues to the subtle messages in my art
9. My color palette is (nature/technology/environment) driven and why
10. Ten things they don't teach you in art school
11. How being in the business of art affects my art
12. When I paint, I like to listen to Guns n' Roses/London Philharmonic/Enya/Toby Keith
13. How the other arts influence my work, e.g., how I attempt to interpret the fluidity of a ballerina in my brush stokes
14. Here are blogs by other artists whose work I like, or whose blogs I like
15. Art retreats; although you may not get rich and famous, you can still travel and stay at wonderful places. Here are my favorites or fantasies
16. How other jobs I've had have added perspective to my art
17. Spirituality is personal, but growth in it has made me a better artist
18. Nine things I want to paint before I stop
19. Why painting en plen air is exhilarating
20. Art by other artists I bought in unusual places
21. Visually inspiring day trips around where I live
22. Museums I've visited in other cities and around home
23. Art books on my bookshelf
24. If I could only recommend one book, art or otherwise, for someone, it would be...
25. How living the creative life has uplifted my spirits and made me a better person
26. Advice for young artists
27. Why I love my local galleries and/or the local art scene
28. How blogging has stretched me as an artist
29. You can find my art online at these sites, here's why I chose to use them
30. Art magazines I like to read
31. The greatest influence on my life was...
32. Why and how parents should encourage artistic development in their children
33. Some funny experiences either colleagues or I've had at art shows
34. I still can't believe people have asked me these things
35. The five best quotes on art I've ever read
36. How the courage and creativity of some disabled artists have inspired me
37. Here are blogs I enjoy that are not about art
38. Seven ways technology has changed how I make and sell art (Some examples are: Photoshop/digital camera/digital painting/digital printing/Painter/online art sites)
39. I'm grateful because this person came in my life, or because this happened to me
40. Eight reasons I get out of bed to paint everyday are (Suggestions: Let's be honest, I need the money. I'm OCD and can't help it. It's the best job a person could have. A day without painting is like a day without sunshine. I can't stand the thought of going back to the 7-11)
41. And you heard writer's block was difficult
42. How overcoming creative obstacles has made me a better artist
43. So I went to a tradeshow/convention/workshop and the best/funniest/saddest thing happened
44. It's really hard to part with my originals; here's why
45. Five reasons you will like the giclee prints I offer
46. Flowers in my garden make me smile and make me paint
47. If I wasn't an artist, I'd be a...
48. Why faces are so difficult to paint, and hands are tough too
49. The most inspiring movie I've ever seen is...
50. How the arts organizations in my area are helping children/charities/??
51. Why you should always use a docent when you go to a museum. Here are some special things I learned at...
52. How reading the Art Print Issues blog has made me smarter, better looking, more creative and much richer
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This post is Part Four of an ongoing series on art careers and art marketing. Here are links to the first three posts:
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Do all your friends and family know you are an artist with work to sell? Have you supplied them with postcards, sales sheets, or other art marketing materials to give to others? In your professional circle, how many contacts have bought your art?
How many professionals do you use in your life? Do your doctor, your lawyer, your CPA, and bookkeeper own your art? Have you shown them your art? Do your friends, family or professional relationships regularly refer prospects to you?
You have people all around you who might buy your art, or they might know someone who will buy your art. If you practice, you can learn genuinely to ask these potential buyers and centers of influence to buy your art or refer you to prospects that will.
If you learn to be effective at the local/regional level, you will create a solid foundation to help fund more extensive marketing efforts. Grassroots marketing does not require a large budget. It requires you learn to be pleasantly persistent in seeking buyers and selling your art. If you are proud of your work, nothing should stop you from professionally presenting yourself everywhere you go.
Business cards are useless 20th Century appendages. They are a classic way for someone to blow you off. Stop using them. Never provide any material that does not have a call to action. Use postcards, sale sheets or brochures with a reason to contact you. It could be for commission work, or for free shipping, free local delivery and hanging, a special price or discounted framing.
When you give your art marketing material to someone, ask for a commitment for when you can follow up to talk further. Keep your promises and follow up on schedule. Send thank you notes with a reminder after the meeting. At the very least, make sure you get their postal mailing and email addresses with their permission to use them.
If you cringe at the idea of doing routine art marketing tasks such as these you need either to find someone who is comfortable and capable of doing them for you, or to learn to get over your feelings about performing necessary tasks to build your successful art career.
Most often the difference in wealth between two equally talented artists is one runs circles around the other when it comes to marketing and selling. Do not let fear, misperceptions or inaction sabotage your future.
Obviously, there is more to art marketing than selling locally. Nevertheless, as the saying goes, "You have to walk before you run", applies to art marketing.
When you master how to capture sales at your local level, you will have more money and more confidence to help you successfully tackle more complex art marketing tasks. Plus, those first gained local buyers are most likely to be your most ardent and long-lived fans.
If you want to get in-depth on the marketing ideas in this series, join me at a live workshop. I am bringing my "How to Get Your Artwork Seen and Sold Art Marketing Roadshow" to Utah.
Salt Lake City - Saturday, July 14 - 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Country Inn & Suites by Carlson
3422 South Decker Lake , West Valley City, UT 84119
Seating is limited and the workshop will sell out - reserve your space today
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Art Marketing Workshop: How to Get Your Work Seen & Sold
IT IS WITH REGRET THE UTAH WORKSHOP IS CANCELED DUE TO UNEXPECTED CIRCUMSTANCES. STAY TUNED FOR A ONLINE WEBINAR WITH THIS SAME SUBJECT.
Sponsored by Xanadu Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ |
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A Salt Lake City Seminar with Art Marketing Adviser and Author Barney Davey
Do you wish for better results from your art marketing efforts? Is it frustrating to realize you could sell lots more art if enough of the right people saw it?
Are you ready to learn how to get the most from art marketing tools and techniques at your disposal?
You are invited to participate in an exclusive marketing seminar. In this unique workshop, you will gain valuable art marketing tools, tips and techniques from Barney Davey. Thousands of visual artists have been helped through his books, workshops, and blogs. His information packed art business articles have been featured The Artist's Magazine, Art World News, and Art Business News.
Discover the most appropriate art-marketing tools to help you get your art seen and sold. Targeting your top prospects with streamlined marketing processes helps you generate better sales results with greater control, and less wasted time and money.
Marketing in a vacuum doesn't work. Only when activities are coordinated do you get optimal returns from your expense and efforts. Harnessing the power of your marketing to get multiple impressions pointed at a defined event or target is how you create marketing magic.
It takes seven or more touches to turn a prospect into a buyer. As you intently begin to focus the power of the marketing tools at your disposal, you will generate more sales without spending more time or money on marketing.
Davey's workshop will help you determine the appropriate art marketing tools for your art business. As you learn to implement your most beneficial marketing processes, you will produce consistently improving results.
For two decades your workshop leader, Barney Davey, worked with top selling artists and publishers on marketing, advertising and tradeshow strategies. He blends lessons learned from those artists with his extensive marketing background to help you pinpoint the best ways to get your art seen and sold.
In this intensive workshop, you will learn to:
$79.00
Salt Lake City - Saturday, July 14 - 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Country Inn & Suites by Carlson
3422 South Decker Lake , West Valley City, UT 84119
Seating is limited and the workshop will sell out - reserve your space today
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Successful art careers happen to artists who have their heart in their business, and their business in their heart.
Treat Your Art Career with Care
A common trait of top selling contemporary artists is they put as much passion and importance into their business as they do into making their art.
"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that. When they are mixed with definiteness of purpose and a burning desire, they can be translated into riches." – Napoleon Hill
In Part One of this series, we talked about the importance of making art that people want to buy. This part of the formula for success is simple or is at least simple to state. That is, use your creativity to make ever improving art that fascinates buyers into taking buying actions.
Part Two tackled the importance of time management. If you don't respect and value your time, no one else will either. The only way to make enough time to do everything you need done is by managing your time efficiently, as well as the time of those who require your time.
Marketing Art with Reason
Fine art sales are rarely bought on impulse. It can take seven to ten touches to create a buyer. In marketing art, you need to have good reasons for actions you take and messages you create.
Successfully executed marketing creates a continuum that accomplishes mulitple tasks. It begins with marketing messages aimed at getting Attention for you and your work, and through repeated exposure those messages turn prospective buyers' attention into Interest.
Intentionally focusing your efforts on creating a steady stream of marketing impressions to a targeted audience is how you transition a buyer's interest into a Desire to own your work. Desire, when stimulated by effective marketing for compelling products, creates Action.
Sales are the goal, and ultimate action, at the end of this marketing continuum.
Effective Marketing Creates Sales Opportunities
Sales are actions facilitated by your direct interaction with the buyer, or by you providing easy-to-use ordering tools on your blog or website. In person, for the greatest results, you always should make your best and biggest offer then shut up until the buyer responds. On your website, you need to provide prices and clear steps on how to buy, how the shipping will be charged and handled, and what your return policy is.
It Is Easier to Sell to a Warm Market Than a Digital Market
People are more likely to buy from people they like and know than they are from a stranger on the Internet. I believe many artists today put too much attention on pursuing sales via social media instead of working to sell direct.
I will trade one or two enthused face-to-face buyers, or a handful of solid personal relationships with referral possibilities, over 1,000 virtual people who will like, friend or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and so on.
Don't get the wrong impression, I like social media and believe it can be a great marketing tool. It just needs to be perceived with its proper importance to your art marketing success. With enough direct buying relationships, you can have a successful art career without using social media. Just keep in mind social media is not a silver bullet. It is just one type of marketing tool, nothing more.
Grassroots Selling Builds a Solid Business Foundation
In the next part, we will talk about the importance of creating a local/regional buyer base, and how to set up your business and marketing plans to connect with and capture your share of this important component to your customer base.
Salt Lake City Art Marketing Workshop Date Announced
If you want to get in-depth on the marketing ideas in this series, join me at a live workshop.
I will be bringing my "How to Get Your Work Seen and Sold Art Marketing Workshop" to Salt Lake City on Saturday, July 14. The hours will be 9 am - 1 pm. Registration and location information will be announced on this blog in a few days. Subscribe now to stay informed.
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“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” — Albert Einstein
The good folks at Copyblogger have come up with a new infographic. I could not resist passing it along to you. If you are interested in improving your internet writing and marketing skills, get on their email list.
Infographics are a relatively new, and very cool visual tool for turning data into information. In our ever increasing fast-paced lives, we long to know more than we have time to find and absorb great information. Infographics help fill the need.
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.
Stay tuned for more the third installment of my Successful Art Careers | How to Make Yours Happen. I will have it up this coming weekend.
Read Part One Here ||| Read Part Two Here
Thanks to all the attendees of my Art Marketing workshops last week in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Your enthusiastic participation and active feedback were great and much appreciated!
If you are in the Salt Lake City area, keep an eye on this newsletter, or subscribe to date and location information coming soon for mid-July. Subscribe to Art Print Issues!
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[Editor note: Part Three is available now. Click here to read it.]
In Part One we have covered the importance to a successful art career of consistently producing desirable work.
The intent for Part Two was to dive into how to effectively market your work to interested buyers in, but that has changed.
I realized there is no point in talking about marketing unless you have the time to do it. With that in mind, let's cover some valuable time management ideas.
It makes sense if you are managing your time more efficiently that you will have more time for marketing, and for your studio, too. If you are like many, if not most artists, you will let yourself become caught in the studio, and not give yourself enough time to get other important art career activities, such as marketing.
The facts are we simply are busier than we have ever been. We find ourselves pulled in every direction at once. This leads to an actual and a perceived sense of lack of time, both create unnecessary stress.
Stress causes physical and mental problems. It causes actual harm to our bodies, including raising our blood pressure, which creates potential serious problems. It causes us to eat haphazardly which can raise our sugar levels and cause diabetes. Stress leads to anxiety, which can cause us to lose sleep, and weight gain. None of these things will help you make better art, or market your art more efficiently and productively.
It is possible to reduce your stress by adding an extra hour to your day through time-management techniques.
Your time is precious; learning to manage expectations appropriately is the key. Be realistic when setting deadlines and do not overcommit yourself. You must learn to prioritize your career. No matter how enticing an offer, or how qualified you may be to do a job, or take on some opportunity, if it doesn’t fit into your goals, then politely say no thanks.
If you assign tasks to others, make sure they know how to perform the task and then let them do it. Do not let them delegate tasks back to you. If they are not capable, then find someone who is. If you end up micro managing someone, you might as well do it yourself, which is self-defeating.
When you create a To-Do list figure how much time it will take for each task. Then prioritize by most important first and time needed to complete second.
In general, multitasking can be detrimental. However, you can do some things simultaneously. For instance, pay your bills while watching some guilty pleasure television. Bundle errands so you only make one trip. Plan your trip working from furthest destination to nearest. Do your meal planning for an entire week while you are doing the laundry.
As your prioritization and time management details begin to kick in and you notice you have more time, use some of it to reward yourself. Take time to acknowledge this improvement. Go to a museum, see a film, take a ride to a scenic spot. Surprise that someone special in your life with a preplanned unexpected jaunt to somewhere fun or romantic, or both. Enjoy your success!
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Part Three is available now. Click here to read it.
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Art marketing is a learned process. When you attend my new art marketing workshop on Thursday, June 7, 2012 in Albuquerque, or on Saturday, June 9 in Santa Fe, you will discover innovative ways to get your work seen and sold.
As a New Mexico visual artist in attendance you will learn how to implement the best tools and techniques to set, track and achieve personalized art career goals.
Expect to leave armed with the knowledge and ability to integrate your marketing activities into a scheduled cohesive plan that leads to your desired results. Work smarter, not harder, definitely applies here.
The difficulty in gaining recognition for their art frustrates many fine artists. Through experience, most know their work sells well when enough appropriate buyers see it. Workshop attendees will learn how to target the right prospects, and how to create and coordinate art-marketing plans designed to reach and influence their best prospects.
Judging the Opportunities Is the First Step
Artists’ success depends on discovering reliable ways to develop consistent sales. With so many choices, finding the most affordable and cost-effective marketing opportunities is difficult. Today’s business climate adds to the challenge. In the workshop, attendees will determine the best marketing opportunities based on a candid evaluation of their skills, resources, and capabilities.
Attendees will benefit in seven ways as they learn to:
New Mexico Workshop Locations:
Albuquerque – Thursday, June 7 - 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm
5401 Alameda Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113
Register Albuquerque:
http://www.xanadugallery.com/Workshop/BarneyDavey/index.asp?wsID=106
Santa Fe - Saturday, Jun 9 – 9:00 am – 1:00 pm.
Doubletree by Hilton 4048 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, NM 87507
Register Santa Fe:
http://www.xanadugallery.com/Workshop/BarneyDavey/index.asp?wsID=107
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When you encounter an artist whose career has blossomed, you know with certainty these fundamental components of a successful art career have been mastered:
While there is much more to developing a successful art career than the items above, virtually every worthy activity in the process traces back to them.
Kaizen is a Japanese term for continuous improvement. As an artist, you learn to improve by studying the techniques of the masters. As an owner of an art business, you need to routinely observe, learn and apply the successful business and marketing techniques of top selling artists.
Although tips for producing faster are not part of this post, I can point you to resources for finding art trends. The second edition of How to Profit from the Art Print Market devotes an entire chapter to “Trends and Inspiration.” Enter the term “trends” in the search box on the Art Print Issues sidebar to find loads of posts related to the topic.
There is no one-size-fits-all marketing solution for visual artists. You first have to learn what kinds of products and services, tools and techniques are available. Then you need to decide which of them fit your budget and what capabilities you have to master and utilize them. It equates to the same trial and error method of learning to create art. You get better and smarter as you progress.
Like making art, marketing art requires disciplined everyday activity. Effectively marketing art requires daily actions by the artist, or a trusted marketing person.
Growing awareness for and making sales of the artist’s work is the goal. As you learn to prioritize your marketing efforts, you will learn to accomplish more in less time. Ultimately, prioritizing makes decision making easier. It also produces extra hours for creating art and other profitable activities.
Making the best choices and determinedly acting upon them is necessary to develop a successful art career. Capturing the attention of potential buyers requires a steady, systematic approach of finding new ways to sell more art while retaining existing customers. These are the essential ingredients of a successful art career.
Visual artists are by nature curious. This helps them see the world through a different lens than other people. Having such a unique perspective also makes artists more sensitive to the world around them, and often is the source of their creativity, passion, and ambition to make art. These same traits often are the cause of artists becoming distracted, and undisciplined, especially when it comes to art marketing.
By not prioritizing their marketing, artists can find themselves pulled in too many directions at once when trying to get their work to market. It is common for an artist to want to make different kinds of art; that is they might be interested in working in watercolors, oil, pastels, or even sculpture or mixed media. Or, perhaps they want to do landscapes, abstracts and portraits.
Entertaining imaginative impulses is great for a creative person; it keeps the stimuli at a high level. Regrettably, it is a snare and a trap for the artist serious about marketing their work. There is a need for the artist to focus on a distinctive style, or aesthetic. Consumers, art dealers, and art galleries use continuity to help them understand the artist and their work.
In this first part, we have covered the need for consistently producing desirable work, and for prioritizng marketing efforts. Next week we will delve into how to effectively market your work using the tools best suited to your personal situation.
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If you are in the New Mexico and want to learn more about art marketing from me firsthand, I have upcoming workshops in Albuquerque on Jun 7 and Santa Fe on June 9. Get Registration Details Here.
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I'm sure her talents are why she is the Senior Editor for Copyblogger, one of the most heavily trafficked and highly admired business blogs on the planet. When I read her post below, it resonated with me to such a degree I asked her for permission to reprint it here. If you have already read it, I would not be surprised. It was tweeted 523 times, more than any other recent post on Copyblogger. Regardless, its pithy advice remains worthy of re-reading.
Back when I was writing novels and working on getting them published, someone gave me a piece of advice.
“You need talent, luck, and persistence. Pick any two.”
It’s probably been twenty years since I heard those words, but I still think of them all the time. They don’t just apply to getting book deals, of course.
Whether you want to paint, write, play music, raise a happy kid, design beautiful houses, or run an online business that makes you happy and rich, you can reach your goals with just two of those three.
At first glance it might seem like two of them are out of your control. But let’s look at that more carefully.
What most people call talent is usually nothing more than passion.
If you love it, you’ll do it all the damned time. And the more you play, the more you write, the more houses you design or symphonies you compose, the better you get.
Yes, there are a few “effortless talents.” There are people to whom the words come so easily you just want to smack them in the head. There are people who play music as easily and naturally as I eat ice cream.
But more often, that sense of ease comes from passion and nonstop, almost obsessive practice.
If you have absolutely zero talent for your chosen field, you’re going to have a tricky time. But usually, it’s a matter of fanning a spark of innate talent until you start to become quite impressive.
The more you work, the more talented you get.
I’m quite a lucky person. I was born in an extraordinarily wealthy country, at a time when women could do pretty much what we like, and in an era of vaccination and modern medicine that kept me from being carried off by some infectious disease at the age of 3 or 4.
Those are all massive strokes of luck. They had nothing to do with anything I did — I just lucked into them.
But what most people call luck is very different. It’s “being in the right place at the right time.” Having things just fall into place. Coming up with opportunities just when you need them. Knowing the right people.
This kind of luck comes from a few different places.
You can improve your focus. Just like you suddenly see red convertibles everywhere once you buy a red convertible, once you start focusing on luck and opportunity, they pop up like dandelions after a spring rain.
Nothing magic makes that happen. Those opportunities were there all along – you were just looking at something else.
You can improve your frequency. If you want to roll a pair of sixes, you’ll have much more luck doing that with 10 dice than you will with 2.
Pitch a guest post to 10 A-list blogs and you’re a lot more likely to get a spot than if you pitch 2.
Talk to 1000 prospects, rather than 200.
Audition for 10 gigs, rather than 2.
You can improve your likeability. Who “wins” the customer, the juicy contract, the retweet, the great job?
Sometimes it’s the one who’s the most “talented” — the one who’s producing the best output.
More often, it’s the one who’s better liked.
Be nice to people. Make yourself helpful. Don’t throw tantrums (public ones, anyway). Don’t build yourself up at another person’s expense. Make generosity a habit.
That successful raging jackass we all know? He may build some temporary success for himself, but everyone’s rooting for him to lose. His karma is gaining on him, in the form of a whole lot of people who would rather distance themselves.
The more you work, the luckier you get.
This is the simple one.
Just don’t give up.
Keep writing. Keep making music. Keep blogging.
When something works well, do more of that. Learning from failure can work, but learning from success is even better. Big successes come from nurturing your little successes.
If there’s someone in your life making you feel dumb for your “pipe dream,” stop talking to that person about your goals. Possibly stop talking to that person at all.
Watch out for what’s sometimes called “inventor’s syndrome.” That’s what happens when you’ve invented some product or system or service that you think ought to change the world, but which, sadly, nobody wants.
Stay light on your feet. Find the story that you want to tell and that your audience wants to read. Find the intersection between passion and service.
Be too damned stubborn to quit, but not so stubborn that you won’t try new approaches.
And will you succeed?
Yes you will indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
~Dr. Seuss
Make your own talent, make your own luck, and activate your stubborn streak, and there’s nothing that can stop you.
Know what goes great with talent, luck, and persistence? Some first-rate marketing information. You’ll find it in the Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. Lots of practical advice you can put into place right away, to make yourself so talented and lucky that you can’t help but succeed.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint.
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Join Jason Horejs and me for a new Art Marketing/Art Business Podcast on Tuesday, May 15 at 4:00 pm Pacific. (7:00 Eastern, 6:00 Central, 5:00 Mountain, 4:00 AZ).
The podcast mp3 download is now available: http://x.co/blogtips
This month, Jason Horejs, the owner of Xanadu Gallery, author of Starving to Successful: The Fine Artist's Guide to Getting into Galleries and How to Sell Art, and I will talk about blogging tips for artists. There are valuable reasons to blog, and numerous ways to go about blogging. We'll cover as many as possible in our podcast.
More and more visual artists have taken to blogging. Still, others wonder if a blog should be used in addition to or in place of a traditional website. The big questions we will tackle are:
Jason and I will help you weigh the pros and cons of blogging, and we will give you tips on how to make your blog more effective.
Have questions or comments about blogging? Email Jason at jason@xanadugallery.com. He and I will try and address your question and comments during the broadcast.
Would you like us to review your blog during the podcast? Email a link to your blog to jason@xanadugallery.comto submit your blog for critique.
A note about start time: Because listeners are registering from all across the country (and a number from around the globe) start time always causes confusion. There is just one broadcast and it begins at 4:00 p.m. Arizona (which doesn't observe daylight savings time) - this corresponds to 4:00 Pacific, 5:00 Mountain, 6:00 Central and 7:00 Eastern. Check the chart below for your start time.
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Time Zone |
Local Start Time |
Local End Time |
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Eastern |
7:00 |
7:40 |
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Central |
6:00 |
6:40 |
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Mountain (Including AZ) |
5:00 |
5:40 |
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Arizona |
4:00 |
4:40 |
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Pacific |
4:00 |
4:40 |
Join us for a Free, Live Podcast on Tuesday, May 15, 4:00 p.m. - 4:40 p.m. Pacific
When you register for the broadcast it will show you registered for 4:00 Pacific - you will simply need to remember to translate that to your time. We will send out a reminder on Tuesday with the start time again, so please don't panic when the broadcast system sends you the reminder in Pacific time.
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Art collectors do not come free. Do you know your costs to acquire a collector?
Do not be embarrassed if you do not know. It is not an easy question to answer.
Capturing and mining the required data is tough for all businesses. A precise answer is not possible.
Let's suppose you took a booth in an art fair for $800 and came away with four new collectors. You could say each cost you $200. But, that would leave out travel, lodging, marketing and other assorted expenses, which easily could double your cost.
The point of asking is to encourage you to track and categorize your marketing expenses. To succeed at this, you also need to aggressively pursue learning how art collectors found you.
While at a show, ask buyers and prospects if your marketing, show marketing, or another artist's promotion pulled them in. In other communications, you can make a specific special offer related to your request for an address that will identify the source.
Being disciplined in tracking what attracts new art collectors will help you intelligently spend your marketing dollars. For instance, if postcards work then use them more frequently. If email works, then send more emails.
Be diligent about collecting both postal and email addresses. Your list of potential art collectors is your lifeline to success. A good way to ask for new list sign ups, and how prospects found you, is to offer something of value in return for their cooperation. For example, a mini-print, a box of notecards, free shipping, or a show special.
Collecting names arguably is the most important task you perform for your art business. If you are not making contact collection a high priority, start now. Make it easy for someone to give you their information on your blog, and your website.
Use an opt-in form from any of the many broadcast email providers. I use MailChimp because it is free to begin. Using their service won't cost you anything until you reach 2,000 subscribers. They let you send 12,000 emails a month free as well.
Try splitting your offers and promotions to the same list. By testing, you will find the most effective way of making your offers. The more your offers hit home, the better your results will be.
Don't be shy, an easy way to start getting referrals is to encouarage your prospects and buyers to forward you emails, pass your postcards along, or tell others to sign up for your special offers.
Be creative in thinking about how you can develop unique ways to help you collect contact information. The payoff will be worth the effort as it drives down the cost of acquiring new collectors.
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They said pret-a-porter will kill your name, and it saved me. - Pierre Cardin
If it were possible to protect the term giclee, more fine artists might use it.
In France, the term haute couture is a protected term. To earn the right to call itself a couture house and to use the term haute couture in its advertising and any other way, members of the Chambre syndicale de la haute couture must follow explicit rules.
When it comes to what to do about the abuse of the term giclee, the adage "Don't bother closing the barn door after the cow is gone." applies to how giclee is used.
If you will pardon the pun, it's spilt milk, so let's not debate the issue. I find more artists and top drawer printers have stopped using the term, but it is difficult since it's use has passed in the lexicon of the average art buyer.
I suppose some artists will find the suggestion of comparing giclee prints to pret-a-porter offensive, which is okay. If you are not ruffling someone's feathers with an opinion, you are not adding any thing interesting to the conversation. Besides, its just as likely the comparison will provide a new, positive perspective on using reproductions. Your choice.
The comparison to me is valid. Haute couture is about one-of-a-kind orginal garments made with creativity and to the highest standards. Certainly, all self-respecting artists commit to such standards when they create their original works.
If nearly all the world's top fashion designers also create ready-to-wear [pret-a-porter] work for the masses who cannot afford original designs made and hand-tailored specifically for them, it seems visual artists should be just as confident in using fine art digital reproductions to help them reach collectors who do not have the budget for their originals.
Making giclees prints of your work is not a cure for original art that is not selling. However, if you find your work sells when seen by enough of the right buyers, then you are a great candidate to start adding giclee prints into the mix of what you offer to buyers.
Besides being able to offer sizes your buyer wants, and make unlimited copies (assuming you do not go down the road of limited editions), you also open the possibility of your work being picked up in the licensing, hospitality, design and healthcare markets. There are numerous examples of artist enterpreneurs who have become wealthy and well known through their involvement in these markets.
I am not suggesting that adding to giclees to what you sell will save your business as pret-a-porter did for Pierre Cardin. It might not need saving. Giclee prints will broaden your product line, give your work more price points, introduce your work to new customers, and more.
The second edition of my book, How to Profit from the Art Print Market, remains the definitive resource to learn more about it. When you order it through my website, you get a free How to Price Digital Fine Art Prints e-book with it.
Should you be in Southern California next weekend, on Saturday, May 5, I will be presenting my Art Career Success Workshop in San Diego from 9 am to 1 pm. It would be my honor if you choose to register and join me there.
To register, or to get more details, CLICK HERE.
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If you find yourself in San Diego on Saturday, May 5, please join me for this workshop. If not, stay tuned, more workshops are coming your way.
This workshop is designed to help you determine the appropriate art marketing tools for your art business.
You will find new ways to simplify, streamline and manage your marketing processes — to pare down to your most beneficial options, and forget the rest. Imagine spending less time marketing, and still achieving impressive results from newly refined and developed sales channels for your work.
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You Will Learn How to: |
What People Are Saying: |
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“WOW! I'm reading your book a second time with hi-lighter in hand checking every resource and scouring the web for every scrap of information.” - David Randall, HIlton Head, South Carolina“ Barney’s advice has been a treasure trove for me. He tells it straight. By following his suggestions, I avoided numerous costly mistakes and uncovered new profitable opportunities.” - Michael Geraghty, Laurel, MD“ Barney Davey's honest commentary about the art world (from mom and pop frame shops to prestigious museums) and his willingness to express that there are exceptions to just about every rule and suggestion he offers, is both refreshing and entertaining.” - Andrew Darlow, New York City Davey informs with great wisdom and wit, and makes a book about marketing as much of a page-turner as some of the fiction novels I read!” - Laurel Knight, Bend, OR |
When you learn to consistenly and confidently apply what you learn in the workshop, your art sales will grow.
The goal is to help you discover which marketing tools will work best for you after assessing your goals, resources and circumstances. And, then to help you find the most effective, efficient and affordable ways to get the maximum mileage from your marketing actions.
I want to help you spend less money and time on marketing so that you gain valuable studio time, or to just relieve your anxiety about how to pull together a workable marketing plan that delivers desirable results.
When you attend you will get information, inspiration and motivation. Plus, you will get dozens of practical ideas aimed at fine tuning your marketing so you get great returns from your plans and actions.
You only need to come away with one usable idea to get a payback from this workshop for years to come.
Watch or listen to this video to gain a deeper understanding of what you will learn. 
It would be my honor to have you attend this workshop:
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Life and technology continuously throw new opportunities, obstacles and big questions at you.
To keep up, you are changing on a nearly daily basis. While some changes are microscopic, others are monumental.
You get a smartphone and start texting instead of calling and emailing your family and friends. You get a Kindle
You get an iPad and stop using your desktop. You get a Wacom Cintiq Graphic Monitor and stop using paint and canvas.
You get bad news about your health or a family member. Unexpected changes with employment happen. Maybe it is good news, for instance a promotion, graduation, or marriage. Regardless of the stimulus, they all cause change.
As a professional artist, (One who sells their work for a profit.), you might find the subject matter, color palette, or medium is just not selling as well as before. Do you question if you are on the right path? Should you continue to pursue making a living as an artist? Should you overhaul what you are doing and shift into another kind of art? Are you pursuing an art business career, or a passion for making art? Can you make them work together?
Once you satisfactorily work through the questions about what is going on with the art you are making, you have to address are you doing the right things to get your work to market? Are there things you are doing you need to stop, or cut back while putting your focus and energy on other ways to help you sell your work?
I can feel some readers' anxieties swell just by writing the above questions because I know taking the time to think through them intelligently, then to come up with an answer and follow up with appropriate actions is overwhelming. It is enough to make some want pull back and hibernate instead of trudging forward.
It is not just confusing newfangled social media causing concerns. Changing consumer tastes, the decline of the gallery system, the growth of e-commerce and more are cause for you to evaluate and make changes to how you make, market and sell your art. The current circumstances are such that artists and other entrepreneurs are being forced make sometimes unwanted and difficult decisions regarding how to keep their business current, relevant and profitable.
I get all this on a personal level because professional changes relate as much to me as any artist reading this. I can ask myself if I am getting enough satisfaction and profit from providing artists with marketing ideas, information and inspiration. Should I change the blog's Art Print Issues' title since roughly 90% of its content applies to all artists? It is a reasonable guess that nearly 80% of its contents applies to virtually any small business owner. Therefore, I ask myself:
I don't know the answers, not yet anyway. Nevertheless, I am thinking about them and working on coming to conclusions regarding them. One thing I will never be is complacent, or happy with the status quo. Not at least without thoroughly questioning and investigating it.
It is certain I will not abandon the work I have done to make Art Print Issues one of the most highly regarded and well-trafficked art business blogs on the planet. Check on its ranking on the Invesp.com Top 75 blogs in Art Category. When you review you will find what is impressive about the rankings is nearly all the blogs listed are consumer, as opposed to business blogs. You find the same thing on Art.Alltop.com. That sort of third-party endorsement is rewarding and let's me know I am doing some things right. Still, it's not proof that it is as good as it gets.
The difference you find between Art Print Issues and nearly all other blogs listed on those ranking sites mentioned above is the others tell you how to make art, or provide news and insights about other artists, which I agree is interesting and useful, whereas I focus on helping you learn how to make money from your art.
Change can be subtle, such as moving from oil to acrylic. It can also be drastic, such as some recent situations I encountered. A colleague where I work just quit her $50,000 year job with great benefits to move to Japan to teach English to Japanese school kids. I asked her if she knew Japanese. She said no, because English is the only language spoken in the classroom.
Another friend has planned a second trip to Bangkok to visit the American ex-pat community there with the intent of living there permanently. A third acquaintance is back from ten days in Costa Rica and is trying to figure out how she can relocate there.
I know more of you are like me in that we have no plans or enthusiasm for moving away from the comforts of our home, friends and family. However, that does not mean you can't make big changes in your life. I am thinking about your art business. Are there things in your art career that could benefit from changes?
I have long championed the idea, and so does my friend and fellow author and gallery owner, Jason Horejs (“Starving” to Successful: The Fine Artist’s Guide to Getting into Galleries), that artists should stick to a look or style. There is a difference between switching styles and having no discernible style.
If questions like those resonate and stir your soul, then you are ripe to start planning the next you, the new you. You are only stuck if you think you are. It can be little changes, or macro changes. The point is to understand, believe and commit.
If you have the courage to make a change and take the time to understand why and how you are going to do it, then stop getting in your way and get moving towards a more rewarding life. It is okay to have concerns, but do not be held back by the fear that can be aroused by them. Be informed, confident and prepared and just do it.
You can choose to regret decisions in the past, although, other than learning from them, I believe it is an utter waste of time to dwell on them. What I am suggesting to you today is to start working on plans where you can say from this day on I do not have regrets about career or lifestyle choices I have made.
If you need inspiration that nearly anything is possible, then read this incredible true story from Jon Morrow. On this guest blog post on Probogger.com, he details how he was able to change his life in ways that seem unreal and impossible given the odds against him. If you can read his story on the link below without feeling pride, compassion and a desire to make changes for yourself, then you are beyond help.
How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World
If you live in or around Southern California, I can help you learn how to change your art marketing efforts to get the most from them.
A new, innovative art marketing workshop designed get your art seen and sold!
A new workshop location for The Road to Art Marketing Success workshop is scheduled for Saturday, May 5. It will be held in San Diego, CA from 9 am - 1 pm. To register or learn more, CLICK HERE.
As an attendee, you will learn more details about how to use blogging for artists as an effective marketing tool. More importantly, you will learn
Click here to register. You can email barney@barneydavey.com with questions.
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Selling art prints is a time-honored tradition that spans decades, and a virtual who's who of the fine art world. Today, fine artists are dealing with an evolving business market that is both confusing and challenging.
How artists sell originals and reproductions has changed. While once reliable distribution channels are becoming less effective, newer models are allowing artists to sell direct and have more control of their art business.
Having effective pricing on your prints is more important than ever. Overprice your work and you will lose sales. If you underprice your work, you will lose profit. Fortunately, you have fantastic tools to help research to dial in what will be best for you.
You can get answers to the above questions and to many more when you order the books above. They are on a special bundle offer now at great savings to you. You pay the normal $29.95 price for the How to Profit from the Art Print Market, 2nd Edition, you get the How to Price Digital Fine Art Prints e-book (A $14.99 value) free with your order.
I believe in blogging for visual artists as a marketing tool. And, I believe it is most effective when artists share as much information about how to sell art prints and how to price art prints as possible in my blog posts. If you are a regular reader, then you already know most of the advice in my posts applies to all visual artists, and not just those selling prints. Check out the archives and you will find them full of practical art marketing advice. Better yet, you get it delivered at my best rock bottom price, which is FREE.
I encourage artists to give freely of themselves in their blogging, and to avoid making every post about them and their work. You can't bore people into buying from you, and only talking about yourself and your work. Give your own advice away, share your knowledge and passion for the arts, educate your readers about art in your city and region, and around the world. They will love you for it.
That said, I also urge artists to be proud of their work and to be shameless, within the bounds of good taste and judgment, in promoting their work. Since I believe in walking my talk. As such, I am shamelessly asking for your business here. To entice you further, I have a great offer for you.
If you want to learn how to launch a career in the art print market and how to sell art prints in the most effective way, you won't find a better source of information than my 300-page book on the subject. The e-book on how to price art prints is loaded with great advice from 10 industry experts who offer invaluable insights and opinions on the best way to price your work
CLICK HERE to go to the Order Page.
If you live in or around Southern California, check this out.
A new, innovative art marketing workshop designed get your art seen and sold!
A new workshop location for The Road to Art Marketing Success workshop is scheduled for Saturday, May 5. It will be held in San Diego, CA from 9 am - 1 pm. To register or learn more, CLICK HERE.
As an attendee, you will learn more details about how to use blogging for artists as an effective marketing tool. More importantly, you will learn
Click here to register. You can email barney@barneydavey.com with questions.
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Let me be blunt. If you are not blogging you should be. If you are spending time and effort on social media and don't have an active blog, and don't have an easy way to collect email addresses, then you have your marketing priorities in the wrong order.
In 2007, when I morphed Art Print Issues from an online newsletter to a blog, one of my first blog posts was Why Every Artist Needs a Blog. Among the nearly 500 posts I've published since, you can find numerous posts extolling the value of blogging for artists. One of my most visited blog posts is 52 Blog Topics for Artists - Get Started Now!
Infograhics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. You find them popping up everywhere these days. Here are two that help prove my point about how blogging for artists trumps spending time on social media. The first is from Patricia Redsiciker, who offers content marketing advice to Internet marketers.
This second infographic comes courtesy of the most popular art business blogger on the planet, Alyson Stanfield, aka The Art Biz Coach. She recently published this infographic on the steps for artists to write a blog post. I know she is in agreement with me on the value of blogging for artists.
Alyson has a new Blog Triage class that is starting up on April 25. The outline looks great, which is what I would expect from Alyson.
Her ArtBizCoach.com blog has been regularly published since 2005. As such, she has gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about how blogging for artists can be leveraged to boost awareness and sales.
I don't think artists should abandon social media. It can be instrumental in supporting your blogging and helping you find new friends, followers and collectors. I know with certainty it is not as powerful as blogging for artists.
A well-lived life is about balance. So is a well-constructed art career. Having the knowledge to know how to prioritize what is most important, such as blogging, and the discipline to stick with it, despite temptations, and the feeling you have done it all, or for too long, is what will make you a better, more competitive artist in today's art market.
A new workshop location for The Road to Art Marketing Success workshop is scheduled for Saturday, May 5. It will be held in San Diego, CA from 9 am - 1 pm. To register or learn more, CLICK HERE.
As an attendee, you will learn more details about how to use blogging for artists as an effective marketing tool. More importantly, you will learn
Click here to register. You can email barney@barneydavey.com with questions.
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If you have entertained the thought of selling giclees and getting your work into the print market, read my new article in the May issue of The Artist's Magazine. It is titled "Are Giclées for You? Does it make good business sense to produce and sell giclées of your paintings?"
The article on selling giclees is like a Reader's Digest condensed 1,600 word version of my 300-page How to Profit from the Art Print Market book. You can order the May issue with my article in print or download version from the North Light Book Club. The price is $5.95 for either version.
I arranged a discount for my readers. Use this link and coupon code for a 10% Off, No Minimum Order at North Light Shop. Use coupon code nlcoupon10 during checkout. Expires 12/31/2012. Once you are on the site, use the Search box on the top right, and enter "selling giclees." You will find both the print and download versions of the May 2012 issue to order. Look around you might find some other gems to pick up while you are at it.
In other news, I am excited to report my workshop presentation partners at Xanadu Gallery have booked a venue in San Diego, CA on Saturday, May 5 for my next seminar:
In this intensive workshop you will learn to:
It would not be workshop from me if I didn't include information on selling giclees and how the print and licensing markets can benefit artists with steaady secondary income streams.
CLICK HERE to register now, or get more details.
You can email me at barney@barneydavey.com about the workshop. I hope to see you there!
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Editor's Note: I have longed believed visual artists are in a sweet spot when it comes to using videos to promote and gain awareness for themselves, and for their work.
Now that YouTube has become the second largest search to its parent Google.com, including video has become that much more valuable as an education and marketing tool. Thanks Ruth Soller for sharing her experiences and insights.
In financial terms future value means that a dollar in hand today is worth more than a dollar to be received next year, because if you had it now, you could invest it, earn interest, and end up with more than one dollar next year. I believe that artists who are creating video today will reap the benefits of being early adopters in their future careers.
Brief Bio
Ruth Soller is a Denver oil painter of western landscapes, architecture and portraits. She paints the western landscape in a magical, mystical, surreal style. She perceives intensified hues, symbolic motifs and dramatic value contrasts in her compositions. She has exhibited from New York City to Los Angeles, Montana to Alabama, and in Florence, Italy. She is represented by Gallery East in Loveland, Colorado.
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Artists, like it or not, cannot escape the fact they are small business owners. To succeed in any small business, a steady stream of activities to generate buyer awareness and desire for its products is necessary.
You only need to see the silohouette of a Coke bottle to know what it is; you know how it tastes, and where to get it. Despite its ubiquity, Coke knows it must continue to beat the drums to maintain the highest degree of awareness, desire and sales of it products.
If an iconic brand such as Coke markets relentlessly, shouldn't you be doing likewise on a scale that fits your budget?
Knowing the best ways to use self-promotion makes a huge difference to an artist's career. You can discover ideas and inspiration in my "The Art of Self-Promotion" article. It is published in the March/April issue of the smartly revamped Art Business News magazine.
You find it touted here because I believe in walking my talk. I want you, and as many people as possible, to know about it. Would you help me with the kind favor of forwarding this post to your artists friends, or post it on Facebook or Twitter?
I'm launching a series of live The Road to Art Marketing Success: How to Get Your Work to Market Today workshops. The first is coming up quickly on Saturday March 31 in Phoenix, AZ. There is still time to register.
The workshop series is sponsored by Jason Horejs, author of 'Starving to Sucessful: The Fine Artist's Guide to Getting into Galleries. He also is the owner of the very successful, Scottsdale-based, Xanadu Gallery.
Just as you can learn how to improve your art skills, you can learn to market your art to get better results. As an attendee, you will discover new ways to get your work to market in this intensive and informative workshop.
The other is merging effective marketing elements to focus on events, dates, shows, and other activities where you have the best odds to sell the most art. Expect to leave the workshop with the tools, techniques and motivation to make a positive impact on how you market your art and make more sales.
Click Here to register. Contact me at: barney@barneydavey.com if you have questions or want to get notice of future dates.
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The need to learn new ways to sell art never stops! Put these ideas into actions and watch your giclee fine art print sales grow!
1. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone. Use this exercise to get started. Create a list of things you would never do when it comes to marketing or selling your giclee prints. Don't stop until you have a list of 50 marketing actions you would never take.
Get help if you need it. Have fun with it. Wild ideas encouraged. Among your results, you are sure to discover new, creative ways to boost your giclee print sales.
2. Be Bold. The adage, Fortune favors the bold, remains true. Being bold is neither being rash nor cocky. It is acting swiftly with confidence in taking on new challenges. The most successful artists routinely leave their comfort zone to take action. They jump in where other's fear to tread. They successfully blend ambition with boldness to separate themselves from their competitors. So can you when you cast your fears aside and just do it!
3. Offer Big. You lose money on every sale when you fail to OFFER BIG. Since you never know a buyer's budget or intentions, simply assume the best and OFFER BIG. Sheepish selling based on what is in YOUR wallet costs you thousands in lost revenue each year. Always start by showing your most expensive work. Get the sale and ask for more.
Be ready with offers for suites, companion pieces or commissions and so forth. Learn to ask open-ended questions and use what you hear to make solid offers. You didn't excel at making great art overnight. Rehearse your questions and your offer until asking for the order and OFFERING BIG comes easily and naturally to you.
4. Develop Confidence. Confidence is crazily contagious, powerful and cool. Creating great art makes being confident easier. If yours isn't, find out why and fix it. Act like the winner you are. You don’t have to be a snob to be self-assured.
People may love losers, but they buy from winners! It's not poppycock; it's true that you are what you think. Use consistent, positive self-talk to overcome your self-limiting beliefs. As your confidence grows, you will naturally and gracefully radiate it without pretense. Confidence is sexy; it is a highly attractive palpable, tangible asset. It will amaze you to discover how consistently presenting your art with cool confidence will create more sales.
5. Synergize Your Art Marketing. Vow to waste money on single marketing programs. Make sure your marketing plans are cohesive; layer multiple marketing impressions from different sources focused on the same goal. This creates a synergy and momentum where the sum of the parts becomes greater than the whole.
Let’s say you have scheduled a show. Then plan to coordinate your marketing plans with postcard mailings, email blasts, advertising, press releases, publicity, YouTube, social media, event planning and alternative marketing. Synergistic marketing plans will amplify your results in ways standalone marketing cannot touch.
Bonus Point: Know How Your Art Fits in the Market. If you don't have a good handle on what is selling in terms of subject matter, sizes, pricing, and if there are emerging trends for how giclees are sold, you are at a competitive disadvantage.
Start making a sincere, concerted effort to learn more about the giclee fine art market. Who is succeeding? Why are they successful? Are they national or regional? What suppliers can offer marketing help and market intelligence? The more you know, the better decsions you make.
My How to Profit from the Art Print Market, Second Edition paperback, and How to Price Digital Fine Art Prints e-book are available now in a bundle. You get both books for the price of one! Click here to get the details.
You have the tools you need to go out and make a great life as prosperous visual artist in the print market. When you wisely use those tools, you will prove what you instinctively know: Life and business are much more fun when you are enjoying success. It’s within your grasp. Just go for it.
I leave you with this quote from Johann Wolfgang Geothe.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Comment and Reply
Here's a comment criticizing this post and my reply. Normally, I would leave them in the comment section, but with this Typepad layout, they are not posted in an easy way for others to read.
Hi Sandra,
Thank you for taking your time to comment on this post. I am sorry you found nothing you could use in the suggestions offered. Perhaps I am guilty of not being more diligent with my thoughts. Here are some additional thoughts to consider.
Have you ever used a brainstorming technique such as challenging yourself, your employees, family members, and friends to come up with new innovative ideas to open new markets for your art? It is surprising sometimes when you do something to get out of a rut and out of your own way.
These are trying times for artists. Taking action now is better than sitting back hoping things get better. Being bold requires a certain amount of risk, but it should be calculated risk.
Have you had an idea to do something that would improve your art sales? Perhaps it is changing galleries in a geographical area, or introducing yourself to someone who could help you, but held back on it? Now is not the time to be timid. Taking bold action with calculated risk is how businesses of all sorts jump over competitors.
Have you rehearsed how you sell your art? Or, do you let your customers lead you around in a conversation with you hoping they will buy despite you not being in control? Do you make any offers besides check or cash, shipping or leaving with in a sale?
We are talking about giclees in this post They are the perfect medium for offering an upsell to multiple pieces. If you are not consistently thinking about creative ways to make big offers, you leaving money on the table.
Customers are adults; they will not find offense at your recommendation to buy more art. They know how to say no. What they do not know are what other possibilities you have to help them own more of your art.
Buyers only ask for things of which they are aware. Steve Jobs didn't come up with iPod because he waited for his customers to ask for it. He offered a product they had not seen before, and they positively responded. Make offers that are out of your personal price range and let the buyer decide.
Some buyers when presented with the idea of buying a suite, or multi-image package, will be happy to say yes. The prospects of making a large order will excite some buyers. More will say no than yes, but saying no to a big offer will not stop them from making a single piece purchase. You cannot imagine the glee you will feel when you hear that first yes to a big offer.
I realize the suggestion to work on developing confidence sounds like a pithy bromide… yada, yada, yada. Nevertheless, the advice is true if you are open to it. When artists come across as some humble artist eager to take any bone thrown to them, they discourage sales. People buy from people they like.
Of course, it is always about the art, but if you are there in the transaction, it’s about you, too. When you come off as self-confident, not smug or arrogant, just confident, you encourage sales. Working on improving your confidence will improve your ability to sell more art.
If you don't have a marketing plan that details how you will promote, when you will promote and what resources you will focus on promoting your art, you are throwing money away.
Nuff said.
Do you want to learn how to get better, more consistent, results from your art marketing? I can help. In partnership with Xanadu Gallery, starting in Phoenix, AZ on Saturday, March 31, I will be presenting the Road to Art Marketing Success workshop. It would be great to see you there!
This is an intensive, live, interactive workshop designed to:
Click here to register now on the Xanadu Gallery website.
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Is it frustrating to realize you could sell lots more art if enough of the right people saw it? Are you ready to learn how to get the most from art marketing tools and techniques at your disposal?
If you find yourself in Phoenix on Saturday, March 31, please join me for this workshop. If not, stay tuned, more workshops are coming your way.
This workshop is designed to help you determine the appropriate art marketing tools for your art business.
You will find new ways to simplify, streamline and manage your marketing processes — to pare down to your most beneficial options, and forget the rest. Imagine spending less time marketing, and still achieving impressive results from newly refined and developed sales channels for your work.
|
You Will Learn How to: |
What People Are Saying: |
|
“WOW! I'm reading your book a second time with hi-lighter in hand checking every resource and scouring the web for every scrap of information.” - David Randall, HIlton Head, South Carolina“ Barney’s advice has been a treasure trove for me. He tells it straight. By following his suggestions, I avoided numerous costly mistakes and uncovered new profitable opportunities.” - Michael Geraghty, Laurel, MD“ Barney Davey's honest commentary about the art world (from mom and pop frame shops to prestigious museums) and his willingness to express that there are exceptions to just about every rule and suggestion he offers, is both refreshing and entertaining.” - Andrew Darlow, New York City Davey informs with great wisdom and wit, and makes a book about marketing as much of a page-turner as some of the fiction novels I read!” - Laurel Knight, Bend, OR |
When you learn to consistenly and confidently apply what you learn in the workshop, your art sales will grow.
The goal is to help you discover which marketing tools will work best for you after assessing your goals, resources and circumstances. And, then to help you find the most effective, efficient and affordable ways to get the maximum mileage from your marketing actions.
I want to help you spend less money and time on marketing so that you gain valuable studio time, or to just relieve your anxiety about how to pull together a workable marketing plan that delivers desirable results.
When you attend you will get information, inspiration and motivation. Plus, you will get dozens of practical ideas aimed at fine tuning your marketing so you get great returns from your plans and actions.
You only need to come away with one usable idea to get a payback from this workshop for years to come.
Watch or listen to this video to gain a deeper understanding of what you will learn.
It would be my honor to have you attend this workshop:
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Fine art is often beautiful, stimulating, motivating, controversial, compelling, foretelling, repelling, or some combination of those attributes. Given the range of qualities that can be attached to art, it is no wonder that the business of finding ways to get it to market is serious.
Read through the nearly 500 posts published here, and as you might expect you will find a serious tone to most of them. While this one is mostly for fun, I'm sure some will find it instructive as well.
It fascinating tour that follows the artistic development of Michelle Thies from age three to age nineteen.
Since this Slideshare is attributed to Alice Thies, I will assume it was her mother who lovingly assembled it as a tribute for Michelle, and I applaud her for tracking the work through the years to share it with the world.
When is the last time you really did something totally different? I'm not talking about creating a new Facebook page. While that might be new to you, it's old hat to more than 800 million users. Don't get me wrong, I think there are ways for artists to leverage Facebook, and other social media platforms, if they are used intelligently.
I'm talking more about doing something about creating a Slideshare presentation that gives your work a whole new perspective. And, then keeping the creative flame lit to find new ways to push it out to the world.
Maybe it's not Slideshare. Have you heard about Magcloud? You can use it to create your very own unique, cool, hot art magazine. Check it out on the link above. It's an Art Print Issues post from more than two years ago that continues to be as curent now as then.
Perhaps you double up your efforts by turning a Slideshare presentation into a Magcloud art magazine. Doing that would be smart thinking. It would allow you to stretch your creative output by placing it in different media.
Now think about how you can coordinate all you old school marketing ways with more cutting edge ideas like these. When you start fine-tuning your art marketing like that you can expect to see your art sales grow.
If you are going to be in the Phoenix area on March 31, you can sign up for my new live workshop. I am on a mission to help artists get on The Road to Art Marketing Success. This intensive workshop is designed to show artists how to get their work to market today.
I don't think you have to work harder, or spend more money, to enjoy better results from your art marketing efforts. You just need to know what to do, and how to do it. To register, learn more, or sign up for notice of future dates, CLICK HERE!
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My apologies for leaving the register links out of the previous post regarding Tuesday's podcast.
Also, a couple of notes to self:
Here is the link to register for the free Art Marketing / Art Business Podcast on Print Advertising for Fine Artists. It's on Tuesday, March 6 at 4 pm Mountain Time.
You can read the previous blog post for the full details. Jason Horejs and I are doing a free-form podcast sharing our perspectives about print advertising for visual artists. It will be fast-paced, fun and informative. Here is the link to the previous post.
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Xanadu Gallery announces a new Art Marketing/Art Business Podcast on March 6 at 4:00 pm Mountain Time. (6:00 Eastern, 5:00 Central, 3:00 Pacific).
Once again, art marketing colleagues Jason Horejs and Barney Davey present a free-form podcast. This one will focusing on print advertising for artists. Both Jason and Barney have long experience with print advertising.
Jason has successfully used print advertising to promote his popular Xanadu Gallery, located on Main Street in Scottsdale, AZ. Barney sold print advertising for a variety of publications for more than two decades, including Decor Magazine and Art Business News.
With these different perspectives, the podcast will be informative, lively and fun. Register now (free) to secure your spot. Don't worry if you can't tune in live, Xanadu will provide you a download link for later listening.
Have questions or comments on advertising? Email Jason at jason@xanadugallery.com. He and Barney will try and address your question during the broadcast.
A note about start time: Because listeners are registering from all across the country (and a number from around the globe) start time always causes confusion. There is just one broadcast and it begins at 4:00 p.m. MST (local time for us) - this corresponds to 3:00 Pacific, 5:00 Central and 6:00 Eastern. Check the chart below for your start time.
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Time Zone |
Local Start Time |
Local End Time |
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Eastern |
6:00 |
6:40 |
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Central |
5:00 |
5:40 |
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Mountain (Including AZ) |
4:00 |
4:40 |
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Pacific |
3:00 |
3:40 |
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Join us for a Free, Live Podcast on Tuesday, March 6, 4:00 p.m. - 4:40 p.m. MST |
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When you register for the broadcast it will show you registered for 4:00 MST - you will simply need to remember to translate that to your time. We will send out a reminder on Tuesday with the start time again, so please don't panic when the broadcast system sends you the reminder in Mountain time. |
If you enjoy listening to our free podcasts, you can pay it forward by simply sharing the information with your artists friends. Jason and I sincerely appreciate your interest and your support.
Someone pass this on to you? Join the our mailing list!
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Join us for a Free, Live Podcast on Tuesday, March 6, 4:00 p.m. - 4:40 p.m. MST |
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When you register for the broadcast it will show you registered for 4:00 MST - you will simply need to remember to translate that to your time. We will send out a reminder on Tuesday with the start time again, so please don't panic when the broadcast system sends you the reminder in Mountain time.
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