Before going to bed, I read a chapter or two of Julia Cameron’s Letters to a Young Artist.

I underlined this passage:

I don’t know where we got the idea that being a full-time artist meant no day job. Being an artist is a matter of consciousness. Having a day job doesn’t alter that. I have seen more artists damaged by unlimited time than limited time.

So, I started wondering what you are doing to supplement your art income. I asked the question on Facebook.

Here are the responses I received (with apologies to anyone I missed):

Julie Robertson Receptionist – boss lets her make art at her desk and gives her studio space.

Cathy Pierce Payne custom frame designer

Frances Vettergreen Visual Artist self-employed medical professional

Mark Scantling Heavy diesel mechanic

Ann Marie Scott Part-time at corporate law firm – great benefits

Caroline C. Blaker Web development – developing the designs of others

Suzanne Utaski Gibbs Full-time wife and mother as well as a part time art teacher

Alyson Champ Farmer

Ann Cook Interaction Designer

Joanne Vallee Brunelle Full-time owner/framer of gallery and frame shop

Creative Stash Graphic Designer

Sikiu Clay Designs Office manager, marketer, and more for husband’s house framing business

Heather Dakota Writer/Editor/Graphic Designer

Don Scott Store manager for a family-owned chain of camera stores.

Kelly Darke – Fine Art art therapist

Patt Scrivener Aifd Home stylist and floral designer

Fine Art By Vanessa Turner structural engineer

Christen Caudle Benat Stylist with Stella & Dot

Mantel Amey Case manager for kids with behavioral issues

Wendi McGowan Marketing Director at a mobile apps development company

Cindy Eley Cradler audiologist

Elizabeth Wocasek Library media technical assistant

Alexandra Gerull Mom

Sarah Snavely Part-time library director

Hollie Taylor Full time Mixed Media Ceramics teacher at local high school.

Lori Anne Boocks Director of Marketing & Communications full-time at a non-profit

Ashley Kiefer Coffee Bar Manager

Elissa Campbell Owns 2 part-time businesses: One as a bookbinder and the other as an online marketing/social media consultant

Theresa Rojas Graduate/Phd student in English. Teaches writing and Women’s Studies

Angeline Marie Martinez Nuclear analyst-program coordinator

Kelly Dombrowski Full time mom, caregiver, minister, graphic/webmaster

Judy Jacobs VP of a commercial real estate development company (part time)

Rachel Thadal Senior advisor (Performance management) at an health and social services center, Mom

Michelle Zacharias Language consultant: technical writer, translator, and teacher

David Bender Personal Trainer

What’s your day job?

Leave it in a comment and please use the Share buttons below to share, tweet, like, or +1.

I just finished reading Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art. Excellent read. I highly recommend it for the intrigue and insight into the world of auctions, dealers, and museums.

It got me thinking about this age-old question.

If a purported masterpiece fools even the experts, why is it worth less after it’s discovered to be a forgery?

It’s the same painting as it was the day before. Yet it’s worth millions less on the market.

Is it fair?

Bonus: Check out John Myatt’s site. He’s the artist-forger featured in Provenance.

Image ©John Myatt

You may feel that your art isn’t selling as well as you’d like. Take a moment to review these 7 key points about remembering to persevere in this week’s Art Marketing Action podcast–an audio version of the newsletter/post of the same title.

Read the newsletter here.

Make sure you don’t miss an episode: Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Are you a fan of the podcast?

If you are a fan of the podcast, would you take 5 minutes to give it a nice review on iTunes? You have to have an Apple or iTunes account to do so. Just go to the iTunes store and search for Art Marketing Action podcast and click on Reviews or Write a Review.

You can leave a 5-star rating (!) and add just a sentence or two that would help browsers decide whether or not it’s worth their time.

Thank you for your help with this.

You think you’re doing everything right to promote your art.

You’re getting into shows, shops, and exhibitions, you’re building your mailing list, and you have a solid Web presence. Still, the money isn’t coming.

It’s hard to keep going and to remain upbeat when your art isn’t selling.

©2002 David Hilton, You're Sure? (Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park). Oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches.

There are many reasons why some artists sell better than others. Let’s look at 6 of them.

1. Personal Tastes
You can’t force people to like something. Remember that the more people see your art, the more likely you are to hit upon someone who falls in love with it.

2. Trends and Styles
Trends don’t affect (or shouldn’t affect) most fine artists, but there are some forms of art that might sell better if they adapted to current styles. If you make clothing or jewelry, you want to follow InStyle magazine, retail catalogs, and subscribe to fashion blogs. If you create functional home ware, stay tuned to décor magazines, HGTV, and trendsetting blogs.

3. Price
If you aren’t selling art at your current prices, do some research. Look at artists at similar points in their careers whose quality of work is on par with yours. Maybe your prices are too high or (gasp!) too low.

4. Medium
Some people gravitate toward specific mediums. Don’t be offended when someone just isn’t into photography or prefers oil paintings to watercolors.

5. Personality
If you deal with the public, your personality could have more to do with your sales than you are willing to admit. Go out of your way to meet guests at your art opening. Aim to be positive and happy to see everyone who walks into your festival tent or open studio. Bottom line: be nice!

6. Work Ethic
Let’s face it. Some artists just work harder than others to get the word out about themselves and their art. If your art isn’t getting the attention you think it deserves, you must ask yourself if you did everything you could to promote your art.

FINAL WORD: Your art isn’t for everyone. Once you understand this, you’ll have an easier time finding the people who appreciate your work. The more people see your art, the more likely you are to hit upon someone who falls in love with it. Likewise, the more you get your art out into the world, the more you’ll be able to direct your marketing message to the people who were meant to see it.

Your art isn’t for everyone. Discover 6 reasons why people buy art in this week’s Art Marketing Action podcast–an audio version of the newsletter/post of the same title. Read the newsletter here.

Make sure you don’t miss an episode: Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Are you a fan of the podcast?

If you are a fan of the podcast, would you take 5 minutes to give it a nice review on iTunes? You have to have an Apple or iTunes account to do so. Just go to the iTunes store and search for Art Marketing Action podcast and click on Reviews or Write a Review.

You can leave a 5-star rating (!) and add just a sentence or two that would help browsers decide whether or not it’s worth their time.

Thank you for your help with this.

Selling Art in the Distant Past

Selling Art in the Recent Past

Selling Art Today

Count your lucky stars to be a working artist today.

You might complain about having to keep up with everything, but what’s the alternative? Returning to a day when the power was in everyone else’s hands but the artists?

Guest blogger: Eric Sparre, Artist & Founder of Artspan.com

The economic downturn has made the already challenging proposition of pursuing artistic work as a full time profession even more difficult. This means that you, the professional artist, need to increase your ability to be self reliant.

What does that mean? Simple, you need to be the driving force behind marketing and selling your work.

You might say, “But my job is to produce the art, I don’t have time to market it (and I am not comfortable doing that anyways).” I understand that your skills, training and inclination may all argue against doing your own marketing. I have been an artist for 30 years and feel the same way! But you should recognize that the world has changed and you both can and must do a lot of your own marketing.

You have the tools to do this–tools that no artist had in the past. And the art market is also becoming more competitive.

Bottom line: you need to ask yourself, “why am I creating this work?” If art is your profession as well as your driving passion, the answer combines the desire to see your work shared with the world with the very practical need to keep the lights on in your studio.

Ten Tips for Marketing Your Art in Today’s World

See my Top 10 Tips below on some tools and ways to market art in today’s world.  But just as important as these tips is the attitude you bring to your marketing.  A positive outlook and some patience are key–building a career takes time and persistence. It is a lifelong process and runs parallel to the development of your artistic skills and vision.  No question that it can be frustrating at times. But it can also be immensely rewarding–which is of course the whole point of being an artist.

As one who has been an active artist and has also devoted the last 10 years to helping others market their work, the single most important conclusion I have reached is that taking control of your career empowers you as a seller, as an artist and as a human being. It is central to everything. And here is where you start.

1.  Harness the incredible reach of the Internet: get a website.

The Internet is the most extraordinary event of our time. It holds tremendous promise for us as artists, but it can be a bit daunting. However, it’s a lot easier to use than you might think. You don’t need a degree or special talents, you just need to spend some time learning to harness its reach.

Start by getting your own website. The easiest (and I think the best) way to do this is with a self- managed template website, one that allows you to add images and text, customize the design and more. A template website, like any other website, should be elegant, full-featured, low cost and easy to navigate. It should look professional. Remember that your website is where you will introduce people to your work and it’s how you will stay in touch with people who already know your work. It should be the hub for all your promotional and marketing efforts.

2. Branding: you and your website.

You need your own website with your personal domain name. It’s about giving your brand the importance it merits.  A page or pages on someone else’s site is not enough. Again, you need to be able to send people to your personal website. In choosing a domain name, try to register one that incorporates your own name. It’s easier for people to remember and people who know you will search for your site using your name as the key word. With a domain that includes your name, chances are excellent that your site will pop up in the top 3 on the search results page.

Participating in group sites or creating profiles on social media sites like Facebook can be useful for extending your reach, but, again, you will still need to have your own site.

3. Make your site easy to find.

There are ways you can optimize your site so that it is easier for people to find you via search engines like Google. The relative importance of the different elements that determine search engine rankings is called an algorithm.  You can search the phrase “Google algorithm,” but here are three of the most important elements.

First, the “Meta Title” is what appears on the top of your browser window and is a description of your site. The Meta Title is embedded in the code behind your homepage, but with a template site, you should be able to enter the Meta Title yourself. It should be 7 or 8 words and include your name and the type of work you do.

Second, content is very important, particularly content on your homepage. Make a special effort to use specific keywords and phrases.

The third element is links. The more relevant (highly ranked) art pages linked to your site, the better (and you should also link out to them).

4. Get out there and exhibit.

Show your work as often as you can.  Without exhibiting, you won’t be able to develop a following for your work and your work won’t develop as fast as it could. Most venues are good when you are starting out, though showing at “vanity” galleries and down-scale retail locations can be counter-productive.

5. You don’t need someone else to sell your work, you can do it yourself.

You don’t need to spend years getting ready (though you will spend a lifetime developing your vision). You can start simply with the people who know you best–family and friends or acquaintances.  Expand your circles out by asking friends and family to send along a link and/or an image to a friend. Getting some marketing training can also be extremely useful and I highly recommend signing up for a seminar with an artist consultant like Alyson.

6. Look for new markets and new mediums.

Have you ever taken your work to an art fair? Have you explored new mediums like giclée prints?  How about interior designers? They buy a lot of art. Check out The Guild, a source book which reaches 41% of interior designers (and many corporate consultants and others).

You should also look into regional mailing lists of decorators and dealers. Talk with other artists, compare notes. Check out relevant magazines like Art Calendar and even artist blogs. Be as creative in your effort to market and sell yourself as you are in your work and you will be surprised at the opportunities you will find.

7. Know your buyer.

Ask yourself these questions: “Who is buying my work? Where are they buying it? What kinds of work, what sizes sell most easily?” These are critical questions for a professional artist and knowing the answers can have a big impact on the success of your efforts.

8. Price your work correctly.

How do you know what a correct price is? It should be a function of three things: your market (see #7), your career (you will start low and increase with time), and the size of the work.

Be consistent in your pricing (charge the same price for two works of the same size and medium–not more for one because you think it’s better). Price your work to sell.  It’s better to sell a work at a lesser price (but still a price that is consistent with where you are in your career) than to have it sitting around your studio.  Also consider sales terms. You may want to sell a work to an enthusiastic, but financially strapped, buyer on the installment plan.

9. Do your homework.

If a buyer or gallery expresses serious interest in your work and you are not familiar with them, you should find out who they are. In the case of buyers, most particularly Internet buyers, you’ll want to get full contact information and business references. As a rule of thumb, never ship anything to a buyer you don’t know without having payment fully cleared in your account (not just “credited”). If you are dealing with galleries, check with the Better Business Bureau if you’re in the U.S.

10. If you are a professional artist, be a professional in all things.

You should look at allocating at least 25% of your time to marketing your work. Because the work itself can be all-consuming, you may want to do your marketing later in the day–after your creative work is done. It’s a good idea to set a daily and/or weekly routine that includes marketing. Make sure that you set standards for the business end of your career as you do for your creative work. Then adhere to them. And as you are marketing your work, keep your promotional efforts consistent in their message.

Bonus tip: Be Bold

Art is about finding your voice, it’s about growth. You can’t grow if you are focused on avoiding mistakes. Pick up the big brush, not the little one. Take a chance. That’s what will take you to the next level. Apply the same approach to your marketing. Don’t be shy. If you feel your work is right for gallery X or buyer Y, tell them why. This is your life!

About Eric Sparre

Artspan Founder and Managing Director Eric Sparre believes that the Internet is “a great leveler of the playing field for artists,” enabling them to do their own marketing and selling. A successful painter with a career spanning several decades, Sparre looked for a simple way for artists to leverage the power of self-managed websites and launched Artspan in 1999. In the course of his career, Sparre has exhibited in six one-person shows in New York and participated in numerous group shows in both public and private exhibition spaces, with reviews and/or articles in the major art magazines.

Find out more about Artspan and how it works for artists.

Please note that I am an Artspan.com affiliate, which means I may receive a small percentage of income if you use the Artspan links here. Also note that I do not endorse any products I don’t believe in.

How do you defend Art
in an
anti-consumerism tidal wave?

. . . or do you?

Melissa Cole, Sweet Spot. Painting, 8 x 16 inches. ©The Artist

“ART MARKET POISED TO PLUMMET IN OCTOBER”

So proclaimed a headline on a luxury goods site last week. Before you let this news upset you, consider the context. Whenever the art press talks about the Art Market, they are referring to the auction market–the secondary market in which art that was previously purchased is offered for sale by the owners. The above headline leads into an article that declares auction estimates are way down for October from the previous October. Unless you are a collector offering art at the major auction houses or an artist whose work is in one of the auctions, this number doesn’t affect you.

You have your own art market.

You–not the auction houses–can control when, how, and for how much you sell your art. You can even control who purchases it if you like. Here are six ways to make sure your art market doesn’t take a nosedive.

1. Above all, make the best work you can.
High-quality work blessed with original ideas will always be in fashion.

2. Don’t raise your prices too much at once.
Prices need to change gradually. You may have had an Aha moment and realized your art is worth much more than you’ve been selling it for, but you will have to do a whole lot of talking to convince your previous buyers that they should suddenly pay double for your work. (Note: This doesn’t pertain to you if you haven’t yet completed a number of sales.)

Sheona Hamilton-Grant, Legacy. Pencil on paper, 34 x 37 cm. ©The Artist

3. Articulate your work through writing and speaking.
By writing or talking about your art, you are setting a tone for how others look at it. You are giving people clues as to how your art should be appreciated. Every major auction has an expensive glossy catalog to accompany it. You don’t need the hyped-up language that is used to sell multi-million-dollar works at a public sale, but you do need solid, authentic words.

4. Build relationships.
Read any book on the Art Market, and you will be convinced that nurturing long-term relationships is critical. Art doesn’t appear randomly at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. It’s a hard-fought battle to see which auction house will end up with the best works. Of course, deal-making comes into play (a lot!), but the sellers need to trust whomever they do business with.

5. Get your art out of the studio!
Exhibit as much as you can and make sure people know about it. Send newsletters, postcards, and email. The more personal your correspondence, the better. Since you’re not able to send personal notes to everyone on your mailing list, it becomes even more critical to pay close attention to your top buyers. That’s what my Cultivate Collectors class is all about.

6. Live by the best business practices.
Keep your promises, exceed expectations, meet deadlines, follow up, and follow through. Do these things, and people will love you as much as your work.

FINAL WORD: You can control your own art market. Don’t rely on outside forces to take care of you. Take the initiative to guarantee that people will continue to fall in love with and purchase your work.

PODCAST

ArtNet.com just tweeted this dire headline: “Art Market Poised to Plummet in October,” which was linked to an article on Luxist. (Honestly, it’s a site I’d never heard of, which doesn’t have a tag line. Seems to be for luxury sales and living, which might explain why I’d never heard of it.)

In any event, I made the mistake of retweeting this headline as is. If you read the headline and read the statistics on the article, you would be hard pressed to find any good news about selling contemporary art.

Karen Koch, Memories of Lanterns and Lightning Bugs. Acrylic, 18 x 24 inches. ©The Artist

Here’s the problem: Most of my Twitter followers and blog readers aren’t at all affected by this. The “art market” referred to in this article is really, as John T. Unger pointed out, an auction sale estimate. In fact, when most articles refer to the “art market,” they are talking about sales at the big auction houses. Auctions usually (except for last year’s big sale by artist Damien Hirst) focus on secondary markets–art that is being sold by dealers and collectors.

Had your work appear at auction recently? I didn’t think so. That’s why you can safely read these dire predictions and know that they have very little to do with you and your own personal art market.

The article mentioned here also says that collectors are turning to private sales in order to have “more control over the outcome of the transaction.” This doesn’t mean they’re buying directly from artists. This means they are offering works from their collection for sale through private dealers rather than auction houses.

To learn more about the art market of big auction houses, I recommend the following books.

I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon) by Richard Polsky

Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by Don Thompson

Talking Prices by Olav Velthuis