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How to make a Living Selling your Artwork.
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Message
Posted
It is a well-known fact that art comes from within and an artist makes the art for himself. When you make a piece of art by putting your heart and soul into it, be sure that it is going to be a success at least for you. In addition to it, you need to be in sync with the world.
Selling an artwork is quite tricky nowadays but majority of artwork is sold online and, in that case, you need to share your work as much as possible but be careful that you always place a signature on your artwork! Do not limit yourself to local galleries; search far and wide for the best fit.
Social connections are the best way to bring traffic to your artwork. You can make a website and put all your artwork on it. Also, you can make a blog and write for young aspiring artists.
It is a fact that selling an art work gets easy when you have knit-picked an art community and a large number of people following your work. So, “Be more social”.
Put/Print a piece of your best artwork on your Business & Visiting Cards and Social Network profiles. People remember images and faces more than names. So, make them aware of your masterpiece and skills.
Display your artwork in art-galleries. Art galleries are deluged with requests from artists to include their work in exhibits. In that case, you need to make your best efforts with the most convincing reason why they should display your work in their gallery and how they fit in with the art and artists the gallery already displays.
Promote yourself, artwork, and your website like crazy to be discovered- Do not be shy about promoting or advertising your artwork and website on internet or local events. This could be the best way to make people notice your artwork.
Display your art pieces in public There are art and public shows you can enter to sell your work directly to the public. At such places, you will find yourself surrounded by many people who are interested in art.
Quoting the right price is another important factor Set a reasonable price for your artwork which is comparable in prices quoted by artists with similar experience and accomplishments
Work with other artists. You could join and work with another artist/s and have a group show and sale in which all artists help spread the work.
Once you have established your presence in the market, you can effectively draw buyers of artwork to you, increase your reputation, and create the career of your dreams.
I hope this helps! Any feedback is highly appreciated. :)
Posted
This is probably, or most of it anyway sound advice in principle, and I agree with most of it. The problem arises when an artist tries to put all this into practice and make it work, and believe me, it's far from simple.
Any aspiring artist who dreams of becoming 'self sufficient' on selling their art has a long struggle ahead of them. The online market is saturated, almost overflowing with work for sale, and there is some damn good stuff out there as well. You can follow all the guidelines above and the probability is that you still won't make it pay, I've done all or at least most of the ideas given and I couldn't live off the proceeds. Of course, that doesn't mean that it won't all go swimmingly for others, their work may be infinitely more marketable than mine.
As many of you will know, I have a long career and background in art, from college days to retirement, and consider myself to be a reasonably accomplished artist, but I could never have been able to give up the day job, it's all pipe dreams unless you have income from other sources to get you through. I suppose to some extent it all depends on how much you need to live on, and in my case that's quite a lot, I have expensive tastes, and not forgetting that I also have an ex wife, a landlord and several distilleries that rely heavily on me.
<div class="__IE11CLEANUP__">There is no question in my mind that getting in with a good gallery, local or otherwise is by far the best way to promote your work, but getting accepted is another matter.entirely, most galleries tend to stick to their tried and tested 'favourite artists', and won't give you a look in although that isn't necessarily always the case. A good pro-active gallery has a large client base, usually those who can afford to and will spend money on art, and they will actively promote your work, always bearing in mind that the hefty commission and VAT will make a big dent in any sales.
I'm not knocking the idea by any means, this 'romantic dream' can and will come true for some, but my final advise is good luck to you, but 'don't give up the day job', not for a while anyway.</div>
Edited
by alanbickley
Posted
Much of what the OP suggests applies to anything you want to sell sufficiently to make a living; last time I read it was in a guitar magazine and I'm pretty sure it's been in the Musicians' Union rag as well. Change "art" to read "music", or "car repairs" or whatever it is that you do.
What it says is fundamentally correct, but can be summed up in three words - Build Your Market
However, social connections are a poor way of driving sales. 2,500-odd people looked at a sketchbook nude I posted on Twitter; it brought zero enquiries about sales or commissions. When I put a new piece of music online, it feeds my Twitter AND Facebook pages as well as being available for streaming; and I still have only three confirmed wedding bookings for this summer. My agent gets me more gigs.
Edited
by alang23
Posted
As luck would have it, today's ArtWeb newsletter also covers much the same thing. I haven't read it in depth yet:
ArtWeb blog - choose "Tips for building up your contacts list as a professional artist". As at the time of writing, it's the top item on the page.
Posted
Get yourself into a gallery - (this is advice to me, incidentally, from me): then most of the work will be done for you, at a price, and people going in to the gallery do at least tend to have an intention to buy something. Social media isn't to be despised..... despaired of, possibly, but not despised .... I've sold a few things that way, but not enough to hold off the bailiffs.........
I think Alan is right - there's a glut of artworks out there, the internet is heaving with them, and your chances of being able to live on the work you sell are smaller than those of winning the lottery if you've even forgotten to buy a ticket. Most artists seem to make their money by teaching (ie, other artists, who hope to make a living from their work even though they must know their own tutor doesn't) and one or two supplement their income by journalism of one kind or other: supplement as in, make a tiny amount of money now and then when the equally stuffed and glutted magazines get round to publishing them.
Most of us just never make it to the big time, or even the slightly less penurious time - and those who do.... well, sometimes you wonder why, and how; and sometimes you see the compromises some of them have made, and question whether you really want to do the same. The one thing I think helps is having the cheek of Old Nick - if you barge into galleries, online and off, and sell yourself as if you were the Coming Sensation, if you keep at the self-promotion day in and day out, if you think like a businessperson with something to sell.... you stand more of a chance than if you sit patiently, waiting to be discovered. Patience, in this case, does not bring its own reward. Question is - do you want to do that? Do you have the character necessary to do it? Can you tolerate rebuff, do you have boundless energy, are you prepared and able to put as much work, or more, into self-promotion as you do into painting?
I don't have that sort of personality, and it shows in my sales. Even so, I've often wished I had - and if I were to advise people on the way to go IF they want a career as an artist, this is probably the key to it; always bearing in mind that there are niche areas, like illustration, which still offer a way in - especially for digital artists. I do think though that we need to ask ourselves if that IS what we want.... because it's a long, hard, exhausting road to follow if you're really not certain that this is what you want to be.
Posted
my focus is with seo and online marketing at the moment, so i might sound a bit biased ! ....there is a lot to be said for backlinking and seo these things are much more important than going to a local art meeting and handing people cards.....or having work on display in a local gallery.the exposure online is far greater...i`m not an seo expert just saying the way things are now.
my work online
Posted
"Seo" being.....?
Online marketing is great IF people can actually find you. One of the purposes of getting into a gallery is that it'll put your name in the field so that people will look for it.
Don't do what I did, and keep your actual name out of your website's title - I'm still looking for a way round this.
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
Posted
Ah. I've always thought, Alan - and call me suspicious if you will - that those people might be ...... fibbing. It didn't strike me that they'd even looked at my website. I responded to one with "if you're so impressed with it, why not buy something from it?", but they went quiet after that.
The thing to remember about the internet, it seems to me, is that it's chiefly populated by people who would like to dive into your bank account and disport themselves while you look on, vaguely puzzled as to what they're doing to earn your cash. I sometimes fear that the advancing years have made me a little cynical, a touch on the sceptical side, even distrustful. Whatever happened, I wonder, to that open, friendly, trusting youth of yesteryear?
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk