Developing Your Artist Career

Speaking from experience, a career in the arts industry is not an easy pursuit. To become successful, or even to draw some kind of income from your artwork, you need to be committed, determined, passionate and able to keep yourself motivated, even when things seem to be at a total loss. 

Starting out is in no way an easy task. Unless you’ve been blessed with instant acceptance of your work by a gallery or agent, the initial stages will find you playing the role of the artist, the marketer/promoter and client liaison. This can all be a bit intimidating when initially all you wanted to do was create your art. But if you don’t see yourself cut out to be a self-employed artist, there is also a wide range of career paths for the aspiring artist. Depending on where your interests and strengths lead you, you could consider following a career in graphic design, gallery curation, professional photography, and so on. However, fresh from your recently obtained degree, the competition for these kinds of entry level career roles is fierce. And unfortunately, unless you have the talent or the contacts, you could struggle to land your first job.

There are a number of things you can do to try to increase your chances: create a professional portfolio of your work, include references and referrals from lecturers and people you have worked for (even work experience roles can go a long way here). Research the company and the position so you will best be able to appeal to the company’s preferences as well as the positions requirements. A major part of the recruitment decision is whether or not the candidate will fit in with the company’s culture. Find out what aspects the company prides itself on, for example, being cutting edge in design innovations, or being relatable and approachable to clients etc. Ensure you emulate these things in your interview; it may just give you that advantage you need to land the role.

When pursuing a career in the arts, there is always the daunting possibility that you may find yourself unemployed for a period of time while you search and interview for the position of your dreams. Unfortunately, this is where some people may find themselves taking on other positions in order make ends meet, promising themselves they will continue to pursue their artistic career. While you’re working as an office administrator or telemarketing clerk, you may notice your career taking a hard and fast turn away from your dreams of an artistic career. Even if you’re working fulltime to keep the bills paid, you continue to strive to stay motivated to keep working on your arts and pursuing the career of your dreams. 

There are, in fact, a number of ways in which you can draw an income and gain experience to increase your portfolio through gaining and creating artistic and design work through the internet. This can be done part time, after the hours of your full time position, to boost both your income and work experience. All you need is the correct database, resource and tips to find this niche work and get started straight away. This is also where the commitment, determination and motivation mentioned earlier will need to kick in if you’re truly passionate about establishing your artistic career. Put in the hard work and you will surely reap the rewards in whichever path you may choose.

Creating Collectors of Your Artwork

Do you want to make yourself a career in art? Or perhaps make more than just a career, but a respectable living? It’s a pretty exciting idea!  Being able to make a very comfortable living do what you love – but how can we do it? Is it even achievable? No matter what your line of art is – I do believe it is possible!

Whether you want to make a full time living with your art or if you’d like to make some extra money through your part time hobby, there are some tips and techniques you need to consider in order to make it a reality. Selling art, especially as an unknown artist can be quite a difficult thing to do, unless you know how. And after selling your first couple of pieces, then comes the new challenge of selling your art over and over in order to create a reliable income. Well, one sure fire way to do this is to create collectors of your artwork.

What is a collector? And can you really ‘create’ them? 

A collector is someone who will look to buy your work time and time again. A collector may even be prepared to buy your work before it has been completed. Imagine that, selling your work before you’ve even finished it?! It is possible to create collectors of your artwork. One way is to rely on your talent and the strength of your pieces, attend as many craft shows as possible and speak to as many people as possible. While that sound like a lot of work, it is also an uncertain way to go about finding people who would be likely to become collectors of your art. A more targeted and less involved way to find and create these collectors is to learn how to correctly market your work. 

Don’t get me wrong, craft shows and art fairs are an incredibly valuable way to get your work out there and seen. But there are a few simple tools and techniques you should know in order to make your time spent at these shows more worthwhile. 

The first tip is quite simple, but one idea you may never consider before attending a show: know your market. What kind of buyers are going to be at the show? Will they be looking for high end pieces or will they be looking for cheaper crafty pieces? It’s important to know who will be at the show, and what kinds of art will most likely peak their interest. When you know this, select the pieces you will show based on what these buyers are looking for.

The next tip is also quite simple, and a lot of artists do do this: have some fliers or hand-out information that people can take away with them. While people may not buy from you at the show, it’s important for them to be able to take some information away so that if they choose to, they can contact you later on. It may also be worth investing a bit more in these fliers to include high quality colour prints of your work. This is a lot more effective as people will be seeing a number of different artists at these shows and good quality images of your work will help them to identify and remember your work.

These two tips will help you receive a lot more attention and success at art shows. However, what you do after the art show is just as important. Follow up is how you can create collectors. Once you have found buyers or people who are very interested in your work, you need to find a way to keep in touch with these people and to market your work to them so that they will come back to buy from you time and time again. 

5 Simple Steps to Sell Your Art!

Whether you've been creating art for years, or if you've finally given in to the artist inside, here's a simple and easy-to-implement guideline to help you sell your art.

Step 1: Before you go about figuring out how to sell your art, decide whether you do want to sell your art.

Initially, this question may seem a bit redundant. But if you really think about it, are you aware of what's involved in selling your art? If you've never sold your art before, you may not realise that after you've invested so much time and commitment into a piece of work, it might be a bit hard to let it go! But in all seriousness, you may want to look at your motivations for wanting to sell your artwork. Do you want to share your art or do you consider it as a necessary evil? If you find yourself leaning more toward the latter, you may want to reconsider your decision to delve into the art business. It could be possible it's not something you're passionate about or something you wouldn't find much fulfilment in pursuing.

Step 2: Decide what it is that you want to sell.

Do you have a vast portfolio of works you want to sell or do you want to specifically make pieces to sell? If you feel confident that you have a good collection of salable pieces, then by all means dive right in and research your potential markets and sales opportunities! If you're looking to create your art to sell, you may have more work ahead of you. But you do also have a great opportunity to identify existing niches to create works targeted to those potential customers. In both cases, a little research goes a long way! Get to know who your potential customers are, what kind of other artists are currently selling to these markets and consider how you can effectively create or market your pieces to them.

Step 3: Find out where you can sell your artwork.

This is probably one of the considerations many artists take for granted – where to sell artwork. It may be quite easy to find the local art markets, or state art fairs, or even online art sales sites, but what you will also need to consider is who you will be selling your art to in those locations. It may be worth doing the additional research to find out specifically what kinds of art sells best at these locations. By this I mean: are buyers mainly looking for low priced craft or trinket kinds or art? Perhaps more sales are made of larger scale, high quality and expensive pieces… If you find markets or locations where buyers will more likely be looking for the type of work you're sell you'll be making more sales with half the effort!

Step 4: Effectively price your work.

Generally, artists do one of two things when they price their work: under price it or over price it! Pricing is not a very simple strategy to grasp, so prepare for a bit of trial and error when it comes to finding the appropriate pricing for your work. Again, research can be a very useful tool when it comes to appropriately pricing your work. Consider similar styles of work, or artists with similar backgrounds, what are the price points they're selling their work around? Could you possibly create for yourself a pricing system to suit differing pieces and different markets?

Step 5: Create it and sell it!

Once you've successfully completed the previous steps, you're ready to pull it all together and start selling! And always keep in mind one of the most important points to selling art – have fun doing it! You're art is something you're passionate about and something you love doing, share that with potential customers and fellow enthusiasts. Artists get bogged down in the actual selling of art – you're an artist not a sales person! But by being true to your craft and open with customers you can find a way to successfully mix the two.

Review: How to Sell Your Art without Selling Out created by Steve Popkin

Steve Popkin’s ‘How to Sell Your Art without Selling Out’ e-course has been implemented by a multitude of artists located all over the globe. The course consists of 27 presentations, each presentation centred on a unique and incredibly valuable topic for the developing artist. The entire course is narrated and discussed in depth by Steve Popkin himself, giving a personal touch to the course and incorporating real-life, relatable examples into the content.

Starting with the most asked question by artists “How Do I Price My Art?” Steve offers a thorough, yet easy to understand explanation of price points and how they relate to your art. He then leads you on to discover the more intricate details of becoming a successful artist and discusses how you can develop your craft into something that is not only marketable but is still representative of your passions as an artist. The course discusses everything you need to know about art marketing and offers a range of plans and ideas for the development of your own art. Whether you want to create a full time art business for yourself or if you’re looking to improve on your hobbies, you’ll find this course to be an invaluable resource.

 As an artist himself, Steve openly admits that he’s not the most incredibly talented artist in the world. He makes his art because it’s what he is passionate about and he wanted to build a business around doing what he loved – isn’t that something we all want? The important point that Steve makes here, is that even though he may not be the best glass blower, he is able to successfully make a living selling his art, while other – possibly more talented – artists continue to struggle. Why could that be? Unfortunately, what they forget to teach us in art school is how to successfully market our art. Over the course of many years and of many trials and errors, Steve has developed this course so you won’t have to experience the same struggles. He simply offers the answers. All that is left for you to do is put the strategies in place and be ready to turn your passion or hobby into a thriving business.

Now, let’s not be kidding ourselves, the road to becoming a Thriving Artists is not necessarily an easy one to tread. But by following the lead that Steve sets out for us in his e-course, the road has been made a lot clearer and easier to successfully navigate. So my advice to you is that if you are determined to become a successful artist, living a full life on the income created by your art, this is an incredibly powerful resource which you cannot do without!

How to Price Your Art to Sell

As artists we like to focus on the making of art, not so much the selling of it, right? But in order to continue making our art and doing what we love, we need to be able to sell it. So the number one question artists will always ask is… “How do I price my art?”

Well, that is a very complicated question, but a simple answer is… “It depends”. 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to pricing your art. What you will be able to sell you art for depends on a multitude of variables, such as your ability as an artist, the marketability (or demand) of your type of work, how well established you are and so on. Now, if you’re a new artist just starting out or if you’ve been creating art for a while and you’re looking to start selling it, there’s no need to fret! There are strategies and pricing structures that you can put in place to build a customer base and thus increase the value of your work. 

We would all like to start out selling our pieces for several hundreds or even thousands of dollars. But the simple truth is that without demand or even knowledge of your work or yourself as an artist, it simply isn’t going to happen! However, as a new artist to the marketplace you have the unique opportunity to establish buyers who can grow with you, perhaps into avid collectors of your artwork. And the simple fact of the marketplace is that collectors mean demand and demand means increased sales as well as heightened prices for your work. But before we get too carried away, let’s take a step back and look at how we can price our art to get to this point.

As an entry-level artist, you need to look to sell to entry-level buyers, which will inevitably mean entry-level prices. And again, these prices can depend on the particular market you’re looking to sell to and the type of work you are trying to sell. You’ll need to do some research. Find some similar artists in your area or similar pieces for sale – what is the common price point? It may be very low, $20-$40 dollars or it might be quite promising, $50-$100. Either way, you need to find a reasonable price point to start with. If you find your works sell quickly, you could even consider raising your average price point.

Once you’ve sold your first few paintings, you should be starting to create a customer base. This doesn’t necessarily need to only include people who have purchased your work, you may have come across people who are genuinely interested in your work that you could include in your customer base to market to in the future. The idea here is not so much focusing on selling your artwork right now, but establishing ways in which you can continue you to sell your art. 

So, make sure you align your pricing with the current marketplace you’re trying to sell to. You don’t need to continue selling at the initial price points you establish, remember that as your customer base increases, so too can your average price point.