This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art, as is his home office. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

Many artists make a huge mistake with their email marketing:  they use their gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, outlook.com or similar address when sending their marketing emails.

If you're doing this, you need to stop, immediately.   It will cut your open rate and sales in half. 

Yes, that's right, you could potentially double your sales just by using a better email address.

Here's a newsletter I received recently from an artist sending from a gmail.com address.

Yikes!

Who would open and read the message above? 

Who would click on anything it contained?  Almost nobody. 

Plus, when Gmail flags messages like this, images are all disabled.  So the recipient wouldn't even see your artwork.

The reason this message has the big scary warning is simple:  To prevent spam, Gmail attempts to verify that the message you receive came from an email server that was authorized to send the message.  And gmail KNOWS, since they own the domain "gmail.com", that you don't have permission to send marketing emails like this from their servers.  Hence they are warning the recipient.  This may be slightly annoying when you're the sender, but it's important.  It prevents spam and, importantly, it prevents people from sending nasty email impersonating you.

There is a simple solution to this: Send your marketing emails from a custom email address on your own domain. 

Instead of sending from artistname@gmail.com, this artist should have sent the message from artistname@artistname.com.

If you are NOT a FASO customer, you will have to pay a bit extra to do this (most platforms charge something like $5/month for a custom email box) and you (or somebody technical you know) will have to setup some fairly complicated records on your domain's DNS known as DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.  The good news is, it's not THAT difficult and you only have to set it up once.  That's a small price to pay to double your sales!

If you ARE a FASO customer, I have even better news - nearly all our plans include a custom email address and, even better, when you set up your email address through us, we automatically add all the proper DKIM, SPF and DMARC records for you.  Here's a link to an article that explains how to setup a branded email box on FASO.  And here's an article that shows you how to make sure you send newsletters from your branded email account.

That's right.  If you use FASO's art marketing platform, then we can eliminate that big scary message in about ten minutes.

So, please, before you send your next email newsletter, take the time to make sure it will send from a custom email address on a domain that you control.

Until next time, please remember that Fortune Favors the Bold Brush.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

BoldBrush/FASO Founder & Art Fanatic

PS - We're continuing our series on email marketing.  Please reply in the comment below and let us know what other questions you have!

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art, as is his home office. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

The 71 Rules that Great Artist Websites Follow

*An updated version of our previous rules for your checklist.

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Editor's Note:

If you want to start marketing your art, a professional and secure website can be your most valuable tool. And FASO is the easiest way to build and maintain a gorgeous website, we also include amazing marketing tools that automate many common marketing tasks for you. To sign up for a free, no obligation 30-day trial, click here.

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's downtown San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art, as is his home office. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art, as is his home office. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

We espouse email marketing as a primary way for artists to build their audience. Developing an email subscriber list is a vital marketing goal in successful email marketing. 

We typically hear two big questions about email marketing:

1. How do I start my email list, and
2. How do I grow my email list?

We covered how to start your email list last week.  If you haven't started yet, we recommend you start with that article.

In this article we'll discuss some ways you can grow your email list.

Grow Your List Through People You Already Know

First of all, who should be on your list?

Here is a list of people who you should invite to join your email list:

Past buyers  - Past buyers are your most likely future buyers.  Astoundingly, this is the area that most artists overlook.  Of all the paintings I've ever purchased, no artist has ever invited me to join their email list. (Well, one did, but only after reading this statement.)  Of all art buyers in the FASO system, only 16% of them are receiving the artists' newsletters. Artists are not promoting to the other 84% of past buyers. Artists are not promoting to their most likely future buyers.  Don't make this mistake!

Possible buyers - These are people who have expressed interest in purchasing, made an inquiry about a piece, or made other overtures about purchasing.  These people should be invited to join your email list.  In many cases the only thing these people are waiting for is the right piece to come along.  Your newsletter may very well be the thing that spurs them to purchase when you finish that piece.

People who have expressed interest in what you do - This group represents everyone else you've met who's expressed a general interest in what you do and have given you permission to email them.

Friends & family - Don't overlook friends and family.  They can serve as powerful connectors and supporters.

Colleagues, neighbors, church acquaintances - Same as friends and family - you can never prejudge who might assist you or purchase from you.

Other art professionals - This may represent curators, gallery owners, art bloggers, art editors. People in the art business have the "bug" and love hearing from artists and seeing what's new. Don't hesitate to ask them, especially the ones you know personally, to consider joining your email list.

Other artists - Most artists make the mistake of discounting other artists. I'm so tired of hearing artists ask, "How can I keep other artists off my email list?"  Or, "Why should I advertise in that venue? It's just a bunch of artists."  This is a huge mistake.  Nobody loves great art more than artists. And artists are actually some of the best buyers of other artists' works.  Even if other artists don't buy from you, like friends and family, they can also serve as powerful connectors and amplifiers of what you are doing.

Invite all these people to join your your email list.  Follow the guidelines we covered in How to Start Your Email Subscriber List. 

Don't call it an "email list" or "newsletter", just ask them if they would mind hearing from you no more than once a month about your newest artworks and what you're up to. For the most likely purchasers you might consider creating a special newsletter segment just for them and you can tell them they will see all your newest artworks before anyone else.  This will make them feel special and be of huge interest to that possible purchasers group (and many past buyers). 

True fans will want to hear from you, so this step not only helps you grow your audience, it also helps you separate the serious from the looky-loos.

Please remember - you must get permission from every person who you add to your list.  Don't shortcut this process, it's against the law, it won't help you, and it may hurt your ability to get emails delivered in the long run. 

I recommend you make a list of everyone you can think of in the categories above and reach out personally to those people a few at a time until you've worked your way through the entire list.  At then end of that process you'll have a nice sized audience.  It would be surprising, after really thinking through all these people, if you can't think of at least 100 people to approach.

We all have a hidden email subscriber list and if you put your thinking cap on you'll realize you know a lot more people than you think you do.  Here's another article that delves further into this idea.

Grow Your List on Your Social Media Profiles and Posts

Make "Join My Insiders List" your primary call to action everywhere you live online.  "Enjoy my Facebook Page?  Join my insiders list."  "Like my Instagram profile? Join my insiders list."

Don't forget to post every now and then, encouraging people to join your email list.  My recommendation is post new art and other valuable content, (no politics please), 3-4 times before you ask for your audience to join your insiders list.  Think of it like this: give-give-give-give - ASK. 

Grow Your List on Your Website

Add a prominent "Join My Insiders List" link on your website. In fact, not having a newsletter signup is the biggest mistake most artists make on their websites.  As an aside about "lead magnets" and "ethical bribes" - we don’t like them and don’t recommend them. Remember what we said elsewhere about respecting your subscribers on a human level. People who are truly interested will want to join your list simply to see new art. You don't need to bribe them. However if you want to, do offer a lead magnet, a giveaway, etc. There is a lot of information online that can advise you.

Grow Your List by Joining an Artist Group

Join a local artist group  and get involved.  You will meet lost of people you wouldn't have otherwise met. You'll expand your audience.  In addition to growing your list, you'll learn about new opportunities you wouldn't have known of.  An artist group usually provides new exhibition opportunities as well.

As you can see, there are a ton of ways to grow your subscriber list...and we've only scratched the surface with this post.

Share some effective ways you've found to grow your subscriber list using the "Comment Here" button below.

For my latest thoughts on art marketing, art sales ideas, and insider announcements about new FASO features we are working on and releasing, you should Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  That's where I publish ideas and opportunities in real time.  Be the first to know.

Until next time, please remember that Fortune Favors the Bold Brush.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

FASO Founder, Software Craftsman, Art Fanatic

PS - To start your own email marketing program, if you're a FASO customer, we recommend you use the built-in ArtfulMail program. If you're not a FASO customer (or need more advanced features), we recommend ConvertKit. Help us keep bringing you great content by signing up for Convertkit with our affiliate link here.

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art, as is his home office. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

Regular readers know I constantly beat the drum telling artists to "send regular email newsletters."

But a common objection I often hear from artists is they don't have an email newsletter list so who, exactly, are they supposed to send the email newsletters to?  

Many artists are simply convinced they don't have anyone to send to.

But I don't think that's true.  Nearly everyone has more contacts than they think.  I read  the average number of friends a user has on Facebook is somewhere between 245 - 359.  For some quick anecdotal evidence, I went through a bunch of artists who are my friends on Facebook and, sure enough, most of them had at least 200-300 friends.  Many, of course, had numbers that were much higher.

Now, how can someone with over 200 Facebook friends tell me they have absolutely nobody to send their email newsletter to?

Seriously, think about how many people you talk to over the course of a few years.  If you're anything like me, you've got tons of contacts that form your "hidden email subscriber list":

• People you've met in the real world who gave you business cards.  Somewhere you probably have a stack of business cards somewhere that you never look at.  
  
  
• Phone numbers you've jotted down on scraps of paper
  
  
• People who've said "my friend so and so" would love your work
  
  
• Hundreds or even thousands of email addresses in your mail program (I have hundreds and hundreds of people I've corresponded with in Gmail that are not on my official contacts list.  It would only take a bit time to search through those past email messages to reconnect with those people and simply ask the if they'd like to receive newsletter updates from me).
  
  
• As mentioned above friends on Facebook (and if you're anything like the average user, you have hundreds there).
  
  
• People you see in real life every day and don't think about as being "customers"
  
  
• People you see on the weekends
  
  
• Your followers on Twitter/ Instagram (or other social media platforms)
  
  
• People who have commented on your blog posts
  
  
• People who follow your blog via rss
  
  
• People who you've met at art shows / art fairs
  
  
• People you've met at gallery openings.
  
  
• A plethora of other ways you meet people.

Now, unless you are a complete recluse and a Luddite, you have dozens if not hundreds of potential contacts within your grasp to start a mailing list for your art business, right now [1].

If you don't have anyone on your mailing list, you don't have an exposure problem - you have an organization problem.

For my latest thoughts on art marketing, art sales ideas, and insider announcements about new FASO features we are working on and releasing, you should Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  That's where I publish ideas and opportunities in real time.  Be the first to know.

Until next time, please remember that Fortune Favors the Bold Brush!

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

BoldBrush/FASO Founder & Art Fanatic

PS - What other ways can you think of to connect with people that would want your newsletter?  Let me know your ideas in the comments.

**********

Footnotes:

[1] Remember, you can't simply add all these people to a newsletter list or you risk violating spam laws.  You'll have to contact them individually and get permission.  That's why it's a lot easier when you bake your newsletter process into your communication system and workflow all the time.  But, the point is, you do have plenty of prospects to start with right now, and if you do a few at a time, you'll have decent sized list going before you know it.

This post is by guest author Derek Sivers.  Derek Sivers is a professional musician, founder of CD Baby and thought leader.  This article originally appeared on his site, sivers.org, at sivers.org.ext. This article has been edited and published with the author's permission. We've promoted this post to feature status because it provides great value to the FineArtViews community.

Imagine you see a caged feather on a museum wall. The sign underneath says the artist is a political activist in jail.

Imagine that same caged feather again. But instead the sign says the artist is a high school kid in Florida.

Or imagine that the only way to see it is to crawl deep into a shrinking tunnel that opens into a room of mirrors, where the caged feather is suspended by a thread.

Same feather. Very different perceptions.

The way you present your art, and what people know about it, completely changes how they perceive it.

Therefore, your art doesn’t end at the edge of the canvas. Your creative decisions continue all the way to the end.

Now think of the way you create and release music.

• You had a tiny idea for a song.
• You fleshed it out into a full song.
• You gave it layers of instruments.
• You chose its texture when recording.
• You came up with your artist name, album title, and visual look of your photos and videos.

Every step so far has been a creative expansion of your original idea.

So now it’s time to put it out into the world. Do you turn off all that creativity? Just upload the song to the usual places, and tell your fans?

No! Most do. Please don’t!

Instead, continue that creative path in your marketing. Flaunt your artistic freedoms, and have some fun with it!

• Set the tone.
• Decide how you communicate with the world, including why, when, and where.
• Create the story about the song, and yourself.
• Choose what you reveal, what you omit, and what you invent.
• Choose what you’re actually selling.
• Decide how, when, and where you’ll sell it.
• Choose what you’ll accept as payment, and what you give in return.

These are all artistic decisions you can play with.

Marketing is the final extension of your art.

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You can view Derek's original post here.

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This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's downtown San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com.

Every email sender has a sender reputation calculated by the big mailbox providers. 

If you send email newsletters, this will include you. Yes, this means Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple and many others will assign a specific reputation to you, your domain, and your emails.

Your sender reputation is based upon how engaged your subscribers are with your emails. The more engaged your subscribers,  the better. The higher your open rate is, the better your chances of landing in your subscribers’ primary email tabs and not in their junk or promotions folders. Conversely, the more unsubscribes, un-opens, and email bounces you get from your recipients, the lower your score will be. That's why it’s so important to clean your email list.

Which brings me to my next point.

A smaller, engaged list is better than a huge list full of people who never open your emails.

Your goal is 1,000 true fans, not a million. Small and clean. Quality over quantity.

With that general idea in mind, below is a list of the important things you need to do to protect your sending reputation. Do the things below, and your reputation will remain squeaky clean. The better your reputation, the more people who will see your emails.

Let’s get started:

USE AN EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER: Do not send your email newsletters from your regular email account.  While this can work OK for a very small list, it will quickly get you into trouble in a number of ways.  Use a real Email Service Provider (ESP) such as FASO’s ArtfulMail, MailChimp or ConvertKit. These platforms all have low priced or free options, so it’s very easy to get started for very little money. ArtfulMail has the advantage of some art specific automations and features.

SEND REGULARLY:  This is the #1 piece of advice I can give you to keep your list clean and your sender reputation good. It’s essential to send regularly. You must send at least once a month, or your engagement data will be wrong and you will greatly increase the chance of having people send you to their spam folder or, you may even accidentally send to a dangerous spam-trap. You can avoid this fate simply by sending monthly.

USE DOUBLE OPT-IN:   Double opt-in means that people sign up for your list on your website, then they are sent an email to confirm their desire to join your list. Once they click the link in that email, and only at that point, are they added to your list. This method ensures that only people who are real, true fans of yours are joining your list. It also prevents malicious people from subscribing people to your list with the goal of hurting your reputation. (Yes, unfortunately, this happens more often than you’d think.)

CHECK THE REPUTATION OF YOUR SUBSCRIBERS:  There are services that you can use to check the reputation of email addresses on your list. Using these services will keep your list clean. Just like every email sender has a reputation, every email recipient has a reputation. Do you often report emails as spam? If you do it too much you might be classified as a "known abuser." Don't send your newsletter to known abusers. They tend to forget what they signed up for.  Another mistake is sending to "role-based" emails such as “info@domain.com”, or “sales@domain.com”  We often see artists sending to “info@somegallery.com.” Don’t do that, it will hurt your reputation.  Note:  if you use FASO ArtfulMail, we automatically check these reputations for you and clean dangerous emails off your list.

MONITOR YOUR AUDIENCE'S ENGAGEMENT:  Again, it is essential to send often to keep that data accurate. People can't engage if there is nothing to engage with.

REMOVE DISENGAGED SUBSCRIBERS FROM YOUR LIST:  Remove from your list anyone who hasn’t opened one of your emails for 270 days or more. We settled on this number since artists don’t send as often as some business types and 270 days is the point where you run the risk of a box becoming a spam trap. At this point send the person three re-engagement emails and then remove them if they didn’t click any of them.

We will cover these emails in detail in a later article, but here is a quick overview:

• First re-engagement email:  The “Are you there?” email: “I noticed you didn’t respond to my first email.”
• Second re-engagement email:  “Your subscription has expired” email
• Third re-engagement email:  “You have been unsubscribed” email.  Then remove them.
  
  

DON’T FIGHT NORMAL LIST DECAY:  Removing non-engaged subscribers is normal. Having people lose interest is normal. In addition, a percentage of your subscribers will get new email addresses or change jobs and those email addresses will become inactive. Again, this decay is normal. A normal email list "decays" at an approximate rate of approx 20% per year. That is why it is important to continually be adding new subscribers.

DON'T BUY MAILING LISTS: Just don’t do this. Ever.

DON'T SIT ON A LIST FOR YEARS AND THEN TRY TO USE IT:  The addresses will be stale, some may have already been converted into spam-traps. The sooner you start and use an email list the better because, as we’ve seen, email addresses decay over time.

DON'T BRIBE PEOPLE TO JOIN YOUR LIST:   This one might be a tad controversial as some “gurus” recommend you provide an "ethical bribe." I don’t really agree with this tactic for artists. As your fan, just hearing from you is the reward. You don't want to email people who only joined to get some freebie:  they will pollute your list. YOU are the reason they are joining. You are the "rock star." True fans are joining for insider access to you. I can't imagine the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen needs to bribe people to join their fan club.

[source]

That’s really it! Do these 10 things and you’ll enjoy a stellar sender reputation and you’ll be able to put a targeted email in your fans and followers inboxes whenever you need to.

For my latest thoughts on art marketing, art sales ideas, and insider announcements about new FASO features we are working on and releasing, you should Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  That's where I publish ideas and opportunities in real time.  Be the first to know.

Don't forget to share your comments below.

Until next time, please remember that Fortune Favors the Bold Brush.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

FASO Founder, Software Craftsman, Art Fanatic

PS: To start your own email marketing program, if you're a FASO customer, we recommend you use the built-in ArtfulMail program. If you're not a FASO customer (or need more advanced features), we recommend ConvertKit. Help us keep bringing you great content by signing up for Convertkit with our affiliate link here.

PPS: If you want to hear my latest thoughts on marketing and selling art,  or you have comments or questions about this article (or others), I'm very active on Twitter,  please follow me at the link below and send your questions or comments to @clintavo.

https://twitter.com/clintavo

This post is by, Tina Garrett, regular contributing author for FineArtViews. Tina is an ARC Associate Living Master, she teaches workshops across the US and in Europe. Tina published her first instructional oil painting video in January 2019 and held her first Solo Show, "Pieces of Me" at Bountiful Davis Art Center in Salt Lake City, Utah in March of 2019. Tina is a proud Missouri State Ambassador for the Portrait Society of America helping Missouri artists fully benefit from their PSoA membership. She is also proud to be a 2018 & 2019 Cecilia Beaux Forum Mentoring Program Mentor.

Part 3: Q&A 

In this final part of my 3-part article on pricing your artwork, I’m going to answer the questions that I get frequently. Don’t hesitate to re-read parts one and two, follow my blog and newsletter and feel free to join my free Q&A Live Broadcast Group on Facebook where, once a month, I answer your questions about all things art in a fun, live, real time format. 

Pricing your work so that you are making what you need to make in order to make a living is just the beginning. As the quality of your work grows, as your work receives recognition and as the markets you reach expand, the value of your work will grow past the basic needs you have set out in your Annual Salary Grid. How much your prices rise is determined by the market value, and your best market value depends on how well you get the word out about your work. Do market testing. That is to say, raise your prices slightly and see if your works can still sell at the new price, to the same audience you normally advertise to. 

If your works aren’t selling at a new price, you have some work to do: Create better work with a higher perceived value. Expand your audience—meaning reach out to new possible collectors. Earn recognitions that improve your credentials, thus increasing your perceived value. Talk about your work with more sophistication and in as many outlets as you can; for example, my work and teaching is being “talked about” in this article, in online galleries, in multiple publications, on my website, blog, newsletter, in all kinds of social media, in handwritten communications, and in my face-to-face conversations. It also helps that my fans, collectors, mentees, students and workshop hosts talk about my work and my teaching online and in person. Ask yourself, “Where is my work being talked about on a regular basis?” If you can’t list a diverse set of outlets, it’s no surprise your work isn’t selling. If the only way I ever tried to sell my work was to stand on my own front porch with a painting and shout, I would sell no work. My voice can only carry so far when shouting and the pool of collectors from those passing by is very shallow. So get your voice out through as many different outlets as are appropriate for your work. And remember, make smart choices. Don’t spend thousands on an add in a magazine that primarily advertises abstract works if you paint animal portraits. Use common sense and learn from your experiments. 

Here are my best answers to the questions that were submitted in Parts 1 & 2 of Pricing Your Artwork. 

—————————————————————————————————————————

When I paint a portrait it takes much more time and effort. However, I can paint a simple still life or somewhat abstract subject much faster and easier. I find it difficult to price them both the same. How would you suggest I deal with this? 

I like to use the Annual Salary Grid as a guide to know what I need to make annually and there are any number of products and services that can fill the empty spots in the grid. So, if I have made 3 little oil sketches, each taking three hours, they aren’t the same price as one, 40x60 that took three months, but I don’t automatically assume they have a low value just because I painted them quickly. I compare their quality, size and complexity to the highest selling similar object in my portfolio and go from there. Ultimately, knowing what you need to make in a year helps guide you to setting the market price of your products and services so that your annual salary is met, and eventually surpassed. It is a great starting point. But the nuance of perceived value is very important. Don’t sell your landscapes and still lifes short just because you’re good at them and they come easier to you. Do market price experiments to discover what your market is willing to pay for them. 

How does one deal with a 're-emergence' of sorts? I had a small art business and sold for twenty years. Then, I chose to take care of my folks for about ten years and completely 'vanished' from the art world. Now, after getting back into painting for the last four years, I'm ready to start showing again (even if it is just online). I feel like I'm 'beginning again' and don't really want to start pricing at where I was previously. I feel that I need to 'get back in the game' gradually, not having beginning prices, but not up to where I was. Suggestions?

In my opinion, your re-emergence depends on the quality and the relevance of the work you are making now. If you are making the same exact quality of work from the past, the same subjects, the same styling, then your work may not be fitting for today’s market or it may not be as valuable (UNLESS you have a loyal following who has been waving their wallets and clambering all along for you to paint again). Artists evolve, or at least they should. You can take this re-emergence as a way to draw from yourself your very best ideas and skills and present them to the world. If you were actively selling and successful in the past, your skills should give you an advantage of artists who are literally just beginning—not just in your skills but also in your process and business practices, you are seasoned. So, do some reflection and show the world what is new. And, like any business, do test marketing and test pricing to see what your market will pay for this new body of work! Good luck!

How do you price commissions in comparison to an equivalent painting?

Commissions are not equivalent to any other painting that you make on your own volition. By their nature they require more work because they are born of the seeds of someone else's ideas. Depending on how much you allow the client to interject into your process, your commissions could cost more than your other work. Use the Salary Grid to learn what you need to make in a year and use the projected number of commissions and projected number of other pieces and other products and services you offer to begin to get an idea of the minimum your work should cost. If you feel your commissions are worth more and they will sell at prices higher than your similar pieces, power to you! I’m writing a separate blog post on commissions soon, and you are welcome to subscribe to my newsletter through my website to get notified when it’s published. 

Another important thing is—don’t be afraid of having to justify your prices. If you make your Annual Salary Grid and you test your market and your work is selling, your pricing is justified. Some people might be offended that a certain product or service is more expensive than they want it to be, but only you know your market, and if others are happy to pay that price, enough said.

My work is fairly consistent, and I try to price based on size. However every once in a while I manage to produce a painting (not a commission) that I feel is superior to what I have produced up to that point. I want to charge more for pieces like that, but have been told that is not appropriate. What do you do when you feel some works are better than others even though they are the same size? 

Artists are inundated with advice. Ultimately, what is appropriate for you, only you can determine. After all, you have to live with the consequences of your decisions. The trouble with pricing your work drastically differently depending on just the idea that you think the price should be raised because you think the painting is better than other similar work you have made, is that your collector’s may not understand why the price is higher and those more expensive paintings may not sell because of that. The best thing you can do is test your theory out. I recommend that you market your more expensive pieces differently than your other work, however. That means you have to talk about them differently to your market so that (if it isn’t totally obvious by viewing the work, which honestly, it should be) they understand why you are charging more. Label them as a special series, etc. 

I’m wondering when you’re a novice and just starting out do you price your pictures differently to if you are a professional or Master? So what I mean is should your price structure be different depending on the level you’re at?

An artist’s ‘level’ is so subjective: How many years or workshops does it take to graduate from being a beginner? Is an artist a master because of their experience or the quality of their art? I’ve taught students who’ve been painting for 40 years and are not considered masters and I’ve taught students who have painted for only 5 years and are making master quality works. Except in the cases of designated Master artists with extreme notoriety, collectors should not expect to pay more or less depending on how long the artist has been painting. Collectors should pay a price that reflects the quality of the work and how badly they want it. So, make the very best work you are capable of at this time and do everything you can to speak about it and get others to speak about it to your market so that your market becomes aware of your work and begins to consider it when they are considering buying art at all. 

This is always a headache - what’s too low, and what’s too high? I was told by someone who commissioned a piece, my prices were too low. But, I don’t want to price them too high for fear of not selling anything? But, I’ve heard, people value higher priced art?

This is one of the reasons why the Annual Salary Grid is a good way to start learning how to price your work unemotionally and based on your salary needs and the other products and services you offer that can help you meet those financial needs. Yes, you’re right, people value higher priced art. That’s because people value higher priced anything. One scientific study proved that when consumers try the exact same thing, in this case, wine: The exact same wine was served to all study participants, but some were told the wine was very expensive and the others were told the same exact wine was very cheap. MRI scans of their brains showed that the people drinking the wine that was labeled expensive, their brain scans showed they actually enjoyed that wine more than the people who were drinking the exact same wine, but they were told it was cheap. This is known as the “Marketing Placebo Effect”. So, do a test, paint three of your best works and raise the price on them, put a fancy label on them (meaning speak about them in a more sophisticated way than you have for past works) and see how they sell in comparison to your other work. Good luck!

How do you work with galleries on pricing your work vs selling direct to the collector.

That’s easy. The market price of my work is the market price of my work whether it is sold by me, a gallery, a neighbor, my dentist...the price is what the price is. If collectors discover that your prices fluctuate from venue to venue or week to week, they will always be waiting for the time when your work is on sale and you will scare off collector’s who are market value conscious — because they believe the work they could buy today may be worth less tomorrow due to the fact that you are randomly raising and dropping your prices. Be consistent regardless of who is selling the work and make small moves when raising your prices. Remember, if a gallery finds a buyer for your work, the fee that they take has been earned. They found the buyer after all.

Hope you cover input and output what you put in costs: paint, canvas, framing, rent, gas etc…

 
All of the costs you incur in order to live: your housing, food, child care, art supplies, shipping, taxes and even the tax accountant, all of it, that has to be added up and that is the number you have to have at the top of your Annual Salary Grid. If you can’t produce art or art related products and services to make that amount, you have two choices: get rid of some of your expenses or earn more money in a non-art related job. 

Is it okay to price by the hour?
You have my permission to try any kind of pricing strategy that you want. If it works, go for it. Eventually, the value of your work should transcend the time you took to paint it, it’s size, it’s subject, etc. 

What I'd really like help with is finding ways to sell outside my rural areas/towns. What I'm finding is that already established artists’ works are being bought. I need help in knowing what to do to break this barrier in order to sell more of my work. I sometimes feel so overwhelmed with the statements from some people who say, "just get in a gallery" or "just push your work on Facebook or your website". I do these things but with little sales. It's frustrating to say the least.

Lets first define what it means to be an ‘established artist’: it means your work is known. Therein lies the key to your problem. If a collector is going to buy art, they’ll go to where they know art is and make their selection. If they can’t find you so that your work can be considered, it is no wonder your work is not selling. So the real question is, how do you get your work in front of people who are in the market to buy art? Now more than ever, this means you have to have great art with a strong, online presence. My advice is to make the best art you can, really push yourself outside of your current level, enter competitions so you can get known by art lovers, since winners of competitions get written about and their work is shown on the competition website. Make sure your website is a FASO website and that it looks great and is updated regularly. Talk about yourself and your journey regularly on your website, your newsletter and blog and on social media. Start there. Good luck!

Your sense of humor is marvelous!! I may never stand outside Brad's house, but it did get me thinking about friends I have who might be willing to put me in front of their friends. I wouldn't mind some advice on how to go about this. It's so important to be genuine and not come off as a cold and calculated opportunist. I thought of offering to do a live painting event for some of their get-togethers before Covid ruined that plan. Any ideas?

Since your intention is to simply make a living, you’re not a sell out or a calculated opportunist, you're a worker bee! And now more than ever, people need beauty and mystery and an experience that heals and takes themselves out of the ‘real world’ and elevates them, makes them think and makes them feel. Paint those kinds of things and be proud when you talk about yourself. Artists are so underrated and undervalued, which is a crime in and of itself, since it is the arts that makes the world worth living in and it is the arts that everyone goes to for entertainment and comfort. 

Did you get started using this grid method successfully by selling online, word of mouth or with gallery representation? Curious about how I can make this work when galleries take 50 percent and that is after some give 10-25 percent client discounts off the top.

This is probably the question I get the most. You don’t have to work with galleries that take 50% if, in order for you to make a living, that rate pushes your market price of your work out of a sellable range. There are galleries that take 40% and less. I have a wonderful gallery that only takes 40% AND if a painting doesn’t sell, they ship it back to me at no cost to me! I have another that only takes 30%! If you’re making great work that sells you have a lot more negotiating power. But for the record, none of the galleries I’m affiliated with have exclusive rights to sell my work. All of them understand that if I find the buyer, I keep 100% of the sale. Essentially, you have to advocate for yourself like you believe your work is worth it. You have to make a living right? So be sure to calculate the fees any gallery would take from the hard work of selling your work for you and make sure that is factored into your annual salary grid. 

Great article, Tina! Love that your formula included extra to pay taxes. Do you also add in other expenses (like commission fees for galleries, materials, costs for shows and travel, equipment, etc) when you figure out your final prices? Thank you!!

Yes, as mentioned before, your Annual Salary Grid needs to encompass your annual salary - that is to say, the total of what you need to make a living to cover all of your expenses in life, business and otherwise. If you don’t know how much that is, it is long-past-time for you to do an audit of your income and expenditures. Luckily there are a lot of banking apps out there that can help you do that. You’ll want to know what you bring in now, how much you spend, how much debt you hold and at what interest. Being honest with this assessment will help you understand your situation and make better decisions when you are setting your pricing, deciding what products and services you offer, how hard and long you need to be working, etc. 

My question is in pricing my paintings for an exhibit - do you take your price and add 20% in the event it sells? or how does that work?

Nope, the price of my work is the price of my work. If the venue finds a buyer, that 20% is their commission for doing so. If you raise and lower your prices for every little thing you're sending a message to your collectors that you are in financial instability and that sends the message that they may not want to purchase your work. There are many collectors who, in part, consider the value of your work and the prediction that it will raise in value years after they've purchased from you. If they see today that a painting costs $1000 and tomorrow that painting costs $1200 and then a month later they see on another website it is discounted to $800, it is my philosophy that, at best, you will have collectors who wait around for your prices to drop, or simply don't collect you at all. Everyone wants to feel like they made a really good purchase. As collectors see the value of your work raise over the years, you are reassuring your collectors and enticing them to buy from you again. And trust me, it is much easier to sell a second painting to someone who already collects from you than it is to find a new collector for each and every painting.

Thank you Tina so much for this information. I have struggled so much with my prices. One thing I find very difficult is to compare my work. I find it hard to find artists that do similar work and have similar experience or style. Any tips on how to make that research?

Sometimes, we are too close to our own work to see it for what it really is. I recommend that you ask two acquaintances, not close friends and definitely not other artists - a neighbor or spouse’s co-worker - look for folks with good taste in clothing, a business colleague of a friend perhaps or distant relative with a luxury car. Tell them you are doing a blind study experiment. Ask them to look at three of your paintings - choose three of your best. Ask them if they have time to do a quick web search for you to find three other works of art by modern artists that they think look like yours in quality, and fineness, ask them to send you the links to those works that in their eyes are ‘equal’ to yours. Give them a little help, for example, send them to Artsy or Saatchi, or if you do portraiture, ask them to look through the past few years of winners of the Art of the Portrait International or BP Award, if you paint landscapes, ask them to look through the winners of the OPA Regional, etc. Tell them it is critical that they be honest and that there is no wrong answer. And tell them if they can’t find anything of an equal level - meaning if your work doesn’t measure up to what’s on the market, they’ll be honest with you and tell you so. Then tell them thank you, you’ve learned what you needed to learn. Then, go research the artists that they think are your dopplegangers. Look at those artists’ websites and pricing, where are they showing, what size paintings are they painting, etc.  Be ready. More often than not, artists who are not selling or winning prizes or being written up in magazines are not receiving these accolades because their work is not earning them. You may find you need to reevaluate your work and up your skills and or the narrative within your work. Don’t worry, these are opportunities to grow and that is always a good thing.  

Tina Garrett is an American 21st Century Realist whose works have been recognized by the Art Renewal Center, Oil Painters of America, Portrait Society of America and others. She teaches at dozens of venues across the U.S. and abroad including the Scottsdale Artists’ School, Village Arts of Putney, Denver Art Students League, The Florence Studio Italy and the Dutch Atelier of Realist Art in Netherlands. Tina is a proud mentor for the PSoA Cecilia Beaux Forum and PSoA State Ambassador for Kansas and Western Missouri. She teaches online workshops and offers critique and business level mentorships. Tina offers a free Q&A live broadcast once a month on Facebook which is open to anyone with art-related questions. Visit www.tinagarrett.com for more info.

This post is by, Tina Garrett, regular contributing author for FineArtViews. Tina is an ARC Associate Living Master, she teaches workshops across the US and in Europe. Tina published her first instructional oil painting video in January 2019 and held her first Solo Show, "Pieces of Me" at Bountiful Davis Art Center in Salt Lake City, Utah in March of 2019. Tina is a proud Missouri State Ambassador for the Portrait Society of America helping Missouri artists fully benefit from their PSoA membership. She is also proud to be a 2018 & 2019 Cecilia Beaux Forum Mentoring Program Mentor.

Now that you’ve set starting prices for your work based on your Annual Salary Grid, you need to do an assessment of your artwork, your market, your prices, and your value. Being able to make these assessments will help you both raise the value of your work (logically and sustainably) and sell your work. 

Assess your Artwork: Make the best work you’re capable of making

This might sound kind of obvious, but you can't just send out shoddy work and expect to be paid well for it. There's no job on the planet where you can do poor quality work and get paid well for very long. You have to put the best work possible on the market. You need to be able to reflect on your work without bias and see clearly where your work needs to improve. The most successful artists have a critical eye and a curious mind which is never satisfied. If you cannot be your own critic, you need to learn — and there’s no time like the present. Look out for my upcoming November blog post on how to develop a critical eye.

I highly recommend purchasing a critique from a professional artist through the Portrait Society of America. I did this in 2014 and was assigned artist Tom Edgerton. His critique was so honest and so practical, the very next painting that I created won 1st prize in the OPA Online Showcase — and it was my first painting to sell to a collector in the U.K. If possible, take a workshop or find a mentor who can help you improve your skills. As an artist, I will never stop learning. There is always more to learn and ways to improve so that you’re doing everything in your power to send your best work out into the world. 

Assess your Market: Find and reach out to people who can afford your work

It goes without saying that if you are making the best work possible, you will need to get clean, accurate images of your finished works (and in these images, there should not be any framing or matting). In 2020, even if you have gallery representation — which less and less artists are able to attain — you must have a regular social media presence and a website (make it easy on yourself and use FASO). After all these steps, if you are still not selling, you will have to reflect on what you’re offering and the value of your work by assessing your market.

My Business Level mentees sometimes believe that their work will sell as long as they show it to lots of people — any people — however, shooting in the dark when aiming for your target audience is a waste of your time. To help illustrate this, I tell my mentees this story: Imagine that I try to sell one of my very best paintings at my normal retail price, by standing with it outside of an amusement park here in Kansas City. As park visitors come and go, hundreds of them might stop and talk to me and many would tell me how much they love my work but zero paintings would sell. Why? Because amusement park visitors don’t generally expect to spend roughly $10k on a work of art. Usually, their discretionary funds are in the $20 to $500 range. So it makes absolutely no sense for me to drag my artwork out into the midwestern sun and try to sell it. However, take that same painting and display it at a Porsche or Tesla dealership, and my chance of selling the work rises (at least in comparison to the amusement park). This is because the dealership visitors in this scenario are much more likely to have the discretionary funds necessary to make the purchase. Thus, my job is not just to create good work and show it to as many people as possible, it’s also to show it to people whose spending power matches my retail prices. 

Understand Perceived Value

You need to be willing to and capable of assessing who your work currently appeals to and why. My husband offered this fable to illustrate the importance of this concept: 

A dad gave his son an old car and said, “Here son, you're 16, so I'm gonna give you this car. You can do with it what you want, but first I’d like you to take it down to the scrapyard and see how much they’ll give you for it.” So the boy takes it to the scrapyard and they say, “We’ll give you $400 to scrap this rust bucket.” After the boy returns to his father, he’s told, “Now take it up to that used car lot and see what they’ll give you for it.” The used car dealer says, “This is an old car, and it’s in bad shape, so we can only give you $1000 for it.” The son returns to his father once more and he’s told, “Now I want you to take it to this antique car show and ask them what they would auction it for.” The guys at the antique car show take one look at it and say “Holy moly! This is a 1962 Porsche Carrera 2! Only 300 were made! If we restore it, it's worth $750,000!” 

Not everyone values everything equally, and not all people understand or appreciate the value of artwork. In the marketing world this is called “Perceived Value,” and it is determined by the customer’s evaluation of the art (based on their knowledge of art value) and whether it meets both their taste and needs in comparison to similar artwork. So do an honest comparison between your work and the work that is in the price range you wish your work was in — then bring your work up to par. After that, you’ll have a lot less trouble finding the people who see your work as truly valuable. More on this in my upcoming November blog post. 

Assess your Prices: Raising and lowering

Hopefully after reading Part 1, you have created an Annual Salary Grid. You have compared your work to similarly quality work and it holds up to the price you need it to be in your Annual Salary Grid. So you have a pretty good idea what you can sell your work for. All that’s left is to put it up for sale and be observant of the market’s response. 

Every time you put your work up for sale, you’re performing a marketing experiment. You just may not have been looking at or learning from the results. Use your past sales knowledge to see how buyers respond to your work and the prices you’ve been using. You need to be collecting data on who you’re reaching and whether they are both interested in your work and able to afford it. You have to determine based on this feedback whether raising or lowering your prices is a smart choice. 

If all your artwork is selling out and everyone’s asking you for more, your prices could probably go up a little bit. On the other hand, if you have a lot of art available and no one's touching it, your prices may be too high or you are still not reaching your targeted group of collectors. (Or, you have not reached the level of mastery in your work which you thought you had.)

If your prices ever are too high, don’t immediately drop them. For the same reasons that you shouldn’t discount your work, be wary of dropping your prices. If you are consistently lowering your prices, anyone who's ever bought your work will feel like they paid too much; they should have waited until your work went on sale. Similarly, new collectors will likely wait to buy your work until the prices have dropped again. This brings down the perceived value and integrity of your work. To avoid having to lower your prices, be careful not to set them too high to begin with and when you raise them, do so slowly and only when you have the data to back the decision. 

Related Article: Bending Under Pressure: Running an Art Business in Hard Times goes in depth on selling your work, diversifying your income, and alternatives to offering discounts. 

Assess your Value: What raising your prices really means

Let's just say you made three to five pieces that you consider bigger, better and stronger than the rest of your body of work, so they should cost double. I say at least three pieces, because it is important to prove to your market that this new, better work isn’t a fluke. Having a group of equally strong works assures collectors that this is your new level of mastery and thus your new level of value.

Now, if those works are twice as expensive, they are most likely not as marketable to your current list of collectors who are used to your lower prices. You have a few choices: (1) explain with well crafted PR, why these works are worth more (maybe they’ve won prizes or been written about in editorials), (2) go out and find a different audience which ideally has more spending power than your original audience, or (3) be collected by someone like Brad Pitt, which raises your market value sheerly by virtue of your new famous collector. Having collectors like Brad Pitt also puts your work in front of all of their rich friends, helping you build that new market with minimal effort on your part. 

If Brad hasn’t called you yet, you may need some help reaching that new market in order to sell those paintings. This is a great time to connect with a good gallery. Take into account that galleries will take a fee — which is effectively an advertising fee that you will pay to help you find that new market. You’re going to pay one way or another. Either you're going to pay a gallery or broker to help your artwork sell at your new, higher retail price, you’ll pay directly for advertising in a magazine, catalog or online art marketing group, or you’ll pay with the sheer amount of time and effort that you will have to expend finding those new collectors and putting yourself and your work in front of them (either in person or online — or by standing with your paintings in front of Brad’s house until he comes home). 

These decisions have to be made based on many factors — such as your ability to speak and write publicly about yourself and your work, whether galleries find your work marketable and profitable for their customers, and other specific data that is reflective of each artist’s work and their current market value. It's not a formula that exists in outer space; all the information you need is in your ability to honestly assess your artwork, your market, your prices, and your value. You just have to get started. 

Please submit any questions in the comments below to have them answered in "Pricing your Artwork Part 3: Q&A." 

This post is by, Tina Garrett, guest contributing author for FineArtViews. Tina is an ARC Associate Living Master, she teaches workshops across the US and in Europe. Tina published her first instructional oil painting video in January 2019 and held her first Solo Show, "Pieces of Me" at Bountiful Davis Art Center in Salt Lake City, Utah in March of 2019. Tina is a proud Missouri State Ambassador for the Portrait Society of America helping Missouri artists fully benefit from their PSoA membership. She is also proud to be a 2018 & 2019 Cecilia Beaux Forum Mentoring Program Mentor.

I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve heard these questions: “Do you think my work’s ready to sell?” and “How do you think I should price my work?” The kind of work you offer, and how you price it, can make the difference between selling consistently and having a dedicated “unsold works” storage space. This three-part article will show you how to craft a pricing structure that reflects the quality of your work and your income needs, give you strategies to raise the value of your work, and help you reach an art buying audience. Please feel free to ask questions in the comment section, and I’ll try to address them in Part 3 of this article. 

When are you ready to sell your work?

Only a collector can prove once and for all if your work is sellable. At the moment your work is sold, it is sellable. What you need to do is find the people who want to buy your work. If you want confirmation that your work is ready to sell, listen to the people you show your paintings to. Let's say you’re getting tepid compliments like, “that’s nice, my aunt is an artist too.” In this case, they have just equated your work with an amateur they know. That’s not code for “I want to buy this painting.” If they’re saying, “Wow! How much is that?” then you are talking to the right people — the people who are ready to purchase artwork like yours (if the price you give them meets the expectations that your work is cultivating). 

In the world today, there’s a purchasing market for almost everything, especially if you're online. So if people are being polite but never asking if your work’s for sale or if you take commissions, either your skill level isn’t quite there yet, you aren’t talking to the right people, or the price you are setting doesn’t match the quality or appeal of your work. (More on this in Part 2.) 

My story

When I first started selling paintings, I was pricing my work based on each painting’s size (in inches squared). I started at $1 per square inch, multiplying that amount by the height and the width of my painting. So a 10” x 10” painting would be 100 square inches and priced at $100. This was right as I began learning how to paint in 2012, and I had several people buying works for between $100 and $500.

I did that for maybe two years, and it seemed to be an okay system. And every year, I would give myself a small raise: about 30 to 50 cents (per square inch) at a time. Soon I started winning some prizes and I felt like it was time I gave myself a pretty good raise, over $3 per square inch. Almost immediately afterwards, one of my collectors — who had been buying my smaller pieces in the $250 to $500 range — asked about a larger painting. 

I gave him the price, and he said, “Wow, how did you come up with that?” Being the astute listener that I am, I realized that the price of my paintings had just overshot their perceived value - by a lot. With the raise and the size of the painting, the price was far from what he was used to paying for my work. Luckily, we were close enough that he felt comfortable asking me to explain how I got to that price. After I explained my strategy, he kind of giggled and I felt both a sense of embarrassment and a sense of curiosity. This collector is a successful businessman who owns multiple major businesses, and I could tell that he was wanting to give me advice. 

The BEST Business Advice:

So he asked me, “How much do you need to make in a year?” 

All I could do was shrug my shoulders and he responded, “Come on, Tina. You know what it takes for you to live, to survive. You are doing this art to make a living, right? So, what do you need to make?” I felt so unqualified and embarrassed. Of course, I knew exactly how much money I needed in a year to support my family, but I couldn’t imagine that my art work would ever be that valuable. I threw out $50,000, just to have a number to work with, but I immediately began to think, There’s no ****ing way I’m ever gonna make $50,000 a year as a painter! Who do I think I am? It felt selfish to think I could really make a living doing what I love. This kind of thinking is very common for artists.  

My collector could see right through it, and he did what every good businessman does when confronted with doubtful inner thoughts: he ignored them and pressed on with the business at hand. He told me I’d need to add 30% on top of that $50k for taxes, meaning my hypothetical income now needed to be around $65,000 a year. Yeah, riiiiggght. 

“Okay,” he said, “so how many of your best paintings — the most expensive, nicest paintings you’ve ever made — how many of those can you make in a year?” I really wasn't sure. I hadn't made a ton of work at all yet and I really hadn’t paid attention to how long each painting had been taking me. I guessed about one per month, or a little less if I got stuck on one; so I said 10. so about 10 in a year. “So how much,” he asked, “have your most expensive paintings sold for?” At that time, it was $3,000. We rounded up to $5000 for easy math and he explained: “If you make ten $5,000 paintings in a year, that's $50k.” All of a sudden I realized, “I only have to create 10 paintings worthy of a $5000 price tag and put them in front of 10 people who not only love them, but have $5000 in discretionary funds and, oh my gosh, that's my $50k!” 

Nobody should expect anyone else to NOT make a living 

Of course, there was also hesitation when I considered what my work was worth. The doubt was written all over my face, but my collector quickly explained: making what you need to make is the way you start your business. It’s also the way you start your pricing, IF you are making quality work. 

His most insightful advice was this: nobody should expect anyone else to NOT make a living in their career. Artists often get asked to do things for free because it’ll “give them exposure” or “give them credentials” and so on. However, there's no other business or profession in the world where people ask, “will you do this for free on a long term basis?” That's not a career, that's called volunteering. Stop volunteering for a living and pay yourself as you would expect to be paid in any other legitimate career.  

Make an Annual Salary Grid 

At the top of your sheet, put the annual salary you want to pay yourself. Be sure it includes at least an added 30% of your income that you will not spend, but will be set aside in a savings account for state and federal taxes. Create a grid that can be filled in with the products and services you can provide and their costs. Every little square on the grid should be filled with something you can do to earn money. Together, all the squares in the grid need to add up to at least your total at the top. 

You may have to do many things to fill the grid; remember that the whole grid needs to be reasonably completed within a year. Perhaps create one master painting priced at $5,000 (filling one square) or create multiple smaller paintings that add up to that $5,000 instead. You could fill squares with sketches, teaching, public speaking revenue, or prize money. It doesn’t matter what services or products you choose to fill your grid with, as long as you are positive you can offer them and you list them at Market Price — the price your products and services can actually sell for. Whatever fits you as an artist, it's important to list your potential income streams very specifically and to have a good idea of the ways you will be able to bring in income. 

Related Article: Bending Under Pressure: Running an Art Business in Hard Times goes in depth on selling your work, diversifying your income, and alternatives to offering discounts. 

Unfortunately, a lot of painters think that they can fill the grid with paintings and prints alone. This is dangerous: you can’t have all your eggs in one basket. As a person who has been self employed since 2000 (read this blog to learn about my life before becoming a professional fine artist), I have to insist that having multiple income streams will give your business stability, which is crucial to this line of work. You may have a situation where you injure your shoulder and you can't paint for a few months, or a pandemic might hit and all your workshops could get cancelled, you never know (that’s sarcasm). In that case would you just stop earning money? How would you be able to make up that income? 

Work to earn income in many ways, whether it be prints, teaching, lectures, a blog, writing a book, or anything else you can think of. There are so many different aspects to being an artist, and expecting to make a full income off painting sales alone is risky, at least until you’re well established as a professional artist. But even established artists rarely take this route. There is a stigma against artists who supplement their income with teaching or book and video sales — I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “those who can’t do, teach,” — but I’m giving you permission to make money in any art-related way you can until you can establish your market. I will be coming out with an article to expel this stigma in the future.

The value of your work matters

As soon as you have a very clear plan for your yearly income, you should have a reasonable idea of how to price your artwork. However, you can’t make that income until people actually buy your artwork, so you can’t ignore the Market Price when choosing your prices. I can tell the world I need to sell a painting for $10,000, but if similar work is selling for $300, that piece will never sell for $10k.

So the next thing you want to do is a little research; figure out what similar paintings are selling for. This is going to take some honesty though, and some self-reflection. If you’re an amateur painter whose never sold work before, you can't just put your painting up next to a Jeremy Lipking and say, “yeah my work’s just as good. He’s selling for $400,000 so I should too.” You have to compare apples to apples. You need to compare your work with the work of several working artists — not just your friends and not just one hugely successful artist. Find the sale prices of paintings that are similar in quality, style, subject matter, and size to your pieces. This should give you a good idea of what you’ll be able to get for your work, if you consistently create that quality and you reach the audience that likes it and can afford it. If the prices on the market are less than what you want to sell your work for (based on your annual salary grid), Part 2 of this article will walk you through the steps you can take in order to raise the value of your work and how to adjust your prices over time. 

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art, as is his home office. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

When I published the 12 Top Things to Never Do on Your Artist Website, I had a couple of people write me directly who disagreed with some of my recommendations.

The item most people disagreed with was, "No Prices."  My position has always been, to sell art online, you need to publish your prices alongside each work of art.  A couple of people disagreed with me on that point.  I've captured the gist of what they told me by combining their objections into the paraphrased "quote" below:

I disagree with your position on posting prices.  As a gallery owner for many years, I have found the price will sometimes put the customer off from the start.  You want the viewer engaged and to fall in love with the work first, before they even look at a price.  Since prices are always negotiable, it seems unprofessional to state them clearly on a website.  If a work is not moving quickly in the gallery, I can offer it at a lower price.  Once that price is listed on a site, it is difficult to adjust.  Correspondence with the customer, after they inquire about a price, also enables me to make the statement that if a work is out of their price range, allows me to offer a lay-away plan, or I can suggest they consider a limited edition print.  This can only be done if the client is interested and talking to me, and not deterred to communicate with me because something appears too pricey.

Here's my edited reply:

This post is by guest author  Keith Bond. This article has been edited and published with the author's permission. We've promoted this post to feature status because it provides great value to the FineArtViews community. If you want your blog posts listed in the FineArtViews newsletter with the possibility of being republished to our 77,000+  subscribers, consider blogging with FASO Artist Websites. This author's views are entirely his own and may not always reflect the views of BoldBrush, Inc.

I have been reminded recently of the fact that “your mailing list is your number one asset”, to quote Alyson Stanfield.  This is something that I took for granted when gallery sales were stronger a few years ago.  I wish that I had done more with my mailing list at the time.  Better late than never, though.  This has been a huge priority this past year.  Now, about 70% of my sales are the result of my own marketing efforts, whereas a few years ago that number reflected my gallery sales.

Use your Mailing List

Put it to work for you.  Be creative in how you use it.  There are many ways to market to your collectors and prospects, and I find that a variety of methods work best.  There has been a lot of discussion lately about email, blogs, newsletters, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.  All of these are great.  But don’t neglect the traditional.  Send cards or letters once in a while.  Send ‘Thank You’ cards.  Send announcements or invitations, even brochures, etc.  Mailing a copy of an article about you (or by you) is another great reason to correspond with your clients.

There is great power in using these more tactile marketing tools.  They are more likely to be seen.  It will set you apart from the crowd.  You are reminding your collectors that you are still there and still creating art.  They will see your work (if you use your art on these marketing items) in a format that they can hold on to for a while.  They may even frame it.  Even if it eventually makes it into the trash, they will see it and handle it and think about it more than an image attached to an email or blog.  Or at least it will make a different impression, it will be noticed and you will be remembered.  Also, there is something about the personal touch of a hand-written note that speaks volumes to how you appreciate them as collectors.

Again, I repeat: use a variety of marketing methods and be creative in those methods.  Use both on-line and traditional strategies. 

An Example

Recently I began a project that is of great excitement and interest to me.  I won’t bore you with the specifics, but will share how I marketed it.  A month or so before beginning the project, I decided to announce it to selected people on my mailing list.  I invited them to join me in this exciting endeavor.  The invitation was for them to become a sponsor by paying a modest amount, which would be completely applied to the purchase price of a future painting.  The sponsors were guaranteed a first purchase right of any paintings from the project and they would have the opportunity to see them before the general public.  They were also guaranteed that I would return their sponsorship money if they did not find a painting from the project that they wanted to purchase.  I intentionally kept the number of sponsors to a minimum.

The idea behind the sponsorship was not to have money to cover any up front expenses.  Rather it was a way for me to know who was seriously interested in the paintings.  With a handful of clients already interested before I even began, my efforts in marketing the paintings afterwards are minimized (but not eliminated).  It is great to know that I have the freedom to paint what I am inspired to paint, knowing that many are likely to be sold right away.  The audience is in the grandstand watching play by play as the project unfolds.  They are a part of it.

This is briefly how I am doing it:

I sent a packet in the mail (yes, snail mail) which included a letter explaining the project and an invitation.  I also included some anticipated FAQs.  Additionally there was a brief bio sheet which showed recent paintings.  Finally, there was a form to fill out and return with their check if they wished to be a sponsor. 

I did not follow up with telephone calls, but likely could have gotten more sponsors had I done that.  I was, however, comfortable with the number of responses I got.  I didn’t want too many, because I was unsure how many paintings would ultimately be created in this project.

As paintings are completed, I send an email of the images AND a hard copy (again, snail mail) to the sponsors.  I send three at a time about once every 6 to 8 weeks or so.  The clients are anticipating these updates and eagerly review them when they come (remember, they signed up and even put money down so they want to be updated).  I then follow up about a week after they receive the images with a telephone call (unless they contact me first).  The clients are given first purchase rights on the paintings before I open them up to other clients or the general public.

Interestingly, one of the sponsors saw one of my recent paintings which was NOT part of the project, but loved it.  They asked if they could apply the sponsorship to that painting.  Of course I obliged.  After all, the sponsorship was to pique the interest of clients, some of whom I hadn’t communicated with in several years (shame on me).  Through this, they found a painting that they liked and wanted to purchase.  Without their responding to the sponsorship request, they likely wouldn’t have seen this other painting which they bought.

This is just a brief example of some things that can (and should) be done to market your work.  I have other pieces and projects which are marketed differently.  I have my overall business which is marketed.  I am marketing myself as an artist.  There are many different ways in which all this is done.  I don’t rely on just one thing, and you shouldn’t either.  Consistency in the larger message and consistency in your efforts are crucial.  Yet, variety in your methods of communication are equally important.

Best Wishes,

Keith Bond 

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Editor's Note:

Today's post is an updated version from a few years ago, but we're republishing it again today because it's still a timely and relevant message. Enjoy!  And if you want to start marketing your art, a professional and secure website can be your most valuable tool. FASO is the easiest way to build and maintain a gorgeous website, we also include amazing marketing tools that automate many common marketing tasks for you. To sign up for a free, no obligation 30 day trial, click here.

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Painting Competition and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's downtown San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com.

When wanting to grow your email list, it's natural to turn to social media as a way to encourage people to subscribe.  Here's how to do that in a way that works.

Most artists, when they start this process, simply post something to their social media accounts that lets their followers know they have a newsletter and why they should sign up.

That is what nearly everyone does and it works for almost nobody.

While simply posting might get you a subscriber or two, most of your posts will be lost in the noise.  As soon as the next funny cat video appears in your follower's feeds, your call to subscribe will be forgotten.

So what does work? Personal outreach works.

Here's a little mantra to help you remember what works:  Personal outreach works the best, while generic posting gets lost with the rest.

Consider what FASO customer Rochelle Allen wrote in our private Art Marketing Mastermind Facebook group:

[Like most artists] I wasn't having any luck getting people to sign up for my newsletter. So I recently decided to send a short, generic (but easy to personalize), and friendly message to people who "like" and follow my Facebook and Instagram pages.

I essentially asked if I could add their email to my newsletter subscriber list so that we would have a more reliable way than social media to stay connected.

 

Almost everyone said yes and I was able to increase my newsletter subscribers exponentially!

 

This happened after I had made 2 posts over the course of the previous week letting people know that I had a newsletter and what the benefits would be for them to sign up. NO ONE did.

Even though one would think subscribing to a newsletter would be super easy for people, it seems like asking directly and offering to do it for them is much more effective.

Here's how you can put this idea to work to grow your email newsletter subscriber list:

1. Look through people who like your posts and follow you on social media.  Identify the ones you want to invite to join your list.
   
   
2. Send each of those people a direct, private message letting them know you have an email list for people who enjoy your art, that you send a short update once a month.  And ask them if you could add them to your email list so you have a more reliable way to communicate that is not dependent upon social media.
   
   
3. Once they reply, add them to your list. That is all the permission you need.
   
   

For my latest thoughts on art marketing, art sales ideas, and insider announcements about new FASO features we are working on and releasing, you should Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. That's where I publish ideas and opportunities in real time.  Be the first to know.

Until next time, please remember that Fortune Favors the Bold Brush.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

FASO Founder, Software Craftsman, Art Fanatic

PS: To start your own email marketing program, if you're a FASO customer, we recommend you use the built-in ArtfulMail program. If you're not a FASO customer (or need more advanced features), we recommend ConvertKit. Help us keep bringing you great content by signing up for Convertkit with our affiliate link here.

PPS: If you want to hear my latest thoughts on marketing and selling art,  or you have comments or questions about this article (or others), I'm very active on Twitter,  please follow me at the link below and send your questions or comments to @clintavo.

https://twitter.com/clintavo

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush  Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's downtown San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

While I'm a huge proponent of email marketing for artists, I've started shying away from using the term "email newsletters" because of the connotation that "writing a newsletter" conjures in many people's minds.

Embrace the Medium

Whenever a new communication medium appears, it's natural for people to simply transfer what's working in a previous medium to the new medium.

The first television ads were really just radio ads repurposed for TV. The radio ad (optimized for voice) played while the view stared at a static image. The first television ad was by the Bulova watch company in 1941. And, indeed, they simply took the voice-over from one of their radio ads, and displayed a picture of a watch, and well, that was the entire ad. Obviously they weren't (yet) embracing television for it's own unique strengths.

What they hadn't done, what nobody had done, was to realize that television was a brand new medium with completely different strengths.

Contrast that early Bulova TV advertisement to a modern Apple ad. The modern ads embrace all the strength of the medium. They focus on fast-moving visuals that evoke emotion, and often have little or no voice over. We saw a similar situation in the early days of video ads on Facebook. Many companies simply posted their television ads to Facebook. But Facebook videos have much less attention and need to be effective, need to be produced differently from traditional TV ads.

The point is that for every medium and every channel, you have to embrace that medium and design your marketing to work natively with the platform.

Embrace Email, Natively

Email marketing goes far beyond sending "newsletters." A "newsletter" is something that was printed on paper that we sent in the pre-internet era.

Prior to email, many companies and artists produced print newsletters. In a print newsletter, it makes sense to save up a lot of news, and then produce something monthly or quarterly that shares all of that news at once. At my gallery, for example, we often sent printed newsletters that had a dozen or so "stories" about upcoming exhibits, news about artists, or tips and tricks on collecting and hanging your art. That made sense in a medium that required expensive printing and mailing via snail mail. It also made sense in a world before smartphones. A world where people were accustomed to sitting and reading a newspaper.

Many early attempts at email "newsletters" mimicked this earlier era and people simply ported their printed newsletters to the new email medium. The worst ones simply attached a pdf of their newsletter. But, even the best ones had far too much content for one email.

Even the early editions of FineArtViews were designed this way, until I very quickly realized that:

1. Producing email newsletters this way was very difficult and took far too much work

2. Sending an email with dozens of topics overwhelmed people and they usually deleted them.

Simply porting a print newsletter email is as much a mistake as simply porting a radio ad to TV. We, like everyone else, quickly figured out how to work with the medium of email properly.

With email, people's attention spans are much shorter than with print. Subscribers tend to scan instead of reading in depth (with exceptions). You have to intrigue your reader much more quickly. Unlike a printed newsletter, which may hang around on the coffee table for days or weeks, an email may quickly be sent to the digital trash bin.

So, you must adapt your strategy to the medium. That means being more focused. That means getting quickly to the point. Make each email about one, and only one topic (after all, you can send another one tomorrow, or next week, which we couldn't affordably do with printed newsletters). If you want the reader to do something, make it extremely clear what you would like them to do. It sometimes means targeting only a small subset of your email list (if you're promoting a workshop, only send it to the "artist" segment of your list).

In addition, since email is so cheap to send, people can subscribe to a series of emails, known as autoresponders. We didn't have a way to do this in the print world, and it's another great example of using the email platform natively. We'll cover autoresponders in a later article.

When you embrace the medium, your marketing will use the email medium natively, personally and to its best advantage.

Proper email marketing is sophisticated, targeted, personal, relevant and very different from simply sending a "newsletter."

What strategies have worked for you in promoting your art, exhibits or workshops via email?  

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

BoldBrush/FASO Founder & Art Fanatic

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Editor's Note:  

Want to sell your art? A professional and secure website can be your most valuable tool to help you sell your artwork. FASO is the largest provider of premium artists websites engineered exclusively for elite artists. We make it easy to build (even for non-techies) and maintain, we include SSL for all of our websites at no additional cost and we provide you with some great art marketing tools that automate many common marketing tasks for you. Get Started with FASO today free for 30-days, click here.

This post is by Clint Watson, former art gallery owner and founder of BoldBrush, known for FASO Artist Websites, the leading provider of professional artist websites, the $38,000+ BoldBrush Art Contest & Exhibit and the free daily art marketing newsletter, FineArtViews. As a self-proclaimed "art fanatic", Clint delights that BoldBrush's downtown San Antonio, Texas office is full of original art, as is his home office. You can connect with Clint on Twitter, Facebook or his personal blog at clintavo.com

My favorite Seinfeld episode is The Opposite. In it, George complains to Jerry that, "Every decision I've ever made in my life, has been wrong, every instinct I've ever had...was wrong.

My life is the complete opposite of what I wanted it to be". And Jerry replies, "If every instinct you've ever had was wrong the the opposite would have to be right." So George immediately starts doing the opposite of his natural instincts.

And in the course of a few days, he goes from being a "bald man, with no job, no money, who lives with his parents" to dating a beautiful woman, and landing his dream job with the New York Yankees.