Truly, there is nothing so sadly anachronistic as a starving
artist in the Age of Social Media. All the traditional and historic barriers to
upward mobility have been removed. The fate of the artist is entirely in his or her own hands. A starving artist simply needs a better strategy, one that takes advantage of a larger, albeit fragmented marketplace.
I once witnessed an artist friend go through the following ordeal: he invested his rent money into a gallery showing. After one month, none of his artwork had sold. Even one sale would have been more than enough to have paid his rent, however, not a one of his two dozen paintings sold and it wasn't for lack of attendance. In fact, the show was packed opening night, every weekend, and the closing night. Nothing sold because his work priced his particular fan-base out of the market.The next week, I saw him at the side of the road, beside a coffee shop. He had a sign which read: "Art. $5.00 each." He waved the sign at oncoming traffic, competing with the local pan-handlers for the kindness of strangers.
What went wrong?
For one thing, his pricing did not reflect the demand. For another, he failed to bridge the gap between his artwork and its destination on the walls of his prospective buyers. In both of his failed efforts, there were barriers of his own making. In the first, it was a price which was too high. In the second, it was putting the art in front of the wrong crowd. The gallery attendees were targeted, not random. The passers-by in their vehicles were just a random sampling of people who weren't on the market for artwork.
What should he have done?
He should have realized that it would have been better to have sold all his work to targeted buyers at a cheaper rate than to have made no money at all. Even if he had only made one sale, the twenty-three other unsold pieces would have constituted a significant marketing opportunity squandered. He should have sold the two dozen paintings at twenty dollars each just to have paid the bills and given him enough working capital to invest into more artwork. He could have used the show as an opportunity to have scored three or four private commissions. But, blind to the benefits of selling as an end in itself, he was left with unsold inventory and an eviction notice.
Creating and selling artwork is time consuming, expensive, and resource intensive. The only way to increase the value of the art is to increase the demand. To increase the prices without waiting for a demand to develop is counter productive. High prices are a barrier to new buyers and discourage potential collectors before they've even given your work a fair look.
By matching the price to reflect the demand, the seller is able to exert greater control over the rate of sale. A consistently high rate of sale is the goal. Even if the prices remain relatively static, the flow of art is a good barometer of one's marketing success. The ultimate aim is that critical mass, the volume of work which will establish your reputation in your particular niche. Niche marketing is the answer to achieving brand recognition in a fragmented marketplace.
High Volume, Low Prices
A strategy favouring high sales volume and low prices is better suited to the relatively unknown or self-representing artist for several reasons. In an ideal world, aesthetics or merit alone would be a guarantor of sales success. In the real world, however, it takes more than skill or talent: it takes business acumen. A major part of success in sales, whatever the product, is the sellers ability to see things from the perspective of the buyer.
The buyer's decision to purchase may not be made right away, but a rejection often will be. Experienced telemarketers know that the first few seconds of a phone call are crucial to establishing the basic rapport which may or may not lead to a sale. Lacking that basic rapport, your efforts are dead in the water. The buyer hangs up before hearing the pitch. If good art sold itself, then there would be no such thing as a starving artist, not to mention the historical record of destitute artistic geniuses. Even though this has been the fate for the majority of the world's artists, there is no reason why such should be the case today.
As I have pointed out in other posts, art is its own advertisement. My approach is to dispense with the advertising budget and treat each work of art as it's own advertisement. Think about it this way, if word of mouth advertising is the most effective, even more effective than billboards, then why would you buy a billboard when you could instead place several hundred paintings in several hundred homes? These would be year round conversation pieces, and given that most people now have Internet enabled handheld devices, potential buyers are literally always a click away. You may find it helpful to conceive of the walls of your buyer's home as indoor billboards. Moreover, given the nature of human relationships, it's a fair bet that the friends of your buyers will have similar tastes and would be inclined to obtain similar work for their own homes.
I once witnessed an artist friend go through the following ordeal: he invested his rent money into a gallery showing. After one month, none of his artwork had sold. Even one sale would have been more than enough to have paid his rent, however, not a one of his two dozen paintings sold and it wasn't for lack of attendance. In fact, the show was packed opening night, every weekend, and the closing night. Nothing sold because his work priced his particular fan-base out of the market.The next week, I saw him at the side of the road, beside a coffee shop. He had a sign which read: "Art. $5.00 each." He waved the sign at oncoming traffic, competing with the local pan-handlers for the kindness of strangers.
What went wrong?
For one thing, his pricing did not reflect the demand. For another, he failed to bridge the gap between his artwork and its destination on the walls of his prospective buyers. In both of his failed efforts, there were barriers of his own making. In the first, it was a price which was too high. In the second, it was putting the art in front of the wrong crowd. The gallery attendees were targeted, not random. The passers-by in their vehicles were just a random sampling of people who weren't on the market for artwork.
What should he have done?
He should have realized that it would have been better to have sold all his work to targeted buyers at a cheaper rate than to have made no money at all. Even if he had only made one sale, the twenty-three other unsold pieces would have constituted a significant marketing opportunity squandered. He should have sold the two dozen paintings at twenty dollars each just to have paid the bills and given him enough working capital to invest into more artwork. He could have used the show as an opportunity to have scored three or four private commissions. But, blind to the benefits of selling as an end in itself, he was left with unsold inventory and an eviction notice.
Creating and selling artwork is time consuming, expensive, and resource intensive. The only way to increase the value of the art is to increase the demand. To increase the prices without waiting for a demand to develop is counter productive. High prices are a barrier to new buyers and discourage potential collectors before they've even given your work a fair look.
By matching the price to reflect the demand, the seller is able to exert greater control over the rate of sale. A consistently high rate of sale is the goal. Even if the prices remain relatively static, the flow of art is a good barometer of one's marketing success. The ultimate aim is that critical mass, the volume of work which will establish your reputation in your particular niche. Niche marketing is the answer to achieving brand recognition in a fragmented marketplace.
High Volume, Low Prices
A strategy favouring high sales volume and low prices is better suited to the relatively unknown or self-representing artist for several reasons. In an ideal world, aesthetics or merit alone would be a guarantor of sales success. In the real world, however, it takes more than skill or talent: it takes business acumen. A major part of success in sales, whatever the product, is the sellers ability to see things from the perspective of the buyer.
The buyer's decision to purchase may not be made right away, but a rejection often will be. Experienced telemarketers know that the first few seconds of a phone call are crucial to establishing the basic rapport which may or may not lead to a sale. Lacking that basic rapport, your efforts are dead in the water. The buyer hangs up before hearing the pitch. If good art sold itself, then there would be no such thing as a starving artist, not to mention the historical record of destitute artistic geniuses. Even though this has been the fate for the majority of the world's artists, there is no reason why such should be the case today.
As I have pointed out in other posts, art is its own advertisement. My approach is to dispense with the advertising budget and treat each work of art as it's own advertisement. Think about it this way, if word of mouth advertising is the most effective, even more effective than billboards, then why would you buy a billboard when you could instead place several hundred paintings in several hundred homes? These would be year round conversation pieces, and given that most people now have Internet enabled handheld devices, potential buyers are literally always a click away. You may find it helpful to conceive of the walls of your buyer's home as indoor billboards. Moreover, given the nature of human relationships, it's a fair bet that the friends of your buyers will have similar tastes and would be inclined to obtain similar work for their own homes.
