How to sell your art (pt4)

Interview with a man in the business

I spoke with Andy Harper, from WHoArtNow, producers of bespoke modern art for some tips and advice:-

What would you advise someone to do if they were looking to promote and sell their art?

Well first thing to do is get a website to showcase your art, a CV of what you can do. I get 20 emails a week from artists and designers who are looking to do business and it amazes me some of them don't have a web page of sorts. If there's a website, I'll always have a look, you never know what you might be missing out on!

Does it matter if its not a website but a portfolio site?

No it doesn't have to be your own website. I'm an active member on DeviantART and FlickR so even if we don't do business, you might find me becoming your friend so I can keep track of your art. I might be a businessman, but my love is still for the art.

Can anyone sell their artwork?

In theory yes, I do think you need to get some feedback off people before you start approaching companies. Plus, look at your work from the point of view of business, is it commercial enough? I see a lot of very good art, but only about 5% of it would be commercially viable enough for our site. Be positive about your work, but accept criticism well. The companies you'd be looking at contacting are busy places, and sometimes emails can slip through the cracks, so follow up with them by phone. Don't over do it though, leave it a week first.

Any other tips?

Yeah, agencies can be brilliant. I worked for Saatchi and Saatchi in London a few years ago and remember seeing these massive files of people's art. They'd be sent in on the hope of getting work, and if they liked your style, they'd keep a record of you. When they got new contracts they'd flick through the files to see if anyone fitted certain criteria and then they'd give them a call.

Conclusion

Art is everywhere these days. Art which once would have been refereed to as non-commercial is now becoming over commercial. Working in the art industry is great, finding new and unheard of artists gives me such a buzz. I love the strange and bizarre art, something which will blow my mind is always good. The thing is, without all the people out there creating this art, marketing this art, I would never find any of it.

Treat your art and your talent as your product. In this world of the Internet, everything is a business, so treat it like one. Never take rejection personally. Have faith, and some confidence. Be patient. The more you put into your art and marketing your art, the more you will get out of it. Most importantly though, love you art, and have fun with your art.

How To Sell Your Art (pt2)

On-line E-Tailers

Being an on-line E-tailer specialising in canvas art, we are regularly contacted by artists and designers interested in selling their art and images. Some are interested in selling one off pictures,whilst others are interested in selling the image rights of their art for re-production purposes. Depending on a deal you can make with an on-line E-tailer, this second option is often the most lucrative.

When approaching a company, act professional. Either email or call them to enquire weather they accept outside artwork. If you intend on emailing them, introduce yourself including a short bio about you and your art. Most say you should add in any training you have in art, but personally I don't look for training, some of the best artists I've met have none or little, there just naturally gifted or hard working! Always include a link to your on-line portfolio or website so the company can see your artwork, if they respond you can at least hope for some compliments or constructive criticism. Under no circumstances must you mention money in the original contact and if your art may be offensive in any way (e.g. nudes or political motivated art) mention this in the email before the link to your site. Some companies won't sell certain so as to not offend potential customers.

So what kind of deal might you expect to get? It all depends on the company involved, and the profit margins on the products and images. Some will offer to buy images out right for a fixed fee (e.g. £20 or $40) and they are then free to sell your image as many times as they can. You will of course not get paid until the first image has sold. The other option is percentage or fixed rate per canvas sold. For example, if you get a deal where you get £10 ($20) for the image up front, then a small amount per image sold you stand to make a lot more money. Some companies will offer a bonus payment or increased percentage if your art sells a set number of images. For example, sell 10 and get another £10 ($20). This is only an example and should not be taken as gospel, if a company decides to sell your artwork they'll come up with the payment and you'll need to agree with it. Don't set your sites too high as a beginner, if the company is selling canvas prints for £100 ($200) don't expect to be taking a massive percentage of this, they have a lot of overheads and there doing as much as they can to sell your work.

Selling on-line through an E-tailer has its advantages. Help improve your chances of selling your images by marketing your images on the E-tailers site. Through your own site, forums, communities, social book marking sites and even emails you can increase traffic and hopefully sales of your images. This will mean you receive more money, and so does the company selling your artwork. This then might result in an increase in the cut you receive from each sale. Work hard at marketing your artwork and you'll see more money coming in.The E-tailer should also be marketing their whole site and with new artists comes new ways for them to market their site. With both parties marketing the images you should both see a nice return.

Like real world galleries, have a look through the sites you intend on approaching before you approach them to see if they sell similar styles to your own or have a wide range of art without your 'niche' currently available.

Driving on-line traffic to your Art

Marketing websites is big business at the moment but its not as hard as you may think. Its all about getting the maximum possible viewers for the smallest outlay. After setting up an on-line portfolio you want to start doing some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to promote yourself. This will give Google (the largest search engine on the Internet) a better chance to see you, and see how relevant your images is to specific searches. The more relevant it thinks you are, the higher you will be placed in the search results.

The best places to start are social bookmarking

sites (Digg, Mixx and Stumble Upon all have an Image Upload) and you can always Stumble on your own site. Getting on these sites has a 2 fold effect, firstly it can help get some traffic to your site and secondly it helps you get some of the crucial back-links to your URL. Another great tip for anyone with images Is to make sure they are correctly tagged up (Alt tags - height and width description tag) This helps Google know what the

image is and helps you get a higher placing on Google images which is a potential gold mine.

If you have a unique style of process to your artwork, write some articles on it. The best thing about art is its much easier to create a fully interactive web 2.0 web site. This again helps with your SEO as Google is open to giving higher ranks in its search engine to sites which give a user interaction. Make some videos of you painting in your style and upload them to You-Tube. Add images, lots and lots (of correctly Alt tagged) images. Search around for some open source interactive flash add-on's so you can let your views get into your site, hopefully come back and most importantly, buy your work!

How To Sell Your Art (pt1)

Introduction

For many years the only way to successfully sell your artwork was in art galleries, however with the rise in the Internet there are now numerous ways to sell your art. Deciding which of these techniques should be the first thing you do. You can of course do both, however your more likely to see faster sales on-line as many art galleries book their shows a year in advance and its hard to get an show if your unknown. There are many different ways to sell your artwork on-line. There are many sites set up for you to sell your artwork, you could set your own site up or you could sell your canvas on one of the auction sites.

Before you start this process, ask yourself the type of person you want to buy your artwork. Are you after an art connoisseur (usually a lot of money for a 1 off piece of art) or are you more interested in selling to the average person (less money, but you might sell a lot of the same image and make more money) ? If you want to sell the one off art to the connoisseur, look to a real world art gallery for that. If your more interested in selling as many copies of your art to the average person, look to get on-line.

You need to realise however, that selling on-line is not as easy as putting your art up and leaving it that and it will take some time to get your first sale. If you don't mind working hard at it, the rewards will be worth it.

A vital piece of information that you should live by is watermark your work. This will limit the chances of someone stealing your artwork, publishing it on another site and claiming the credit for themselves. Worse still, some will steal your art to make money off it themselves. DeviantART allows you add a Creative Commons License which adds a DeviantART watermark with your DeviantART URL. This is a simple yet effective way to watermark, yet why not make your own? image.

Art Galleries

Go to your nearest city or town and you'll see the amount of art galleries there are about. Art Galleries are the holy grail to an artist. Being able to watch people admire your work and give you instant feedback is amazing. Sadly only a small number of artists these days manage to exhibit in an Art Gallery.

So how do you go about getting exhibited in a gallery? Start with some research, find local galleries that work with your style and topic. It doesn't matter how amazing your art is, if your trying to sell stencil canvas art to a gallery that specialises in sculptures, your going to get a no straight away.

Its a good idea to go into the gallery before contacting them.Have a general chat with a member of staff about some of the art, get a feel for the gallery and staff. You need to be able to trust the gallery, and get on with them. If you get an appointment, be well prepared and dress smart. Always take a sample of your

work. If you produce large Canvas Prints, make some digital re-productions, as long as they are good quality and high resolution copies kept neat and tidy in a portfolio. Aim for a minimum of A2.

If you get an exhibition and some or all of your artwork sells, the gallery will take their commission. This varies from gallery to gallery, but I've organised and visited galleries and exhibitions in galleries taking as little as 20% going all the way up to 60%. this might seem like a lot, but small inner city galleries have huge overheads and can often only fit small numbers of images on the walls. Remember, there a business, not a charity so they are trying to make money.

The rest of this little 'How To' will follow, in three more parts so watch this space or feel free to subscribe - you can now even have email subscribtion to our News.