How You Can Start An Art Business Today
Three key ingredients will build a long-term successful art business:
- Planning
- Marketing
- Creating
Whether you are thinking about starting an art career or wish to earn enough money to support your crafting hobby, the internet has made it possible for creative people to accomplish their goals.
Many successful artists have made an art career online, so can you if you are willing to put in the hard work.
Artists who have created a full-time career selling art online know that there is more to operating a business than just making art and posting an image on Facebook and Instagram. Developing a business plan and working on web design, social media marketing, blogging, and creating newsletters has helped them grow their small business globally.
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Start An Art Business In 9 Steps
There are 9 steps you will want to focus on if you art interested in selling your art online or promoting your local craft events.
The first step is to create an online art gallery where people can view and read about the art you create, purchase your original art and giclee prints.
Designing a professional online art gallery is easy and affordable with WordPress and hosting services like BlueHost.
Here is a video that shows you how easy it is to launch an artist WordPress website.
There are other options available for building an online portfolio besides building a WordPress site.
Visit 16 Best Artist Website Builders to learn more about the other options available.
Uploading your products on an e-commerce platform is the easy part. The challenge is to drive people to your listings.
Building a long-term successful art business takes a great deal of energy. There will be extended hours and emotional ups and downs. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. If you are seeking instant gratification, starting an art business might not be in your best interest.
However, if you are willing to learn about art marketing, and work hard, you can achieve your goals.
Do you have business goals, or are you just thinking about selling art online?
If you are interested in starting a small business, take a few minutes to write down what you would like to accomplish.
Your goals will be the blueprint of your business plan.
To help write your art business goals, download How To Write Goals You Can Achieve Workbook today.
“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” ~ Sr. Tomas Watson
Now that you have an online presence, let’s talk about how to start an art business from home.
Here are 7 areas you will want to focus on to sell your art:
- Create Art
- Find Your Niche
- Learn Who Your Target Audience Is
- Create A Mission Statement
- Learn Art Business Logistics
- Write art business goals
- Design An Art Marketing Plan
Starting An Art Business – Get In The Studio
Before starting a business, you will need a product or service to sell.
It is essential to have enough art prepared before you start promoting your art business online.
How paintings do you need before starting a business online?
There is no magic number to how many different paintings, pastel paintings, or drawings you need to have in stalk before opening an online art gallery. However, the more listings you have available, the more people you can reach.
Prints, greeting cards and merchandise is a great way to supplement your income and increase the number of products you have on hand.
One painting could provide you with four or more products to sell by offering reproductions of the original.
While you are promoting and selling your artwork, you want to schedule studio time to create new artwork.
It is necessary to produce art even when you feel less than creative.
You can not sell something that does not exist.
Try to find different ways to keep yourself motivated even during tough times.
Tips to help you stay motivated:
- Have your goals, mission statement, and vision statement where you can see them every day.
- Read art blogs
- Look at other art
- Force yourself to create even when you feel less than creative
- Join art challenges
- Join Facebook artist groups
- Become an art collector
- Take local art classes or online art classes
- Read how to paint or how to draw books and eBooks
- Subscribe to art magazines
Find Your Niche
Once you have an inventory of products uploaded on your e-commerce website, you will want to start focusing on driving potential collectors to your listings.
Online sales are increasing every year, which means more artists are trying to sell their work online. The amount of competition is growing every day.
Developing an art marketing plan that separates your art business from all other artists is the only way to build a following.
How can you separate yourself from other artists who paint or draw similar subjects?
The easiest way to get started is to focus on your niche.
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features to satisfy specific market needs, the price range, production quality, and the demographics intended to target. It is also a small market segment. (Source: Wikipedia)
The people who have a passion for your artistic style are known as your target audience.
For example, if you paint “horses,” your niche would be “horses.”
Promoting to people who have an interest in horses will significantly increase the chance of you landing a sale.
Take a few minutes to think about what you would like to be painting or drawing for the next five or ten years.
Visit art that sells for more information about what style of art sells best for some inspiration.
More related articles about niche marketing:
- Niche Marketing Strategy For Artists
- How To Position Yourself As A Thought Leader In Your Niche
- Separate Yourself With Niche Marketing
- How To Monitor Your Niche – Online Art Marketing
Learn Who Your Target Audience Is
Selling original paintings is a numbers game. Whether you are selling paintings at local art fairs or online, the chances of you landing a sale increases when more people see your work.
Selling paintings online is much different than selling at local art fairs. People visit fairs to discover new handmade items and they tend to visit every booth at the events.
People searching for original art online will not visit every artist’s website. They might notice new paintings on social media, Pinterest, or in the search results. Your job is to find a way to get your creations in front of people who have a passion for what you create. This is much more difficult than setting up a booth at a local art fair.
The easiest way to get started is to learn who your target audience is.
The information you collect will help you to create content that will drive them to your website.
What you should know about your target audience:
- Age
- Gender
- Where they reside
- Occupation
- Household income
- Their interests
- Where they hang out online
The data you collect will help you write blog posts and social media posts they want to read.
loyal art collectors.
Here are some articles to help you learn more about your target audience:
- Sell More Art By Learning Who Your Audience Is
- How To Find Your Target Audience
- What Is Your Target Audience Searching For
Create A Mission Statement
A mission statement is a sentence describing a company’s function, markets, and competitive advantages, a short written statement of your business goals and philosophies. A mission statement defines what an organization is, why it exists, its reason for being. (Source: Entrepreneur)
Why is it important for a fine arts business to have a mission statement?
An artist’s mission statement will help you stay focused on what is essential for your business.
There will be times when you will start to derail and lose focus on your vision as your business grows. The chance of making bad business decisions will increase when you lose focus on your goals and philosophies.
Not only is a mission statement beneficial for your small business. It also explains to potential buyers what you stand for and what they can expect when they conduct business with you.
Download the Artist Statement Workbook to help you write the perfect artist statement.
Art Business Logistics
You might be asking yourself, do I need a business license to sell my artwork?
Every state has different laws to pertain to small businesses.
The best business advice we can give you is to do some research to decide if you want to classify your business as a sole proprietor or a different business structure that will better fit your business.
Visit the IRS, your local Clerk of Court’s website, and your local town hall to see what steps you will have to take to make your business legal.
Business Name
Deciding on a business name is a challenge for some artists. The name you decide on should reflect your mission statement, and it should be easy for people to remember.
Visit, How To Write Perfect Art Business Names if you are having difficulty deciding a name.
Write Art Business Goals
It is impossible to write an effective business plan if you do not know what your objectives are.
- Why are you starting a small business?
- What products or services will you be providing?
- Are you interested in having a full-time artist career?
Business goals create a business plan. Write down exactly what you would like to achieve and where you would like to be in the next five years, then develop strategies to help you get to where you would like to be.
Related Resource: How To Write Goals You Can Achieve Workbook
Design An Art Marketing Plan
You are here because you are trying to learn how to start a business in art.
Every business starts with goals and a marketing plan.
A marketing plan outlines advertising and marketing strategies.
- What strategies are you going to implement to reach your goals?
- How much revenue do you need to generate?
- Are you going to sell your art at craft shows, in galleries, or online?
- How mediums are you going to use to build brand awareness?
- How much time can you devote to blogging and posting on social media networks?
Once you know how much time you can devote to blogging, social media, writing newsletters, maintaining your artist website, and creating art, you can start to block off times during the week to get the job done.
Keep in mind that you are the CEO of your business. There will be nobody to tell you what needs to get done.
You are in charge, and you will have to keep yourself motivated and organized to grow your art business.
If you have a difficult time with time management download, Get More Done In Lees Time – Part Time Artist.
For more information about writing an art marketing plan visit,How to Write an Artist Marketing Plan That Works
Pricing Strategy
Pricing art is one of the most challenging tasks artists face.
Figuring out how to make a profit can be challenging, but if you plan on starting an art business, your goal will be to make a profit.
Before You Can Make A Profit
Before you can start to price your art, you will need to know the business costs.
Make a list of all the costs associated with operating your art business, including paying your salary.
Example of art business expenses:
- Art supplies
- Studio costs including water, electricity, and heat
- Marketing supplies including internet, smartphone, and advertisement
- Craft show fees
- Shipping supplies
- Shipping fees
- Hourly wage
To learn how to price your art for a profit, download Art Pricing Guide – How To Price Art To Sell today.
Create An Online Presence
Selling art online is easier than you might think.
- All you need is a product or service that people want.
- A way to let people know the product or service is available for sale and a place where they can purchase the product.
It is really that simple.
We have even better news to share with you. It is easier to build brand awareness now than ever before.
You have the internet at your fingertips.
You have the potential to reach over 4 billion active internet users around the world.
Develop a strategy to build an online presence and start showcasing your art to your target audience.
A notable example of two artists who built a successful online presence would be Melanie and Nicholas Beall.
I stumbled on Melanie and Nicholas’s website by simply doing a search on Google for “original horse oil paintings.”
Ranking number one in the search results was Melanie and Nicholas Beall’s artist website Melanie & Nicholas Horse Paintings by Commission.
Melanie and Nicholas’s site does not rank first in Google’s search results by accident.
They have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy on their website and blog.
The work they have done has helped them to outrank 1,300,000 results.
There are a couple of points I would like to mention about their site.
Melanie and Nicholas have done a wonderful job making their site easy to navigate and find detailed information about their services and procedures.
The other point I would like to highlight is their daily artist blog.
They understand the importance of creating content that will attract their target audience.
Ranking number one in Google’s search is proof that they have become masters at building an online presence.
Related Post: 4 Ways to Expand Your Online Presence – Art Marketing
Create An Editorial Calendar
If you have done any research concerning marketing, you have probably heard the phrase “content marketing.”
Joe Pulizzi, the founder of CMI, is a master of content marketing.
Joe describes content marketing as:
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Take the time to learn everything you can about content marketing.
Artists like Melanie and Nicholas have become successful because of their willingness to learn about content marketing.
You can become as successful as they are as long as you are willing to put in the time and effort.
Creating an editorial calendar will help to keep you focused on your mission.
The calendar will make it easy to review what you have already published and what you should be writing in the future.
To learn how to create an editorial calendar visit,How to Write an Editorial Calendar That Will Generate Traffic.
Keyword Research
Now that you have your editorial calendar, you will want to fill the calendar with blog post ideas that will drive organic traffic to your artist’s website.
Organic traffic is free traffic generated from search engines.
When a person is searching for something online, they go to Google or Bink and type in a couple of words in the search bar.
The words that they type in the search bar are known as keywords.
Google or Bing will recommend the best content that relates to the query typed in the search bar.
The person will then scan through the results and click on the link that looks like it will provide them with the information they were searching for.
As a content creator, your job is to write content that your target audience is searching for in the search results.
The first step is to learn what your target audience is interested in learning about your art business.
The next step is to discover what keywords your target audience is using to search for that content.
Take Care Of Your Customers
By now, you know:
- What your business goals are
- What platform you will use for your online gallery
- How to price your artwork
- All of the logistics of doing business
- How to create content that drives traffic to your site
Once your site starts generating traffic, you will want to develop strategies to keep them coming back.
The easiest way to keep your visitors coming back to your site is to write high-quality content.
The next step is to make sure that every post you write has a call-to-action.
What is a call-to-action?
A call-to-action tells your audience what to do after they have finished reading your post.
Your call-to-action might be to visit your art gallery, visit another post, or signup for your newsletter.
Your objective is to keep your visitor on your site to learn more about you as an artist and become familiar with your artwork.
For more information about the call-to-action, visit:
Call-To-Action Strategy That Generates Sales
Providing valuable content and providing a clear call-to-action is one way you can give excellent online customer service.
Another way you can provide excellent customer service is by having a contact page.
A contact page is a page that provides a way for a visitor to contact you if they have any questions about your artwork.
For more information about contact pages, visit, Should Art Blogs Have Contact Forms?
Another strategy that works well is to have a FAQ page that answers the frequently asked questions about your art business.
Give the best customer service that you can. Your business and reputation depend on them.
Related Post: How to Get Customers to Refer Your Art
Final Thoughts On How To Start An Art Business Online
Successful art businesses start with art business plans.
It has been said that 50 percent of small businesses fail within the first 2 years.
The most common reason so many businesses failed was that they didn’t have a plan.
Starting a business as an artist has never been easier.
Artists no longer have to have someone represent them like an agent or art gallery.
All of the tools and resources are at your fingertips.
Now that you know how to start an art business online is time to take action and get started.
Online Art Business Overview:
- Create great art people will want to purchase
- Learn who your target audience is
- Study your competition
- Develop an art marketing plan
- Review and revise your business plan
- Search for new opportunities
- Make a presence online by blogging regularly, post frequently on social media, and pin your content on Pinterest
Final Thoughts On How To Start An Art Business Online
Successful art businesses start with art business plans.
It has been said that 50 percent of small businesses fail within the first 2 years.
The most common reason so many businesses failed was that they didn’t have a plan.
Starting a business as an artist has never been easier.
Artists no longer have to have someone represent them like an agent or art gallery.
All of the tools and resources are at your fingertips.
Now that you know how to start an art business online is time to take action and get started.
Online Art Business Overview:
- Create great art people will want to purchase
- Learn who your target audience is
- Study your competition
- Develop an art marketing plan
- Review and revise your business plan
- Search for new opportunities
- Make a presence online by blogging regularly, frequently posting on social media, and pinching your content on Pinterest.
For more information about art marketing, visit Art Business – Art Marketing Resource.
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