Selling For Artists: 101

So you want to sell your art. I do not necessarily advocate it. If you can get by with a job and your art as a "hobby", that's great. The problem is that making art, for the serious artist, is a full-time job. Now, I do advocate that everyone create art in some form or another, and I do not think you have to be a professional artist to make good or even great art. Further, who says your art has to be good, especially if you are doing it for yourself and not to sell? Let's get past that need to justify ourselves as artists. Making art, in itself, can be a positive and enlightening activity. Moreover, creativity calls for all sorts of activities one might deem as art-making. We are all creative, or have the capacity to be. To not be creative is to suffer. Creativity is a human need. It might even be a need for all creatures, on some level. The creativity of a hamster, chugging ever onward on that little hamster wheel, might not seem creative to you or me, but to the hamster, and to God and His angels, the hamster might very well be expressing his creativity. 

The first paragraph was rather an aside, for this article is about selling art for the artist. So let us put the first paragraph and its concerns, the aside, aside, and let us deal with the business of selling art. I have to sell, and a lot of you have sell. So let's talk about it. We will move from the general to the specific, starting with motivation and moving towards various techniques available today. This article is sales 101, so we will not be talking about techniques just yet. 

Are you motivated? How motivated are you? What is your motivation for selling your art? In another article, I have spoken a lot about motivation. I suggest you read that article, "Right Motivation". The best motivation is selfless love. That article talks about how to achieve that motivation. Let us assume that your motivation for selling your art is that you want making art to be a full-time job. You do not want to do anything else but make your art. A lot of artists feel this way. I might ask you, is this feasible? There are lots of things we must do besides art. Go to the doctor and the dentist, drive, buy groceries, eat, spend time with your loved one (if you have one; I have cats, so I spend time with them.), bathe, and so on. In other words, it is impossible to do only art-making activities. Moreover, as I am suggesting, it is unhealthy to try to live that way, and, for those celebrities who are given such a life, where they need focus very little on anything else but art, such a life is not necessarily good for them. It may seem good for awhile. But it lacks balance. Not to mention that making art, though it may be a spiritual activity, is not something to worship in itself. There is a higher path. Only focusing on art to the exclusion of all else engenders selfishness. Never mind that that is what you love to do and that making art may be "following your bliss" as Joseph Campbell puts it. Bliss is achieved through selfless love. So if you follow your bliss to the exclusion of all else, ironically, you won't be following your bliss because you will be acting selfishly. 

There is nothing wrong with doing something else to make money and making art "on the side". But again, let us put that aside, and get on with the issue of the selling of the art you are making. Are you motivated to do this? Is your motivation purely selfish? If your motivation is purely selfish, you may or may not succeed. If your motivation has at least some selfless love to it, you are in a better place to succeed. If you have a desire to help others, whether it be family or friends or society, you are in a much better position to sell than if you are just thinking about yourself. 

Some artists struggle and do without and do that for as long as they need to - maybe indefinitely. I recommend this strategy only up to a point. Some of that strategy implies determination, which is good. Sometimes going without is what it takes: sacrifice. What to go without? One may go without money, a roof over your head, food, not to mention drugs. I hope you are not doing drugs, or smoking, or whatever... If you truly want to make a go of your business, quit your bad habits, especially expensive ones. (Even a bad habit that doesn't seem expensive may actually be very expensive. How you spend your time and what you give attention to matters.) One may go without a lover or spouse. One may go without many things in service to the art. But then, you have to ask yourself, how much are you being a burden on others. That is where I would suggest you draw the line. 

So, how, besides sacrificing whatever, do you make a living as an artist? How do you sell your art? This is the perennial question, which never gets answered fully because the tools and ways to accomplish that are always changing. This article is selling 101, which means I am not going to go into depth about tools, among which, the internet is, of course, the main tool today. If you are not appropriately geared to use the tools, it does not matter what tools are available to you. There is no magic formula for correct motivation and determination. If you don't have that, well, that's where to begin. No tool or technique is going to solve all your problems. There is no magic pill to take, no set of clicks that will sell your art for you. 

Artists, among the rest of us, a lot of them want the selling done for them. They don't want to take responsibility for sales. Now, in an ideal society, artists would be supported to make their art. They would make appropriate sacrifices, focus on creating their art, and society would help them do that. But that's not the world we live in today. Rarely does that ever happen. Like it or not, every artist is responsible for sales. Don't expect an agent or gallery or anyone, including your spouse, to do that for you. It just does not work that way. 

Now, you will find, especially when you take sales seriously, that others will sell for you, but they get on board because you are the captain, manning the ship, and the ship is going, or can go, in the right direction. If you have someone wanting to sell for you and your ship is not going in the right direction... Well, let's just say, if it's too good to be true, it probably is not true. Hold onto your wallet or purse. 

I don't care if your agent is Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler - Picasso's agent - you are still the main guy (or woman). Picasso happened to be a great showman and manipulator. He knew lots of other artists, he knew how to work and dominate a group - Picasso was a salesman. I do not suggest you have the ego Picasso had. I don't suggest you be the same kind of salesman. In the words of Robert Downey Junior, we all have our own kind of hustle. Do you think Paul McCartney, as rich and famous as he is, does not think about sales and promotion? Of course, he does. But you, who are not Picasso, you, who are not Robert Downey Junior, you, who are not Paul McCartney, you who are not rich and famous, how do you market your work? The answer here is that you do it your way, which may or may not coincide with the way others sell, promote and market. 

We must establish, then, that no one else but you is responsible for your work selling or not selling. You had better get that clear in your mind because if you do not, you will have very little control over what happens. You will have very little control over sales. No gallery, agent, internet tool or site etc. is going to solve your sales problem. You are the go to guy (or woman). When you look around and see all this artwork in your house or sculpture in your yard or whatever, and none of it has sold, you have to take responsibility. Now, even for those who do not care to sell their work, they also must take responsibility for it. They must take responsibility for valuing the work, especially if they make a lot of it. Very few of us can be Emily Dickinson, a recluse supported by her family of origin. Very few of us want to be Vincent Van Gogh, an insane artist supported largely by his brother. Despite the inner and outer turmoil of these two artists, they produced incredible art. I'm not suggesting you go that route. This article is about selling, not about not selling. 

If you cannot bear to live with complete lack of visibility, you will have to solve your sales problem, and it is a problem, unless it's not. If it is not, why would you be reading this article? Usually, lack of sales is a problem. Having a lot of sales can also be a problem, but that's a problem most of us want to have, unless you are Kurt Cobain or some such. Visibility is an issue for everyone, but some of us handle that better than others. Fearing visibility might be part of what keeps you from selling to your capacity, but let's not over analyze the situation. With proper motivation, you can figure out what is keeping you from doing whatever you need to do to get sales, psychologically speaking. 

So you take a look at all the art around you, know that you want to be selling rather than not selling. What do you do? First, take inventory. You should be doing that all the time. What are you making and why? You may not have the total answer to that. No one does. But you have an idea. Here you assess the value of what you do. If your art is not valuable to you, why should you think it would be valuable to anyone else? 

It may be that what you are doing, or what you are trying to do, is edgy and iconoclastic, or very forward thinking, that is to say, in a way, not very saleable - or, to put another way, not very bourgeois. An upper middle class citizen will not be particularly interested - unless... Unless that person is an art lover, and especially likes iconoclastic or forward thinking art. Now, before you go that route, let us consider that what is forward thinking, that is, new in the field of art, is now more difficult to come by than, say, the pre-modern art days of yore. A lot has been done already. So unless you come up with a new way of what has already been done, it has already been done, so what you are doing is not new. Even if you come up with a new way of what has already been done, still, that may not be new enough to please the ardent collector of avant garde art. Look at what all has already been done, and not only has it been done, it has been done exceedingly well: expressionism, abstract expressionism, cubism, minimalism and conceptual art, dadaist art... It's all been done. Coming up with something new is real hard. We all, as artists, feel the need to create something new and original, but it is not that easy. 

I must inject here that I am not saying do not copy styles of art. We all do that. We all must learn and grow and copy. That's part of the process of coming up with something new. If you don't understand what has been done already, you are less likely to come up with something that has not been done. That is to say, we stand on the shoulders of others. 

So when I say take stock of what you are doing, which is a constant process, I am saying, you have to be able to critique your own work. Is your work working? What are your criteria? Are you cranking out same after same after same? Or is all your work new and original? By that, I do not mean to be taken literally. I make frog sculptures. Every sculpture I make is a frog. But each frog is different. That is the key. Even when you repeat yourself, make the repetition a variation. Or, try this. If you are going to repeat yourself, try to hit that repetition dead on. Try doing exactly what you did before. You may find it's not that easy. In one way or another, you are always striving for excellence (a trait I do not believe Rush Limbaugh deserves to be considering his blowhard self to be doing, by the way). 

What are your criteria? What are your standards? Are you meeting them? What makes your work valuable? If you have no clue about this, and I mean no clue at all, you are not ready to sell your work. I admit that making art can be mysterious. Finding that je ne sais quoi, that special something, can be difficult to pinpoint. Nevertheless, you have to do it. Strangely enough, a lot of this gets down to very practical matters. What do you think Shakespeare was after when he wrote his plays? He wanted to keep his audience engaged. He wanted to write a great play that kept his audience, which could get rowdy, I am sure, engaged. Now, we consider Shakespeare to be the highest mark of professionalism and artistry when it comes to wordsmithing. What was his standard of excellence? Basically, can I keep my audience engaged? This standard is so true for us, regardless of whatever medium you are making your art in. Can I hold someone's attention? How do I do that? Different artists use different methods to do that. 

Here is one of my main criteria. It is similar to keeping an audience engaged. Would someone want to buy my sculpture? I want to make things that people would like to own and look at day after day. It is really as simple as that. Achieving this end, though, is not so simple. It involves matters not only of craftsmanship but also of artistry. It involves imagination, joy and depth. It involves many things. The task is not so simple, although the criteria is quite basic. Just as a writer wants to keep his reader turning pages, so do I want to keep my customers wanting more and more of what I create. 

You may not want to think as practically as this. You may use other criteria to reach similar ends. That is, you may have another way of achieving mastery and artistry in your work. You may not be thinking so much about pleasing an audience. Given that, you still do have to think of your audience. An artist always does. Otherwise he is telling a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. To quote Shakespeare's King Lear. I don't suggest you do that any more than I suggest you try to sound like Rush Limbaugh, who, according to Al Franken (remember him), is a big fat idiot. 

What are you doing and why is it valuable? Is what you are doing a contribution to society? How so? Why? These are difficult questions you must answer for yourself daily, and you must try to do it without lying to yourself, completely free of hypocrisy, denials and self-deception. Does this make sense? Being an artist is not an easy job. Being really good at anything that is worthwhile to be good at is not so easy. I don't suggest that everyone approach making art with this in mind, only those who want to make art all the time - and sell it. You have to be good at what you do, just as a plumber, lawyer, or whomever has to be good. But of course, not everyone is good at what they do. There is a lot of mediocrity in this world. Do you want to contribute to that? I hope not. 

Here also I am not suggesting ever pandering to your audience, appealing to their baser propensities and their vices. That serves no one. Art is not pornography, and, quite frankly, pornography is not art. This is not to say that art cannot be erotic or shocking or horrific or anything else that may not be considered wholesome or of a G-rating. Art may be low or high, but keep in mind that there is a big difference between art and just plain pandering. If all you are doing is pandering, I don't consider you an artist. You are a fake, a fraud, a phoney. Art contributes to the culture and to our well-being. Pandering does not. 

Yet, desperate for attention, you may find yourself wanting to indulge in pandering. You may find yourself wanting to do all sorts of things for attention. Just keep in mind that you are doing so under the rubric of being an artist. You are supposed to be a leader, culturally speaking, and perhaps speaking on other levels as well. Your work contributes to the culture, hopefully. It might also contribute in other ways. Who knows? You do, or might. 

Therefore, step one to selling the work is to continue to take inventory, assess value, and increase the value of your art. How you increase value is up to you and depends on your process and your criteria. Is feedback from others, from an audience, for example, useful? Duh. Yet we hear all the time that artists make art to please themselves. Don't fall for this. We are a people pleasing bunch. I don't care how much you say you want only to please yourself, you want praise. Admit it. Flattery will get you everywhere with an artist. If it won't... What makes you so special that you don't care what others think and feel? Of course, you do - not to be inhibited. But of course, you care. This comes down to empathy. One must have empathic awareness to be a good or great artist. 

Step two, I would suggest, is to develop enthusiasm for selling. You will have to get over any psychological hang-ups you have about selling. You must be able to get excited about selling your work. How does this play out in daily life? Just as one must learn and grow as an artist, one must educate oneself about selling. This education may happen through workshops and groups and books or in the field by taking action, but it is always happening. One must always be calibrating and tuning the sales engine. Sales is a relentlessly ongoing activity. What you do (or not do) will serve you (or not serve you) tomorrow. 

There is a saying. I think I read it in a Tom Hopkins book: selling is the highest and lowest paying job. Meaning, if you don't work very hard at it, you won't make any money. But if you work hard, you can make a lot of money. Guess what the majority of people in sales make: not a whole lot. One has to be an exceptional salesperson to make a lot of money. Translate that into your situation, my friend. If you want to make a lot of money, you will have to learn how to sell and be good at it. That is the hard truth. Welcome to reality. 

Let that sink in. If you want to have money, and you are a full-time artist, you will have to become good at selling. Are you good at selling? If you are not good at selling, you will have to become good at selling. It comes with the territory. Like I say, don't expect anyone else to do this task for you. It is up to you to become good at selling. You can do it. If you are such a creative and talented person, do you think you cannot sell? You can. You just have to want it and be willing to learn. 

Here's another tip: although criteria around your art may not be scientific and practical and basic, criteria around selling is absolute. Here it is: if you sell, you are doing well. If you do not sell, you are not doing well. If your art is not selling, you have to learn how to sell it and you have to be willing and excited to do that. Are you??? You have to get to a place where you are, like, I love selling my art. I could spend the entire day selling my art. I love it. 

No more should it ever feel like a chore to sell your art. Is it a chore to write an invoice so you can get paid? You should not feel that way. You should be, I love writing invoices to get paid. It's one of my most favorite things to do. 

Do you get the picture? In fact, it is best if you can become as excited about selling your art as you are about making it. That is the awful but liberating truth of the matter. 

I tell people, I have two ways I make money. I make frogs, and I sell frogs. That's it. If I am not making frogs, I am selling them. If I am not selling them, I'm making them. Production and sales work in tandem. Duh. 

If you like things a certain way, you must be able to get excited about engaging in the activities that make life that way. If you want to fuel your art dream, how else are you going to do that but by getting excited and happy about selling your art? Duh-uh-uh. The more excited and happy you are, the more likely you are to sell more and make more money. That's the way it goes. If you are not selling, change that reality. 

Now, you look at your art and you say, sell that crap? I have to sell THAT? How can I sell that? Give me something I can sell, like electricity or drugs - something a lot of people want and are willing to pay for. If that is the way you feel, you must change that situation. You must return to step one, assessing the work. Scratch your head and ask yourself what is not working in the work. Why does it not feel valuable to you? What has to change? What changes must you make? Are you willing to make those changes? You must be willing to step up to the plate and try to hit a home run, do the best you can, when it comes to creating something worthwhile. This, in itself, is not an easy task. It takes work. Are you willing to work for your money? Work does not become play unless you put in the hours and work. 

In sales, you must believe in what you are selling. If you don't believe in it, how are you going to muster up the enthusiasm to sell it? Maybe, if you are a master salesperson, you can sell snake oil. Is that what you want to do? Do you want to make snake oil? Snake oil, in this metaphor, is not good stuff. It's fake. It is not the real medicine. Or in your art, do you want to supply the medicine that can relieve such psychic illnesses as angst, anxiety, boredom, lethargy, depression and apathy? In selling, the product has to have value and you have to be able to convey that value to your customer. If you don't think your art is valuable, why would anyone else? 

Now, I don't go in for hyped up convincing yourself your art is valuable. I don't go in for puffed up ego and thinking your art is really great when it isn't or when it could be much better. Remember, always, you must continually assess the work and you must have criteria for that. Selling, contrary to popular opinion, is not about lying. Politics might be about lying. But sales is not, not when it is done right. 

Create and produce valuable work. Understand, on some level, the value. Learn how to sell and become happy and motivated by that activity. As motivated as you are to make your art, be at least half as motivated (hopefully more) to sell.  

I have taken you this far along, yet we have much farther to go. But this is sales 101. This is where one must start. It took me many years and much failure to discover these simple truths I am telling you here. Hopefully, you can get there sooner than I did. Start by taking inventory and assessing the work continually, day after day. Then begin to take selling seriously. Begin to develop enthusiasm and love for selling. That's it. If you don't have these two steps down, if you don't have some competency in these areas, there is no need to go any further. This is the starting point.