This last week I received an email from a visitor at Beautiful Artist Websites. We get many emails asking questions about marketing and selling art online and offline, but this particular message got my attention. Let me quote:

Hello. I am from a little town in Wyoming and I am wanting to ask a pretty simple question, Well my wife is a painter/sculptor. She is the best I have seen in my eyes but not only mine, my family, her family all our friends – and she has won art shows throughout Wyoming. She moved to California and tried the art program there but she had no luck. I am contacting all art areas to ask how I can get her work out there to be seen/ sold/ and admired by a massive verity. I know she has a chance at success but she has not taken the steps. If there is a chance you can e-mail me back to let me know I would be so thankful.

A couple of things struck me about this message. Firstly the love that this man has for his wife and her talent – this kind of moral support from friends and family is just priceless as one navigates the often challenging path to commercial success as a professional artist. In most cases it is a marathon run and your warm circle of friends cheer-leading you on may be the one thing that pushes you over the finish line.

The second thing that got my attention was how well this email describes the real challenges of how to get started. There is SO much advice around in many great books, blogs, forums, etc, but if you’re really starting out with art marketing what do you do first?

When I answered this email I pointed the gentleman to a number of articles on our site, in particular a collection of our best art marketing articles from 2009 which covers some important bases. But several days later his email was really bothering me because I didn’t feel I had addressed the core question.

Here’s what I honestly think – there is enough information online today for anyone to research any art marketing question that they could possibly think of between now and the year 5,000. A lack of information isn’t the challenge. What is typically lacking is an understanding of the overall process or a system to implement it. But there is something way more fundamental that this:

To sell art you need a market to sell to. To some extent there is an existing art market that can be tapped by emerging artists – but probably the bigger piece is the art market that you create yourself. And how do you do that?

A few years back while driving from New York to Los Angeles I listened to a truly fabulous audio book called “The Ultimate Anti Career Guide” by Rick Jarow. I won’t digress into its message here except to say that this book is a great inspiration with some very practical tools to help you find your life’s work. The reason I bring it up is because Rick mentioned something very powerful which hit me like a bolt of lightning. Here is what he said:

Another name for a Community is a Market

Sounds simple right? But think about the power of this statement. What Rick was referring to was that when you build a community around being yourself and doing the work that inspires you, that community can become the market that finances and fuels your ongoing career growth – a true symbiotic relationship in its most positive sense.

So, in  practical sense what does this mean for you, the artist seeking artistic and commercial success? It means to take the regular steps to nurture and build a community around the art that you create. One way I really encourage artists to get started with this is to have monthly open studios. One of my favorite articles on this subject is a 3-part series that I wrote myself called “How to Stage A Successful Artist Open Studio“. Encourage friends to come along – even if they’re not excited about art. Ask them to bring friends and send out postcards and written invitations regularly to galleries and other arts professionals.

What you’re doing is watering the little plant which is your art community and f you do this consistently every month it will grow into a big tree and eventually it may become a mighty oak. This is your art community AND your art market. When you have this foundation in place, all the other marketing steps and tools, and systems fall into place because you’re applying them to your known and trusted market.

I’m big on building strong foundations for success because to reach your objective may take every ounce of inspiration and energy you can muster for a long time. If you build those foundations strongly you’ll make life much easier for yourself in the future – and have a more meaningful and fun time of it. Your art community is a BIG foundation!

The Lovers (Section) ~ Paul Gauguin 1902

In Part 1 we explained why Search Engines are important for artists and the role they play in the “Attraction phase” of your online art marketing. In this post we’ll look more closely at strategies to be successful with search engines.

Most artist’s websites (most websites in general in fact) rank poorly in search engine results. If your website doesn’t show up on the first page you’re missing opportunities. If it’s not on the second page you’re basically wasting your time with search engines.

So, how do you rank highly? Here’s what we’ve learned in our 6 years of designing artist websites:

The Major Search Engine Traffic Success Elements

Here are the three major keys to ranking highly in search engine results:

Optimized Website Structure: Your website must be built and structured such that search engine robots can easily find and index the information on the site. Basically it must be easy to read and understand and should where possible avoid elements that are invisible to search engines. Simple also works much better for human visitors – the worst artist websites from a human perspective are almost always the ones which are overly complex or clever rather than simple and visual!

Optimized Keyword Selection: Your website must include the appropriate words and phrases to describe you and your style of art. These “keywords” and “Keyword phrases” need to be placed in the most powerful sections of your site. In addition, it’s important to ensure that the keywords you use to describe your art are the same as those being used by people searching for your style of art in search engines. There is no point in optimizing your website for terms that no one is searching on – that is like advertising beef in a town of vegetarians!

While we are on this keyword topic it is relevant and important to mention niches. At the core of SEO and of any serious marketing effort lies the concept of your niche. It is very difficult to be commercially successful as an artist if you simply describe yourself as an “Artist”. On the other hand, if you can tightly define exactly what sort of artist you are and the style of work you create it will help you significantly. It helps because your message stands out to buyers who have an interest in your style of work. The saying, “Get rich in a niche” is just as true for art as it is for any other business and you need to embrace it and use it in all your art marketing activities. Being able to describe your niche is central to success with choosing SEO keywords.

Optimized PageRank: Search engines must decide that your website has a high “Relevance” to the search term. To a large extent this is a measure of the quantity and quality of incoming links (from other websites) to your website. Just as in human social situations our importance is judged by the number of our friends and their degree of social power, so too is your website ranked by the company it keeps!

These three factors  work together to create a “sweet spot” of maximum search engine rankings. Think of it as a recipe for a cake with 3 ingredients. If you have all three in place and bake at the right temperature for a sufficient time you can be fairly confident of a superb afternoon tea! If on the other hand you miss an ingredient the cake may not rise or it maybe it will taste really bad – not so good for business.

What we have noticed with SEO is that various websites will come and go from the page 1 search engine results. The sites that stay there invariably have all three foundations solidly in place so it really is worthwhile to do it properly if you want consistent results.

Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? The truth is that it is quite simple, but it does take commitment on the part of the artist to do the research work and get the website optimization done. But then commitment and effort are what separates commercially successful artists from the rest.

If you are one of those seriously committed to success you have some options with how to implement SEO. You can research your own plan and spend thousands of dollars of your valuable studio time and you might be on the right path. You could also consider our Artist SEO Success System, a 21 day program which takes the guess-work out of exactly what to do and can get you solidly on the path to search engine ranking success. At $97 it really is unbelievably good value and we have a bunch of very happy artist customers who say so. Here are just a couple:

Daniel – Thank-you for your Artist SEO guide and workbook. I have spent a small fortune learning SEO from various experts. Your book does an excellent job of distilling the most important parts down to step by step actionable tasks. Wish I had found you first, it would have saved me thousands. Awesome value. Tim ONeill, Nebraska

As an creator of educational materials and online courses (in my day job, I have a Masters in Instructional Design) I am totally impressed with the guide and workbook. It is so well written and thought out and CLEAR! I can tell you guys did a ton of work… Bravo! …. Kristen Hoard, California

Thanks for taking the time to read and absorb this series on SEO. There is never enough great art visible in the world and I hope that you will make use of some of these concepts to improve your marketing and get your art out there where it belongs – seen and sold!

Lovers ~ Pablo Picasso

If you’ve been reading recent art marketing articles regularly over the last year you may have noticed an occasional minor clash of ideas on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Artists. I confess to being one of the culprits in these sparring matches!

My experience from working with clients at Beautiful Artist Websites is that SEO IS very important for artists – just as it is similarly important for any modern business wanting to increase its exposure to potential buyers. It is also a topic that is not well understood by artists and this is why I took several months out of my schedule to write The Artist SEO Success System.

In this post I’ll explain why SEO is important for artists and precisely where it delivers its true value. In Part 2, I’ll give you a brief introduction to the three foundations of SEO so that you can get started on optimizing your own artist website.

So why is SEO so important for artists?

First of all, lets demolish a myth or two.

Many artists say that SEO is a waste of time because Word-of-Mouth marketing is more powerful. Let me say that from my experience nothing else compares with word-of-mouth – a referral from a happy client or partner is undoubtedly the “gold standard” in marketing. It comes with an instant level of trust and positions you much closer to closing a sale.

But if that is the case why do other businesses engage in so much extra marketing and advertising activity? Why would they do that if word-of-mouth is so powerful?

The answer is because they want to grow their business as much as possible (as should you) and they recognize that if they only use word-of-mouth they are missing many potential clients. Do you want to miss out on clients?

Search Engine Marketing is part of what we call the “marketing attraction phase”. This is where you attract potential clients who generally don’t know about you at all. They don’t know your name – they only know that they are looking for art of a certain style. They could be individuals or they could be art dealers or art licensing reps. The point is – they want what you have but they aren’t connected to anyone who knows you so they will never hear about you through word-of-mouth.

The “attraction phase” can include a number of different marketing methods including SEO, Social Networking, Snail Mail marketing to galleries and dealers, networking with local arts organizations, galleries, etc. The optimum mix depends on your art and personality.

You should also be clear that the main goal of any attraction-phase marketing technique, including SEO, is not to create an instant sale. This is where artists often get confused and disappointed. Instant sales do happen, especially in the lower price-points – but what you really want is to lead them into the next phases of your art marketing process where you build relationships and create a customer for life. That is what you should be aiming for!

Just for your reference, the phases of our art marketing model are:

1. The Attraction Phase
2. The WOW Phase
3. The Relationship-building Phase
4. The Sales-Close Phase

You can read more about these phases in our free report, “7 Steps To Sell Art Online“.

But lets get back to SEO and some hypothetical examples of how it might help an artist commercially:

Gillian is an oil painter who lives in Northern New Mexico and paints landscapes, many of which are focused close to the town of Abiquiu. (Note: If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit this town you should mark it on your list of places to go – it is right near Ghost Ranch and Georgia O’keeffe’s desert home – just gorgeous landscape!)

Gillian has a website which she has optimized for search engines. During that process she discovered that many people google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” and so she optimized her artist website to rank highly for those phrases.

Gillian has opened the door to several big potential opportunities:

- A gallery director scouting for new work of Gillian’s style and subject matter may very likely google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” as part of their search strategy. When Gillian’s website ranks on Page 1, it means they can find her and look at her work. If Gillian’s work is great and her website does its job she may get a call from the gallery director. This is priceless attraction-marketing for free!

- Similarly, an art licensing rep may be looking for work similar to Gillian’s for a new line of home decorations at Target Stores. Search engines would be part of their strategy.

- Finally, tourists who have visited the area and fallen in love with it often get home and realize that they really want a piece of art to remind them of their experience at Ghost Ranch. What do you think might be one strategy they might use? Search engines – of course!

Now, as I mentioned above, search engines are just one of several attraction-phase marketing techniques you can use – but they are very powerful. So why would you want to miss out on the potential business with a website that doesn’t rank highly for the phrases applicable to your work that are heavily searched? Why would you risk missing out on a serious percentage of your potential new visitors?

You wouldn’t right? That would be plain crazy! But that is exactly what MOST artists are doing with their websites! And the most insane part of this is that SEO is not really that difficult to master, IF you know what to do.

Today I’ve covered WHY search engines are an important marketing tool for artists and WHERE they deliver they strength. In Part 2 we’ll discuss the 3 foundations of Search Engine Optimization to get you started.

If you’re serious about more success with your website you can also check out our “Artist SEO Success System” – a Complete 21 day program to comprehensively SEO your artist website. Created exclusively for artists it lays out a complete plan and can save you $thousands in lost time.

Editors Note: This article (written by us) was first published in Fine Art Views in October 2010.

Think you’ve tried everything with your artist website and still getting mediocre results? AKA: few visitors, no emails, no sales? That’s not good and it’s not necessary!

One possible and highly likely reason for your lack of success is that you’re using isolated marketing methods that don’t generate enough momentum to lead to results that sell art online. Success in any modern business requires a comprehensive multi-faceted marketing approach and art is no exception to this rule.

To learn how to apply a marketing system to your website you could go study small business marketing for a year in Grad School. Interesting, expensive, and time consuming! You could also get started with 7 Steps To Sell Art Online, a free 20-page primer from Espresso Artist Websites.

In just 20 minutes you’ll understand the framework you need to put in place and follow to be successful with your artist website.

Chapter titles from 7 Steps To Sell Art Online

• The 4-Stage Online Art Marketing Model
• How To Attract NEW Visitors To Your Artist Website
• How To Help Google Sell Your Art
• Social Networking Your Way To Art Career Success
• The Importance Of WOW!
• Repetition Rules Art Relationship Building
• Build Community With A Beautiful Blog

We know that most artists love to work on their own marketing so here is your opportunity to grab some success with this great free report from Espresso Artist Websites.

The 80/20 Rule is an old mathematical formula created by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. At the time, Pareto stated this rule was based on the principal that 20% of the population owned 80% of the wealth. In later years this rule has been used in many different ways and you have probably heard a few of them too, such as: 20% of the salespeople produce 80% of a company’s sales. Or 20% of the employees produce 80% of the companies’ profits. Another is that 20% of the population pays 80% of the countries’ income taxes!

My rule is that artists should be spending 20% of their time creating and 80% of their time marketing and administering to their art business in order to be a successful artist.

Today, for most artists it is the other way around. Unfortunately most artists will spend 80% of their time creating and only 20% of their time administering, marketing and promoting. How can any artist expect to be successful with their art business if no one knows about or is exposed to their work? It is a dilemma that all artists must face, in that they are doing what they love, which is producing, rather than being in the business of selling art.

Andy Warhol was a prolific and successful American artist. He was also a master marketer, promoter and art business person. We can all learn and follow his art business operating philosophy. There are two Andy Warhol quotes that puts the whole Art vs. Business dilemma into perspective:

“Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist”

His other quote is:

“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”.

Now, I think we should take these quotes seriously, as it was recently documented that in 2009 a Warhol painting of his, the “Eight Elvises” sold for 100 Million! Warhol knew what he was doing as an artist, a marketer and as an art business person!

As an artist are you spending a majority of your time marketing and promoting your work? Have you identified who your target market is and analyzed how to reach them successfully? Do you have a website that displays and showcases your art correctly? Do you have a Blog or online newsletter that helps to drive traffic to your website? Are you taking advantage of and using Social Media to make contacts, promote your art and help to build your brand? Do you have an ongoing email marketing campaign that exposes your work to the decision makers in your target audience? Are you using PR sites to promote your events, shows and sales? Have you availed yourself of promoting your work on Document sites, Bookmarking sites, Blog sites and on YouTube? Artists can give demonstrations and talks on YouTube and in Webinars. Are you prepared to market your work on Smart Phones and on iPads? None of this technology is expensive and most of it is free. It is only the artist’s time and their creativity that is involved to take advantage of these different media to promote their work.

All of these terms, technologies and media may seem daunting and overwhelming to you, but you can turn those negative thoughts around to “wow, look at all of the possibilities that I have to promote, market and sell my work!” and “What a wonderful and exciting time to be an artist, I can’t wait to get going!.” But you cannot hope to be a successful artist if you are only spending 20% or less, of your time promoting your art. Whatever amount of time you are spending on marketing today and if you were able to double your time and effort (and stick with it), you would see more traffic, more inquiries, be in more shows and eventually make more sales!

You will not be very successful in reaching your target audience and selling more art if only 20% of your time is spent marketing. Try doubling your time to 40%, then to 60% of your time and if you can get to where you are spending 80% of your time promoting and selling your work, you will become a successful artist.

Yes, all of this does take time, hard work and persistence. Do you want to be a successful artist? Then try spending 80% of your time marketing and branding your art and spend 20% of your time creating. In time, I believe that you will see good results and become a successful artist.

About the Guest Author

John R. Math is a successful art photographer based in Florida. Mr. Math began his professional art photography career in 2006 and since that time he has had more than 85 exhibitions, sold his art through art galleries and to private collectors and now markets most of his artworks to the corporate art & hospitality markets. You can learn more about John and his art marketing program at Art Marketing Strategies and Light Space & Time Gallery.

Interested in being a Guest Author for Art Marketing Secrets? Learn more about how to contribute on our Article Submission Page.

Back in February I was interviewed by the lovely Tara Reed for her monthly Ask Teleclass. The topic was Ask About SEO For Artists and it was a valuable call (if I do say so myself!). Tara has a real talent for bringing out the golden threads in these classes and the result was some very straightforward guidance for artists to improve their search engine rankings.

If you weren’t on the call and haven’t listened to the replay I highly recommend you do so. If you think I’m kidding about how valuable this is, here are a couple of  testimonials from that call…

From Shawna Erback…

Thanks to your tele-seminar with Tara Reed, I am now in first place and first page when I search for “licensing studio”, “art licensing studio”, “artist licensing” and “artist licensing studio”.  Before I listened to your ask call my website looked pretty on the outside but was a mess on the inside and thanks to you I now have seo optimization! I listened to that call more than once taking notes and will listen to it again and again to keep things fresh.  Thank you Thank you!!

From Sue Allemand…

SUPER SUPER SUPER! That’s all I can say! I never expected to get this much out of Daniel’s call! I understood EVERY WORD! He makes it so simple to understand! And to think — I spent hundreds on supposed “promotion” companies who claimed to submit you to X amount of search engines – numerous times over a certain amount of time, fix your meta tags, get you X amount of reciprocal links, etc…  and NONE of what they CLAIMED I needed (and what I paid for) was in Daniel’s top 3 for SEO!! Unbelievable!

I confess that I’m not normally one to self-promote as outrageously as I have above! I’m an Aussie by birth and we are trained to be somewhat self-effacing. When I landed in California 15 years ago I had to learn self-promotion 101 very fast otherwise I would have been eaten alive!

But seriously, the reason I am pushing this whole SEO topic strongly is because it is SO IMPORTANT for you as an artist and there isn’t a lot of comprehensive SEO guidance available focused on the art community. This interview with Tara was exactly that – SEO For Artists.

So, why is SEO so important? Many artists and even some art coaches think it’s not relevant to art because art is somehow “different”. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you sell art that is business – and SEO is a major force for business success online. Let me give a hypothetical example of how it might work for an artist…

How Search Engines Help Artists – An Example

Susan is an oil painter who lives in Northern New Mexico and paints landscapes, many of which are focused close to the town of Abiquiu. (Note: If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit this town you should mark it on your list of places to go – it is right near Ghost Ranch and Georgia O’keeffe’s desert home – just gorgeous landscape!)

Susan has a website which she has optimized for search engines. During that process she discovered that many people google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” and so she optimized her artist website to rank highly for those phrases.

Susan has opened the door to several big potential opportunities:

• A gallery director scouting for new work of Susan’s style and subject matter may very likely google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” as part of their search strategy. When Susan’s website ranks on Page 1, it means they can find her and look at her work. This is priceless attraction-marketing for free!
• Similarly, an art licensing company may be looking for work similar to Susan’s for a new line of home decorations at Target Stores. Search engines would be part of their strategy.
• Finally, tourists who have visited the area and fallen in love with it often get home and realize that they really want a piece of art to remind them of their experience at Ghost Ranch. What do you think might be one strategy they might use? Search engines – of course!

Now, in all honesty, search engines are only one method used by businesses and individuals to find what they want. But they are very powerful – so why would you want to miss out on the potential business with a website that doesn’t rank highly for the phrases that are heavily searched? Why would you risk missing out on possibly 50% or more of your potential new visitors?

You wouldn’t right? That would be plain crazy! But that is exactly what MOST artists are doing with their websites! And the most insane part of this is that SEO is not really that difficult to master, IF you know what to do.

A lot of powerful people think that search engines are important for your business. Here is what Qi Lu, President of Microsoft’s Online Services Division said recently…

Search Engine Advertising is the most powerful economic force on the internet.

Those are important words and as an artist I would certainly want the most powerful economic force on the internet working for my art career! So, if your website doesn’t already rank highly for search terms that actually bring customers here is what I would suggest:

Start by listening to the recording of Tara’s SEO For Artists Teleclass. It’s free, and as you can see from the testimonials above you could actually learn some useful info. This is really required knowledge for any serious art marketer.

If you are really serious about selling more art via high search engine rankings on your artist website, consider buying our Artist SEO Success System. It is a complete 21 day program to comprehensively optimize your website for search engines – and it is 100% focused on artists. At $97, it is not cheap but it is tremendous value when you think of the potential market you can open your website to (learn more). And yes – we have many great testimonials about this product too! Here is one that just came in this week…

I’m going through the workbook and doing a lot of the exercises which are really great.   As an creater of educational materials and online courses (in my day job, I have a Masters in Instructional Design) I am totally impressed with the guide and workbook.  It is so well written and thought out and CLEAR!  I can tell you guys did a ton of work… Bravo!  …. Kristen Hoard

As art marketers and artist website developers, our job is to give you the tools to create business success with your art. I’m handing you this one on a silver platter – so please make use of it and go sell some art. I can’t wait to open the champagne and toast your success!

Note: This article was originally published as a guest post on Tara Reed’s Art Licensing Blog

Being a professional artist means a number of things, a most  important one being that you are able to make at least part of your living from the sales of your art. So how is that working out for you at this time on Planet Earth? Is the art market rewarding you with abundance in Summer 2010? (Apologies to our Southern Hemisphere readers – we know that you’re shivering right now!)

We’ve seen lots of commentary lately on the state of the art market and it varies all over the map – from super-optimistic tweets and posts on twitter and facebook that sales are up or even better than before, to art industry news reporting a variety of successes and failures, to calls we’ve had ourselves from artists reporting patchy results.

So how is the art market really – for you??

Our experience with the artists we connect with has been that well established pros are doing OK and in some cases are really prospering. While some are report flat or slightly declining sales the business is still there.

The artists who appear to be having more difficulty are those who are entering the market, particularly if they are selling original works with substantial price-tags. Establishing your presence and success in a new market is always a challenge in any sphere of business, but the way is always made easier  when that market has expendable income – and that is not so much the case today compared with 10 years ago.

The path of the artist is a unique one though. Many businesses look first to the market to find a problem to solve and then develop and deliver a product to solve that problem. However artists, by their nature, tend to look inward, bring out something original, and then look for a market that will support and appreciate their vision. It’s a risky business but when it works it’s a beautiful thing and a beautiful life for the artist and their patrons. A wonderful counter-balance to the anarchy of just “letting market forces rule”.

To sell art in the current economy you have to put a system in place and work it even harder than you might normally. You can’t just do things on a wing and a prayer – you need a plan and a system as well. So “on a wing and a prayer and a plan and a system” you might say! We have written frequently on using systems to market art. If you’re interested in this you can research our articles or check out our “7 Steps To Sell Your Art Online” report over at Espresso Artist Websites.

A couple of practical suggestions though to build into your system:

Think Small – If you normally create large pieces that sell for $thousands, try adding some very small pieces to your body of work that sell for hundreds. You don’t have to sell out your artistic vision – just put that vision on a smaller canvas! This is important in a challenged economy because you want to create low-risk entry points for new collectors.

Think BIG – There is always a luxury market segment that has significant expendable income. There are still swags of people spending $5,000 or more per night to stay in luxury hotels and villas all over the world – and those are the cheap rooms! Those folks have available cash flow to buy art – so how could you find a place selling your work there? First, you will definitely need a great plan! What if you decided that you were absolutely going to do this and that failure was not an option. What would you do?

Think on that!

Art Calendar recently ran a series on the Luxury market – you might want to check into that too.

How does web-video art-marketing impact you? What actually motivates you to take action? This is important to understand because it affects how you should pitch yourself when YOU create videos to promote your art.

On a side note, Tara Reed recently wrote a great article for us on the subject of YouTube Marketing Videos For Artists. This is a must-read if you are thinking of creating video to promote your work. Now, lets compare a few video styles and get your reactions to them. All are focused on the topic of Search Engine Optimization to give a good basis for comparison.

Example 1

In the first example, the fabulous Tara Reed recently acted a command performance in her video, How SEO for Artists is Like making a Google Field Goal:

Example 2

This next example is one I put together as a selling video on our Artist SEO Success System Landing page.

Example 3

Finally another example of SEO handled in an even more comedic tone. This one is really funny – you have to watch it!

The question I have for you is: What works for you in a marketing sense? What I mean by that is what would actually cause you to buy something? Does the entertainment factor make a difference to you? Or will you just enjoy the entertainment and then go on to find the lowest price wherever you can?

Please share and leave your comments below!

Back in the early part of this century (so long ago!) I spent a lot of time visiting major art fairs all over the United States. Some were major recognized art events like the Sausalito Art Festival and King’s Mountain Art Fair in California, while others were more modest events with a focus on local artists and craftspeople.

One thing which was always interesting to me was to see how visitors to these fairs were often drawn to the booths of a few specific artists. Sometimes it was because they were well-known local or national identities, and other times it was because the art was really great. But often the booths containing some of the very best art (IMHO) were quiet and without traffic. Why was that?

Another data point was that the busiest booths at the shows were often those of photographers and jewelers. The popularity of jewelry was obvious – while it may be art, it’s also associated with how we look and feel – and that gets to one of the “big 3″ buying motivations – in this case, relationships. But why photography?

Over time I developed a theory that photography is popular with most people because it is more accessible than other art forms. Meaning what? Meaning that a normal person without an elaborate art education feels comfortable relating to photography without having to be told why it’s “important” or a great work of art. There is something about the fact that we have all used a camera and that the images look mostly real (even if incredibly artistic) that allows us to relate to photography in a natural and un-stressed way.

On the other hand, I often noticed situations where visitors to a booth containing some really excellent oil paintings or pastels were obviously less comfortable knowing how to respond to the work. Their gut feeling may have been that they loved or hated it, but in many cases this true response was buried beneath a hesitation of whether they should like it – as if an art expert was needed to interpret for them. This created more of a distance in how they responded to the art.

In the years since then, I’ve noticed similar behavior at many at events from small open studios to high-brow art events. Without question, making your work accessible to the hearts and minds of your visitors will help you sell your art. But how do you do that? How do you do that if your work is different or unusual? Of course their will always be a few people who really “get” your work from the beginning, but there may not be enough of them to sell your art to and build a prosperous commercial career on.

There are many answers to this question, but one which is most important in my mind is simply – communication. You have to find ways to bridge to a wider audience and help them understand you and your art. That can be very simple and here are just a few examples:

• At an open studio or show, be sure to make time to engage with each visitor and listen to them. Ask them how they feel about a particular piece and give them some details about the technique you used or your motivation when you created the artwork or ….. This make you much more accessible.
• On your artist website be sure to have a bio and artist statement that people can relate to. You want them to feel that you are real, and you also want to “bring visitors in to your inner circle” where they will feel comfortable enough to get really excited about you and your art.
• Go way way beyond the concept that “my art speaks for itself”. It will to a few people for sure – but this is an age where few people trust their hearts and minds to make a purchase without some collateral support. So, be very 21st century in all your marketing plans and materials.
• Create some champions! In an ideal world, the best sales and marketing person for your art is you the artist. But you can also get some great results by enlisting existing collectors and friends who love your work and can speak about it and explain it to other potential buyers. Sometimes you’ll find an existing patron whose greatest passion is to help you get more of your work into the world. Recognize and engage these wonderful people to help to build relationships and sell!

Good sales in any field mostly come down to a mix of excellent product and great relationships. To sell your art you need to follow that same formula. You have a wonderful product (your art!) so make it accessible by connecting with your audience and explaining why it (and you!) are important and wonderful!

Etoile Trees - Josse Ford 2002

We’ve been having another big discussion at Art Marketing Secrets recently – this time about the whole issue of stealing images from artist websites. While we all know that it’s true that this is a fact of life, the big question is: Does it really matter? Will it significantly change your art career if someone downloads and re-uses an image from your website?

At first it’s tempting to go for the obvious answer – OF COURSE it matters! It’s just plain wrong to steal work from a website and to re-use it without permission – especially for commercial purposes. And those images could be used to make prints and art-cards, and could be licensed out to make all manner of things like coffee mugs and tea pot stands.

But is there a real risk of that?

On the other side of the fence one could argue: What can anyone seriously do with a small 72 dpi image? It’s not print quality so it’s not like it is going to be published as an expensive giclee image for example. And in some cases it misses an important point:

What if in making your images completely safe you make it more difficult for galleries and collectors to use your website? That would be like shooting yourself in the foot – right?

One example of this is the popular mouse-over image galleries where you can’t actually see an enlargement of a thumbnail image unless your mouse is hovering over the thumbnail. It probably protects your art but anyone seriously interested in your work is going to have their patience extremely tested – and that’s not really worth considering if you hope to sell some art or “be found”!

You can also add digital watermarks to your images, but in our experience they tend to look unsightly and take away from the quality of the viewing experience. This might be OK if you are focused in a very low-cost art-print market space, but if you’re into promoting your high-end originals we have yet to see a site that looks good with watermarked images.

Some of the do-it-yourself online portfolio services offer image protection as part of their service, but it is far from foolproof. Want to know why? I just tested two of them and was impressed at first that I was not able to right-click and download the image on the screen. But then I remembered the “Grab” application on my Mac – and in a few moments I had successfully copied images from both services – glad that I wasn’t paying them for that feature!

So, there you have it. We haven’t yet seen a fool-proof solution for protecting art online and at 72 dpi, we’re not sure that it actually does matter. There’s an age-old concept that wherever you put your attention, there you go…. Based on that, our honest feeling as we write today is that you should probably spend more time thinking about and planning how to get the RIGHT people to see your website than worrying about how to keep the wrong people away!

That’s our view and it’s always subject to change if we learn something new. What do YOU think about this? Please comment below – we really want to hear what you have to say!