Art Marketing Secrets

Open Studios are a popular way to show your latest work to collectors, arts professionals, and the public. They can also be a successful and consistent way to sell your work. Read on to find out how to stage one successfully. In Part 1 we’ll talk about preparing for the event. In Parts 2 and 3 we’ll go over important details for the day of the event and follow-up activities for when you have cleaned away all those empty champagne magnums!

This week’s art quote is from Joe Gordon, Chairman and CEO of Miranda Galleries in Laguna Beach, CA “Credential building is important. You need to make yourself an artist of merit. It is important to make yourself unique and noticeable with techniques and passions that are distinctively yours.” We totally agree! I’ve been saying for [...]

They are what they say they are – fully customized websites designed around you and your art. It is very important to do your research well and choose the right website designer so be sure to ask the right questions: Do you have any idea what the designer is going to create for you or how long it will take? … By itself it is unlikely to create overnight success for an artist’s career, but when woven together with other elements into a marketing strategy, it can be very effective in promoting the artist’s work.

For a variable fee (typically $50 to $300 per year) these sites allow you to create your own portfolio by uploading images of your work together with bios, artist statements, resumes, etc. … The down side to these gallery-sites is that there is no flexibility to show your work they way you would like to and their selling fees can be quite high.

Artists seeking to develop a website to showcase their work have many options. Website designers offer a range of solutions ranging from simple template-based sites to fully customized designs built entirely around the persona of the artist and their work. Understanding the benefits of each option is important, as the art marketplace is highly competitive.

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) has just announced the recipients for its annual fellowship grants of $7,000 apiece to 134 artists recognized for excellence in their given disciplines. The grants total $917,000 and are intended for unrestricted use, meaning that they can be utilized for everything from art materials to rent – which is welcome news for recipients.

I participated in a webinar this morning hosted by Marketing Experiments on the topic of Twitter For Business, or to use their title, Getting beyond the “Now What?” … I felt more positive about Twitter by the end of the session – it seems like it has really valid applications in selling, marketing & branding, as well as customer service.

The latest issue of Art Calendar (newsstand edition) has a series of great articles on building and maintaining your online art presence. Gay Jervey gives some excellent tips on achieving successful results with high-quality art websites.

Useful tips from Steve Doherty’s blog at American Artist. I recommend clicking through to read the full article – its a good read! – Minimum negative space. – Include Shiny objects. – Detail (People Love It) – Happy subjects. – Leave peripheral areas incomplete. – Listen to comments from viewers. – Maintain logical, consistent pricing [...]

Galleries and other Arts professionals do search for work on the internet so it makes sense to do as much as possible to help them find you. If you perform an online search on your name, even if your website is poorly optimized there is a good chance that your site will show in the results. But remember – if a gallery hasn’t heard of you, how would they know to search on your name?