When Your Art Is Also Your Business

Successful artists have always had to think about the business side of their work. It is a fact that art can be a profitable business, but it requires a lot of work and patience.

Operate It Like a Real Business

In order for art to become a business, it needs to be created with the consumer in mind. It should have commercial value, and in order for this value to be realized, it needs to be widely available.

For starters, you need to create a business plan, just like any other entrepreneur would. Your plan should include how you’ll fund your business and how you’ll structure it, as well as marketing plans and long-term goals. 

In-Person Marketing

Since art has been around forever, why not start with a method of marketing that’s been around just as long? In-person and word-of-mouth marketing is the one method that carries the most sincerity and is likely to result in the highest sales prices. 

Your family and friends are probably already your first and best customers and while you can’t expand your family, you can expand your friend network. Reconnect with old friends from high school and college. You can use a search engine to look for fellow high school graduates from, say, Atlanta and the surrounding area if that’s where you went to school. Simply type in your name or the friend’s name, along with the school and year, and you'll get quick results with options to reach out to long-ago friends.

You should also have plenty of business cards to hand out wherever you go and to everyone you meet. That can get expensive if you use traditional methods, but online business card printing apps and software make it much more cost-effective. It also allows you to design them just the way you like, inserting your own designs and choosing colors and fonts that fit your style. 

Build Your Brand

It’s important to establish a brand for yourself that identifies you. Defining your brand helps you make the kind of business decisions that standardize the vision for your work. When you have a personal brand, it can help you communicate the value of your work to like-minded customers, which can improve your marketing.

Create a logo that reflects your brand to use on all your marketing materials, including your website and social media pages. The logo should be simple, easy to read, and recognizable. It is the first thing a customer sees when he or she views your business. It is the face of your brand and it should be memorable.

There are many ways to design a logo, but you should keep in mind that it will be seen on every type of material - online, offline, on paper, and on digital signage.

The Value of Social Media

No matter how busy you are, it’s important to spend some time on social media every day. This is especially true when you have little money for advertising. Your most important tool for reaching potential audiences is through social media. It’s how you’ll establish connections with art collectors, museums, galleries, agents, concertgoers, wedding and portrait photography subjects, and many others. 

But just sharing with your followers won’t get you there, not even close. You’ll need to pay for ads. But the good news is, they work!

Social media ads provide the most scalable content promotion and are proven to turn visitors into leads and customers. You can create your own Facebook ad yourself and it’s pretty easy to do. And if you’re advertising or sharing photos on Instagram, learn the size requirements, then resize them yourself with a free image resizing tool. 

Learn From Your Peers

Cindi Fortmann Photography is a great example of marketing done right. Consider hiring Cindi and be confident in both her talent and her standards of excellence. 

You have to understand how to promote your brand, build a following, and create professional work in order to be successful. But if you follow these few steps, like reaching out to friends, building your brand and logo, and investing in ads on social media, there’s no reason you can't make your art a successful business.