How to Sell Art

It’s very exciting to want to share your art with the world! For some artists, thinking about how to sell art can feel like a bit of a mystery—how does one get their art into collectors hands by selling it. The art world is a unique one but you can still use tried and true simple tactics like other business owners. It’s an asset to be creative but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to sell you art, in fact one of the first things you need is a sales funnel!

Create your own artist Sales Funnel:

A sales funnel is the sequence of steps someone goes through to buy your work. The reason it is called a funnel is you have more people at the top getting to know you and then you as nurture them towards a sale they get further down the funnel until you make a sale. Through that process, you will not sell to everyone but are rather funnelling out the hot leads—people that are more aware of your product or service and who have already shown interest either by following your brand on social media, signing up to your email newsletter, as a referral from a friend or previous client or some other expressed interest—from a larger pool of leads.

For example here are some dream scenarios on how a sales funnel works:

People following you on Instagram → opt into your newsletter list where you provide value to them → they visit your online store → they buy an artwork → you email them with a discount code as a continuing customer → they buy another piece as a gift!
People see your work at a market → they opt into your newsletter list where you provide value to them → they send you an email inquiring about an artwork they saw at the market → you reply telling them the work is available and with steps to purchase it → they buy the artwork and continue to receive your newsletters.

Here is a long but useful video about sales funnels for artists by the Abundant Artist team.

Time to do a Sales Funnel Audit. Ask yourself these questions:

How can someone buy art from you? Is it easy? Are the steps clear on your website and social media on how to do this?
How do customers find your artwork? How do they buy it? How do they stay connected to buy again?
If someone has never bought art before, how do you guide them through this process?
How does someone find out how much your work costs? Is it clear to them how to do this?

Hot Tips:

Buy art from other artists and pay attention to how smoothly or not so smoothly this process goes. Think about how you felt during each part of this journey. How do you want your clients to feel?
Have someone you know purchase art from you as a test and get feedback on each step of the process. How easy is this for them? What did they like and/or dislike about the process?
Ask people who have purchased from you before about their experience. We spend so much time trying to get new clients instead of focusing on the people who have already bought work from us and love us. The best thing we can do is spend more time asking our current clients for feedback and building relationships with them. They will spread the work for us! Way easier!

Bonus resources:

Need to keep track of your inventory? Artwork Archive is a great Inventory System for Artists. If you use this link you receive a discount and TTN receives a small payment if you sign up. Win-win!
This post on how to be a successful artist has more tips to help you!

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All of this material comes from the TTN Resource Library! Learn more about the library and the Thrive Together Network here.