10 biggest mistakes artists make that hurt their businesses

Artists in its majority, have no absolute sense of business tactics or how to represent their artwork making them engage in not very good practices that hurt their businesses in the short run. Many are so desperate to “make it” that consider if they take shortcuts it will make them get there faster… nothing far away from the truth. Artists are easy pray and many have taken advantage of that, from brick&mortar galleries to online galleries and websites for artists, art dealers and artists managers. Below is a list of the 10 top mistakes artists fall into in an attempt to make a living at selling their art.

1.- If I sign up for all the Best Websites for Artists from where to sell my works I’ll make a killing a month… that assuming you sell something from all those websites that is. This is one of the worse mistakes artists make over and over again! and in the beginning of the internet era I fell for it as well. Websites or online galleries for artists are NOT designed to attract collectors, that’s just a collateral benefit. The majority or all of those websites are aimed to attract desperate artists looking for a break and charge them a fee in exchange for a gallery, and the fake promise their art will be seen by thousands. The problem is the thousands that see your art are also artists trying to sell theirs, not exactly the market you were thinking you’d reach. 99% of these websites marketing campaigns are designed to attract artists that would eventually sign up for an account in a desperate attempt at finding the right website from where to profit by selling their artwork. Most if not all of those self called Best Websites to Sell Art or Best Websites for Artists are no different than vanity galleries. They charge you a per month or annual fee for the privilege to offer your works there, they don’t jury their artists so the site is crowded with bad, worse, worthless art or even worse eBay cheap mass produced painting as the majority are just an extension of what sells for pennies on eBay by the truck, so your work has a very slim chance to be seen by the right crowd, diminishing even further your chances to make a good living at selling your work. In the end the owners of those websites are the ones that make a killing a month while you keep paying hoping to make a sale. If you have fallen into this trap, then is time to wake up! make a list of all the websites where you signed up for and pay a monthly or annual fee that have not brought much or none visibility and sales. Now add up all the monthly fees and you will see you are paying a load of money for what? an online gallery and none or a couple of sales a year?… Although I understand visibility is the key for success especially online, as an artist I also understand many if not all of those websites are not worth at all. They engage you in believing tons of great things and in the end deliver little or nothing. With all the money you spend paying their fees in the hopes they will bring you the right collectors, you could be paying a good web designer to create a killing online portfolio and rank it high on search engines, prepare and mail portfolios for prestigious galleries or even pay an ad on some of the best premier art magazines that for sure will attract the right collectors to your art. If visibility is the key make sure the websites you sign up for are free, as to just have a small gallery on each one of them pointing to your main website or if they are payed make sure they are juried and that they offer quality art, otherwise your work will get buried very fast.

2.- A myriad of websites offering the same works with different prices… Another huge mistake artists make which make them look even more desperate and so unprofessional! never a good sign and always the wrong image you want to portray of yourself. This is very typical especially on mass producers eBay sellers. I’ve found quite a few selling extra-large works on the big auction house for $600 or less as that’s what the market commands for many of them, yet they have the same paintings marked on Best Artists Websites (No. 1 mistake above) for thousands of dollars. If you are not selling for more than $500-$600 a piece for huge paintings what makes you think that you can engage an online collector in paying you $24.000 for the same exact painting on another website? Consistency is the key to success and it not only refers to art but to price as well. Trying to outsmart collectors and galleries is neither a good approach nor a smart tactic. Pricing the same painting on different places at different price points confuses potential collectors and galleries alike making you look desperate, unprofessional and unfortunately a laughing matter when same pieces are proven not to sell for more than $400-$600. A gallery wanting to represent your works might loose interest in you or simply won’t take you seriously because of this instability in your price list. The best thing is to come up with a price list of retail prices for your common sizes and stick to it. This price list should be valid for sales done from your studio, online, for galleries and commissions, that way no matter from where collectors find you they will perceive you not only as a professional artist and business person but also a good investment potential. You can view my price list to give you and idea on how to create yours. Compare your prices with prices from similar artists with similar number of years in business as yours as to give you a better understanding on how much to price your works.

3.- Sending email newsletters adding everyone’s emails in the To or CC… I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this and as I’m writing this segment of the article I’m receiving one from an artist I have not signed up to receive his newsletter with at least 30 email addresses anyone could possibly grab and use! and you are now wondering why you receive so much spam in your inbox?…. If you call yourself a professional artist you have the obligation to act professionally in every aspect of your business and I literally mean EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR BUSINESS. As business people we are responsible by law in the US and many countries to protect the privacy of our clients and collectors and that includes their email addresses. There are hundreds of ways, free and paid, to send professional newsletters to your subscribers without sharing your entire list of emails with everyone, but definitely one method you should never use to email your subscribers is by adding all the emails of your clients in the To or CC head of your email as that might get your in serious trouble and could scare away potential clients, not mentioning that you will start receiving quite a few hate letters from many of them. There are many paid services for professional newsletter/mailing list management on the internet. The most recognized are ConstantContact.com, MailChimp.com and IContact.com. The problem with these services is that they can get quite expensive as your mailing list grows, so you might find yourself looking for other alternatives down the road very soon. One alternative is to host the mailing software on your own server. One of the most popular free software that handle professional email newsletters/mailing lists is phplist.com. This software costs nothing as its an Open Source and runs directly on your server so there is no need for extra monthly payments, but it does require professional installation and enough knowledge of HTML, PHP and servers, but once is installed is very easy to use. In the long run, even paying a professional to install it and customize it will cost you less than signing up for the payed services. The software has the same exact capabilities if not more as any of the paid mailing lists services. It provides a form for people to subscribe to your newsletters and an easy way to unsubscribe if they wish to, which can be customized to match your current website, it provides above everything privacy to your subscribers which is extremely important and I can’t stress enough, and gives much, much more just for an hour or less of installation and customization, very well worth it if you ask me! So stop sending those unprofessional newsletters where anyone can see everybody’s emails and start protecting your client’s info. My company www.elegantwebdesigns.net can install this for you and create the templates to match your current brand.

4.- Buying or scavenging the internet to fill up my mailing list … this is definitely a no-no! There are anti-spam laws in place in the US and Canada called US-CAN-Spam law which if you are not familiar with I advice you to start reading about. The law basically says do not email people that have not subscribed to your newsletters. As a professional business you have the obligation as I said above to look professional on everything you do, and that includes your notifications or newsletters. Buying mailing lists or scavenging the internet looking for email addresses of potential clients is not the right way to fill up your mailing list. There are quite a number of things that can happen if you approach this practice. Two of the most common are 1) your email could end up on a black mailing list in which case 70% or more of your notifications will never reach destination, 2) your website/hosting account could get suspended. You can’t just expect people to be happy to receive your notifications on a regular basis if they have not signed for it themselves. It takes time to build a good mailing list and the best way to do it is by being professional and promote it or make it visible on your website so your visitors can subscribe if they wish to. Another way to do it if you do outdoor shows is by having a book in your booth for people to sign up for your newsletters. This can also be done during the open night of your show if the gallery is ok with it.

5.- Don’t make your clients go through hoops and loops to buy your art… I see this happening over and over again with many artists resulting in collectors just looking for some other artist to purchase from. Galleries know artists sell on their own so why hide it? Artists are also business people, no different than any gallery and they shouldn’t act mysteriously pretending they don’t sell on their own. An easy way to accomplish this is by having the same price list for everyone that way galleries won’t feel uncomfortable by artists underselling them (see No. 2 above). Also respect your galleries. If they are selling certain number of paintings on their gallery don’t offer the same paintings on your website or from your studio, instead create a link to the gallery info page so your customers can purchase the painting they fell in love with directly from the gallery, that way you are establishing a more transparent relationship with your galleries and you are building a more permanent business relationships with them. If you sell from your website don’t make your clients click 20 links to get to the add-to-cart-button, make it easy and instead get yourself a good shopping cart or find a professional that would install state of the art shopping cart on your website. Accepting just PayPal will close the doors to hundreds of customers that just don’t feel comfortable using PayPal, so start by accepting other methods of payment as to broaden your client base, especially if your prices are higher than $500. Make sure to also accept major credit cards, checks, Google checkout, and even international wire transfers as that’s the method of payment used in the majority of European Countries.

6.- I’m not a web designer, but how hard can it be to make my own website?… very! if this is you please rethink your position and hire a pro otherwise you will be one more of the millions of artists rejected by galleries and collectors for having a poorly designed online portfolio. Your online presence is an extension of you the artist and the business person, and the last thing you want is for it to look sloppy or unattractive. You wouldn’t give a ketchup stained business card to a gallery owner right? then why would you want to have a less than attractive online presence? Just like creating a painting takes time and you need to follow certain rules depending on the media you use, so is creating a good website. One of the mistakes I as a web designer and artist see over and over again is the lack of good navigation throughout the website, the difficulty for visitors to find what they are looking for and the abuse of graphic designer fonts like Papyrus and such which are not to be ever used as regular font on any website, no matter how much you like it. Another huge mistake artists make when building their own online portfolios is the use and abuse of a large variety of colors for fonts and uppercase throughout the pages. If your pages have some of these elements you are hurting yourself rather than helping your career. Knowing html these days is not enough to create a competitive website that would rank high on search engines, it takes much more than that and only a professional can help you with it. My website has taken me 5 years to make it the way I envisioned it in first place and to rank it high on the search engines as to be able to sell from it without depending on third party services. If you have changed your mind after reading this, like the way my website is built and want to take a step forward into creating the right image brand for you and your business, I would recommend you to pay a visit to my other company www.elegantwebdesigns.net as we have being creating competitive websites for artists for over 5 years or look for a web designer that would meet your expectations.

7.- I was rejected by a gallery again! what is happening?… A gallery rejects an artist for many reasons, the common reason the lack of a good portfolio. Although the new era of technology is very much active and many galleries have implemented new ways to view and accept artists portfolios, the reality is the old method of mailed portfolios is still valid and very much used these days. The problem is there is not a unified idea of what a good portfolio should have, just bits and pieces around the internet with not much information in many cases, and every gallery have different standards which confuses artists even more. But there is a book that I recommend you to read “Starving” to Successful by J. Jason Horejs, Gallery owner and director of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, that would clear many of the misconceptions and will help you create a spectacular portfolio for galleries to increase your chances for gallery representation. To purchase the book please visit the gallery online at www.xanadugallery.com/book/. You might say you already have a great portfolio that complies with gallery standards, and you are probably still asking why do you still get rejected?… this is the thing, 70%-80% of the galleries you apply to will reject you for many other reasons but your portfolio or the quality of your work, you just need to accept rejection as it’s part of being an artist and learn not to take it personally or blame your work for it. Just keep trying, the right gallery for you is out there.

8.- A gallery rejected me because I sell on eBay!… were you expecting something different?!… eBay is synonymous in the real art world for fraud, fakes, copies, mass produced art, art produced with poor painting techniques and materials (resulting in paintings that decay in a short period of time), low prices, shill bidding, fake resumes, and no respected gallery would want to represent an artist that consistently sells in this marketplace especially if the artist sells large number of big and extra big paintings (60 or more per month) for $600 or less. There are just a hand full of artists that are not mass producers, that do not sell for bottom prices, and that are successful in galleries as well that happen to occasionally offer some of their paintings on eBay and that use eBay to capture new clients or that use eBay as a shopping cart of some sort as they lack of one on their websites. These artists not only produce extremely high quality art, but are smart enough to offer very small paintings at auction that happen to sell for very high prices without flooding the market while maintaining high interest in their works by both galleries and avid collectors. The small paintings they sell on eBay are never offered on galleries yet many galleries are not quite happy with them selling on eBay either despite the high prices the small paintings fetch at auction. If you respect your work and your career selling on eBay might not be the right marketplace to tackle and not the right image you want for your business especially if you sell a large number of paintings a month. As with the Best Websites for Artists, your listings will get buried on a mountain of bad art, worse paintings and copies in a matter of seconds diminishing your chances to be seen by the right crowd instantly (assuming there is still one these days) not mentioning respected collectors and galleries don’t buy from eBay artists any longer. That without mentioning to be able to sell on the biggest online garage sale and earn an income you will need to become a mass producer and list everyday at least 2-3 paintings (with this practice you make your work less valuable year after year no matter what many artists claim on their eBay pages), pay high listing fees (about $30 or more per listing) as to increase a little your chances to get seen. If you are lucky and you make a sale you need to discount two sets of fees, eBay ending fees and PayPal as that’s basically eBay’s only accepted method of payment for sellers on top of the listing fees. Also you’ll need to pay outside advertising to bring people from other places on the internet to your eBay listings. In the end yes, you would sell maybe 80 paintings a month for $500 that assuming the paintings are really big (over 24″ x 36″) because that’s the average price for art on eBay right now, unless you are extremely famous and acclaimed artist in which case why you would need to sell on eBay remains a mystery, but after you discount all these outrageous fees you had to pay to make that sale, the cost of materials and any other expenses you might have, you actually earn about $350 or even less per painting. Are you still asking yourself why a gallery rejected you for selling on eBay?…

9.- I was told I’m a mass producer and that I’m hurting my business, nonsense! I’m just a prolific artist!… If you are producing and selling 50-60 or more paintings per month, I’m sorry to break it up to you, you have fallen into the mass producer category and you are no longer considered a prolific artist. Being an artist is not only about painting everyday, we all do, paint everyday is part of the business, but paint high quality art more important that producing large quantities of canvases. Finishing that many pieces per month (about 2 or more per day) means you are sacrificing on something somewhere and galleries and serious collectors know that, especially if the paintings are large and extra large works, so chances are you might be lacking on quality or technique no matter what your media, style or techniques are. A Daily Painter is considered a prolific artist finishing 1 small postcard size painting (8″ x 8″ or smaller) a day, which means in a month a daily painter would be producing 30 daily paintings plus maybe 5-10 larger more detailed works for galleries without hurting quality, falling into mass production and saturate the market with its works. Another factor to consider, an artist that produces and sells 60+ paintings a month usually sells volume and repetitive themes or paintings for low prices not a good combination as the investment potential is nonexistent unless you want to satisfy a low Target-Walmart like market and you are ok with it. Also by selling and producing that many paintings you are saturating the market with your works which also creates the opposite effect, the value of your paintings is null especially if you produce the same painting over and over again because it has a high demand. You need to see your paintings as products, but not grocery store products where the scope is to saturate the market with the same product because it has a high demand; instead high quality, valuable and rare items where only one original is available while many sub-products (prints, posters, merchandise in general) are available for the masses, in this way you are incrementing the value of that piece rather than becoming an online street painter.

10.- If I pay the fee to exhibit on so and so gallery I’ll be respected and more galleries will open their doors… don’t full yourself… paying a gallery to exhibit means you have fallen into the wrong possible gallery representation ever. Galleries that only accept you/your work by paying a fee are called “Vanity Galleries“. Respected galleries or regular galleries know who these galleries are and don’t take seriously those artists who exhibit there. These vanity galleries have no interest in pushing your work or your career in any way, since they have covered their expenses, and commissions from the beginning with the fee you just paid. These galleries don’t care about the quality of your work and will accept anyone who can pay. The fees to exhibit on these galleries are usually pretty high in some cases $2000, $5000 and even more and on top they request a 20%-30% commission on sales. Most desperate artists who haven had a break fall for this tactic spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars hoping to “make it” in the art world, especially if the gallery is located in NY. This is a false statement and a pretty expensive lesson to learn if you ask me. If you have $2000-$5000 or more to spend in your career, spend them wisely. If you don’t have a website yet, get one and promote it heavily on high end art magazines like American Art Collector or such. If galleries is what you want, get your portfolio ready and start doing the gallery walk. Find galleries in your area that would like to represent your work in a more long term relationship, those are the galleries that will most likely help you build your career.

Art is one of the toughest most brutal business, but it shouldn’t be if you approach your career with common business sense. Value and respect your work, the galleries that represent you and the collectors that admire you, and your art journey will be filled with nothing more than satisfaction.

M.Valenti

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