As an artist who’s looking to get serious, you’re already aware of how hard it is to start a business. Probably downright terrifying.
Where do you even start?
For your business to succeed, you need to get exposure and start selling enough of your art at a decent price in order to make a living.
In this guide, we’re going to help you overcome these art business obstacles (and more).
Starting a business is one of the hardest things to do. And starting an art business brings a whole list of unique challenges.
That’s why we wanted to make it a little easier for you to get started.
With this guide, you’ll learn how to get a realistic idea of what starting an art business looks like.
With so many different art styles and genres, it’s hard to know which business “formula” will work best for you.
Starting an art business can be terrifying but this guide will set you up for success.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Start Your Business off Right With These 5 Steps
Chapter 2: How a Little Research Can Help You Get Ahead in Today’s Market
Chapter 3: How Getting to Know Your Audience Will Boost Your Career
Chapter 4: Find Out What Sites Will Serve Your Art Business Best
Chapter 5: How Social Media Can Grow Your Art Business
Chapter 6: Learn About Eco-Friendly Options for Your Art
Chapter 1: Start Your Business off Right With These 5 Checkpoints
Not all businesses are created equal. Each is unique, especially art businesses.
Starting a business is daunting, but if you break up the work into smaller tasks, you’ll be up and running before you know it.
Do these one at a time, and by the time you’re done reading, you’ll be well on your way to seriously selling art.
Make a Budget
This is probably the least fun part about starting a business. Unfortunately it’s also the most essential.
Figuring out a cash flow budget is a fairly simple concept, and is extremely important if you want to start out on the right foot.
All you need is a simple spreadsheet, either in Microsoft Office or Google Docs. List your monthly expenses, add them up, and then subtract that total from the amount of money you receive every month.
Ideally, you’ll have some leftover money to apply to future expenses. If not, don’t panic. You’ll just have to take a good look at what you can afford to cut back on.
Check out a great resource here to dive deeper into managing your budget.
Make a Website
I can’t tell you how important it is to have your own website. It’s easily the most effective tool you’ll have in your business arsenal.
If you want to effectively build your brand and market yourself, a business site is essential.
You can even create your own. My suggestion would be to use Squarespace, as they have fantastic templates specifically for art portfolios, with a clean modern style and easy to use interface.
If you’re able to hire a web designer, even better. Here’s an excellent list of authentic Squarespace web designers with a range of talents and prices.
Find Space for a Studio
A separate studio space is a good idea for a lot of reasons. Maybe you have kids, and find it difficult to work when you’re always being interrupted, or it’s just easier to focus in a space that’s completely your own.
You know how difficult it can be to get those creative juices flowing. With a studio, you can completely make it your own, and organize it in a way that serves you.
It can be in a spare bedroom, the garage, or a different building entirely. Be on the lookout for a space that meets your requirements and fits within that new budget you just made.
Register Your Business
If you’re selling artwork, you have to have a business license and to get a business license you need a registered business. Once you register your business (most artists start with an LLC) you can apply for a DBA (Doing Business As) so you’re free to use whatever name you choose.
Having a registered business in the form of an LLC or corporation will give you added protection. The more you comply with IRS regulations the less trouble you’ll get into. Be sure to look into your city and county requirements as well.
The next step is to apply for a resale license. That way you can buy materials and sell work at wholesale prices.
You’ll have to complete a resale card for each business you buy from. It sounds tedious, and it is, but, you’ll get great discounts. Not to mention not having to pay sales tax on materials used for your work.
To get started on your business license, go to your county or city’s municipal website to see what you have to do in order to get the license. If you’re lucky, your municipality will allow you to do everything online; otherwise you’ll be required to go to an office.
Now Start Creating!
The biggest thing your business absolutely depends on is your artwork. This is actually more challenging than it sounds.
Your artwork needs to be unique yet consistent and of the highest quality. Mediocre art won’t sell, and then your business will never get off the ground.
Chapter 2: How You Can Get Ahead in Today’s Market
In this chapter I’ll show you how important it is to think critically about entering the art world. Even small things can be important.
The more you prepare yourself for any situation, the more successful you’ll be.
Think About Where People Can See Your Work
Keep the art marketplace in mind when it comes time to create. Finding a place for people to see your work in person is huge. There are 3 spaces you should consider.
- Commercial Galleries: these can be local, national, or international.
- Public Exhibitions: things like competitions, libraries, and museums.
- Personal Access: these are places where you can be reached directly, such as an art fair, your website and even your own studio.
Always be Ready to Sell
Your information and artwork should be accessible at any time. It’s important for people to be able to look you up easily.
If you’re unsure on how to be ready, here’s a checklist of things to ask yourself:
- Is your portfolio up to date?
- Does your portfolio include a resume, images, statement and work descriptions?
- Do you have a website?
- Have you priced out your work?
- Is your contact info on everything you send out?
- If you hear of a show last minute, how long would it take you to put together a proposal package?
- Have you thought of an “elevator pitch” so you can quickly describe you and your work?
Getting yourself and your artwork out there is the best chance you have for selling your work and having a thriving art business.
Find Out Who is Buying and Selling Art Right Now
Learn about which collectors might be interested in your work.
Chapter 3: How to Broaden Your Audience and Boost Your Career
Become familiar with who will potentially buy your art. This will expand your audience and increase your sales. You’ll attract more clients by concentrating on making your business more people friendly than art friendly.
Creating what you love is important, but what if you could tweak it just enough to appeal to the masses?
In this chapter I’ll teach you how to think from a buyer’s perspective. You’ll know who wants your work from a local, national, and even international standpoint. Let’s dive in.
Find Your Target Audience
Start off by thinking about what kind of crowd you want to attract. Get specific; it will help :
- How old are they?
- Where do they live?
- Where do they work?
- What is their community and culture like?
This is important because it’ll affect the way you write and talk about your projects and events. Make sure the language you use is fun, interesting, easy to understand but still concise.
Don’t forget to include photos of your art!
Start a Mailing List
One of the best tools for reaching your audience is an email list. You can even start with friends and family, then branch out to other people and venues from there.
By sending personalized emails to family, friends, and colleagues, you can generate great publicity for an upcoming project opening.
Once you have an established mailing list, start sending out newsletters to grow a following. You can use them to market your artwork, but you’ll get a more authentic audience if you also use them to connect with people on a more personal level. Tell your audience a little bit about yourself!
An awesome tool for sending out newsletters to your mailing list is MailChimp. They’re great at designing the email’s layout and helping you schedule automatic emails. Plus they have a free version for businesses who are just getting started.
Manage Your Time Effectively
In order to manage your time well, you need to track it first. For two weeks, check how much time you’re spending on certain tasks.
After reviewing your time audit, look for ways to group tasks. Pay attention to when you get the most work done. Whether you’re more of a morning person or night owl, you can design your schedule to benefit your most creative hours.
Now, create an itemized checklist of things that need to be done each week. Assign a day to check in with yourself and make sure those things are getting done.
You may even have to create a long term schedule for yourself. For example, you can choose 3 nights a week to work in your studio and 2 mornings for paperwork and marketing.
If you make a schedule, don’t forget to pencil in time to relax. It sounds silly, but overworking yourself will only hinder momentum. Also, you’re less likely to slack off during working hours if you have a specific day and time in the near future to look forward to.
If you’d like to look into all the ways you can successfully manage time, check out this in depth blog post here with 27 effective methods.
Build Professional Relationships
Thinking about how to present yourself may sound unnecessary, but you’d be surprised by how helpful it is to research people. When meeting with someone about your work, seriously consider the following:
- What exactly do you want from them?
- Do you want a long or short term relationship with them?
- What materials do you need to bring with you and how can you best present them?
- How much background do they need to understand the project?
These are just some things to consider when you want to make a great impression on someone, or even a large audience. If you have to speak in front of a crowd, practice first.
Memorizing your presentation before you give it will make all the difference. Also remember that it’s okay to be nervous. Admitting this to your audience will actually work in your favor. It may be obvious anyways, but this way they’ll be more likely to sympathize with you.
Chapter 4: Find Out What Sites Will Serve Your Art Business Best
Online platforms are your best friend for getting your art business off the ground. There are lots of online galleries, print shops, and more.
I’ll go over which ones artists prefer and why.
Squarespace
This sleek website builder is great for artists. The drag and drop aspect makes it very user friendly, and you have 2 weeks to try out templates for free.
It’s considered the best for page design, which makes it perfect for artists to show off their work. The overall minimalist style ensures your site will look clean and organized no matter what.
Buffer
This is an essential tool for growing your brand on social media, especially if you’re flying solo. You can access your Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter all from one source.
Write the posts ahead of time and schedule the posting so you can set it and forget it. And if you ever begin to build a team, you can give them access so you can collaborate on drafts together.
Saatchi Art
This art selling platform is one of the biggest in the business. It also has a range of tools from a beautiful app to an online manual for artists to get the most out of the site.
The application is easy and free to complete, with some lucky artists getting a “seal of approval”. Even though your cut is only 65%, you get the benefits of being on a site that’s easily recognized by the art industry worldwide.
With 1 million followers on social media, and another million receiving Saatchi catalogs, you have a lot of opportunities to be seen.
Prints Giclee Shop
PGS will meet all of your printing needs. They’re best known for their high-quality giclee prints, and can print on a range of papers and canvases. Along with experienced printers, they also have a large flatbed scanner that can capture art 8ft in any direction.
They combine traditional printmaking with modern digital imaging on a variety of materials:
- Bamboo
- Aluminum
- Canvas
- Acrylic
- Paper
Chapter 5: How Social Media Can Grow Your Art Business
It’s no secret that sites like Instagram and Youtube can make you money. The question is how?
We’ll go over all the secrets to how artists have turned their businesses into cash cows using social media.
This is easily the most art-friendly social media platform out there. In order for this tool to work you need followers, and a lot of them. Therein lies the challenge; because without followers, there’s no one to see your art.
So how do you get more followers? Well, there are a hundred different ways depending on who you ask, but I’ll give you the important basics to get you well on your way.
The most important thing to remember is use the highest quality images. Try to ignore the filters and brush up on your photography skills instead. This includes lighting, cropping, and composition. If your pictures aren’t that great, people will not follow you.
Your username should be your business name – which is most likely your full name – so your account is that much easier to find. If it’s not available, try adding “art” at the end of it.
Make sure your bio is attention grabbing yet short. Try to use keywords that people will search for. Oh, and make sure your profile is public! Otherwise there’s really no point.
Once you have your profile set up, it’s time to start reaching out. This does not mean use the followback method. That rarely works. Instead, find people you’ll actually benefit from to follow. This includes other artists, interior designers, galleries, art organizations, etc.
They probably won’t follow you back, but don’t sweat it. From there, start liking their photos and posting meaningful and conversation-starting comments. Be insightful and interesting, and soon people will be curious about your page and check you out.
In addition to all this, keep Instagram’s algorithms in mind. The more engagement your posts get, the more you’ll be seen in feeds and search results. This means that the more you communicate with other instagrammers, the more you’ll be seen.
Creating a business page on Facebook for your art page is a great idea. From there you can easily link to all your other social media profiles. Facebook makes it super simple to share posts, events, videos, and photos.
It’s important to know you can only sell products from a business page on Facebook. They don’t allow you to use a personal profile for commercial gain. That being said, it’s very easy to do. And the nice thing is you can connect the 2 accounts so if you’re signed into one, you’re connected to the other automatically.
To do this, go to the top right of the page where the drop down options are. Select “Create Page.” You’ll be taken to a page with different business options; you’ll probably want to choose the artist option as it’s designed to focus solely on you and your work.
You can share everything about yourself, including a bio, artist statement, and a link to your website. From there, put together a few photo albums and caption the pictures.
Once you’re established it’s time to start socializing. Facebook has hundreds of community groups you can join and follow. Your page will do best if you interact with others on a daily basis.
This might be the hardest social media platform to master, probably because of the maddeningly short character count. You get 140 of them, so you have to make sure each one counts. This also includes links and hashtags.
100 characters is recommended if there isn’t a link, if there is, then use 120. According to Hubspot, 92% of all user interactions on Twitter revolve around links, so feel free to share new blog posts, other social media posts, or anything you deem relevant to your art.
The best time to use this app is always. Post tweets several times a day and interact as much as you can. Use a site like Buffer to help you schedule tweets ahead of time.
When doing so, keep in mind that there are high traffic times. Most people are reading tweets on their lunch break, or right after work. This means that the best time to schedule a post is between 12 pm and 3 pm Monday through Friday. On Wednesdays, try to post between 5 pm and 6 pm.
Hashtags can be a challenge by themselves. Try to keep them as short as you can; 11 characters or less is best. And only use 1 or 2 in your post. This means the hashtags you choose are very important and have to be extremely relevant. Tools like Hashtagify can help you find which ones are trending.
When you’re finally ready to start tweeting, remember to make your post valuable to your followers. It can be a new piece of artwork or some tips you find useful. The more engagement you can get the better.
Pinterest may not have taken off quite as strongly as Instagram or Twitter when it comes to marketing, but it’s been steadily growing. As a visually centered platform, this is a great tool for artists to use.
The use of boards makes it super easy to organize your profile in a way that works best for you. Not only can you caption every image you upload, each one can have a link back to your website so you can drive traffic.
This is also an amazing tool for inspiration. With billions of images you can create boards and fill them with whatever visually attracts you. The easy-to-use app allows you to access your ideas at any time.
Once again Buffer will come in handy as it’s best if you post a few pictures a day. You’ll find Pinterest to be a lot easier to manage however as you don’t need to engage with others as often as other social media sites.
Just set up a free business account and start posting and pinning.
Chapter 6: Learn About Eco-Friendly Options for Your Art
If you’re a functioning member of society, then I’m sure you’ve noticed the eco-friendly trend. Now that we have more info available to us, we’re choosing more and more planet friendly options.
This could be something you’re interested in and could be a great way to boost sales and join the “going green” niche.
Being able to truthfully say your art is eco friendly is a huge bonus.
Printing
Look for recycled paper options and the recycled paper content of paper products you buy. You can choose the ones with the highest recycled content. The only downside is that most of these are not archival.
Consider other printing materials that are not paper based such as bamboo or hemp.
Printer inks are usually petroleum based and are made up of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. These VOCs can cause birth defects and cancer. They absorb into the soil in landfills. If you need to dispose of the inks, look for a toxic drop off site or recycling plant that’s close to you.
You can avoid VOCs altogether by using soy based ink. It’s become popular among magazines and newspapers. Or you can print digital for things like business cards and stationary. These use 100% non-toxic toner.
Proper Disposal
Instead of rinsing used brushes with soap and water, think about reusing solvent. After using it to rinse out the brushes, let it sit overnight. By the next morning the pigment will have settled to the bottom.
Pour the now clean solvent into another jar and now you can dispose of just the sludge. If it has metals, lead or anything poisonous, then be sure to take it to a hazardous waste facility.
Chapter 7: How to Turn Rejection into Motivation
This might be the biggest challenge artists face.
How do you go on after being told you’re not good enough?
It’s super hard; but possible.
As artist Jaq Chartier says, “ If you aren’t getting rejected, you aren’t putting yourself out there.”
You can’t let rejection stop you. The more you apply to things, the better. Even though it hurts to be told you didn’t make it, you don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes.
Maybe there were some people on the panel who did like your work and were overruled. They probably serve on other panels, and the more your name pops up in applications the better it is for you.
You never know what kind of amazing opportunity could come out of rejection.
Above all else, stay positive and don’t take things personally.
Chapter 8: Creative Ways to Sell Your Art
We’ve gone over a lot of online options for selling art, but don’t be afraid to try other avenues. Not only could you make some money, but the exposure and proximity to other artists can help you further your career.
The Power of Cards
You’ll probably be surprised to hear that postcards can be a great way to market yourself. An email mailing list is essential for news updates, but they are also easily forgotten and deleted. Sending out a postcard allows you to show a snapshot of your work while also giving the recipient something physical and visual to remember.
This works especially well when you have an exhibition coming up
Open Your Studio
This can be a great way to make connections, whether it’s with a few friends or other artists you invite over to even dealers and curators. Whether it’s formal or informal, you can use this opportunity to practice presenting and talking about your work to an audience.
This is something you should prepare for. Declutter your space and make sure to showcase the work you want to talk about, whether it’s new or old. If it’s new work, still keep the old work handy just in case the visitor wants to see your progression.
Have a short list of questions to ask the visitors such as if they see what you intended them to see, or if your work makes them think of another artist. Take notes.
Make your studio guest friendly. Offer them something to drink and make sure there’s a place to sit. If you use strong-smelling materials, remove them for the moment so it’s not too overwhelming for them.
Be mindful of your demeanor the entire time. Hopefully this goes without saying for most of you, but just in case, I wanted to throw out a few tips that will make the guest like you more. Even though it’s about your art, keep in mind that you represent your art and your business.
Be polite and humble at all times. If you’re uninformed, rude, or arrogant, no one will want to work with you. Don’t B.S., especially if you are hosting an art professional. They’ll know immediately and you’ll lose credibility.
Give your guest a tour of your work while giving a brief explanation. Remember to give them time to respond. This is not the time to go off on a tangent. Try to mirror your visitor; go slowly if they’re a quieter person, or make good conversation if they want to talk a lot.
The better impression you make, the more positively your guests will regard you and your work.
Conclusion
So there you have it; my guide to starting your very own art business.
Now I want to hear from you. What did you think about this guide? Or was I missing anything?
Let me know by leaving a comment below.
And that’s it for the Definitive Guidebook. Great job!
