Marketing Your Work
Tuesday June 27, 2006
We've had a discussion going on at the Jewelry Making forum about issues with jewelry artists asking for free advice and the limitations surrounding this. One member posted a link to a very helpf article called You Can't Sell Your Art Until You Learn How to Sell It. Even if you have never considered asking for free advice, you'll find some excellent information here about marketing yourself and how important a skill this is for solo artists.
Comments
Thats a very interesting article. Thanks!
That response to a query about selling artwas truly amazing. Such a lot of verbiage just to tell the artist NOTHING! But if she liked it…oh well
The thing is, I don’t think when someone asks that to someone who makes a living at consulting that the intent is really just “do you like it.” They probably want constructive criticism, which is what both these people mentioned in the blog post get paid to do.
In a perfect world, artists would be able to create art and collectors would beat down their doors to purchase it. Obviously, this is not a perfect world and I found the advise to be soberingly honest.
Everyone has to make their two cents off of everyone else, apparently. Sad as it is, it’s the way things are.
Thanks for providing the insight.
Well, as Tammy points out, This guy basically says that he is in the business of SELLING the information that was requested gratis. OK. I don’t give away my work to total strangers either. However, the real message here is that someone asked the wrong person for information. The search was poorly directed.
In theory at least, Artists support and encourage each other. That’s the way it was in art School, right? Everyone went out of their way to be supportive? There were never jealous people who dissed every talented effort. This person isn’t doing that, exactly. The author of this article is responding to an artist-to-artist request as a business person; advising the artist to become more business-like. Though i agree that one needs to have more than one hat if they’re going to diversify their efforts, I think that the response is not well-meaning. An artist to artist request deserves an artist-to artist response, unless the designated recipient is not actually an artist. Even if the response is “sorry buddy, no time to look. Why not check out http://www.artbusiness.com/consultpurp.html
They have some valuable info.” Basically, it boils down to search strategy: if you want a better answer, ask a better question. If my question is “Where can i learn to market my work?” There are many resources. If the question is “What free marketing resources are available to artists ?” The results will be fewer, and so on.
So- What kind of articles & resources are YOU looking for? Personally, I don’t need creative sources or “projects”, but information on good low-cost shows, marketing and display ideas, discourse on various issues that artists deal with when they’re marketing artwork, would support my need. A forum that fosters a supportive environment for that sort of dialogue to occur would be GREAT!
Here, here, Ann! And, we talk a lot about this sort of thing on the jewelry making forum (http://jewelrymaking.about.com/mpboards.htm) Another resource to check out - if you haven’t already - is Crafts Report magazine. It’s not free either, but well worth the cost if you really want some nuts and bolts art biz info.