3 ways artists can sell more work online.

This video is going to feel counterintuitive, but I want you to stick with me because selling more of your work online isn't about showing more of your work. It's about connecting more with your potential buyer. The three things we're about to talk through are not only going to help you sell more of your artwork and creative services online over time, they're also going to make content creation and promotion and all this stuff way, way, way, way easier because you're not going to have to make a new creative thing every time.

So the first thing I want you to think about in order to sell more of your art or creative services online is to show more of your process and not only that, show more of your mistakes. What this does is this brings us in to you as a human being. We don't love perfection. What I'm not saying here is like, show crappy work. What I am saying is don't be afraid to like, let somebody know where you messed up and how you fixed it. Because as a person who's buying your work, seeing how you've dealt with problems and what you've gone through just makes me like you that much more. It's really just human to human kind of thing. This also gives you a ton of different content ideas because just showing your process is way simpler than having a finished piece of work that you're putting out to the world every freaking two days or whatever. So one quick way that you could try this is to make a reel where you're showing your process and show the thing that is the mistake and talk about why it's annoying the heck out of you and show how you're overcoming that annoyance and how that's now making you think about the work in a new way or making you excited about it in a new way. So it's all about connection, all about people getting to know you, how you work, and why your work matters to you.

The second thing I want you to do to sell more of your art or creative services online is to show less of your work and more of you. I look at a lot of creatives, Instagram accounts or YouTube channels, and what I end up seeing is a lot of the work. But there's nothing that shows me who you are as a person or why I should care about you. And humans connect with humans. That is science. Seth Godin says it this way. People like us do things like this. So if you're wanting regular kinds of people to like your creative work and not just other creatives, then they need to see how they can relate to you as a human. And so when they see your everyday life, they're going to feel that connection, they're going to start to know you, they're going to start to like you more, they're going to build trust and that's going to allow them to feel lot safer when you come to them and say, hey, I got this thing that I think you're gonna like. So a quick way to try this is to make a list of three things that you do in your everyday life. This could be anything from meditation to eating hot sauce, to like playing with your dog, right? Find ways to talk about those things in your content and do it often. Make it almost like a ritual to have these elements in your content in some way. If you can work it in, incorporate your art or a piece that you're working on, or like a project that you're working on with that little story that involves your dog or meditation or how just if you can line those things up to where you know, you see them come together, that's great. If not, it doesn't matter. The point here is building human to human connection so that when you offer your art for sale or your creative services for sale, they will like you more.

The third thing I want you to think about is don't sell on your social media. So sell in email. I think email is a great place to do this and there are two reasons why. Number one, getting people off of your social media and into your email means that you own the contact to them. Two, it's just proven that people would rather be sold to in an email than on social media. Use social media to show your work, show who you are, but then let them know if they want to actually buy the work or you know, then they need to contact you in some way, get them into your email list. We're not gonna go into a lot of detail on building an email list in this video. If that's something that you'd like to see, let me know in the comments below and I'll make a follow up video on that at a later date. Building an email list is a huge part of my program, your first 1,000 fans. So I found that direct connection to be huge, but also my students have as well. So here's an example of how you might do this. My friend Kate Schrader, who is an incredible ceramics artist, does something where she's constantly posting about her dogs, herself, the ceramics that she's building. She's showing her process, she's sewing when some of the ceramics burst in the kiln and, like, crack. So she's giving all that information on her social media and she lets her audience know, hey, I'm going to have a limited amount of these available, and if you want to buy them, you have to get on my wait list, which is inside of my email. What's amazing is that she has developed that wait list and now she sells out of her products every single time, literally in minutes. It is insane.

The main takeaway here is that people aren't going to buy stuff from you unless they actually trust you and feel like you have their best interest at play, and especially when it comes to art. Your story, your ideas need to merge with the story and ideas of the viewer. They have to understand what this is all about. And I talk about this a lot in other videos. And so go check this video out. I think you'll get a better depiction of, you know, what gets somebody to actually sell more of their stuff and have more stuff resonate with their audience. So thank you so much for being here. It means the world that you have given me your most valuable asset, which is your time. I'll see you over there in that video.