5 Ways To Take Your Art Business Online TODAY.

If you're an artist who has sold your work in real life and you're ready to take your art business online, I'm going to give you five ways that you can start your online art business today. And it doesn't matter if you have a large audience, a small audience, or no audience at all, one of these ways is going to work for you. So let's get started. By the way, if you're new here, my name is Lennon. I am the founder of a company called Stop the Starving Artist. And I have been very fortunate to help hundreds and hundreds of artists and creatives grow their online views by billions and their income by hundreds of thousands, subscribers by millions. You know, doing the things that we're going to talk about today. But I just want to say it's not important to have the biggest audience. It's just important to have the right one. And so that's what I want to focus on. So the first way that you could get started with your online art business is the thing that a lot of people talk about, which I'm not going to spend a lot of time on because a lot of people talk about it, but it's things like Etsy or Saatchi, art finders, Redbubble, stuff like that. Here's why I'm saying this first and why I'm actually not a big fan of this. Because when you start a business in these sites or on these sites, what you're really trying to do, at least in my opinion, is shortcut the audience development, right? Shortcut the process of finding new clients. You know, with a site like Etsy, for instance, the promise is that you can just kind of post your stuff and you know, there's a built in audience there. But as these things become more and more saturated, you know, finding an audience for your stuff is less and less likely, at least in the short term. And then on top of that, if you are trying to sell anything that is over, you know, 50, 100 bucks, it is hard. You know, it's like trying to sell Louis Vuitton in Dollar General, you know, it does not work. So I can hear you. All right, Lennon. So if I can't sell on, you know, Etsy or Redbubble or any of that stuff, like, what do I do? Well, if you have any sort of audience on social media right now, and I mean over a hundred followers, I would suggest that you focus on selling one piece through social media in one week. And I'm going to walk you through exactly how to do that. But let's talk real quickly why this is so powerful. Most of the issues that you're having are paralysis, analysis, you are overthinking things, probably where you know, you're like, well, what if I do this wrong? Just tell me the right way. This is a simple way for you to just get started and get over the hump and, and learn a few things. So let me give you the exact three steps that I would do. Step number one, just pick one piece and develop a little story around that piece. Like, why did you make it and why is it valuable to your viewers? Right. Why is it valuable to your audience? What do you want them to get from it? That's step one. Step two on a Google Doc, the title of the piece, some great photos, the story of the piece, and just letting people know, like, I only have one of these, here's the price, click here to email me and we'll get everything set up so you don't even need a buy now link. You know, on the Google Doc you could just make it really, really simple. Step three, get on social media and for one week, every day you're going to post on there something about the piece. Either your process video. I would only recommend doing one process video because those typically attract other artists. If you're only attracting other artists on your social media, that's a whole separate conversation that we need to have. So that's a different video, but one video, that's your process. One video that talks about the story, one video that talks about you and why you're passionate about the thing that this art piece is about. One video that is just basically reading the Google Doc, right? So you're just like, hey, here's the story of this thing, here's the title of it, here's the, here's how much it is. I only have one of them, right? And with every one of these videos, what you're going to do is remind people, hey, I've only got one. It's first come, first served. And if you want it DM me, I'll send you the info. When they DM you, you send them the Google Doc, right? The Google Doc has all the instructions and then you follow up with them just one time, but toward the end of the week, right? And that they're giving you that permission, they're saying, hey, I like this thing, I'm interested in it. And you just make sure to follow up and then you see what happens and you don't get married to the result. What you're doing is finding ways of selling that feel more comfortable. It's like the first time you rode a bike, you know, you didn't expect to do it perfectly. You just kind of got up and started pedaling and then fell off the horse a little bit, and then you got back on. So that's really what this process is about. So the third way that you could start your art business online today is ask previous buyers that are online. So this is assuming that maybe you don't have much of an audience. Right? You could ask previous buyers to post for you. So you just ask them to show the piece, talk about why they love it, talk about what they love about you. Little testimonials. What you do is you offer a 30% commission to this other buyer. So this is essentially an affiliate opportunity. So you're saying, hey, appreciate you being a buyer. If you're interested, I'd love to give you 30% commission if you're just willing to do a few posts for me. Right. And so this is one of those ways that you can leverage maybe someone else's audience if they have an audience that already exists. Now if you're like, well, I don't really have that, don't worry, I got you covered here in the next one. But again, just think about how simple I'm making this. I'm just trying really hard to give you, like, let's not overthink the business. Let's just get started. And then from these opportunities, you can develop a system of over time. Right? That's what I really want for you guys. Simple, simple, simple art business. Not something that is some big, complicated, overdone, you know, funnel or, you know, sales process that, like, requires all this tech and automation. Like, let's just keep it really, really simple. Okay? The fourth way that you could start your online art business today is think of what kind of art you create and then maybe even ask chat GPT, like, I make this style of art. What kind of businesses out there would this be in alignment with? So let me give you an example. One of my other previous clients, Susan, she did a lot of really amazing and beautiful fabric work that was modeled after plants or outdoor life. And so businesses that she could align with would be plant stores, gardening supply stores, things like that. I went to the vet the other week, and there was an artist that had posted their work inside of the veterinarian's office. And they had, you know, their artist statement in there that honestly was kind of poorly written, but it was in there, and they had work that was up and it was all animal related. Right. So what businesses would your art really align with? So you might be asking. Well, Lennon, like, this all feels like a local thing, not an online thing. Okay, so hear me out. Here's how it becomes an online thing. So I would love for you to make a list of 25 businesses. And now you can not just pick local businesses, although I still would. You can pick national international businesses. And if you're smaller, I would consider smaller businesses to start. Like, pick the ones that are at least on social wise, like sort of your size or above. But here's the beautiful thing. A lot of these businesses still have bigger email lists even if their social following is smaller. Right? Because they're constantly taking people in their CRM, right? Customers and clients, and they're then putting them on an email list so that they can market to them. So you could simply write an email to these businesses that says something to the effect of, hi, my name is Tommy Two Tones, and I make amazing art around X. I think this would be a perfect fit for your brand because, you know, my mission is this. And I notice that your mission is this as well. So then after the introduction, you say, hey, I'd love to talk about how I could pay you at bare minimum, $300 for just including my stuff into an email. If you're interested, let me know. No pressure. Then you follow up with them, you know, a week later, if they don't respond. So here's the way that works. If they respond to you, you simply say, like, I sell pieces for $1,000 and I would give you 30% of every piece that I sold. And then you just see who bites. Okay, I can hear you. You're like, well, Lennon, I don't have money to spare. What if they say no? If you don't have money to spare, then don't make that offer. If they say no, like, they say no, don't overthink these things. These are beautiful ways for you to just test opportunities that you could do to get in front of new audiences, you know, and if you hear all that and you're like, you know, this all makes me uncomfortable. I'd rather just grow my own audience and pitch to my own audience. Well, that's where number five comes into play. So number five is what I call the heart based sales accelerator. This is like a 30 day process that you go through to build an audience. You build trust with them, and then you make them an offer of your work. So one of my clients, Hannah and Nemo, made about $70,000 in their first year with me using this process and just doing it over and over again. And this is really the backbone of everything that I teach. Like, this is my favorite of all the methods because again, you're building your own audience to leverage here. And there's nothing more powerful than having your own people, you know, to be able to sell your work to, like, that really love you and what you make. So, okay, here's what it looks like. So over the 30 days, there are four weeks. The first two weeks are all about building your audience. So during this two weeks, what you're going to do is focus on creating content that attracts your ideal buyer, right? So you got to think about who is this person that you're really trying to reach and not just creating a bunch of process videos, but stuff that would really emotionally connect with them. Because people don't buy things, right? They buy feelings. So what is it that you want someone to feel? What is it that you stand for as an artist? What is it that, you know, you believe in? And you'll make content around that for those first two weeks. Now, in week three, you get on social because you've now got this new audience, and you say, hey, I'm releasing this collection or this piece next week, and if you want it, then let me know. Send me a DM or leave a comment, and I'll put you on what we call the priority list. And you'll be first to know because these are first come, first serve. I've only got four available. I've only got five available. I've only got one available, whatever it is, right? And now you've built this little list of people that are excited about, you know, the thing that you're making, and they've given you permission to reach out to them. And so in week four, we make the sale, right? So you first make the offer to the priority list. Say, hey, you said you were interested. Here's a link to buy. Here's the price again, there's only four available, five available, whatever it is. Then you're selling on social based on the results of what happened in your priority list. So let's say you had four pieces, you sold one from your priority list. Now you only have three. So when you get on social media, you say, hey, I had four of these pieces available. Now there's only three. And so if you want these, make sure you get it. Just shoot me a dm. I'll send you all the info. And I see this all the time. A lot of times, artists on average will sell to 1 to 3% of people, you know, just if they do it generally. But when you do it this way, people on your priority list will see upwards to. Especially if you're doing a new priority list with every collection or every piece. Like we'll see upwards to 20% of people buying. That's a big, big increase. Right? I do a whole in depth masterclass training on this. You can just go to stopthestarvingartist.com you watch that masterclass for free. It's like a, I don't know, 35 minute piece of content that walks through every step of this. So you can actually make this happen if that's something that you want to do. So in order for people to go through this process and actually buy from you, obviously they need to trust you. And this means you might need what's called a personal brand. And a personal brand is not, you know, being an influencer that's slinging a bunch of cheap stuff on the TikTok shop, right? Like this means you know that people are talking about you when you're not in the room and what are they saying about you when they're not in the room? Because if all they can say is that you're a painter or you're a songwriter, like, then you're no really different from anyone else in your space. Like, you need to be able to stand out. And so in this video here, I'm going to walk you through what a personal brand is and help you decide whether this is something that you want to focus on. Because in this method of building your audience and making sales, having a personal brand is actually really important. But it's not as crazy or cringy as you might think. So check this video out, I'll walk you through the whole thing and I'll see you over there.