These 7 Mistakes Keep Artists From Selling Their Work Online

When it comes to making money as an artist, it is not easy. And I don't ever claim that it's easy. I don't ever claim that I have the one right, only way to do it. There are thousands of ways to make a living as an artist. But after having worked with hundreds of artists every year for the past six years to help them grow their own businesses, specifically online, what I've seen are seven mistakes that you're probably making if you're not making sales. Now, what do we know to be true? We know that in order to get someone to buy something physically, they need to connect with it emotionally. There's tons of statistics around this, especially when it comes to more of a luxury item like art. And this doesn't matter if you make music or you're a photographer or, you know, you do some sort of visual art art, whether it's paintings for 15 bucks or paintings for 15,000, like, it all works the same. They need to connect with it on some sort of an emotional level if you want them to, you know, pull out their pocketbook and hand over their hard earned money. And that brings me to the first mistake that I see a lot of artists make is that they focus on the art and not the buyer. Right? So what do I mean by this? If you have, you know, some sort of piece of art here, right, and you have the buyer, most people will look at this and they'll say, okay, this is the thing we're trying to get somebody to buy. So I should put, you know, all my focus here. Well, is that true? No, it's not true. Why? Because this is where we have to be focusing if we want someone's attention. And the only way we're going to get this person to buy is, is if we first get their attention. And I can hear you, you're like, well, Lennon, isn't showing the art going to get their attention? Well, it depends. Most people don't show up on Instagram ready to buy art, right? They're ready to be educated, right. In some way. They're ready to connect on some level and so maybe even be inspired. And so if we're not thinking about these things first and the habits of someone online, then we got a problem. So what we want to do is make things around this that gets this person's attention and then show them the art. Why do we do this? Because it allows us to do what is called marketing, right? Marketing means we're getting our buyer's attention and we're saying, hey, look over here. And also, I have this thing to offer. So you got to figure out who this person is, right? Who. Who are they? What are they all about? Where do they come from? Where are they hanging out online, all those types of things. And if you're over here thinking linen, you're drawing stick men, and you're talking to artists, well, just know, I'm not trying to do a tutorial here. I'm trying to teach you how to make money from your work. If you need that, you can go somewhere else. That's totally fine. The second thing that I see artists do is making content, assuming that everybody that's watching it already knows you. So you start to feel this fear, like, oh, well, I'm going to say this thing too much. Aren't they going to get sick of this? Right? When it comes to buying things, we don't buy things unless we trust the person. So the focus should be on getting attention from the right people and building trust. So instead of asking like, well, what if I just end up annoying people? A better question to ask is, what if you reach more people and your people, meaning your ideal people, so start to get to know you. Because in order to get to know you, most people don't need to hear things one time. They need to hear it over and over and over again. And the big benefit here is not just that people are going to get to know you and you're going to find new people. The big benefit is that it's going to take a ton of work off of you. Because once you find the things that work in your content to get attention and build trust, you can do those things, but over and over. And one of the things I'm trying to help artists do is build a nice, boring business that allows them to spend more time making art. The third mistake is that struggling artists just aren't making enough offers. What's an offer? It's just me saying, hey, I got this thing available, right? I did a call inside my community recently and asked everybody, you know, how many times in 2024 did you make your art available for sale? Meaning, like, you publicly announced it. And most people said less than 20. And that's because we assume that people just take that next step, right? This goes not only with your art. Like, let's say you don't want to sell on social media, but you want to sell on your email list. You have to ask them. And we had a student do this recently where she publicly said, like, hey, TikTok may be shutting down. So, you know, if you want to get on my list? Go ahead and do it. She got over 50 people to sign up on her email list. And her big takeaway was like, I forgot that people just don't think about it unless we remind them. The fourth mistake I see artists make is that they're not making their offer clear. Meaning what is specifically available? Where can they get this thing, right? Is it easy? Because there's a lot of data with people online that spend just a few seconds on your website. So recently, one of our artists, who's a jeweler, her name's British, she took Instagram and started making posts and at the same time was making these stories. So we'll call these circles here, her stories, and these are her feed posts, right? So what she would do is every day she would make a feed post and talk about, okay, this is what's available, right? And then she would also make a story post. And let's say that this story post said, okay, this piece of jewelry is no longer available, right? I just sold out of it. And then what she would do is on the next story, she would say, but this one is available. And then the next story, she would link them to her website, right? And why would she do it this way? Because knowing that something has sold creates scarcity for her, right? And then when she says, but this specific thing is now available, right? And then she links them directly to that product, and it makes it simple. And when they go to the website, they're not looking at everything. They're looking at the one thing that's available, the one thing that she has shown them. And there may be a link down here that's like, hey, if you want to see more, like, go see more, that's fine. But you saw this, you wanted this, so I'm going to make this real, real simple for you. So the feed posts drove people in and also allowed her to push more on her stories. And then her stories are also drove people to her website, right? So both were doing the same thing, but she was doubling down on these tactics. The fifth mistake that I see struggling artists make is constantly changing either what you sell or how you sell it. So we had a new student come in recently that had tried to sell everything, right? Literally, just like, oh, well, I was doing this for a while, and then I was doing that. And now I'm trying this thing and I'm like, hey, pick one, right? And give it some time. Because here's what happens, right? When you think about what you need to do, you need to one Be comfy, right? Talking about it. And if you're not comfortable talking about what you're trying to offer, people aren't going to want to buy it because they're like, well, that person isn't even comfortable selling me their painting. Or that person isn't even comfortable talking about the art that they make. And when you keep changing, every time you change it, you increase your level of discomfort for two reasons. Number one, you've realized that, like, oh, the last thing didn't work. And when it didn't work, what do you do? You have fear, right? And you create more fear because there's more evidence that it didn't work. But the other thing that needs to happen is the buyer needs to see consistency. And if they don't see consistency, what happens? They don't trust you, right? Because they're like, well, this is just, to be honest, an amateur, right? This is just somebody who doesn't necessarily have it figured out, so it's not really worth that much money. But when you're really comfortable talking about what you do, right, you get rid of this fear over time because you do it over and over again. And then the buyer starts to see your consistency. And even those that aren't ready to buy right now will be ready to buy in the future because they're seeing you show up consistently. When people talk about showing up online consistently, this is what consistency means. I don't care if you show up three times a day, but you're constantly changing how you talk about your stuff, what you make, what you do, how you approach everything. There will be problems with people not knowing or understanding what, why, or how to buy what it is you make. And for some of you, the sixth mistake is your biggest one. It's this right here, right? It's fear. You want something to happen from your art career, but you're not doing something about it. It's like saying, well, I want to sell more art online, but I don't want to do social media, right? It's like, well, then how do you expect to make money online, right? Like, that's the main way that we can get attention from people. So you need to be able to fall in love with the process of doing these things, making it in a way that the process is for you, but the product itself. And by the product, in this case, I mean your social media content, not your art, right? Because you need the similar thing for. Your art needs to be for them. You need to make content that resonates with them. But the process of Doing it resonates with you. And your art is the same way. Making your art, first you have to love it. You have to find the people that will also be excited about it. I mean, I got an email this morning that said, lennon, how do I start telling stories? I said, well, how did you start making art? You know, you just started. It's fascinating to me that so many artists are so driven by play and creativity, and yet they suck all those things out of their marketing. I got to do it right. I got to do it right because somebody told you that, right? You know, is a certain formulaic thing. But think of it like this. When you learned to speak your native language or even English, right, You obviously know English, you knew you had to learn to put the right words in the right order in order for people to understand you. But once you understood it, you know, you deliver in your own unique way. And marketing is no different. There are certain elements that allow people to understand you and allow you to get their attention. But, you know, you still have to have your flavor. You still have to show up as authentically you. You know, the reason that I do this is because I love this, right? I did this for years with making no money, you know, having another job, because I saw what this could do for people like me, for creatives like me. If I would have had somebody that showed me how business is actually exciting and fun and can be exciting and fun and can allow me to, like, reach new people in new ways and can also allow me to grow more as a human being than maybe anything else I've ever done. Because it brings up all my fears and my concerns and, like, frustrations. Personal development wise, like, business is exponential growth. So if you want this to happen, then you gotta move, you gotta act. And that brings me to the final mistake, which is you're focusing on the expectation instead of the execution. So what do I mean? You have maybe put something in your head that says, like, if I don't do this by X time, then that means something. It may mean that you're terrible at marketing. It may mean that you have awful art. I don't know, like, you've made it mean something about you. And some of you believe that just because you've done it a lot, you've been on social media and you've posted consistently that that means you know what you're doing. I've cooked a lot of steaks in my life, but I would never say that I know what I'm doing when it comes to cooking steaks. Right. Like, it's good. But if I had Gordon Ramsay here, like, cooking my steak, I guarantee you, like, he's gonna show me. No, like, this is what cooking steak looks like. So here we are right here, and we have this expectation of, like, I want to be here. And let's say you give your social media plan two months, and if you're not here, then you feel like you failed. Meanwhile, you did get here. You just didn't look at the right things. You only looked here. Right? And what does this do? This makes you feel like a failure. Maybe you've heard the phrase, we often overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in a decade. And so what if your focus was always here, right? And looking backwards, look at how far I've come. What would that change about how you show up? Because you're starting to see progress. This is something we work on in my community all the time. Because I hear it like, oh, Lennon, I've been doing this a long, long time, right? And I make good content. Well, let's talk about that. What does it mean to do something really well? Well, there's three questions that we can ask. Number one, am I doing this consistently? Okay, if you're doing it consistently, that is level one. Congratulations. Right? And so many people look at this and they say, well, I am doing it consistently, and I got here, but I didn't get here, so I'm a failure. No, no, no, you got here Right? Now, level two, am I doing this well? What does that mean? Well, is it getting you an outcome? So maybe instead of getting to here at first, consistency got you here, and then still not all the way. Right? But it gets you further along. And the final boss is, am I doing this consistently well? Because doing something consistently well is the only thing that's going to get you here. Right? Meanwhile, we go back to what we talked about earlier. Most of you, you get to here, and then you just turn around and start over, right? You start a new thing, you mark it in a different way. You create a new project and you start over, and you never actually get all the way across. You say, oh, I tried this for two months and it didn't work. Well, let's be real. Like, some of these skills can take longer than two months. But maybe it did work because maybe you got more views, you just didn't look at your numbers. Maybe you got more sales, you just didn't look at your numbers. Maybe you grew your email list by 10 people and it wasn't as far as you wanted to go, but it's still 10 people, it's still growth. And you can look at those numbers and say, okay, what worked well? And can I do that more consistently? Because not hitting your goal doesn't mean that your art sucks or that you suck or that the course you're taking sucks. Right? It might be that you just didn't give it enough time. And that's a really hard thing for us to hear sometimes. So I have a couple clients, Hannah and Nemo, and they started with me about three years ago. And what's really amazing is that in the first year, they saw some pretty exponential growth. I want to say they went from making about 20,000 dol doing in real life sales just at markets, traveling all around the country, right. To close to 70k. And then fast forward to this year, they made just over 100k just online sales. Now they don't even do the traveling anymore. Right. Now why did that happen for them and not for other people? Well, because they fell in love with the execution, not the expectation. They set their expectation of, you know what? We don't want to be on the road as much anymore. So what do we need to do to make that happen? What made it work for them? Well, they just looked for progress. Like, we don't want to be on the road anymore. So what does that look like? How do we start showing up and being ourselves online? Oh, my light went off. I don't take credit because they did the work, but they just followed the steps that I put out in front of them. And they treated themselves like a business because they knew that was the thing that was going to bring them business. So let me know in the comments, what's the biggest mistakes that you feel you're making in your art business right now, and what are you going to do about it? Right, because it's one thing to recognize it, but you don't learn anything unless you take action on it. So if you just let this kind of sit up here, you haven't actually learned anything. You got to go out and do something with it. My mission is to see the artists inside my community make over a million dollars collectively this year. That's a big ask, and I can't wait to see it happen. And I hope that you are a part of that mission. I'm sending you tons of love and I'll see you in the next video.