“I don’t think there is room for ‘artistic temperament.’ Professional artists understand art is a business. If businesses ran their companies like artists do their careers, they would not stay open a year.” — Jack White
If you want to reach a level of professional success as an artist, you need to embrace the business aspect of selling your work and approach what you do as a business. If you don’t embrace this, then you aren’t aligned to reach a level of independent success as a professional.
What do you have to offer?
Artists often get offended when someone refers to their work as a product … it carries some sort of negative connotation that products are mass-produced and watered down by conglomerate commercial entities.
Yes and no.
As an artist, you know all about generalizations … people often make judgements and group the creative crowd into the pool of broke individuals contempt for the average. So try not to think of products as something carrying a negative connotation. As an artist, you produce something the world finds valuable.
That’s your product.
And as the world of technology opens the world to individuals more and more, their are more creative products entering the market than ever before. Consider what Apple did with the App Store … designers are able to produce an application and sell it to the world.
That’s their product.
Learn what works in business
If you want to be a successful artist, consider looking to what works in business. Evaluate what works every year and try to implement into your store online. Every year, companies promote some sort of sale in light of the new season. This works because it announces the new season, which people always look forward to, and it’s a warm welcome because it welcomes them with a sale of some sort. Likewise, consider how you might be able to market a sale on your products during a holiday or special event.
It might sound strange at first, but this is what it takes to effectively increase sales.
Learn from failure and success
One thing is certain: you are likely going to experience both failure and success in terms of marketing your products. Until you find what works for you and your community of followers, you are going to have a mixture of failure and success. Learn from it and move forward. Don’t get hung up on what didn’t work, simply learn from it.
What’s working for you?
Are you actively marketing your products in this way … if so, what’s working and what isn’t for your niche of creative work?
