Motivation and marketing

People don't like to admit it, but it does motivate you to make work if you're selling it.

There is a drive in that. (Zoe Benbow)

Chanson d'Amour

http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/DigitalPainting/Florals-and-Macros/i-LHQ6vXX/2/L/chansondamourdesatcl-L.jpg

Continuing the discussion from the other day about different kinds of art sites and the potential for burn out from having to keep up our presence and participation in various online art venues, I thought I’d tackle the other half of the equation – the reason we do all this! As I mentioned, our first priority may not be sales, but I think it’s a bit ludicrous to say, “I’m only in it for the art” when we’re working our rear-ends off trying to market ourselves every which way to Sunday. There probably isn’t one of us who wouldn’t celebrate a sale even if just as an affirmation that what we create appeals to someone besides ourselves.

And we’ve probably all bitten off more than we can chew when it comes to self-promotion. We read blog after blog about how to market ourselves online, how to be more visible to potential buyers. Maybe we even buy packages that promise to show us how to get 10,000 Facebook fans in just weeks. Then…the next blog you read says, “Don’t count on Facebook to sell your art.” More successful friends recommend Google+ or Pinterest and so you do that too.

As artist Dan Turner says, “Too often, artists start down the online art marketing path and quickly find themselves bogged down in “how-to” details. They reach burn-out before they ever get a fundamental marketing plan in place. Trying to connect the dots in a half-baked, half-finished marketing plan is disheartening and counter-productive.” Dan’s written a simple, easy to follow art-marketing primer called, “7 Keys to Selling Art Online.” Best of all – it’s a free e-book download. Remember though, just because Dan makes it look simple with his clear, step-by-step advice, doesn’t mean it isn’t going to take work…lots of work…but at least the end result might be those sales we keep pretending aren’t important. That doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about why I create in the first place or how I measure my success as an artist…it just means that it would be less than honest of me to suggest I wouldn’t like to sell a few pieces now and then too!

You can get Dan’s free art marketing guide here: http://danturnerfineart.com/dan-turners-7-keys-selling-art-online-free-ebook-artists/  But don’t stop there…he’s got lots of worthwhile advice in his blog too!

Perhaps it's true that as Abigail Brown says, "We cannot judge our art because it does or does not sell." In the ideal world, that's the way it should be. But the real world is more likely to be like this:

Tough Love for Artists...an end to excuses

"Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what  you love and believe in, and it will come naturally."

David Frost

Braving the Storm

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/braving-the-storm-lianne-schneider.html

Art critic, writer, curator, psychologist Brian Sherwin goes head to head with the excuses many of us make about why we are less than successful in marketing our art - or our writing as the case may be. I admit to using every single one of these excuses at one time or another. How about you?

"Lack of action is often fueled by excuses. We can find examples of this within every angle of life. With that in mind, I want to discuss some of the common excuses artists use to justify their lack of action -- be it failure to develop OR market their art. The tough love starts now..."
Read the rest of this reblog at  Stop Making Excuses | The Art Edge

Mr. Sherwin covers the seven most prevalent excuses we generally offer for our lack of success and knocks those excuses on the head. I'd like to add at least one more...discouragement or feeling that what we're offering has been found wanting. I think it's possible to do everything right...at least in regard to Sherwin's excuse list...we can work at it daily, stop watching television, let the housework take second place, share care-giving responsibilities with other family and friends, go to gallery openings, stop worrying about whether or not we have an art degree, budget both our time and money so we have the resources we need to get it done and keep reaching out to contacts in the art or literary world both online and offline to widen our networks. 

We can go further...we can blog, create forums of mutual support for other artists, master social media marketing (there's a great big book out there called Social Media Marketing for Dummies that I happen to have bought in the face of what seems to be a time consuming need to have a presence on a half dozen social media sites!) We can do all of that - stress ourselves out with the need to respond and reciprocate for every positive comment or share we receive - and at the end of the day...or the month...or the year, be completely and utterly discouraged because we've not only sold or shown very little, if anything, but the response to our efforts is unenthusiastic at best or downright negative. Galleries and art magazines turn us down again and again and rejection seems to be the common theme day after day. I've been there...and I'll bet you have too. 

But like Sherwin's counterarguments to the excuses he discusses, I had to come up with a way to fight through that discouragement and the sense that my art or poetry had been found wanting and I do that by remembering that I don't just want a sale for the sake of a sale. I want my work to be bought and seen and read because someone out there recognized the passion behind the work, got what it was I was trying to say with it and one way or another shares those feelings. If that isn't happening, maybe I need to re-examine whether I've allowed my passion for the art to play second fiddle to the marketing of it. And then I need to honestly assess whether I've more to learn in terms of how I've expressed what I wanted to say - to get better at it every day.

Brian Sherwin concludes by saying, "In closing, as an artist you have two choices: You can continue to justify whatever it is that you feel is holding you back by spitting out excuse after excuse. OR you can learn from it -- get to the heart of the problem -- and change the way you approach art making / art marketing. You must make the choice." I say...choose passion. 

  From Dodinsky's "In the Garden of Thoughts"