What makes art worth money? I’m going to say some stuff that most artists probably don’t want to hear.
It’s not your skill.
It’s not some hidden technique.
It’s not even having a great website.
It’s certainly not your Facebook account.
The sole determination of how much your art is worth is how much people are willing to pay for it.
And what they’re willing to pay is directly related to:
– how much money they have
– whether or not they know about you
– how much interest they have in your work
In the book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark Don Thompson tells the story of how, before big auctions, art galleries and auction houses will put together a catalogue of the work in the auction. You can see some examples here. These catalogues are full of gorgeous pictures of the art, essays by critics talking about how important the artist is and where they stand in the pantheon of great artists, perhaps some words from the artists, and short descriptions of each piece, that often includes a little bit about the work and how it was made.
The catalogues alone are sold for a small amount. They are works of art in their own right.
But when it comes right down to it, they are just books full of stories about art.
How to Raise The Prices on Your Artwork
We’ve written extensively about telling stories about your work in the past. Weaving stories takes some great skill, and is something that you learn over time. In this post, I want to cover some block and tackle ideas on how to make sure a story is built around your work.
Sign it. Whether it’s legible or not, your work should have some sort of signature that is consistent throughout all of your work. That way people always know that it’s yours.
Title it. There are too many works called “Untitled.” Your work should have a name. Even if it’s Blue Series #4. Then at least people can specifically talk about your pieces. Smart artists give their work names that intrigue the collector, that give a way in without being too specific or prescriptive about what the viewer should take away.
Date it. Right next to your signature. There you go. Don’t be suckered into thinking that collectors only want new stuff. When you’re famous, people will want your earlier work, and they’ll use it to explain your evolution as an artist. When you have a retrospective at a big fancy museum, this will be gold for your curators. If dating it makes you uncomfortable, do it in some sort of code. Then people can have fun cracking the code, which brings more attention, which raises the value of your work.
Number it. If you make multiples of any kind – open edition or limited edition prints, photographs, screenprints, or something else – you should number your series. Collectors expect to know which piece they got, and in the case of limited editions, they expect that the size of the collection doesn’t change.
Explain it. Just like the gallery or auction catalogue mentioned above, you need at least a one or two sentence explanation of the work, a “way in” to understand or at least exploration. Give collectors some way to discuss your work so that they might talk to their friends about it.
Give context. This is where most artists fall down, I think. What is blogging but giving context to your art? How does free culture play into Gwenn Seemel’s work? You can read her blog posts on copyright to find out about how it might affect her work.
Document it. Artists are getting pretty good at this, I think. Work in Progress (WIP) shots are all the rage on Instagram. Stop every few hours and take some pictures of your work. Keep a daily art journal. By doing this, you’ll be able to build stories, provide context, and the WIP shots are gold for marketing.
Doing these activities alone will help you build a story. I’m not talking about a made up story that you add to the art, but the actual story of the art. What went into making it. The reason people might find it interesting. Good art doesn’t sell itself, it needs some context and a “way in.”
But My Art Doesn’t Have a Story
Someone actually said this to me in a response to a reader survey. It made me unbearably sad. Every piece of art has a story. If it’s art that comes from your heart or soul. If it’s art that grows not just out of technique practice or mindless doodling. You are your art’s story. You are the thing that matters when it comes to selling your art. If you say your art doesn’t have a story, it’s like saying that you don’t have a story or that there is nothing interesting about you.
This is, quite frequently, the primary problem I run into when working with artists who want to sell their art. They don’t know who they are and what they stand for, so they can’t possibly know what their art is about or how to communicate it.
And you won’t get anywhere until you figure that out.
Free Webinar: How to Sell Your Art
We recently had over 1,000 artists register for a free webinar on selling art over the Internet. We covered topics like:
- How to Talk About Your Art to Collectors
- What Kind of Marketing is Working *Right Now*
- How to Use Social Media to Effectively Sell Art
You can watch that Webinar at this link.
image by 401kCalculator
I look forward to the webinar Cory. My question is about Print-on-Demand. How does that fit with “number it”? I’ve really bought into how you’ve recommended setting up a page per painting on WP.org and was going to do that, and then discovered ArtStoreFront.com that recommends using their artist websites to sell art, blog, etc.. I can’t seem to make a decision. I’d love if you can talk about that during your webinar. Thanks.
Open editions aren’t usually numbered and are often priced lower than limited edition prints. You can simply label them “Open Edition” as opposed to 1/250, etc. Buyers on print-on-demand sites are probably not buying the prints as an investment, but because they like the work and it fits their budget. Maybe you could offer two kinds of prints to appeal to different buyers: some open, some limited. For the Art Storefront site, for the LE you could just say “edition will be capped at 250” then keep track and stop printing when you reach that.
Cory, this post is the best set of tips from you yet. Thank you for the concrete steps an artist needs to take, in order to get serious in selling their art.
I will agree this is one of the best post so far. My art does have a story but I have to learn to tell the story on paper. If i am face to face with a collector I am doing ok . But writing the story is a bit harder.
Quiet often I came across this story telling, but no one tells you how and where to begin. What to tell in a story that will interest the listeners and help them connect. Give an example if possible. Thanks.
Sonia, the post has several links to various blog posts on storytelling. You can also sign up for our class at https://theabundantartist.com/content
I was just discussing this the other day with a friend of mine. If you watch who is really making strides in their jewelry sales it’s those with a story. They can be selling the most prefabricated store bought junk, but if you have a story that pulls at the heart that = SALES. I’ve been following several competitors that do just this and they are very successful.
I’ve always been the introverted kind. I don’t share easily what is in my heart. But I think people are longing for that connection. I will have to dig deep and make a proactive attempt of letting people in.
Thanks for making me think more about this today!
It doesn’t have to be painful Kathy. We talk about working through this process in the Content Marketing for Artists course.
Hi Cory
First let me thank you for all of the information, you are awesome! I am on imagekind and ViewBug already, sales not that good. Looking at ArtPal, thinking about it, but my question is “if I choose the print on demand, do I choose the markup, like (35%)I really don’t want to get into the printing process. I am posting only photographs, Some are digital manipulation(which I love) I have signed up for the
Video you offer, maybe I should wait until I watch before deciding. I am confused about having your own website, if I did, then one will need to have a host server, then a printing company, Right? This is where I get lost, then you talk about a Pod, don’t want to sound stupid, but if I don’t ask that would even be more stupid, I’m not sure what a Pod is or does.
Thank you for your time and all of the research you have shared.
Cheers, Barbee
This is something that completely makes sense. I’ve got a good story in my life – actually in a way I’ve got too many good stories in my life. I’m a writer and depending on what level of story I put into it, I could go “very controversial” or “very not, to the point that I unintentionally attracted a whole lot of libertarians whom I disagreed with on almost everything among my friends.”
Controversy isn’t a bad thing. If you are LGBT or a feminist or a strongly religious person or anything that stands out from “average expectations” you will reach a particular market of people who agree with you, sympathize, want to support you and see you succeed. Everything you do, even things that aren’t on topic, are still on topic because of who made them. If you’re ethnic, which is almost everyone, you’re going to reach your ethnic group. If you rejected your ethnic group (see LGBT and you’d know it if your ethnic group is homophobic) you can reach out to the groups that accept you and anyone else who strongly disagrees on the point that got you shut out from the mainstream – and still be yourself.
Be real. That is the heart of it. Putting your best foot forward. Ignore all the people who don’t like you because they aren’t buying your art, focus on people who categorically do.
I haven’t decided the core direction of my career yet, but may attempt to stitch everything together on love of nature. I’m pagan, LGBT, progressive, disabled, live in San Francisco and Love Cats. I have friends whom I have nothing in common wihth except “art” and “cats.” And I have people who would disagree on the fine points of my outlook even if they share all of the above. Perhaps especially since people who ALMOST agree with you are the most likely to be horrified by the one thing you differ on!
I eat meat. I’m in favor of humane livestock care and have a daughter who raises goats and chickens and rabbits for food. I’m not an obligate carnivore but my beloved cat sure is and I would not thrive if I became vegetarian. So within my progressive circles that comes up for friction occasionally. I don’t see it as unnatural to keep prey species and make the symbiotic bargain of taking care of them rather than hunting. What I do toward the environment is tend toward eating smaller animals and consider beef a major treat. Not a believer in “All or Nothing,” I keep a small ecological footprint.
Art itself can be a connection. Teach. Teaching people how to paint will sell art. I can’t count how many times I have bought a painting from a regular online teacher I admired. I’ll be looking at all the demos and some specific painting will grip my heart. I’ll click to buy or email to discuss a payment plan, make payments and eventually get the happy package. Then go on studying that teacher’s style with a real example in front of me, which does wonders for my understanding the technique and its effects.
Every hobbyist who likes to paint or draw is in that category of potential buyers for those good reasons. They’ll eventually get good enough to sell but may never push it beyond paying for materials and trips to workshops, because people learn. Taking it seriously to build a career is a different matter, a life choice that involves deciding things like where to live, what to do for a living, how to handle the non artistic parts that may be difficult like bookkeeping and marketing.
Currently I’m retired and painting better than I did when I lived on it. But this will change in a few years when I can supplement my Social Security, retire on account of age means not having any sales taken out of my disability. It’s too discouraging to sell when I’m not actually seeing any proceeds from my efforts but once I can, I will probably be doing a lot better than I did before my health tanked on the last chronic condition. The older ones meant literally that working for myself was physically easier than trying to keep a schedule working for other people, but the last one meant I could functionally only work a day or two a month. I wasn’t selling enough to live on that level, but could get to a point where I can or build enough runarounds to have more working time. All that takes time, patience and effort, experimenting with ways to make my life easier and pull what isn’t in reach into reach.
But if I’ve got the old age pension for necessity it won’t matter if the volume of sales doesn’t get to be enough to live on right away. I can grow my career at its natural pace and see what happens.