How to Make Your Art Into a Business

As an artist, you’re fully committed to your passion. Whether you’re a photographer, a painter, or work with a variety of media, you’ve had an artistic mindset as long as you can remember. You’ve given up great jobs to commit more time to your art, and you’ve even gone to grad school to study up on it. Recently, you’ve been thinking of turning it into a business that will make money. With the internet, suddenly it seems like you have a chance; selling your art online is way easier than starting your own gallery.

You know there are some great strategies out there, but you aren’t totally sure how to get started. Luckily, we’ve got some great tips for you, which will get you making money and gaining popularity as an artist in no time.

Create a beautiful, mobile-friendly website 

If you don’t have a website already, then you need to start. And it can’t just be any website–it has to be beautiful, the kind of site that visitors will spend hours on. Considering that you have an artistic streak, you’ll know right away what color scheme works, and what fonts match the aesthetic style of your work. But in addition, you need the right features — a homepage, samples of your work, a portfolio of where your art’s been featured (whether that’s print, online, or in a gallery), information about you (for example, your education and art background), a blog, and contact information.

If you’re not an expert when it comes to web design, there’s no need to worry. There are plenty of resources such as Wix, WordPress, and SquareSpace that already come with templates tailor-made for artist businesses. Additionally, don’t forget to make your website mobile-friendly. Now that we’re spending five hours per day on our phones, you need your website to look good not only on computers but on mobile. Luckily, there are lots of free tests out there to see what your website looks like on a phone.

And don’t forget to make it easy to scroll on a phone! According to Kissmetrics, you need to use “checkable boxes and scrolling menu bars to simplify the data entry process. By reducing the content on your page, you have the option to make the text size a little bigger (i.e., legible on a small screen). This makes the essential information on the page accessible in one easy vertical scroll. Also, make sure the action buttons are of a decent size and have enough space in between each for easy navigation with fingers.”

Blog as much as you can 

Did you know that in 2017, 66 percent of marketers used blogging in their social media content? It’s an amazing statistic, but it just goes to show what an important part of your digital marketing strategy blogging is. It improves your search engine optimization (SEO), which means you’re going to appear toward the top of the search engine hits when someone looks up both art websites in general and the keywords in your blog posts. This is important because it makes it more likely people will visit your website, take a look at what you’ve got to offer, and buy your work.

Additionally, it’ll make your customers come back for more. If you write a blog post about the different stages you take in completing a commissioned portrait, or how to get into art school and build up your portfolio, you’re providing them with information that they want to read. You’ll be admired not only for your artwork but for your ability to make the art world more accessible.

Share on social media 

Finally, you need to get on social media. If you’ve worked so hard on your website and blog, you still aren’t going to get anywhere if you aren’t advertising it on the best platforms. When it comes to art, the most important platforms are going to be Instagram–which has more than 800 million monthly active users–and Facebook, where you can easily connect with other artists.

To learn more about how to promote your art on Instagram, check out this advice from the NYC art experts from Agora Gallery. Even if you’re spending just fifteen minutes a day updating your social media profiles while you sip iced coffee K Cups, it can make a big difference when it comes to gaining leads.

Making your art into a business is all about making yourself completely available to fans and customers online, and sharing as much as you can of your paintings and thoughts about art. 

What other ways have you connected with your fans?