have you ever wondered how to start an
art business
no
okay then never mind
my name is drizzkids and i started my
art business nine years ago and in that
time i've exhibited my work
globally berlin milan buenos aires
brussels london i've won dozens of
awards was featured in some famous
magazines and even exhibited my work in
some well-known museums like the golden
museum in the netherlands and in this
video i will be explaining how to start
your art business first things first if
you want to develop an art business you
have to know what professional artists
are and what they do because most people
think that professional artists make art
and that is actually not true if you
look at the history of the best artists
you see that the best artists
were also the best business people and
spend most of their time on their
businesses i'm thinking for example
about rembrandt with his factory about
andy warhol with his factory about
artists today even damon hurst jeff guns
etc etc all spending a lot of their time
on their business professional artists
will easily spend 80 percent of their
time on marketing and business and only
20 of their time on their art whereas
beginner artists
will spend 80 of their time on art and
20 of their time on business or on
watching netflix and so as a beginner
starting your art business you will have
to be willing to spend 80 which means 40
hours a week or more on the business
side of your practice knowing very well
that while doing that
you will likely not make any money in
the first couple of years and so how
does that look 80
what do you do during that 80
time well the first thing that you need
is obviously a place to sell your art
this can be a gallery this can be an
online gallery your own website and
obviously some picks will be better than
other pics but it really depends on what
your goals are as an artist i've made a
lot of videos about it on my channel
anyway if you don't know which one to
pick i would suggest to build your own
website with wordpress for example
instead of shopify or squarespace or any
of those platforms now just having a
website will not result in people
automatically finding your website and
buying your arts and so you will have to
drive traffic towards your website
yourself
and the easiest way to do that and the
cheapest way at this moment is social
media social media is the future of the
arts and a great tool to sell your art
salted and christies are selling million
dollar items on social media as we speak
and so if they can do that you can most
definitely sell a 500 painting or a
thousand dollar painting now when it
comes to growing your social media
presence there are so many things that
we could be talking about but if there's
only one tip that i can give you it
would be to talk with people yourself
make that first step yourself instead of
waiting for them to come to you and then
afterwards making that step
thousands and thousands of times here's
the thing if you go to an instagram
profile that has a thousand followers
that is an r profile and you comment and
you like their post and then you send
them a dm explaining what you like about
their work 95 of those people
will
check your stuff out and if your stuff
is good enough then they will follow you
afterwards and then if you like some
more and comment some more on a regular
basis and they see that engagement from
you because you're volume following them
as well in this scenario then
then they will probably start doing that
for you as well and so now you have an
effective way to increase your follower
account and increase your engagement
on any social media platform basically
now this process obviously takes a lot
of time and can easily cost you 10 hours
a week and so you might be wondering why
is social media so important why should
i do this why should i spend over an
hour a day talking and interacting in
meaningful conversation with our people
online well here's why the middleman is
disappearing and is being replaced by
the internet and so what we will see in
the near future is that the traditional
gallery model will be replaced by the
internet we will also see some huge
shifts
in how museums pick their artists
because museums need visitors they need
ticket sales because their funding from
government depends on that and soon
those museums will realize that
an unknown artist who has a million
subscribers on youtube actually brings
them way more visitors than an
established artist
that doesn't have an audience except for
the 10 collectors that really loved and
as a result five years from now those
museums will start exhibiting seemingly
out of nowhere those youtube artists and
obviously by then it's going to be too
late and so what you want to do is start
your social media presence building that
social media presence right now when
it's not saturated yet
on top of that i would also suggest to
build your email list out because
you never know when social media
decreases their organic reach and when
you cannot reach your followers anymore
and so that's where the mailing list
comes in so now we already have two
important aspects a place to sell our
arts
namely our website and a way to drive
traffic towers that place
namely social media and so what's next
how can we make sure that the people
who land on our gallery space actually
buy our work how can we make sure that
the conversion rates are really high
well it has everything to do with which
art you make
now the next thing that i want to
explain is not something i did myself
but looking back is definitely something
that i would do if i were to start over
the biggest mistake that artists make
is that they think that they have to
decide which art
they make
that they think that they have to decide
which which art style to pursue and that
is completely wrong what you have to do
instead is let your customers decide
the truth is that your customers decide
what they're willing to pay for and what
they're not willing to pay for
and you have to let them do that
otherwise you will not sell anything you
will be that artist that
makes something super strange that
nobody understands and then nobody buys
it and then the artist says well nobody
understands me i'm misunderstood or
whatever you know and so how does that
look how do you let your customers
decide
it's fairly simple there are two aspects
that you have to do the first one is to
figure out what they like you do this by
posting a lot of your original art on
social media and then see which artworks
get most likes most chairs comments etc
etc etc and then after you know which
artworks are most liked
you want to figure out which artworks
people are willing to pay for because
what people are willing to pay for is
oftentimes different than what people
like
and you do this second thing by all in
beginning putting your prices extremely
low so that you get a lot of sales
volume going and then you can just
literally see
which artworks are being sold most and
then after you've done that you know
which artworks sell most which artworks
are most liked you want to combine those
two things and the combination of those
two things will be your
best possible ideal artwork to make and
then you make more pieces that are
similar to that ideal artwork piece and
of course you raise your prices to a
decent price point now
obviously you cannot do this with a
finished large-scale masterpiece that
would be way too costly and so what you
want to do is you want to do this test
these things out with very small
original works or art prints of your
original works now for some this process
of finding what sells best and then
making more of those types of artworks
is selling out instead of making what
you love but
it simply isn't
this is what an artist is and should do
and this is what all famous artists have
done before you
this notion that you should be a strange
misfit that is misunderstood by society
and
and only gets recognized after he
is dead
is it's complete bs
and on top of this not being true it's
also an extremely toxic thing that you
should not believe you should not
believe in the starving artist myth this
is going to hold you back as an artist
and it's going to lead towards failure
really now one of the best tips when it
comes to starting your art business
actually doesn't come from me it comes
from today's sponsor liking this video
which is something that you should be
doing because it's because of your likes
that this video is an ad-free experience
and
it's because of your life that you don't
have to listen to some kind of
two-minute canned boring sponsorship
message now let's talk about english
because you might be thinking by
yourself trees should i have a niche
everybody has a niche what's a niche i
also want the niche well the truth is
that
you don't need need a niche at all the
people who are talking about the niche
are predominantly people on youtube
actually it's kind of a thing to talk
about it now but if you would be talking
with multi-millionaires who have been
building businesses you will not hear
them talk about niches too often because
the truth is that a niche doesn't really
matter that much what you need to do
instead is every time that you make a
new offer create a new art service or
whatever make sure that is it that it is
in line with your existing customer base
if you do that
then you will have all the benefits of
having a niche and more as a matter of
fact if you think about it having a
niche in the art world actually doesn't
make a lot of sense
because in the art world a large portion
of your customers will be buying your
art because of you
not because of the artwork not because
of the niche or the affiliation with the
niche that they like let me explain this
for a moment let's compare gerard
richter with the following two artists
nikki hari and lynn spore
all three make scraping paintings and so
by definition all three are in the same
niche but the people who are buying and
nikki are paying ten thousand euro ten
thousand dollars for that painting
they could
buy a lint sport which would be the same
quality the same painting and way
cheaper they are not doing that because
they want to buy a nikki high and the
people who buy richter are paying 100
times more than nikihar
even though the paintings are the same
quality people are not buying a niche
product they are not buying a painting
they are buying
and so if you're an artist you should
stop thinking about a niche and as you
can see in the previous example and also
something that i want to mention is that
the quality of the artwork doesn't
matter
i see this all the time artists go to a
gallery they see an artwork for example
scraping painting in a gallery hanging
fifty thousand dollars and they will say
well i can make the same painting i'm as
good as this artist but my work isn't
worth fifty thousand dollars well guess
what thomas
everybody can make that painting that's
not the point the value of that artwork
hanging in that gallery at fifty
thousand dollar price point
is not determined because of the quality
of the arts
at all the reason this particular artist
is selling at the price point of fifty
thousand dollars is because he had
eighteen exhibitions in major museums
and has been making art selling art
exhibiting art for the past 30 years
thomas did not pay his juice yet this
artist paid his juice
this artist climbed the ladder just like
in the corporate world in corporate
world you have to climb the ladder in
the arts world that's the same thing in
order for your paintings to increase in
value you have to acquire those
credentials museum exhibits gallery
exhibits awards etc etc etc now where it
becomes interesting is when we start
thinking about which
credentials are overpriced and which
credentials are underpriced
is it still smart to start all the way
underneath the gallery ladder for
example or is it smarter to start
building a youtube channel is
having youtube subscribers
five years from now going to be more
important than a solo exhibition i don't
have the answer to those questions but i
do
i i would argue that
having 500 000 youtube subscribers is
way more powerful than having a solo
exhibition in a mid-level gallery for
example and so it might be true that
mid-level gallery representation is
overpriced compared to a youtube channel
now let it be clear
that while i'm saying this i only have 4
000 youtube subscribers and so i have no
incentives to say this or believe this
or anything another tip that i want to
give you is that when you are building
your art business that you understand
make sure that you understand copyright
law make sure that you are building
a business that is legal you cannot for
example just make portraits of famous
artists and movie stars and then sell
prints of those portraits online that
would be fanoid and you would need the
rights to use the likeness of those
characters in order to sell them when i
was doing the research for this video i
came across an amazing girl on youtube
that was sadly enough doing this
but that's illegal and so her shop will
likely
be closed down due to lawsuits very soon
in the next year perhaps two years and
so you don't want to be that artist that
is building a successful business that
actually succeeds and then has to shut
it down because of a detail
a legal detail another thing that i want
to quickly mention is that nobody
who ever built a successful business
knew
how to build the business before they
did there has never been an artist who
knew how to become famous before they
became famous and so at some point you
will have to stop researching and just
start building a business without really
knowing how to do it it's true to doing
that you will learn and in order to make
this video complete we have to talk
about one more thing the most important
thing and it's not making art
it's not marketing it's not social media
it's not having a website
it's sales
the most important aspect of every art
business is sales and so we should be
talking about that explain you
everything about selling your art but
that would be another 15 minutes and
frankly completely different video and
so i'm very sorry but we're not going to
do that
predominantly
because i already did it's called how to
sell art on instagram without having a
lot of followers
take care
take a look and remember
art is the only necessity