You Can't Do It All

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed today, so I'm going to talk about the most efficient ways to sell artwork. Efficiency will be a bit of a trial and error game, and it will depend a lot on what works best for you. What works for me won't always work for someone else. But here's what I've found to result in the most money for time spent selling artwork.

• Consigning to stores. Most boutiques and stores are willing to take work on consignment, because it doesn't cost them anything if the work doesn't sell. It just takes a few emails and phone calls to line up a place that will take your work. Once you've got the account, though, all you need to do is create and watch the money roll in! The major drawback to this is that you're not making as much money (usually only 60% of the item cost) and you're not guaranteed a sale. But if you have several stores consigning your work, and you make 5-10 sales a month for a $20 item in each of those stores, the money does start to add up. Just make sure that your items are priced so that even at 40% off, you make a profit.
• Art Crawls. Also referred to as Art After Hours or Art Parties, these are shows that take very little time. The most common ones around here last from 5-9 on a Friday night and include free food and wine! Even more important in the South, they're indoors and air conditioned. If they're well promoted, you can walk away with quite a bit of money. Most of the time, the people that come to these are looking for real art. I sell more of my bigger pieces at these shows than I do anywhere else. You can also utilize a mailing list to promote where you'll be when.
• Online Sales. This is probably the easiest place to jump in, because you don't need a ton of inventory or strict product lines. Online selling can suck up some time, though, because it's a lot of work to photograph and edit pictures for all of your items! Most of my online sales come from two or three popular items that I can remake over and over again. I recommend finding something like that for you. This cuts a lot of the time out of the process, too, because you don't need to take and edit new photos. Promoting online sales takes a lot more effort than any other venue, because you can't rely on an event promoter to bring traffic to you - you must generate your own traffic. This requires a good understanding of SEO (search engine optimization) or a way to direct your "personal" customers back to your website.