my honest advice for artists & small businesses: how to get people to ACTUALLY buy your art

deep breaths hi my name is Tammy I'm an artist and small business owner and today I want to share some harsh truths I've learned over the years some of these lessons I learned while I was in graphic design school but the majority of them I learned through trial and error over these past four years of running my art shop because we all know the feeling of working super hard on something but then it just not selling at all so I've gone ahead and compiled a huge list of the things that I wish I knew sooner

but before we get to the video I want to talk briefly about our sponsor which is universe universe is a drag and drop app for creating any website that you could think of like a link in BIO website a full e-commerce store blog or portfolio and you can use it on your iPad your iPhone or your computer I used Universe to make my Linkin bio website I think it's so cute it helps me connect to you guys and future clients and it was so easy to use you can easily pick a personalized Doom domain and

Hyper customize your site to match your vision I made mine from scratch using my phone but you can also use any of their amazing templates my favorite trick on the iPhone is to make transparent pgs of my products and then upload those pictures straight into Universe if you're in the US you can use their cell block which enables you to start selling your Creations in minutes you can also sell digital items using their download block and although these are only available in the US they also have a PayPal block which is available everywhere else so

if you decide to get Universe Pro you can start selling you can remove Universe branding and get access to their code block to unlock additional customization options you can use the first link in my description to get 25% off your first year of universe Pro or use my second link to try Universe for free and now let's get into some harsh truths the first thing is that if you truly want to run a successful small business you can't make selfish art I'm so afraid to start off with this one but it's true the point of

any business is to add value to a customer's life so especially when you're first starting off you can't just say I made this cool design I think it's cool please buy my art like no one's going to buy that because who is this even for no one is going to spend their hard-earned money on something that they don't feel a deep connection to and this may be a hard pill to swallow especially if you design your own products and art is so personal to you but just because you worked super hard on something doesn't mean

it's going to sell frankly it's not enough it's not enough to make things that only you enjoy so at first this may seem very restricting and this might be off-putting to a lot of artists but I'm not saying to completely disregard your taste you can still make things that you are proud of and things that you enjoy to make so long as you do these few things first you want to ident identify your audience who are you making products for what group is your business serving and in order to make this an enjoyable experience for

you make it an audience that you are also a part of for example if you love making animal portraits make your audience animal lovers people who love their cats who love their dogs they will be willing to pay you for Pet Portraits or if you love anime your target audience will be people who love anime as well people go to Anime Con who will pay for fan art and then your business can make fan art for them that way it's a win-win for everybody you get to have fun doing what you love and your customers

benefit from your passion for what you do once you've identified your target audience another thing you want to constantly be doing is researching on social media it's easier than ever you can make polls on your stories asking your audience what type of products they want what type of videos they like to see I do this all the time with my own followers because I want to make sure I'm putting out stuff that they want I want to end this section off by saying I make selfish art all the time especially on YouTube some times I

just make random videos like book shopping or building a miniature set and I made those videos simply because I thought it'd be fun and they brought me joy and that's super important because that Joy from creating selfish art keeps me going in the long run but as you can see those two videos also happened to be my worst performing videos and I knew that would happen and I accepted that in contrast videos like my cap cut tutorial did extremely well because that was a very selfless video and it provided a lot of value it was

not for me at all it was for you guys so striking that balance between selfish art and selfless art is what's going to enable you to make art for a living here's another harsh truth you need to give something in order to get something so for example on social media I'm quite vulnerable in my videos I show what I look like even on my worst days I share my process I talk about my anxiety and my struggles and lessons I've learned and although it's very vulnerable it allows people to feel connected to me and therefore

my brand that doesn't mean you have to bear your entire soul to the internet like stay safe but all of my favorite successful small businesses online have also shared their stories their experiences shown their faces and that little offering of yourself is what gets people to want to support you because they see the humanity in what you do and all of a sudden you don't have to be the best I'm by no means the best illustrator the best painter the best product designer but from the moment I started sharing my story and sharing my process

those stories have imbued more value into my products than any technical skill could have and dare I say it that's the difference between me and AI art so again I must reiterate the harsh truth of starting a business is that you are not entitled to anything even if you took hours on a painting or months working on a collection that does not mean that someone will buy from you because what have you offered them other than demanding that they buy from you the solution to this is that you must provide value in your videos show

your process so that others small businesses and other artists can learn from you you'll come to realize that your very first supporters won't be normal customers they'll be other people like you trying to start their small businesses so help each other out through your content comment on their videos share them on your stories and that's exactly how I got started and got a following another thing you can do is provide entertainment or education whether it's short form or long form story times are a great way to get people's attention because we all just love a

good story share the biggest lesson that you've learned from school or share the biggest mistake that you've made and over time cultivate a community I recently started following this girl named Martina calie I think that's her name and she is an amazing case study on how the majority of her posts weren't actually marketing any products I'd say about 90% of the things that she's posted were just ideas on how to scrapbook and over time she's cultivated an extremely strong scrapbooking community on Instagram so over the years she's taught people how to collect their memories and

now she released her own book and she sold out on all the pre-orders in like less than a week and this is actually a really good example too of how much you should actually be asking people to buy your stuff like when we think of the marketing pie I feel like the average person would think that 100% of your posts should be to market for your products but in reality it's a lot of community building it's some story times some Vlogs some tutorials because in my experience most of my customers aren't just people who found

me on a whim and purchased something immediately more often than not it's people who have been following my journey for years before they actually decide to purchase something another harsh truth is that once you do find something that works for you you cannot stay the same you have to keep innovating diversifying not only will this keep you relevant but it'll create a little safety net for you once one of your products doesn't do well like if it stops selling or you simply just don't want to make it anymore like for me I know I probably

won't be making Palmer clay stuff forever so that's why I started branching out into stationeries Ceramics and plushies the same thing goes for Content creation and marketing I started off only doing Studio Vlogs but now as you can see this year I started doing a lot more talking videos just talking straight to the camera giving my advice because it provides value to a new audience in a different way than Vlogs do and lastly you will never feel ready no matter how much research you do no matter how many people you talk to you'll never truly

feel prepared or like professional with things like running a small business or an art shop you really just have to learn as you go one of my small business friends jumo juwes she started when she was 15 years old and she started manufacturing plushies before I did like she just graduated high school and she beat me to the punch and in one of her videos she said that she literally went in blind yes running a business is hard you'll have to keep learning new things every single day you'll have to face a lot of disappointment

and that's why you have to find it within yourself to believe that you can do hard things once you find those words in yourself like I can do hard things I am capable of doing something difficult of starting my own business of achieving Financial Freedom through my art I feel like that belief alone will make things so much easier for you no matter how much effort or time it takes you can do it and let's say you've already started the process you've been doing this for months and you're not seeing the progress that you want

to see that's a clear sign that you need to change something talk to your friends ask your followers really be open to constructive criticism because at the end of the day you are not the best at what you do so yeah look at what other people are doing reflect on your business and how you can improve because I guarantee that there's something that you can change and it's most likely in how you're marketing I feel like especially if you come from the art World your art is so personal to you so it really does hurt

when it's not perceived in the way that you want it to be but what helps me personally is I make art for myself and that is my therapy that's my healing Journey For example these paintings I just painted for myself just for fun and I probably won't ever monetize this I I can't monetize this because I got the reference off Pinterest so that's my art and then this is my business in my brain I separate the two and I feel like that separation is very very vital and healthy for any artist wanting to make a

business out of their art that distinction will make things so much easier when you get like discouraging comments or stuff because it's no longer personal it's business so yeah anyway that was the last bit of advice that I wasn't planning on saying but I hope this video helped thank you so much for watching this video was really hard for me to write out because it it felt like I was being really harsh but this is all genuine advice that I always give to my friends or anyone who ask me for stuff on how to sell

your art or run a small business let me know your thoughts or questions down in the comments below and I'll see you guys very very soon bye [Music] resty r on her shoulder I was cleaning her shoe when