Ep 5 How to decide if you should have a website… or not, as an artist?

In this episode of the “Living from your Art” podcast, I talk about the importance of NOT creating a website too soon when you start your artistic career.

We often receive advices from people around us who never had any kind of business whatsoever and one of those advices is to create a website FIRST… let me tell you why this is wrong.

Transcript:

Welcome back to this next episode of “Living from Your Art” podcast. In today’s episode, I talk about the fact of having a website or not or creating a website before you even start advertising your art and promoting what you do.

So, today I’m not in my car and I’m using new headphones, so you tell me if the sound is better, but anyway, we are experimenting, right?

A lot of times when I meet new clients, new artists that I help, they will talk to me about websites, social media, having business cards, having a video trailer, having lots of stuff before they can even start selling and promoting their art. And what I learned through the years is that you don’t HAVE to have something to be a legit business (you didn’t, you don’t even have to be like a incorporated) or whatever. 

You can start selling your art right away.

Of course, you will do an exchange of money, so you will tell that to the government at the end of the year. But what I mean is that you don’t HAVE to have an entity, to create a LLC (or a corporation wherever the country you are in!) BEFORE you can start making any sales.

What I really want you to understand today is that having a website, having business cards, having a desk, having a Facebook page, having a LinkedIn page, having a flyer, having whatever it is that you think that you should have before you start promoting. You have to take this idea and throw it in the garbage because you can start making sales right now today if you have some talent for a specific art.

The people that will usually buy if you’re just starting out, the people that will buy from you first, are your friends and family. So, make a list of a hundred people and more; I don’t know how big your network is, but at least a hundred persons that really appreciate you for who you are. People who already told you that they like your art, already bought some of your art.

If you already are doing business, make a list of a hundred past clients that had fun with you, who bought from you in the past and with which you have a great relationship. Then, call them or email them or talk to them on social media from your personal profile and set up an appointment over the phone.

The best way of selling art is in person or over the phone, so just do this!

And when you start making sales or when you start making more sales, then you can buy a website or create a website. Just wait because I want you to put your attention, your focus, on selling your art and making the money necessary at first to be able to buy these things: a website, create some business cards, all of that jazz (whatever else anybody in surrounding is telling you to do!).

The vast majority of the time, they’re not even in business themselves! And if they are, maybe they’re not at the same level as you are, maybe they’re more advanced, they’ve been doing this for years, and they’ll tell you: “Oh, you have to have this, you have to have that!”. But most of the time, unfortunately, they don’t have the right solutions for you.

I don’t want to tell you that nobody has the right solutions because that would be a lie. But what I’ve observed, through my years of helping artists that are wishing to become full-time artists, is that they’re doing so many things that they don’t need to do right now. They’re investing in so many things that they don’t need to invest in right now, that they’re losing momentum and they’re losing some precious, precious time that they could spend on just making their network grow, making some sales, and making their self-confidence as artists bigger and growing.

So this is really, really important because, at first, you want make sure that these pieces of art that you create, or shows, or whatever kind of art that you create, that people actually love them, that you can find some specific niche of people, like a specific market that are actually craving for it.

So that brings up your level of self-confidence.

And then, you will be more certain to invest in ads, flyers, mailings or email blasts to these people. And then you’ll know that the money that you’re spending, or investing, is going to have a return on investment.

So that was mainly my focus for today’s episode; having a website before anything else is reverse. So, make some sales (and maybe THAT’S a reverse thinking for you), THEN create a website or even social media accounts. You don’t even need social media at first because you have your friends and family, and you can go in Facebook groups and all of these things.

If ever you need help, send me an email at: elie@livingfromyourart.com and I would love to speak and work with you maybe. I’ll create my website maybe soon, but as you see, I don’t even have my website yet and I’m selling services (since the recording of this episode I have now built my website!). It was nice to speak with you again, thanks for listening and until then, stay creative, stay positive. Talk to you soon. Bye

Art Business Coach
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