Building your market.

Do people like your paintings and are they prepared to part with their hard earned money to buy one of your paintings?

I read so much about Artists who have been painting for less than 5 years, some only a few months complaining about how no one wants to pay the prices that they put on their paintings.

In my opinion they are concerned about all the wrong things, I read them always talking about the price they that they should get for their paintings and the pricing formulas they use, price per square inch, add labour costs and I saw someone say and factor in utility costs.

Now I can understand a mature Artist at the peak of her career talking about these things but she does not have to because she has built her career and her prices have increased to the point where the small prices she got in the beginning have been returned to her many times over.

Artists at the beginning of your career it is not how much you get for your paintings, the price, it’s all about strangers buying them and putting them on their walls and then through after sales service keeping those strangers as customers and friends.

We are not building prices we are building a market.

I do not want you to give your paintings away but no matter how good you think they might be, if you are unknown then you cannot ask the same price as a mature Artist would ask after a twenty year career, she has earned the right to ask high prices and she has built her own market and maintained her market which takes a lot of work.

In the beginning of your career it is not about building big prices it’s about building your market and that will take selling your work to strangers and then turning those strangers into friends and then life time collectors. These collectors who were once strangers will become your best advertising, word of mouth and it is to their advantage to see you become famous and your paintings sell for big prices.

This takes time so prepare for the long game and be patient.

Strangers will make you famous but it will take time, so don’t start to panic until you have been painting and selling for ten years.

This is not what new Artists want to hear, but if you are unknown, then you are unknown.

Don’t worry about building your prices, put your energy into building your market this will earn you the money, if you last then the high prices will come.