Recently I re-launched The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester. P.S. Enrollment is currently closed.

And I heard from a number of artists from around the globe who eagerly wanted to enroll but said that they didn’t have enough time or money.

1. Not enough time? That’s no excuse because unlike other courses, The Semester is self-paced and it does not end, it’s on-going. Students receive unlimited access and can participate according to their schedule and commitments.
2. Not enough money? That’s no excuse either because if you actually do the work, The Semester is an investment that could pay for itself many times over.

If you make art, then making money is just as easy. Oh I can hear it now. “No it’s not!”

Yes it is. Stay with me. I’m not just promoting The Semester, which I obviously believe in.

I’m going to teach you how I first made significant money with my art.

I shared with a number of applicants to The Semester, a story about a time when I really wanted to attend an expensive painting workshop with my mentor Gregory Kondos in the south of France.

I was working for a music distribution company, MP3 files and Napster basically annihilated our company almost overnight.

I was left with no job, no prospects, and a sizable 50% non-refundable deposit for this workshop. Did I mention that my seven-year relationship had ended abruptly and that I was emotionally devastated?

Thankfully, my co-workers encouraged me to take the trip and to find the money and make it happen.

I could stay home and cry or I could go make art and make money.

I decided on the later and it was one of the very best decisions I have made in my life.

I put out a box of overpriced chocolate in my office cubicle with a sign that said, “Send a kid to France.”

Even though my co-workers where loosing their jobs, they bought my overpriced chocolate and that paid for all of my art supplies.

I wrote a letter to everyone my in my small network offering them the opportunity to receive a small painting that I would create just for them in the south of France. (See above.)

I included a self-addressed stamped envelope with the payment due date.

The self-addressed stamped envelopes began to arrive, some with requests for paintings, and some with just a few dollars and well wishes.

I basically created a Kick Starter campaign before it existed.

This simple sales and marketing effort not only funded my trip to the south of France, it funded a side trip to England to see my family and I made profit.

It was my first taste of making art and making money.

My patrons were absolutely delighted with the paintings that I created for them and some bought more.

It was so easy to execute because I was going to be painting anyway and I was actually more inspired by thinking of who was going to receive each painting.

What did this marketing effort cost me? Well, I had to buy:

• some paper
• envelopes
• stamps

It helped me tremendously to have the support of a friend who encouraged me and who let me use his fancy color printer.

There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from doing the same thing, today.

1. Determine what amount of money you would like to make.
2. Create a product a.k.a. Art.
3. Make something easy to execute on.
4. Create something that will add value for your customers in some way. You can just personalize it.
5. Choose a price point that your network will easily say yes to.
6. Do the math. I only needed ten people to say yes to fully fund my trip.

I recommend first mailing a letter and following up via email with a PayPal payment link. You now have the advantage of technology, so use both.

Be clear on what you want, when you want it, how they will benefit from what you will be making for them, and why you want it, maybe you want to enroll in The Semester?

Not sure what to write? No need to struggle with copywriting. I have an easy fix.

1. Imagine that you’re sitting across from someone who you think would be receptive.
2. Tell them what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, what you would like to do for them.
3. Record this imaginary conversation, then transcribe, and edit it.

Your message will come across in a way that feels authentic, natural, clear, and concise.

Commit to a date to send the letter and ask a friend to hold you accountable.

Just see what happens. Treat it as an educational experiment.

The worst thing that will happen is that you will learn vital lessons about the selling and marketing your art. You’ll learn about:

• Product Development
• Pricing
• Positioning
• Marketing
• Selling
• Project planning
• Accounting
• Follow through

Essentially what I learned from funding my trip to France were the basic mechanics of making art and making money, which I just repeated until I got to the place where I was a full-time Artist.

You can do this. It’s just about committing and taking planned and scheduled action.

Someday is today. Do it now and tell someone who cares what you are going to do and by when. The only thing stopping you is an excuse and Artists Who THRIVE don’t do excuses 😉

p.s. I would never write this letter today but who cares. It worked!

What will you create and by when? Share below.

Do you have a hard time charging for your art?

Be honest. Even if your prices are outlined clearly do you still get a twinge of guilt when you take money for your art?

It was so damn easy and fun to make your art, how could you possibly charge for it?

I aim to complete a painting in under two hours, with ease and joy, whether it is a $3000 study or a $25,000 commissioned paining.

Why? Because it feels and looks better when I paint quickly and because I can.

However, many artists feel guilty and they are conflicted about charging for something that they enjoy creating.

I don’t. And neither should you.

What’s the answer to “how long did it take you to paint that painting?” All my life.

When a concert pianist climbs on stage to perform a concerto, he or she is not charging by the hour.

Even though the very best source of creative inspiration for an artist is getting paid for their art, emerging artists too often feel conflicted.

Why? Artists see a purchase of their art as an affirmation of themselves.

This is precisely where things get twisted.

When someone buys your art it is an affirmation of the value of your product, your art, not you.

Just so you don’t miss my point, I’ll say it again. Collectors, fans, customers, however you refer to them, are not affirming you as a person. They are affirming the value that they perceive your product is offering them.

It’s not about you, it’s about them.

If you perceive a collector’s purchase of your art as an affirmation of your value as a person, you are naturally going to feel conflicted about charging for your art.

If fact, you going to feel like a bit of a whore.

Our culture offers artists two disrespectful categories that, with your help, I aim to stamp out :

1. “starving artist” or
2. “art whore”

“Art Whore. Noun- someone who specializes in feeling special for maintaining the delusion that art is inherently valuable. This is typically done by selling their artwork, which requires a massively inflated ego and fosters a dependence on the insulated world of art critics. This dependency can be likened to the relationship between a hooker and a pimp.”

“John Doe is an art whore. Before that he, like all other artists, was a wanna-be art whore.”

So the choice is “starving artist” or “art whore,” two universal destructive and conflicting labels that make it so that artists can never win. Each choice is some tired bullshit.

Here’s the truth, as I mentioned in my last post.

“Every artist is an entrepreneur and every entrepreneur is an artist.” Dr. ‘E” Elliot McGucken

Have you had trouble charging for your art? Be honest. The truth will set you free. Share below.

Traditional business plans do not work for artists. Why? Because Artists sell emotions.

Artists are really in the business of selling emotions and that is why traditional business plans do not work for artists and that is also why artists don’t see themselves as entrepreneurs.

We artists actually sell “products” that evoke feeling, products that connect the buyer with their humanity. That’s much more powerful value than a pair of new sneakers or the latest technical gadget.

So a huge amount of money always has and always will change hands in the art market.

According to “The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) estimates, 3.2 percent — or $504 billion — of current-dollar GDP in 2011 was attributable to arts and culture.”

In comparison, “BEA’s estimated value of the U.S. travel and tourism industry was 2.8 percent of GDP.”

What prevents artists from getting their share? Simple. They see themselves just as artists and not as entrepreneurs.

A successful attorney who runs their own practice is an attorney and an entrepreneur. A plumber who sells their services a plumber and an entrepreneur. You get the picture.

“Every artist is an entrepreneur and every entrepreneur is an artist”, so eloquently stated by my friend Dr. ‘E’ (Elliot McGucken) whose “Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship, Business, and Technology” Course has been featured by The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Business Week.

So why don’t artists see themselves as entrepreneurs?

The confusion is fueled by the loud and unquestioned “Starving Artist” slur, a disrespectful and destructive belief.

Ironically, this slander is continuously broadcast by the same culture and economy that values art so highly, 3.2 % of the US Gross Domestic Product!

So why else are the “manufactures” of these highly valued “products” so very confused?

Because an artist often can’t see beyond how they feel about their product.

Why?

Because unlike traditional businesses, artists sell products that reflect what is deeply and personally meaningful to them.

Target market? That is not something they even mention in art school.

So artists don’t identify with traditional business and traditional business does not identify with artists. Each party is often outright hostile towards each other.

Artists believe that their values are different from business people and they don’t speak the same language. We often hate what we don’t understand and what intimidates us.

However, successful artistic and conventional entrepreneurs have much more in common that they think.

They each have to effectively answer these questions.

1. Who are you and what do you stand for?
2. What do you stand against?
3. What problem is your product solving that is really worth solving?
4. How do you solve this problem in a way that is unique and effective?
5. Who has this problem? Who is your target market?
6. Where and how can you find your target market?

If you want to make art and make money you must be able to answer these questions in clearly. No B.S. No fluff. Your artist statements won’t help.

Can you answer these questions? If not, start to by giving it a try. We all have to start somewhere. There’s no shame it that.

Please share below.

 

 

The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Here’s why…

I recently re-launched The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester, eight, interactive, foundational, business courses teaching a proven, iterative, sequential process of building a profitable artistic enterprise while connecting a community of Artists Who THRIVE.

I thought it would be a fantastic idea to partner with the top art and design schools by giving their alumni free access to two hours of high quality online training. For each alumnus who enrolled in The Semester, I offered to make a donation to their art school’s endowment.

The top art and design schools have woefully unfunded endowments and that is the main reason why their tuition rates are so steep.

It actually costs more to attend the Rhode Island School of Design than it does to attend Harvard Law School.

Yet you’d probably be more successful selling your art if you attended Harvard Law School because at least your alumni network could easily afford it.

The other big problem that U.S. art and design schools are facing down is that the U.S. Department of Education has them under much stricter scrutiny and they are limiting the number of student loans to art students.

Why? Because the high loan default rate of art students who are graduating, or not graduating, from art and design schools, without marketable skills, is a real problem.

I thought when I reached out to the top art and design schools they would either:

• Love the idea
• Ignore the offer
• Or somehow perceive my offer as competition, even though the program is limited to art school alumni and not students

As you can guess, the response from the top art and design schools was very mixed, generally including:

1. We would first like to see your curriculum. (I’ll bet you would. But I own and protect my intellectual property, as I instruct other artists to do. In fact, I’ve trademarked “making art making money.”)
2. What you are offering competes with our career office’s services. (I don’t think so because you just used the word “career” and there are no jobs for fine artists so they don’t have “careers”, they have businesses.)
3. We are not interested in participating “at this time.” (As if there will be a next time.)
4. Last but not least, an “Associate”, you know who you are, from one of the most established art and design schools scowled at me, “What could you possibly have to offer that the staff in this Career Office, with over 100 years of collective experience, has to offer?!” (Let’s start with kindness and professionalism.) It gets worse but I’ll spare you.

Giving art and design school alumni free training and their school’s endowments ongoing donations. What was I thinking!?

I know that the path to hell is often paved with good intentions.

But the fact is the alumni from the top art and design schools are already reaching out to me. They have been for over a decade.

Alumni from the top art and design schools are applying to The Semester, they are reading this blog, and they are booking phone consults with me.

Why? because these artists are not getting what they need from their “career” offices and or their alumni departments. They want to make art and make money and they don’t know how. They need help.

Art school alumni paid a huge premium for their tuition and many are now forever shackled with inescapable student loan debt. They are looking for a return on that investment of precious money and time.

One art school representative said, “If it were just up to me, we would partner with you immediately but I just can not use the words ‘making art’ and ‘making money’ in the same sentence with the administration of this art school. I work with ‘Marxists.'”

I responded, “Let me just guess, you have a pretty bad relationship with a most of your alumni, don’t you?” “Yes, we do. They just don’t want to engage with us.”

She was actually very polite and more receptive than most but she never phoned me back as she said she would.

There’s a big fat elephant in the living room and I’m not havin’ it.

We’ll just go around the obstacle, the permission and scarcity based art establishment. That’s the beautiful thing about the Internet.

How has the career or alumni office at your art school helped you? I’d love to hear some really good examples. Please share below.

You are not a Real Artist unless you are a Full-Time Artist.

Have you heard this? Maybe you’ve actually said it and meant it?

Over the years I have be subjected to a number of rules that other people expected me to live by.

When I lived by unquestioned rules that did not serve me I have been injured.

So let’s have a good long look at this rule, “You are not a Real Artist unless you are a Full-Time Artist.”

The truth is that the only reason that I am a “full-time Artist” is for two reasons:

1. I’m unemployable. I haven’t updated my resume in about 15 years.
2. I don’t like following rules just for the sake of it. And when you work for someone else you have to follow their rules.

Before I was a “full-time” Artist I was a “part-time” Artist.

When I quit my job and moved to San Francisco to be a “full-time” Artist, I had invested several years as a “part-time” Artist.

By the way, I don’t recommend doing what I did.

Why? There are smarter and less pressured ways to become a full-time Artist.

My art definitely changed and evolved when I became a “full-time” Artist because I had more time to make it.

But I was the same person, the same artist. I did not become a more real person or a more real artist.

I’m bringing this up because there are many artists who I’ve worked with who happen to have a day job and they don’t hate it. Thankfully.

These Artists also enjoy the stability of receiving a consistent paycheck. Amen. What’s the shame in that?

Artists Who THRIVE is all about making art and making money while thriving.

How much time should you devote to making art and making money? That’s entirely up to you. There is no mandate.

“You are not a Real Artist unless you are a Full-Time Artist.”

Really? Says who? And on what authority?

Where is this ruling coming from?

I’ll tell you where this rule, or judgment, is coming from.

It’s coming from other artists who are struggling financially and justifying their choices by asserting this myth.

Are the “full-time” artists who receive financial subsidies from their family or partners “real Artists?”

Look. If you really believe this rule, that’s cool. But don’t be smug and arrogant by imposing it upon other artists. Live and let live. “Do you.”

I know many talented Artists who also fulfill other roles that are important to them, which makes their pursuit of making art and making money, part-time.

So if this rule does not serve you, and you’ve been living by it, consciously or unconsciously, give it a rest.

The point is to pursue a healthy and happy balance that works for you. Living by other people’s standards will always lead to disappointment.

Is there a committee that christens Artists? I don’t thinks so; art is in the eye of the beholder.

If there is a committee, it’s not other artists. It’s our collectors.

How has this rule unnecessarily pressured you or eroded your confidence? I want to know.

 

Yes. You read that correctly. Your artist’s statement is irrelevant.

Why? Because no one really gives a damn.

Because an artist’s statement is about you and your creative process and it is usually nearly impossible for collectors to understand what the heck you are talking about, much less sincerely care.

If you want to sell your art then it can’t be all  about you. It has got to be about them, your target market. When you make it all about them, then it will be all about you.

Yet artists cling so tightly to their artist statements hoping that they will do the job in place of a real marketing message.

Hoping is not marketing.

Selling art is a privilege; it’s not a right.

The fact that you really really want to sell your art and be recognized as an artist has no absolutely no bearing on how marketable your art is.

“Just do what you love and the money will follow” is bullshit.

If people paid you for just doing what you love to do, when it pleased you, that would be charity, not business.

Do you really want charity or do you want to add value?

Now if you want to do, what you want, whenever you want to do it, for your pleasure, cool. Do it. That’s called a hobby and there is absolutely no shame in that.

But you will never be able to pass off a hobby as a business.
Why? The market won’t let you.
How? They won’t pay you.

Selling art is a very big business and it is subject to the same basic economic rules that all other businesses operate under.

If you want to grow your creative enterprise then you have to solve a problem or alleviate a pain.

This is very challenging concept for many artists to get their heads wrapped around.

I get it. I am introducing a new world-view to many artists but you know deep down that I’m right. You have deliver value to get paid.

Most artists have no idea where to start to define their unique value proposition and the target market it serves or what this really even means. I didn’t know.

Determining your unique value proposition and the target market that you serve, or don’t, takes time and brutal honesty. In fact, answering this vital question is the central thesis that I teach in The MAKING Art Making MONEY Semester.

The other principle that I teach is that artists should not try to sell their art. Yes, you read that correctly.

Don’t try to sell your art. Why? Because selling art sucks.

You are just not talented enough to sell your art and neither am I.

So what you need to do to compete in a market over saturated with raw talent is to create value above and beyond your art and to sell that.

If you are not enrolled in The Semester, allow me to give you a head start in determining what unique value you offer to your target market.

Here’s a weekly update from an artist who I am working with directly.

“I sent out an email to a small group of collectors to see what it was that made them want to buy my art. When I got responses, I was stunned at what the work meant to them. One of the people that wrote back was so eloquent, and what he wrote helped me to understand a bit more about my potential tribe. A work in progress to be sure but he nailed what I have been thinking.”

Do what this artist did, survey your market. Examine their responses critically.

• How many of them are just being nice?
• What insights did you gain?
• What perspectives have you not considered?

This is not necessarily going to give you absolute clarity about your unique value proposition but it will head you in the right direction.

It will point you outward so that your concern is less about yourself and how you are served by your art and more about how you serve others. This is the place to start if you want to sell your art.

You must know what value you offer and to whom.

Why? Can you imagine if a shopkeeper tried to sell you a new product but they couldn’t tell you what it was actually going to do for you?

This analogy explains the embarrassing and awkward disconnect between the artist’s statement and the collector.

This may sound like a bit of rant but its just reality.

• What is your reality?
• How do you serve your target market?
• Are you making it up or are you absolutely certain?

I want to know. Leave a comment here.