8 Tips on How to Start an Art Business
by 
Lina Thorne • Updated · Posted in Marketing
Have you been dreaming about starting an art business for a while now? Weeks, months or even years? But fears and worries are stopping you, right? There’s too much competition. The market is too saturated. There’s enough of amazing artists in this noisy world that’s flooded with visual content, so, obviously, there’s no room for you.
Well, the time to overcome your fears has come!
It’s perfectly possible to turn your hobby into a successful business. Naturally, you need to be realistic. Many people are under the impression that starting an art business means you’ll get to paint all day. But that’s not true. You’ll have to create content for social media, experiment with various marketing strategies, learn some new skills, etc. Also, you need to be ready to commit to your new business. Even if you have a full-time job at the moment, you should be able to spend at least an hour or two a day on creating your art or promoting your art business. There’s no other way around it.
Nevertheless, if you really want to make your dream come true, keep reading. In this article you will learn how to start an art business and what crucial steps you’ll need to take at the beginning. You’ll find out why it’s important to determine your target audience, how you can market your art business as well as protect your artworks from unauthorized use.
8 Tips for Starting Your Own Art Business
Without further ado, let’s take a look at what you should do when starting an art business.
1. Find your art style and niche
As an artist you might feel confined by defining an art style and finding a niche. But, please, don’t. You don’t have to stick to one and the same style your whole life. Your art can change.
But let’s face it, there are some techniques that you can do better than others. And if you’ve been creating art for some time now, you’ve probably already developed some sort of a style. It’s important to figure out what your distinctive talents are and what’s unique about your artistic style because your potential customers will need to know what you specialize in. Deciding on a niche will help you figure out how you can market your art.
When deciding on a niche ask yourself a few questions:
- What kind of art do you like creating?
- What art-related skills do you have?
- What techniques and styles can you work in?
- What kind of products do you want to sell?
For example, if you are a digital artist and enjoy drawing cute cartoonish animals, you can make use of print on demand and create products like stickers or notebook covers with your drawings. If you like teaching, you might consider giving art lessons or even making an online course that can be purchased. Take a look at what kind of products successful art entrepreneurs are selling. Then brainstorm your own ideas to figure out what you can offer.
2. Do some research
First of all, you need to research the market as understanding it is vital for the success of your art business. You need to understand what’s trending and what’s popular, what niches are oversaturated and what sub-niche don’t have a lot of competition. This will give you some product ideas as well as help you figure out how you can stand out from the crowd.
Another thing that you’ll need to do is figure out who your target audience is, who can be interested in your art and, most importantly, who will be willing to buy your art for the price that you want to sell it for. Then you’ll need to do some research to find out where your target customers can be:
- What online platforms do they tend to use?
- How much money do they have on average?
- Do your target customers go to art fairs or art galleries?
- What places do they often go to in the real world?
For instance, if you want to sell your art mostly to millennial women in the US, you should consider opening an Etsy shop since this marketplace is extremely popular among American millennials.
Finally, when doing your research, take a look at your competitors. Don’t be intimidated by your competition. Learn from it, instead. Check out how they market their art and promote their brand. Pick up some of their tricks and utilize them in your own marketing strategy. Pay attention to how successful content creators take pictures and make videos of their artworks. Your competitors can help you figure out how often you should post on social media and what might be the best way to engage with your audience.
3. Come up with a plan
Your dream of building a successful art business might feel like an unachievable goal. But once you break it into small steps, it will be less scary. Keep in mind that it’s okay for your plan to evolve over time. You need to be ready to adapt. However, it’s necessary to come up with a plan because it will be your roadmap helping you move in the right direction.
To come up with a plan, you might want to answer these questions:
- What are you planning to sell?
- How are you different from your competitors?
- What are your short and long term goals for your art business?
- How will you manage your inventory?
- How will you package and ship the art pieces to your customers? Or do you want to sell digital art?
- What systems and tools do you need in place?
- What marketing strategy do you want to start with?
It might be a good idea to search for some business plan templates that will give you more ideas. Alternatively, you can take a pen and a piece of paper and just start writing everything regarding your art business that comes to your mind.
4. Promote your art business on social media
If you really want to build a successful art business, you’ll have to be quite active on social media and invest some resources into content creation. Remember that social media is about being social. So, interact with other creatives and comment on their posts. Engage with your audience – no matter how small it is at the moment. This is how you can grow your social media accounts organically.
What you also need to remember is that personal branding is quite vital for success in a creative industry. People prefer to buy from people, not from soulless companies. So, show your face on Instagram Stories, tell people about yourself and your artistic journey: what prompted you to start creating art in the first place, how long have you been doing it and what you like about it, share struggles that you’ve had to deal with. Show what your creative process looks like. You need to create a community of loyal and dedicated followers that feel connected to you.
Since you are an artist, it’s a good idea to focus on visually-driven platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok and YouTube. Reddit might be of use, too. Naturally, you will need to learn about content creation – how to take photos and make engaging videos. But it’s not as hard as it may seem. It’s okay if you have a smartphone or a decent digital camera – you can work with what you have. There are lots of photo and video editing apps that can be used for free or almost for free. Come up with a posting schedule and try to stick to it as much as you can.
Here’s a tip.
Social media platforms tend to have size requirements. You need to follow them if you want your images to look good after you post them. For instance, an image for an Instagram post should have a 1:1 or 4:5 aspect ratio with the image size of 1080x1080px or 1080x1350px. Otherwise, the platform will automatically compress your image to make it smaller and this will have a negative effect on the image quality. Fortunately, you can use Watermarkly’s online tool “Crop Photo” to prepare your images for sharing online. In fact, there are ready-made presets for popular social media platforms. Simply upload your images into the app, select the preset that you need and adjust the cropping area. In addition to this, you can duplicate an image right in the app. It means that you can crop an image for an Instagram post, make a copy and crop it for a Facebook post. Then export both of these images in one go. The processed files will have both the necessary aspect ratio and pixel dimensions.
Free tools to crop images for social media:
5. Create a website
A website will signal to people that you are serious about your art business. Don’t worry, you don’t have to hire a designer or know coding. There’s a whole lot of various website builders like Squarespace or Wix that has made creating a website so much easier. Everything is pretty simple and straightforward.
What’s great about having a website is that you can set up your online shop there. So, people will be able to purchase your art right on your website. A website is a great place to showcase your portfolio, as well. You won’t have to worry about any size requirements or crop your images to a specific aspect ratio. A social media account is something that you can control only partially. But on your website? You’re calling the shots! You can design it however you want, fill it with whatever content you want.
If you are good at writing, it might be a good idea to start a blog. This is how you can draw more visitors to your website. Plus, if you share your knowledge, people will see you not only as a professional, but also as an expert.
Here’s a tip.
Your website will probably be filled with lots of visual content. If the size of a webpage is big, your website visitors will have to wait a while until all the contents will load fully. And no matter how beautiful your art is, no one is going to wait for long. Most likely people will leave, and you’ll lose potential customers. What can you do? Well, if you want people to have a positive experience when visiting your website, your visual content should be optimized. To put it simply, you need to compress images before publishing them. When an image is compressed, its size can be decreased from 10 MBs to 1 or 1,5 MBs. On top of this, the image quality will be pretty similar to the originals. Your compressed images will look amazing and load lightning-fast on a webpage.
Free tools to compress images for a website:
6. Create a financial plan
Now it’s time to address the practical side of starting an art business. It’s crucial for you to manage your finances and have some sort of financial plan. You need to determine your startup costs. For instance, if you decide to create a website, you’ll need to pay for it. You might also need to pay to rent a studio, buy the necessary equipment and materials.
You also need to decide what your artworks will cost. Pricing your art can be a little tricky. It’s not like selling old stuff on eBay where you can do some quick research and price your product slightly on the lower end. When determining the price, you need to figure out how much the materials – the paints, the canvas, etc – cost, how much time you spent on creating a single piece of art and what your hourly rate approximately is. If you’re renting a studio, you will need to factor this into your price. You need to figure out how much you need to sell to cover the expenses and earn a profit.
Additionally, remember that if you set the price for your artworks too high, it’s possible that no one will buy them. On the other hand, pricing too low isn’t good either. You won’t make any profit or even lose some money. Plus, people often associate low price with low quality, so they might think that your art is not as good as it may seem. Finally, remember that you can adjust your prices over time if you realize that you’re making little to no profit.
7. Take care of the paperwork
Yes, this bureaucratic part of starting an art business can be quite confusing and tiresome. But it’s crucial. You’ll need to check the rules, regulations and laws in your geographic area and register your art business, so it’ll be official and legal. You might need to get a specific permit or a business license. Most likely, you’ll need to fill out a few forms to establish yourself as a sole proprietorship or LLC.
It’s better to contact your local government – town, city or country government – and ask them all the questions you have. This way you will get the most accurate and up-to-date information without spending lots of time browsing their websites.
Also, check out such websites as ZenBusiness or LegalZoom – they will help you figure out what type of licensing will be more suitable for your art business. If you know any artists who have already started their art business, you might want to ask them for advice.
You might also consider setting up a separate bank account for your business. So your business-related expenses and earnings won’t mix up with your personal finances. This will make it easier for you to deal with taxes.
8. Protect your images with a watermark
It doesn’t matter whether you’re planning on sharing only photos of your artwork or your actual digital art, it’s important to protect your intellectual property. Whenever you upload visual content on the Internet, there’s always a risk that someone will download and use it without your permission. For instance, as a print on a T-shirt.
To avoid this, you should watermark your images. You can use your brand name or your logo as a watermark. It’s worth mentioning that watermarks don’t guarantee 100% security. Some AI apps can remove watermarks. However, your brand name or logo on an image is a visual cue that you want to protect your rights. It can be enough to deter some lazy thieves. It’s also important to design your watermark properly. For instance, you can fill your entire image with repeated watermarks or put your watermark in the center or a heavily detailed area and make it semitransparent.
What’s more, watermarks are great for promoting your brand and raising brand awareness. Your images can spread into the far corners of the Internet. Thanks to your brand name or logo on your images, potential customers will always be able to find and contact you. In addition to this, people should associate your artworks with your brand. Watermarking all the visual content you post on social media can help you with that.
5 Watermark Ideas for Your Visual Content
In Conclusion
It’s time to find some courage and just start your art business. Don’t worry about not knowing everything. You can learn and improve along the way. Evaluate your progress every now and then, adapt and refine your strategies if necessary, make adjustments to your plan. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try things out. Hopefully, this article has given you some guidance on how to start an art business and now you have a clearer understanding of what you should do first. Remember to be patient and persistent. Don’t expect immediate results. It might take time for you to get your first customers and gain traction. Just keep going and eventually you will succeed.