PUBLISHER'S DESK: Are You Selling Your Artwork or Just Hoping it will Sell?!

Marketing means exiting your art studio, sitting at your desk, and generating ideas for selling your work. It's not difficult, but it does take time and consistency.

Each week artists ask me for suggestions on how to sell their work. Selling takes time, planning and concentrated effort -- focus that will take you out of your studio. However, it's a necessary part of the process. You create. You sell. If you don't sell, you'll soon be inundated by all the inventory you're generating and depriving a future customer of enjoying your work on a daily basis.

In today's ARTIST SPOTLIGHT, we're showcasing an artist who is selling directly from her website so quickly that she can be cleaned out of merchandise in as little as 15 minutes!

Here's what she posted on her ABOUT page: For shop announcements, sales, and keeping in touch, please subscribe to my newsletter. If you would like to see what I am working on every day, please follow me on Instagram

Selling involves a multi-pronged approach to reaching customers from online to in-person. You cannot depend on just one approach -- your marketing needs to INTEGRATE several methods to be successful. Social media is great for generating attention and a following but isn't necessarily the best route for sales. Social media has a SHELF LIFE -- it comes and goes in a matter of minutes if not seconds! Only your website or newsletters have a more sustainable shelf life.

Additionally, most customers want to see art IN PERSON before purchasing -- art is a person-to-person transaction and the more "story" behind what you're making, the better. The "story" can be included in your ARTIST STATEMENT. A customer is purchasing you, as an artist -- what do you bring to your behind-the-scenes story?

So, let me ask you a few questions:

• Do you have a website? At the very least, create a LANDING PAGE.

• Do you have a social media presence? Remember the shelf life of each platform before spending too much time there. You do need maintain a regular presence, but a newsletter --short/sweet -- might serve you better, timewise.

• Do you write a newsletter? Add some fun personal anecdotes to whatever artwork you're also posting. Be sure to post pet pictures, if you have one!

• Have you collected names and email addresses from art shows to keep building up your customer database?

Reminders: Anything posted online needs to be refreshed CONSISTENTLY or its value slides down the google search page. Developing "Key Words / phrases" for your website is essential to its SEO. Most artists are only posting a few times a month. That's not enough. Email marketing brings visitors back to your website regularly -- but don't spam. Sites that send email campaigns increase their retention rate by as much as 23%. Your newsletter doesn't need to be a tome, in fact, it shouldn't be. Keep it short and friendly with plenty of photos!

If you're going to subscribe to an art marketing service that's going to notify your customer base regularly of new pieces you're creating, you might want to reconsider and do this yourself. I'm SPAMMED by artist notifications of their newest work, and to be honest, don't even open those emails anymore. The artists are paying BIG BUCKS for these services to generate interest in their work through email notifications. But, when they come out SO OFTEN, it is a nuisance for the recipient. So, think twice about buying into one of these services. It sounds good on the surface but may ultimately backfire for the artist.

Future columns will address more tried-and-true ideas for marketing -- stay tuned.

-- LYNNE KORNECKI, Publisher

Enjoy this week's issue, and please continue keeping us informed of your art news!