If you are selling art online you are going to need traffic to your website.

As you look at ways to generate that traffic a great place to start is Facebook. You need to be on Facebook and you need a strategy to effectively generate that traffic.

This post is going to give you that strategy and spoiler alert… ITS INCREDIBLY EASY TO DO THIS.

That being said so many that are selling art online are not doing this.

I think there are a number of reasons / assumptions folks have about why that is the case.

So to start this post out I think we need to tackle those assumptions and then we can move on to the strategy itself.

Lets start with the elephant in the room. There is no getting around it so I am going to come out and say it.

If your art sucks and if you dont have a focused niche you are in trouble.

Perhaps those can be overcome if you are the greatest online marketeer that ever lived.

Otherwise, you are in trouble.

The sucks part unfortunately is not fixable. I feel like a [expletive] for even bringing it up but I have had multiple conversations with folks whose art is simply not good.

They ask for marketing advice on how to start selling some of it. You might love doing art as a creative release and thats perhaps all its going to be.

A decision that is totally ok.

I love taking photos and do so to enjoy myself. I have no illusions about quiting my job to become a fine art photog.

If you think this might be you then ask an honest friend or two (not your mother) what they think of your work.

The niche part is is fixable. We wrote a post about it.

So if you are certain your art does not suck and you have a defined niche then lets tackle these assumptions so we can get on to the strategy.

#1 Art does not sell online.

Variations might include… I sell only originals they don’t sell online, only cheap art sells online, my art will never sell online I just know it.

Perhaps you have a few of your own.

Read this.

My favorite quote from the piece

More art is now sold ONLINE then at galleries

Still not convinced?

Read the 2015 Hiscox report

Even if your cynicism borders on the extreme (mine certainly does) that report clearly reveals that the online art market is headed in one direction and its UP.

41% of respondents said they discovered an online art sales platform through social media (up from 33% last year). Facebook and Instagram are considered the two most important social media channels in the art world.

#2 Art buyers are not on Facebook

Variations might include… my buyers are not on Facebook, Facebook is dying as a platform, Facebook only has kids on it.

Watch a bit of this.

https://youtu.be/XCvwCcEP74Q?t=526

Takeaway being THE ENTIRE WORLD IS ON FACEBOOK. Your buyers and your future art buyers.

You need to be on Facebook.

#3 Art does not sell on Facebook

Variations might include… People that are on Facebook are not looking to buy art, I have tried it and art does not sell, art does not do well on Facebook.

This is one of my favorites when it comes up.

Does not matter what you sell really. We are talking about driving traffic to your website. We are not talking about selling art on Facebook directly (at least not yet, permit me to get to that bit at the end)

What do you sell again, thats right, art, or to put it another way, images.

So what is the most popular type of post on Facebook?

Images.

You need to be on Facebook.

So far we have sorted whether or not art sells online (it does), that your buyers are on Facebook (they are), and that it just so happens that the most popular posts on Facebook are what you specialize in (images).

With me so far…. great. For those of you still on the fence about the idea let me ask you a question.

How many times a day does the average person check their Facebook?

13.8 times.

That’s 13.8 times per day, 97 times per week, and 388 times per month that they could potentially be seeing your art.

I wonder if you had a whole bunch of likes on your Facbeook page and you published a bunch if that would increase your website traffic and thereby sales?

You need to be on Facebook

#4 Its really difficult to get Facebook going

Variations might include… It’s difficult to setup, I am too old for Facebook, I am private person and don’t do social, its really not worth the effort, I dont really like Myface, Spacebook, or any of the other ones either.

Eloquent in its brevity no?

Lets get back to the real question…

#5 Art does not sell on Facebook

Told you I would get back to this question.

Of all points made so far this one is the most critical right?

So let me come and answer it and simply say no it doesn’t.

Allow me to explain.

Does this sound familiar to you?

You started doing Facebook, you posted some images with buy my art type of links, perhaps you even spent some $ on ads, you didn’t get any sales.

You failed and its because art does not sell on Facebook and you dont care who says it does.

Please go through the deck below and you can stop when you hit slide 30.

NOTHING SELLS RIGHT AWAY IN TODAYS DIGITAL WORLD. THATS NOT THE WAY ONLINE MARKETING WORKS.

You make art and you share it, people check it out, they remember your art and your name, they see more of your art and your name, you build a relationship with these people, when they are ready to buy art they come and buy it from you.

According to the 2015 Hiscox Online Trade Report, browsing art online definitively results in customers buying more of your art. To quote:

We’re seeing this year (2015) that browsing increasingly translates into online sales

Thats how it works.

Its really not all that different than the offline world though right? It works the same way.

Let us be crystal clear: Artists and Photographers are regularly using Facebook to drive traffic back to their Art Storefronts websites, which are designed to convert visitors into buyers, and are actively making sales daily.

Yet most folks out there think the new digital world and at times Facebook is gonna be a panacea and make sales fall from the sky. Make fish jump right into the boat.

Nope.

An audience and relationships are not like light switches. You dont get to just flip the switch and they come on.

It takes work to build them.

Hence, you need to be on Facebook and you need a strategy.

A Facebook Strategy

Publish your images often.

Thats it.

Its really not more difficult than that.

You are an artist, your work is amazing, and you have a niche.

Start sharing images and start doing so often.

What about getting likes, and re-marketing, and boosting posts, and advertising in general, running contests, using links, asking for shares, frequency, sharing times, and videos, etc?

What about focus?

1. Start a Facebook Page for your art
2. Start sharing your best art and do so often.

If you only have a little bit of art then share once a week.

If you have more than a little art then share twice a week.

If you have allot of art then share 5x a week or more.

Start and don’t stop.

Everything else comes after.

You have to start with the basics.