A $3,700 Art Sale Placed on an iPad? A New Era of Selling Art Has Arrived
Art and photography now sells day and night from every device imaginable. Here’s how it happened and how you can get a piece of the action.
Typically, here on the blog you'll find us talking about photographers and fine artists in large groups – how the successful ones are earning their sales, and how the struggling ones can improve.
Today, we zoom in - to a single artist, and a single sale.
Why? This single sale tells you everything you need to know about where the art market is today, and where it's headed tomorrow.
The Sale
In case it's not immediately clear: this isn't how things used to work!
Selling fine art and photography used to be an intensive, supremely risky venture.
It used to depend on the tricky business of making the right impressions with the right gatekeepers. The gallery owners, the curators. In hopes that they'll show your art and give you your livelihood.
Today, that power has shifted to the artists and photographers and there's no longer any reason you can't build a sustainable art business completely on your own.
There's only three roadblocks left standing in your way:
1. A marketable niche. This is at least one element of selling art that will never change. Without being able to target an audience that has an emotional connection with your subject matter, making sales will be tough at best.
2. The right website. Any old Squarespace/WordPress website won't do – to see results like Terry, you'll need a proper online art gallery website. A website loaded with powerful features designed specifically to sell art to art buyers. We picked the 7 features we think are most critical in today's art market and rounded them up here. How many do you currently have?
3. The right technology. Beyond individual features, building a successful art business online is all about having the right technology behind you. Art business technology should help you automate order fulfillment, manage your contacts, view meaningful data about your business, and better understand your sales funnel (where your buyers are coming from, and where you're losing sales). It's not fun, it's not what you got into art to do, but with the right technology it can at least be a little more painless.
So, how did Terry do with these roadblocks?
Let's check the score.
1. Terry's website is focused primarily on landscapes of Northern California, and the sale featured above sold to a buyer located in...you guessed it, Northern California. Niche: check!
2. Spending thousands of dollars from your iPad takes a certain confidence in the product. Because Terry's website is equipped with cutting edge features such as Wall Preview and Augmented Reality, the buyer had a range of tools at their disposal to make a confident buying decision. Plus, submitting the order was done with a beautiful, single-page experience. Website: check!
3. As soon as the prospective buyer added an item to their cart, the Art Storefronts technology behind Terry's site kicked in. She can then monitor which pieces the user viewed to send them a specialized offer in an attempt to close the deal. Or she could advertise to them on Facebook/Instagram to try and get them back on-site to finish up the purchase. And when the order does come in, she's able to use the Detective analytics tool to take a look at where this buyer came from (so that she can find more just like them). Technology: check!
What all of this means.
Put simply, the art industry has changed.
We're in a new era of independence for creatives, and there has never been a better time to be an artist/photographer.
You no longer need the permission of gate-keepers to sell your art, nor do you need to settle for the raw deal of selling on marketplaces like Etsy.
All you need is a niche and your own art gallery website.
So - is your website prepared to take orders at 1AM from iPads and phones?
If you feel like your current website is holding you back, and you're ready to take your art business to the next level, we want to talk to you.
Now I have a coach that keeps telling me 'go, go, go!' and pushes me to do the stuff that I need to do.
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