Nick discusses how artists and photographers can transform their businesses by leveraging online live art shows, especially in the wake of the pandemic-induced e-commerce boom. He emphasizes the shift from relying on physical galleries and third-party platforms to building a direct audience through social media. Key points include the importance of a proper art gallery website, effective ongoing marketing, and the benefits of Art Storefronts as an all-in-one solution for artists at various stages of their careers.
Podcast Transcribe
Nick Friend: So how to build a viable art business in 2020. The game has changed, where and what to focus on to reach the level of success you are after—that's what we're going to cover here today. The biggest advancement in the art industry has just taken place. It's resulted in the greatest opportunity ever for photographers and artists, and frankly, creators in every business. You can now run live art shows online using social media. In other words, you can sell art live. It's as close to in-person as it gets, and this is really big. We're going to get into this and tie it all together.
People can virtually walk into your gallery in real time, just like having a physical presence. They can see your art with close-ups and from all different angles, and it's you showcasing your work—the artist, not a random salesperson. You can have your own gallery openings; you're not relying on a gallery to do that for you or invite you to do that. Most importantly, you can make sales on the spot. That's incredible, right?
When you're driving traffic to a website, sometimes you get a sale, sometimes you don't. You get them onto your email list, you've got an urge for them. But with these art shows, you can do them on the spot, just like what happens in a retail store. How did this all happen? Because it's not something that's been going on for many years. It just happened. The pandemic hit, the resulting lockdowns that we all experienced dramatically accelerated e-commerce. You've probably seen this in the news—e-commerce companies have just gone crazy. E-commerce purchases have gone through the roof. It also pushed usage of social media to record levels. Everybody's on their phones and their devices way more often, consuming more from those devices, and it grew the use of live video exponentially. Maybe you saw this. People have been going live in all sorts of different industries everywhere, selling different products, talking about news, whatever it is. This created a perfect storm for artists. Artists got creative, particularly the artists that we were working with, and started running live art gallery shows. Art buyers, with time on their hands, would happily attend—they had nothing else to do. But it turns out it was an instant hit. That's what's amazing about this. People are commenting that these shows are entertaining and fun, and they're sharing them. These shows are getting increased exposure. They also mentioned how convenient it is—they no longer have to go physically to the art gallery, which they rarely did anyway. Let's be honest, how many times does a given consumer even go to an art gallery in a given year?
Most importantly, as I said before, sales are happening on the spot. We now have run dozens of live art shows alongside Art Storefronts members. When I say we, I mean us—me personally, Patrick, who is on this call, the Art Storefronts team, the marketing team, and the leadership team. We have done these ourselves. We have gotten our hands dirty and we have helped our artists and photographers sell sometimes tens of thousands of dollars of art individually in a single show. It's incredible. This has been thoroughly tested and it's now settled science.
What does this mean? This is the big part, guys. It means that all of the benefits normally reserved for physical art gallery owners—all the reasons you wanted to use them and be in these galleries, such as they can sell your art live in-person, showcasing the art in person, holding events in person, building direct relationships in person—these are the benefits that they have by having a physical presence. But all of this can now be done by you online, thanks to live video. In the past, you needed these galleries and publishers to get wider distribution. Not only did it cost you a large share of the profits, but it never allowed you to build a direct business where you own the customers. It's a very big deal. The problem is a business can never rely on third parties over the long term. Those of you who have relied on third parties, you know what's gone on. The galleries have been shut down, the art shows have been shut down. When you're reliant on third parties, your eggs are in another basket, and bad things can happen. Third parties build their business on the back of your products. This is just how third-party distribution works, not just in the art industry but in any industry. They get to own the customers and you don't, and you get a 1099 check. You're just an independent contractor. This is building a business on sand, you guys. That's a problem. It's not rock. It's on sand. In other words, with third parties, the rug always eventually gets pulled out from under you.
How does that happen? A gallery drops you or they don't carry as much of their work. Online, whether it's on Fine Art America or Saatchi Art or Etsy, these are essentially online galleries. That's all they are, just like an art gallery in your hometown. They just happen to be a little bit bigger. But when they change their algorithm, it's essentially the exact same thing. They are taking you out of the bestseller category or whatever it is. What happens over the years? Artists and photographers constantly report how they're no longer making sales or they never make sales in the first place. But the point is, eventually the rug does get pulled out, and that has now changed. You can build your own audience directly online. You don't have to be subject to this anymore. Thanks to the social media platforms, the distribution is already there. There are social media platforms today, and this doesn't mean that you have to participate in them as an individual. They are the CNN, NBC, the Fox News—they are the distribution channel. They are like the TV platforms of today. That's where the eyeballs are. That's where the attention is. That's what we mean by the distribution is already there. Meaning, you simply announce what you're gonna do or you just go live and people will be there. You don't have to coax them to come to your space as art galleries do when they have to create an event.
When you build a direct audience and when you own your customers, that's when you're building a business on rock, and this is how you're going to generate consistent income. Everybody always wonders, why are there starving artists? It's because they're always reliant on third parties. They're never owning their own customers. They're never building a direct business. So you never get consistent income. This is how you build consistent income in any business, in any industry—you build it direct.
Summing it up, photographers and artists can now run their own international art gallery business online, right from home, with all the benefits that only physical art galleries have enjoyed. You can do it on the side or full-time, and it doesn't matter because you don't have overhead. You don't have monthly expenses that you have to worry about that are significant. You can do it however you want. Take a moment to realize how amazing this is. It's the biggest advancement in a very long time in the art industry, possibly ever. I've been in the art industry for 20 years and I've never seen anything like this. It's incredible and it's so great.
Running your own art gallery business online is the best way to build a long-term valuable art business. But here's the thing—this business model has already been working. We have members on our platform that have been selling over $100,000 a year from their own websites by simply having the mentality of, "I'm running my own art gallery. I'm gonna build my business online. I'm gonna build my audience." That's the way to take this to the next level. That's how you can really scale internationally and everything. But now, with these live art shows, this business model has rocket fuel behind it like never before.
Given this, how do you proceed? How do you do it and still have time to do what you love? You still want to create; you don't want to be spending all your time on marketing and ads. So how do you do this? How do you execute on it and still have a life? First, you need to equip yourself with a proper art gallery website. What is that? It's one that has all the features that help buyers make decisions to buy art and it converts the maximum number of visitors into buyers. In other words, a proper art gallery website eliminates the friction inherent in buying art online. Buying art online is not like buying toilet paper or some trinket. It is complex. People have questions like, "Will this mesh with my wall color? Will it work in the room that I want to put it in? I don't know about the size, will the size work? I want to frame it, but how will it look in a frame?" All of these things are friction. If your website answers these questions, then you're going to convert the maximum number of visitors into buyers.
Customer experience matters. We live in the age of customer experience. This is how Amazon and Apple have become trillion-dollar companies—by focusing on customer experience and by living by phrases like "customer obsession." Your art gallery website should provide an amazing art buying experience. This is what you do. You're artists and photographers selling art. You should obviously equip yourself with something that gives your customers an amazing buying experience. If you want your customers to know that you care and are running a professional operation, that's what you would do. It makes no sense to spend time and energy marketing just to drive traffic to a substandard experience where you're going to let people down and leave money on the table because you're not going to convert as much. You might as well just not even do it because there's so much going to be wasted. So properly equip yourself.
Unfortunately, a website is not enough. Many of you probably know this. If you notice here, I took a screenshot. I Googled "99% of all Shopify stores fail." You can do this
yourself and you see these different headlines and people talking about it. It's a stat that's out there. It's not a knock on Shopify because the same thing can be applied to Squarespace, GoDaddy, Wix, Zenfolio—take your pick. The reason is because the website is not enough. Don't get fooled into thinking that just because you have a website, you have a real business. Any person today can launch a website in ten or fifteen minutes, and they do. They're doing it every day. This is why most of these businesses fail. Learn the lesson now and save yourself years of pain and struggle. The ongoing marketing is the number one problem. It's the biggest problem that all photographers and artists share. This is what you have to solve. Nobody has enough traffic, distribution, or eyeballs seeing their art. Nobody has a big enough audience. You need to consistently build an audience and then you need to nurture it. That's what turns them into sales. If you do not solve the marketing problem, you are just going to be one of the 99% who fail. You have to solve it.
Therefore, the second aspect you need is to learn how to effectively market yourself both online and offline. Learn how to do it, have a consistent plan, get some help or whatever it is that you need, but solve the marketing problem. The more effective you are at marketing, the bigger your direct audience will get, the more sales potential you will therefore have, and the more consistent your income will become. In the end, you will have your own distribution channel that nobody can ever take away from you. This is the Shangri-La. This is where you want to be.
Conclusion: How do you build a valuable art business in 2020? You run your own art gallery business online. How do you do that? Number one, equip yourself with a proper art gallery website and solve the ongoing marketing problem. These are the two things you need to do. The problem is when you look at anybody who's struggling right now or who has been struggling for the last five or ten years, they either have none of these or only one. So at a high level, you got to solve these things and you'll be in a way better position. Then you'll be able to take advantage of the live art shows and all these different things that are happening that are going to take your business to the next level.
The good news is we created Art Storefronts to help you do this. We are an all-in-one solution: proper art gallery website plus ongoing marketing consulting. You're going to get a taste of all of this today. What we are doing is working. Don't take my word for it—I'm showing you this presentation and obviously I want you to do your research. But all you have to do is read our reviews and talk to our members. We have 3500 members on the platform. It's about half photographers and half artists. If you want to talk to them, we can connect you.
Who is a fit? We work with people at all stages in their career: part-timers, stay-at-home moms and dads, people new to selling art, and people doing extremely well, selling $100,000 or more annually. If you are committed to building an art business with consistent income, then we will likely be a great fit for you. After one of our team members, like Reed who's going to be presenting in a second, will listen to what your business is about, what your goals are, what type of art you're selling, who you're trying to go after, and will tell you if you are a good fit or not. We will only bring on a new member if we believe we can actually help you. Our biggest metric, the thing that we're after, is customer success. If we can't make you successful and we don't believe that we can really do that, we will not bring you on and we'll tell you that. Thank you so much.
