This is the story of how John Lechner, an Australian landscape photographer, more than doubled the value of an order by asking one simple question.

But to fully understand that win, we need to go a little further back - to 2018, when John first joined Art Storefronts. 

At that time, John used his site to sell his own work, of course, but he also sold the work of another's – wildlife artist Natalie Jane Parker.

Two artists under one roof, and John did the marketing for them both.

This was working out well, but earlier this year John began to suspect that they could both increase their earnings if they sold through separate websites.

And so he took matters into his own hands, building a second Art Storefronts site just for Natalie's work and asking our members and consultants for feedback on it in our private art marketing group:

Just 24 hours after launching this new site, John was already seeing signs that it was going to be worth it.

He even predicted that Natalie's sales would increase from her current average of $1,500 per month to as much as $5,000 now that she has her own site.

Looking pretty good for 24 hours in! Maybe that $5,000/month goal isn't so wild after all...

One week later, John posted another update sharing all the milestones he had already hit with Natalie's site:

At this point, we expected to hear from John in a few months, after he'd had time to get the new site's sales up to speed, but it didn't take nearly that long.

Within one month of launching the new site, John was back with a big update – he'd done it. 

$5,603 worth of print sales in one month – a nearly 4X improvement to Natalie's sales just by launching her own Art Storefronts site.

And he didn't stop there. Not even close. 

In John's latest update, he revealed he'd managed to turn a massive $4,500 order of 21 prints into one worth almost $10,000 with one simple question...

"The original is still available, do you want it?"

Boom. The buyer didn't know, so he told them. And they bought it. 

Here's what he told the Facebook group about how exactly he pulled it off:

At the root of this win is one critical concept – in order to build a successful art business, you need to own your customer list.

And that means you need to run your own gallery, online - not sell through a marketplace that keeps that customer information away from you.

We recently called running your own proper gallery website the single most fundamental aspect of succeeding at selling art online, and John's and Natalie's success is the perfect illustration of that fact.

If you can properly communicate with your customers, you can find opportunities to increase your sales. To turn one-off customers into on-going collectors. To grow a sustainable art business. 

And isn't that what all the effort is for, in the end?