👋 Meet Artist Bill Stidham

Bill is just like you.

This is his story.

He has a robust body of work as an artist.

He is trying to sell that body of work so he can support his family as an artist.

Bill specializes in colorful and vibrant portraits.

He started by getting his art up on a website 👇

A website that is specialized to sell art online with all of the bells and whistles you need to do so.

Features like the ability for his customers to see his art, on their walls, with their wall paint colors 👇

His website also allows his customers to purchase his art as originals, limited editions, prints (on a range of media types), and even as merchandise like mugs, or coasters, or greeting cards. 

When the orders come in; Bill gets paid, the printer gets paid, the order gets printed and shipped to his customer.

All of that happens without Bill having to lift a finger. His website and platform takes care of all of it for him.

That gives Bill time back to keep creating new work and work on his brand.

📈 Bill was on the right track

So far, so good.

He was making sales, growing his business, and his creative portraits even opened doors to collaborate with famous folk.

Below is a current collaboration he is doing with Billy Gibbons (a member of the classic rock band ZZ Top 👇 ) 

Pretty cool right?

Sounds amazing even, a dream come true.

Here is when we get to the wrinkle in this whole story. 

In Bill's story, in our story, and as it turns out, in yours too.

🧩 First, who they heck are we, and what do we know?

We built Bill's website for him, we host it,  and we maintain it for him. If he needs to change anything we take care of it.

Same thing we do for the rest of our 9000+ customers.

BTW if that sounds interesting drop your details below and we can tell you about it.

Ok... let's get back to the story (his, and yours) 👇

👨‍🎓 Over the last few years we have been teaching Bill how to market his work online

The goal here is for Bill be able to support his beautiful family and make it as a full time creative artist.

For that to happen he — as well as all artists and photographers — need to be actively marketing their work.

Celebrity collab's are awesome and all that but they are not enough.

If you want to make it as an artist your work needs to be actively marketed to the world and that active marketing can never stop.

📚 So we set ourselves to the task of teaching Bill to market his art.

To do that an artist needs to learn how to do things like...

Once you learn how to do these things you then need to practice them (no different then the practice it took for you to learn your creative craft).

Here is where Bill, — and you  — run into the problem 👇

Turns out Bill has a busy life and like it does for all of us, life happens 👇

What inevitably happens in an art business is that when life does happen, the first thing to suffer is the marketing.

It is the lowest priority on the totem pole.

When life happens artists and photographers just stop marketing.

This is true for Bill, for all of our 9000+ customers, and its true for you.

Bill, like most artists and photographers... (any of this sound familiar?) 👇 

Imagine the conundrum this has created for us as a business.

For a business to thrive it needs to create successful customers.

For us that is our 9000+ artists and photographers selling more of their art and photography then they ever have before and being able to support their lives and families.

For many, it's to become fulltime creatives and artists, to quit the day job.

We have created a website platform that displays our customers work in an amazing fashion.  

It has all the bells and whistles you need to sell art online or off.  

It automatically prints and ships the orders.

We take care of all of the challenging tech stuff; we do it for you permanently.

Then we teach you how to market your art all year long; playbooks, a calendar that tells you what to do everyday, and support you when you get stuck.

We have classes 5x a week on Zoom teaching you how to use the playbooks and the calendar.

Yet none of that is enough!

When life happens, when you get busy, when you get frustrated, when mercury goes retrograde... the marketing stops and so do the sales.

Our customers were in a great spot already and especially compared to most artists and photogs out there but the businesses were just not growing fast enough for all the above mentioned reasons.

So we finally came to the point where we asked the real question (the only question  as it turns out, that matters) 👇

🤔 What if we just started doing the marketing for Bill?

What if doing the marketing for him is the only way to ensure customers like Bill remain consistent and thorough in their marketing all year long?

What if it's the only way to not just grow, but explode Bill's business.

So we set to answer that very question.

Could it work?  Would it work? How could we pull this off?

🌹 Mothers Day Sale 

Mothers day is a huge art selling holiday in the US (most artists either don't know this or don't believe this and sadly it is to their bottom line's detriment).

Every year we have our customers run a sale during Mothers Day.

Last year, Bill ran his sale on his own following our guidance; playbooks and following our Art Marketing Calendar as well as what we teach in our Zoom classes.

Let's take a look at his results 👇

Not a bad effort by any means.  This year we decided to do the marketing for him.

Now let's compare his 2022 results to what he did this year 👇

Whoa!

116% growth in YOY Total Sales + 452% growth in YOY sales coming from new customers!

This is just one sale out of the many we run all year long... not to mention what goes down in Q4, aka the 4th quarter, aka the holiday buying season, Black Friday and Cyber Monday and Christmas.

Here is how Bill feels about it btw 👇

✈️ Introducing CoPilot

It's what we are calling it.

Our newest offering that does your marketing for you.

Here is how (succinctly) it works 👇

I know what you are thinking.  

This sounds awesome and all but "Bill" looks to be an established artist; marketable work and the whole celebrity collab thing.  

Just because it works for him and his art does not mean its going to work for me and mine.

Up until recently, we shared your skepticism 👇

🙌 We have the receipts

So far we have tested CoPilot on 1000+ of our customers.

A diverse group of artists and photographers from all over this country and others.

A group from all different age groups, niches, levels of experience, levels of marketing experience and success.

The results have been staggering!

Crazy right?

We have been in business for almost ten years now and we have never in the history of this company received so many positive testimonials.

In addition to the positive feedback we have been paying close attention to our overall sales numbers; specifically the sum total of sales made directly from our customers websites.

Here are how the month over month numbers stack up; 2022 vs 2023 👇

The staggering part of these results is that whether we are or are not (in a recession); I am not sure anybody would say that facts on the ground, economically speaking, that this year was better than 2022 was.

Yet are customers are selling more art this year than last and quite a bit more at that.

So what changed? 

🤬 Nobody does their marketing consistently or thoroughly

Not even our own customers.

Not even our own customers when we give them a marketing plan, a 365 calendar, 5x weekly zoom classes to teach them how to do it, technical support when they get stuck!

It's not just you.

Artists and Photographers sadly; Are their own worst enemies in this department and their businesses suffer as a result.

I feel much better getting that off my chest.

The only way we were able to get the majority of them to do so was to just do it for them.

Based on the results so far we are never going to stop either.

👏 The Most Exciting Part?

Its summer now — which is a great are selling time too — which means the biggest art selling time of the year is coming.  Q4 or the 4th Quarter; The last three months of the year that has Black Friday / Cyber Monday and the run up to Christmas.

So we are really excited to see what we can do with CoPilot during these busy coming months.

If you would like to learn more about CoPilot or everything else we do here at Art Storefronts just leave your details below and we will follow up.