Artist Marketing Fees: Fill & Download for Free

Great question, and, of course, there are no easy answers when it comes to art sales of any kind.I have worked with Miami based photographic artists as clients. You can pursue specific dealers and collectors in your geographic area, and you can submit to art consultants, and hotel projects and private residence interior design projects. I always recommend that artists have their artist statement, CV/bio, and Price Lists in order and available before presenting their work to anyone.Since I am not familiar with your work /genre / style or your goals I can name a specific resource for you here publicly at this time, but I do offer many no-cost/gratis resources via my website Artist Marketing Resources http://ArtistMarketingResources.comand fee resources via my Artist Marketing Resources web stores:Gumroad http://www.gumroad.com/artistresourcesWebs http://artistmarketingresources.webs.com/apps/webstore/

Early on in my career one of my curators / dealers, when I asked for his help to evaluate & price the work I gave for his show, had said: “anything of value must be at least $1,000.” This number is a starting point. To simply make an artwork I need (the following is in the order of magnitude from most expensive to least): to pay rent for my studio space, to spend time making the work (this may range from days, to weeks, to months, to, sometimes, even years), artwork materials, artwork transportation costs (I work large, therefore installation of art in galleries requires getting transportation to the show & a lot of times unsold work goes back to studio which requires de-installation & again transport.) There is also expense in the marketing efforts. Thus, for example, I have a website (a must-have expense) with my portfolio & info about me as an artist. On the same website there's an e-commerce portion (more expense!), which allows me to sell my work directly to collectors. This same website has a paid plug-in w/ a shout-out (more expense) for marketing emails which I send to announce my shows to my list of followers.) As you may know, artists’ marketing printed effort may also be quite involved: business cards, exhibition / post cards, brochures, etc.Meanwhile, as I'm working on my art, I always want a wider audience to see it, and thus I submit for competitions. Application fees have a cost.Oh, last but not least, the artist needs to eat, drink, & clothes theselves, rent a place to live…When we sell work, this is the only time when we can collect money, and even try to begin to cover some of the expenses we incur when we live & breathe to make art. On top of all of the basic nessesities, of course, there is aesthetic value of the artwork!In my experience, artwork cost within the range of $3,000 to $20,000 would cover artist's expenses adequately. Everything over this amount, to my mind, is an “assigned” aesthetic value & this factor is difficult to explain or put a finger on because it has to do with emotions of the buyer, or perceived market value, or potential market value of the work.

It would be easier to answer this question if there it had pointed to specific websites for examples. Every website is different and every designer has their own reasons for designing it the way they do. So my answer is going to be somewhat general in nature. I would have to base it on reasons I would have for designing a website the way you're describing.The website needs to showcase the artwork. It shouldn't compete with it. A simple, stark design will make sure the viewer's attention is focused on the work. This is especially necessary if the work itself is black & white or monochromatic in nature. In contrast, general websites that have mostly text will discourage readership. The rule of thumb that I subscribe to is that less than half of the screen should be occupied by text, if that much. The rest should be taken up with blank space or images. A nicely designed website will give a viewer access to navigation, and links to frequently accessed portions of the website with the fewest amount of clicks, all without visual clutter, and it needs to do so intuitively. 99% of artists' website audiences are concerned with seeing the work, and contacting the artist. They could care less about the artist's family, hobbies, philosophy, etc.The artist used a pre exisiting theme designed to be an online portfolio. Artists, generally are not web designers, nor do they want to be. Managing content and keeping a website up to date can be a real chore. Using a Wordpress theme can greatly streamline the process of keeping the most current work in the portfolio while being able to organize older work where it doesn't compete with the work the artist wants to feature.Often, artists are part of a larger group. In many cases, illustrators and photographers work with a representative agency. These agencies usually take a commission of 25-30% of the artists' fees, but in exchange, they handle most of the artists' marketing and facilitate most of the sales and billing. These agences will have a website that hosts portfolios for all the artists they represent. Many times the artists will have their own URLs but they will point to the page maintained by the agency. People visiting the agency website will see a list of artists and all the artists' pages will have a unified look that is consistent with the agency. The agency, will want a site that's clean and compatible with all the artists' work.