What does it take to be a successful artist? The majority of beginner artists dread the tired stereotype of the starving artist-sacrificing your financial security for the sake of the craft. Making it as an artist is no easy task. It doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to fail in life-every successful artist can attest to this fact.
What do you need to do to be successful like them? As an artist, you ought to think of yourself as a small business. Once you develop this mindset, you can optimize solutions designed to improve yourself as a business entity. Below is a researched guide on how to make it as an artist.
As an artist, you need to believe in your calling. Constantly doubting your craft's potential and taking negative advice from other people is a recipe for disaster. A strong mindset means you have to know what you want to achieve… Click To Tweet
- How to Make it As An Artist? Have A Strong and Clear Mindset
As an artist, you need to believe in your calling. Constantly doubting your craft’s potential and taking negative advice from other people is a recipe for disaster. A strong mindset means you have to know what you want to achieve out of art. You also need to know what is required of you and put your efforts into it.
In addition, as an artist and business, you have to be open-minded. Be open to change and new inspiring ideas. The real measure of art is the ability to adapt to more than one place. Regardless, you still need to have a strong and clearly defined mindset.
2. Understand the Principles of Marketing
You have already established your craft as a business. The next step is to understand the business aspects of it, including marketing. It is vital to understand the principles of marketing if you want to improve your small business.
Some of the basic principles of marketing that answer the question how to make it as an artist include:
· Product. Your potential clients need to understand your art products, your style, features, and what you are offering them that is lacking elsewhere
· Price. Art can be expensive and very cheap at the same time. It is not uncommon to find starving artists underpricing their art. When determining a pricing strategy for your craft, it is vital to consider your small business’ position in the current marketplace. If you promote your art as high-quality, the price should ultimately reflect that.
· Promotion. What activities are you undertaking to make the business more known to clients? Such include sponsorships and advertising. However, it is all investment. Understand your client’s value and whether the promotion is worth the hassle to acquire them.
3. Embrace Digital Space and Online Marketing
One of the major ways artists are nowadays selling their art is on social media. Your best bet is to seek information on marketing-especially digital marketing-and perfect your strategy as a business. You expose your art to thousands or millions of potential clients by marketing your art digitally, depending on your marketing strategy.
4. What’s Your Competition? What is Your Competitive Advantage?
Currently, there are millions of artists worldwide, all battling for the same audience. There are also different forms of art, each aiming to impress art lovers. Not all artists share the same style or access to the same market.
As an artist, competition won’t likely bother you as much. However, if you look at the business side of your craft, you are not alone. As such, you need to understand your competition and what sets them apart from you. Fill in a missing gap where your competition cannot manage.
5. Embrace Better Artists
As much as they are your competition, they should also act as your reference points. A better artist is experienced enough to provide solid insight and input. Ideally, you form a network of individuals who are likely to refer a few clients your way. However, your ability to embrace and work with better artists depends on your approach and mindset.
6. Schedule Your Time
As an artist and business owner, you should know when to take up one role and pause the other. Divide your time sufficiently, allowing periods of rest, time for perfecting your craft, and time for being a business owner. Moreover, free time is often a major source of inspiration for most artists who produce consistently amazing art.
7. Be Enthusiastic About Your Craft
Your art enthusiasm has to cut across every aspect of your craft. Whether it is for the art itself, the business, and the process, practice being enthusiastic, especially if you are in it for the long term. Think of it as infusing your hobby, passion, and profession into a single unit.
Enthusiasm also involves embracing failures and setbacks that come with the process. What are you going to do about such challenges? Most importantly, being patient helps you stay in the game long enough to make it as an artist. Some artists generally go through a long process to realize success. It would help if you were willing to be patient with your craft and simultaneously putting in the necessary effort to make the process easier.
8. Have A Solid Work Ethics
Most struggling artists are generally inclined to copy other artists’ crafts to sustain their livelihoods. While this may not be illegal-depending on circumstances-it certainly feels like cheating, especially if you are doing it commercially. Make it a point to have strong work ethics as a business and an artist if you want to stand out.
9. Understand the Changing Art Process
Art constantly evolves now and then. As a good business owner, you are obligated to evaluate the constant changes and the consistent processes. Once you embrace the changes, you can streamline your art business in the direction that encourages your growth as an artist and as a business.
10. Dedicate A Budget to Marketing Your Business
To make it as an artist and a business, you have to be willing to go the extra mile to market yourself. There are free avenues and channels you can use to market yourself. However, if you intend to realize better returns, you have to set aside a dedicated budget for your marketing strategy. Oftentimes, if your marketing strategy/campaign is brilliant and more clients buy your art as you anticipated, your return on investment will be higher than your marketing budget.
11. Be Open to Feedback and Mentorship
Look out for people who want to see your craft improve. If possible, ask for constructive feedback from your clients, social media audience, and exhibition reviews. It is often the thoughts of art buyers that inspire artists to improve in certain areas.
Most importantly, be open to mentorship. Currently, you can find online courses that tutor artists to improve their art in different ways. Whether it is an art tutor or a more experienced art, there are bound to be valuable lessons you can pick up from them.
Bottom Line
How can you make it as an artist? Your first step is to have a clear, strong, and open mind. Trust that you are doing the right thing and are willing to put in the work. Moreover, taking a business approach to your craft allows you to see things from different perspectives.
In addition, you need consistency to realize results. By giving in, you are setting yourself to fail as an artist. The true hallmark of an artist is being patient with the process, embracing failure, and learning to use criticism to improve.
Generally, understanding yourself as an artist and a business sets you apart from every beginner artist struggling to make it as an artist without a clear plan.
