Something that I think a lot of technician archetypes can get caught up in, is how little people offer them for their masterpieces of excellence.
What I would suggest, is that its all relative.
Let's say you created the Faberge egg, or, an amazing robot sculpture, and, you showed it to a farmer, a lawyer, and the King of England, and, they all had the same exact love for the art piece.
One would be in tears of joy over the beauty of your masterpiece, and offer you three out of 5 of his chickens for it. The other, would offer upwards of $30,000 and the other, your weight in gold, some property, and employment to commission further pieces.
When people say that something is "too expensive", they are saying "for them."
This is not a reflection upon the quality of the work. To use another analogy, it is as if someone were saying that speaking in front of people was "too hard" or "too scary". Yes, for some. For others, they look forward to such a thing.
Everything is relative.
Ergo, it is not the quality of the product that is as important as who sees it.
Yes, if someone with the sufficient funds sees your product, it would indeed be best if the product was worthy of them purchasing it. More importantly, an artist should always strive to improve their style, as how we do anything is how we do everything; and our art is ultimately a reflection of our values and sense of self.
But this self improvement is for personal growth & expression, NOT SALES.
Even the shoddiest pieces of art have sold to those with deep pockets. (how many times have we all said "hell, I could paint THAT!" next to the red dot on the canvas which just sold for a hundred grand??)
Grow and improve your art because it is a piece of your soul and an expression of the gift God gave you.
Remember that marketing is the missing piece in EVERY unsold, or undersold piece of art. Ever.
Remember the red dot on the white canvass. The difference between that, and something immeasurably better (but unsold) is that the right person saw it, and was emotionally motivated to purchase it.
So, then, how to expose your art, with whom, and where?
That is a question for an agent. It doesn't matter if they take 90% of your sale price.
One more time: It doesn't matter if they take 90% of your sale price. (which, they don't)
Why doesn't it matter?
Most artists want 100% of the profits they get from the farmer, instead of 1% of the profits they get from the King.
Or, they want 100% of the profits they get from the one lawyer they sold to last year, instead of 80% of the profits they sold to 300 lawyers instead.
Agents, like realtors, affiliates, or anyone else who works as a middleman who works on commission have one thing in mind: Sell your work.
Their only focus is finding people to buy things.
Just as I answer yahoo answers with the focus of connecting questions to products, so too does an agent see people who would like his clients' work.
And, if they work on commission, they will always be trying to get as much as they can for your work. If they undersell it, they still sold it. If they oversell it, they, and you, make more money.
Get affiliates working for you, and get represented. You don't even need a gallery. Using a service like paydotcom to sell your art is perfectly acceptable.
Offer insane commissions, especially in the beginning. Make it appealing. Sell the first sculpture at a loss simply to get the affiliates interested. If you have 5000 affiliates spamming the internet about how great you are, someone worthwhile will see the pieces you have.
To stress the point home: Take the focus off your work for one month and apply yourself exclusively to the marketing of your work. And, by applying yourself, what I mean is increasing the number of people who are exposing your work. Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts and the like are only as powerful as the amount of people who see them. Getting affiliates to run countless blog posts in hopes of landing you a sale will still increase your awareness and yes, those facebook fan pages are important to have as landing pages for those interested in your products, just as a website is, but widening the field is immeasurably more important.
If I double my facebook fan page, I get an extra few thousand followers. If I increase my exposure on the internet by 0.0001% that's still thousands and thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS more people who will see my work.
Get the bloggers, affiliates, promoters, agencies all working for you.
What I would suggest, is that its all relative.
Let's say you created the Faberge egg, or, an amazing robot sculpture, and, you showed it to a farmer, a lawyer, and the King of England, and, they all had the same exact love for the art piece.
One would be in tears of joy over the beauty of your masterpiece, and offer you three out of 5 of his chickens for it. The other, would offer upwards of $30,000 and the other, your weight in gold, some property, and employment to commission further pieces.
When people say that something is "too expensive", they are saying "for them."
This is not a reflection upon the quality of the work. To use another analogy, it is as if someone were saying that speaking in front of people was "too hard" or "too scary". Yes, for some. For others, they look forward to such a thing.
Everything is relative.
Ergo, it is not the quality of the product that is as important as who sees it.
Yes, if someone with the sufficient funds sees your product, it would indeed be best if the product was worthy of them purchasing it. More importantly, an artist should always strive to improve their style, as how we do anything is how we do everything; and our art is ultimately a reflection of our values and sense of self.
But this self improvement is for personal growth & expression, NOT SALES.
Even the shoddiest pieces of art have sold to those with deep pockets. (how many times have we all said "hell, I could paint THAT!" next to the red dot on the canvas which just sold for a hundred grand??)
Grow and improve your art because it is a piece of your soul and an expression of the gift God gave you.
Remember that marketing is the missing piece in EVERY unsold, or undersold piece of art. Ever.
Remember the red dot on the white canvass. The difference between that, and something immeasurably better (but unsold) is that the right person saw it, and was emotionally motivated to purchase it.
So, then, how to expose your art, with whom, and where?
That is a question for an agent. It doesn't matter if they take 90% of your sale price.
One more time: It doesn't matter if they take 90% of your sale price. (which, they don't)
Why doesn't it matter?
Most artists want 100% of the profits they get from the farmer, instead of 1% of the profits they get from the King.
Or, they want 100% of the profits they get from the one lawyer they sold to last year, instead of 80% of the profits they sold to 300 lawyers instead.
Agents, like realtors, affiliates, or anyone else who works as a middleman who works on commission have one thing in mind: Sell your work.
Their only focus is finding people to buy things.
Just as I answer yahoo answers with the focus of connecting questions to products, so too does an agent see people who would like his clients' work.
And, if they work on commission, they will always be trying to get as much as they can for your work. If they undersell it, they still sold it. If they oversell it, they, and you, make more money.
Get affiliates working for you, and get represented. You don't even need a gallery. Using a service like paydotcom to sell your art is perfectly acceptable.
Offer insane commissions, especially in the beginning. Make it appealing. Sell the first sculpture at a loss simply to get the affiliates interested. If you have 5000 affiliates spamming the internet about how great you are, someone worthwhile will see the pieces you have.
To stress the point home: Take the focus off your work for one month and apply yourself exclusively to the marketing of your work. And, by applying yourself, what I mean is increasing the number of people who are exposing your work. Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts and the like are only as powerful as the amount of people who see them. Getting affiliates to run countless blog posts in hopes of landing you a sale will still increase your awareness and yes, those facebook fan pages are important to have as landing pages for those interested in your products, just as a website is, but widening the field is immeasurably more important.
If I double my facebook fan page, I get an extra few thousand followers. If I increase my exposure on the internet by 0.0001% that's still thousands and thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS more people who will see my work.
Get the bloggers, affiliates, promoters, agencies all working for you.
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