Shall I Tell You How It’s Done? I know what works. It’s taken years of banging my head against that virtual wall, but I now know how to sell fine-art prints over Internet. I’ ll be happy to share my findings with you. Shall I tell you how it’s done?
First of all, the basics; you’ll need a website. If you’re a visual artist you need a website in any case. It’s your virtual calling card, catalog and studio visit. I am fond of saying that if an artist doesn’t have a website he doesn’t exist, and that’s only a slight exageration. You need your own domain; don’t settle for free hosting and a Hotmail account. Your clients won’t take you seriously. So pay for your own domain (www.marysprints.com) and e-mail account (mary@marysprints.com). It’s not too expensive and it will help you to achieve the credibility you need to get strangers in far off places to send you money for your prints. All business is about credibility, but online business moreso, as your whole operation is somewhere out there in the ether with no tangible office, store or parking lot, and clients are naturally distrustful. Virtually everything you do online will be designed to build the credibility necessary to overcome your potential clients’ natural! reticence.
To Flash or Not to Flash Your website needs to be tasteful and professional. There are different schools of thought on website design. Some people prefer their sites to reflect advanced design and technology concepts, with ornate presentation pages, Flash animations, etc. I’m of the other school: plain vanilla with text links. You can go either way, but if you opt for the former you’d better do it well, as highly “designed” pages take significantly longer to download. If you’ve navigated the Web much you know that speed is of the essence. Just as in the real world, clients are put off if you make them wait. The question of colors and layouts we’ll leave to you. You are, after all, an artist. Having said that, I’ll confess that I prefer combinations of black, white and greys. That way the background colors don’ t clash with or distract from the colors of the prints you display.
All the images you put on your site should be of professional quality, of course. You are selling images. That’s not too complicated in these days of digital cameras. Even if you don’t have a digital camera you can still make excellent images of your prints with your old SLR camera and color negative film (yes, the same kit you’ve taken on vacation all these years!) When you drop the film off for developing at the photo lab, tell them you want the negatives scanned onto a Kodak Photo CD. This procedure gives excellent image quality and saves you an infinite amount of time and frustration scanning prints. Whether you opt for digital or film, the absolutely essential element is the tripod, without which your images will be deficient.
Content is King Content is king. People don’t log onto the WWW to see flaming whirligigs. They go to find useful information. Make sure your site has some, whether it’s notes about techniques, articles on printmaking history or art criticism, or even a thoughtful collection of links. Information – relevant, interesting, timely information – is the cheese in the trap. If you’ve gotten this far with your site, all that remains to do before publishing it online is to fine tune it for search engines. Your nephew can help you with this. It’s about metatags and keywords, stuff that you’d rather not have to bother with.
So, now your site is published. Congratulations, it looks pretty good. Now you can sit back and wait for the orders to come rolling in, right? Well, not exactly. Actually, if you really want your website to function for you, your work has just beguin. Now you need to start to promote and update. Start by putting your URL (Web address) on all your correspondence, business cards, e-mails, etc. Send out notes announcing your new site to all your friends and associates, art galleries, the local paper, art publications, etc.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate Are you an expert on some aspect of printmaking or a related subject? Write an article on it and get it published in the aforementioned publications, on the condition that they publish your site’s URL at the bottom of the article. Find the Internet newsgroups related to printmaking and participate in them. If you work them patiently and discreetly they will give you not only publicity but valuable feedback on your site.
So far so good. By now the content on your site will be getting a little musty and could do with refreshing. This means new images and articles. When you get the new material online don’t fail to send out a little newsletter to everyone. “This is starting to sound like a lot of work!” you say. Well yes, in fact it is a lot of work. You were expecting something else? A silver get-rich-quick bullet, perhaps. Forget it, that’s not going to happen. And things get worse before they get better. Read on, if you’re not too demoralized already.
The Secrets of Success It turns out, as you have correctly if reluctantly suspected, that the secrets of success in the virtual world are the same as those of the real world: professionalism, efficiency, perseverance, honesty, communications skills and a pinch of creativity. So, follow this painstaking formula for a couple of years. Be unflaggingly cheerful and helpful to everyone who comes your way. You’ll receive a lot of requests from art students. Attend them lovingly. Internet is a big world made up of many small worlds, and the printmaking community is one of them. Answer all e-mails on the same day they arrive and treat potential clients like the VIP’s they are. Smother them with information and attention. Pack their prints securely and honor your guarantee scrupulously.
You’ve been working on your micro-mini dot-com print enterprise for a couple of years now. You’ve learned a lot about the Web, about site design, e-commerce and promotion. Your site is approaching critical mass, that magical point where the various threads of communication, promotion, good business practices and a smidgen of serendipity have woven themselves into a solid fabric of credibility. (Remember credibility?) Though you’re not exactly a household name, you are known and respected in printmaking circles, you have published articles and been interviewed a few times for your printmaking expertise. You have been seen at major printmaking fairs and events. Certainly now you can begin to think about leaving your day job and making your living from your prints, no?
Not a chance. Regardless of how well you’ve done your homework thus far, you’re not going to get enough orders over Internet to permit you to live from the sales you make from your website. (I warned you it would get worse before it gets better!) It’s not only about the number of orders you get, but the type of orders, which will be mainly for single prints. Just the time and expense involved in packaging and mailing prints one by one will eat up most of your profit.
The Best Part Are you thoroughly demoralized yet? Don’t give up now, because I’ve been saving the best part till last. If you have conscientiously laid down a solid foundation of credibility over the past couple of years, there is a reliable formula for capitalizing on it. It’s called “B2B” or “business to business e-commerce.” Properly carried out, a B2B campaign will sell a sufficient volume of prints, not just single prints but whole editions, to enable a professional printmaker to devote himself exclusively to art.
How does one go about it? B2B, at its most basic, is little more than the virtual version of the time proven direct mail business. You send out mailings to companies offering your original, limited-edition fine-art prints as corporate gifts and office decoration. Most of them won’t answer or will say no. But a few will say yes. And when companies buy prints for gifts or decor they don’t buy just one. They buy dozens or hundreds. The best news is that, if a client buys this year, next year he will be back for more!
In Six Months You Can Learn Anything In order to plan and carry out your B2B campaign you’ll have to get up to speed on copywriting, layout, list management and the rest of the direct-mail techniques. But that’s not beyond your reach. You’re a creative person and in six months you can learn anything. I know what you’ re thinking: “Very well, suppose I manage to master this whole process and actually make it work. Where do I find the time to do any printmaking?!”
Excellent point. Ideally, printmakers should make prints and not have to worry about marketing them. Isn’t there a professional service somewhere out there which will take care of all these bothersome details for printmakers: website design, site promotion and updating, public relations and B2B?
There must be a few of them, but you’ll forgive me if I confess that I only know one. It’s called World Printmakers and it’s at http://www.worldprintmakers.com.
Mike Booth
World Printmakers
http://www.worldprintmakers.com
miguel@worldprintmakers.com
