 Well welcome to this video. Chances are you're watching this because you love to create and make what you do but there's an element of frustration when you don't then get rewarded with a sale. Now in essence selling art is a fairly simple straightforward process and there are plenty of artists around the world already doing it but unfortunately not anywhere near enough right? So many people are still stuck in a full or even part-time job and not actually in a position to make a living from their art. Give me a shout out in the comments below if you are still working full-time but you dream of actually switching over and building your art business so that you can make that living from what you love to do. Now in this video I'm going to share five steps to selling more of your art online. Now if you haven't started selling on a regular basis or you're further down the track and your art sales have dried up make sure to watch my previous video that I entitled art sales dried up and then the seven steps to getting your art sales started again because those seven steps will kind of get you to the beginning of the process and from there you can ramp things up and focus on making more sales and this video as I said is specifically for online. There are plenty of strategies that I share on this channel for selling offline as well but I thought today we'd focus in on that because I know that so many of you have an online store have opened an online store or maybe are still dreaming of setting up and opening that online store so let's focus on how you can make more sales there. Now if we haven't met yet I'm Sophie artist entrepreneur and art business coach helping artists just like you to build profitable businesses from your creative passion. If you like this video don't forget to give me a thumbs up and of course consider subscribing to my channel so that you don't miss out on any future content. Alright let's dive into those five steps for selling more art online. Now first up I should say that we're going to assume that you've got all your foundations in place. If you haven't make sure to check out that previous video or other videos that I've got and I'll link below this one in terms of building your business plan your marketing plan all those foundational pieces that you need for an art business. Number one is to have a niched and limited item shop. So we've all heard that old adage less is more it's something I tend to think about actually all across my life but that's that's a topic for another video all together so let's imagine something I like to do in my spare time which is to go clothes shopping. So imagine for a moment you go clothes shopping and you go into a store that is just absolutely packed there's racks and racks different colors different styles different sizes this thing over here and another style over there and you're just bombarded with like a visual overload. Now the chances are that you're going to feel totally overwhelmed and you're going to say to yourself I don't know that I can even begin to find what I'm looking for in there so I'm going to leave and find another store that's perhaps more what I'm looking for and has less in it right. So now you walk down the street and you find that little boutique store that has a limited range perhaps even a limited color palette and you're either going to love it or hate it right you're either going to walk in and go oh my god this is exactly the sort of clothes I want to wear I'm in all I need to do is make a decision on what I'm going to buy or you'll just poke your head around and go that's not my style I'll go to the next one then you go down the street you find another one you're like oh no this is this is what I'm looking for right it's so much easier because when you go in there and you find the right store that has the type of clothing that you're looking for it's very often not just the case of buying one item it might be the case of buying two. Now this happened to me exactly the other day I walked past the store that I looked in the forum was like I'm not going in there this just looks like a big jumble sale and now it's been taken over by somebody else has a really clear specific line of clothing in a few limited colors I walked in and thought wow there are all these items and I ended up buying three things because there was so much in there that I love and they all went together so I'm hoping that this is beginning to make sense and you can translate that across to art so imagine if you have a website that is just packed full of everything you've ever made right it's overwhelming to your audience we know that you want to have a clear niche check out this video on how to find your niche here so once you're seeing that you have a clear niche keep your shop limited right it could be that you have all these different things but you keep a lot of them in draft and you're just going to have a one collection up for the moment so that the people who love what you do don't have that overwhelming choice they're just looking going oh my goodness me okay here's the 10 or 20 pieces well I love them I'll have this one and this one that's ultimately what you want after all so number two you want to make it easy for them to buy now this is something that I see over and over again there might be beautiful artwork on a website but I'm clicking around kind of going hey I can't see the price now I put it in my cart but the cart doesn't tell me now if there's going to be postage and packaging like how much is that will they ship to my country actually I'm not even sure what size it is or what it's made from and sometimes I can't even distinguish if it's an original or a print all right the the challenge here is that we make the artwork and we know that likely unless your former career was website builder you don't want to have to do the listings so you get through them really quickly you get the photographs you put a photograph up you put the title you put the price you write like two lines you know thank god that's listed but that's not good enough right that is not good enough your audience deserves more your audience is online and we all make really quick snappy decisions right it's yes I like it do I want it it needs to have all the information that the customer needs what sizes it if it's the original what size is it how is it made is it framed how's it going to arrive when's it going to arrive what's the cost to get it delivered where do you deliver like how long is it going to take all of the things people are going to want to know in one easy place right you want to make it simple and ideally here's the less is more theme ideally don't want them clicking around either right it's there's the picture I've clicked on the picture it pops up and there's all the information I need with a nice highlighted add to cart and then when they've added it to cart you want to make sure that the shopping platform that you have your website built on is really easy and simple to use and it's again it's got all the information on there for them to use one click they pay and they're out and then they know what is going to happen next they get a confirmation email they've made this purchase there's a tracking number when are they going to get the painting so you want to think about what are the things that the customer might want to know right list out all the things you would want to know if you were a customer and then make sure you cover it all off because remember if they've got a question they're unlikely to reach out to you they might do but they might again just go off this is too hard I'm going somewhere else it's very noisy in the studio this morning remember if all the information isn't there or they're at all confused or they're uneasy to make the purchase especially if it's an original and it's a large amount of money they're going to leave and go somewhere else now if you're selling on a third party site if you're selling prints or cards or products or smaller items then obviously that's a little bit easier but again we want to know as a customer all the information just quickly and easily if it's a print what sizes is it available in what frames will it fit because it come mounted will it come rolled in a tube will it arrive flat how long is it going to take same same questions so this might be a bit laborious for you to do sometimes it's easy to use a third party platform a lot of people I know have shops on Etsy a lot of it is pre-filled and you just have to add in your information add in your photos publish listing so there's definitely something to be said for using a really well-built website or a third party site that's an e-commerce site and that has all the information on there so step number three for making more art sales online you want to maximize the best selling times in the year so think about when the holiday times are one of the periods that people are naturally going to be looking for gifts maybe spring Easter mother's day father's day Thanksgiving Christmas those times of year typically have a surge in shopping and you want to make sure that you are there with a special offer for those particular times remember that typically January February March are quieter months than other months unless of course you maximize out on Valentine's Day in which case February is going to be your best month but I know that over the years January tends to be really really quiet people have spent a lot of money on Christmas and so that typically there's a bit of a lull in product purchase in January things will pick up for me I used to find that August was a quiet month especially when I was in the UK school holidays you know everything geared up for September so think about where you live think about your business type your products what are times of the year or yearly festivals that you can plug into that you know are going to be high sales point typically Christmas is going to be one for everybody so you want to think about that sort of October November time as being peak time for you to be making your online art sales plan for this you know in your business plan you'll be planning it all out I would typically use my quarter planner that's part of that business plan to plot out when I would be doing all of those sales talking of step number four is to make regular sales offers so I don't want to say that no sales will happen without a promotion because that's not true you will make organic sales but again we just don't know when that's going to happen you might make one one month nothing for two months ten the next month it's much easier if you are more in control of that so by creating these short time based offers that ideally you can send out on your mailing list we've talked about this in the previous video then you're more in control you'll begin to know the numbers I have this number of people on my mailing list when I send out an offer with a discount code I typically convert this percentage of my mailing list and make sales and it will be much easier for you to be in control of that remember of course you don't always want to be selling in terms of your marketing so you want to have periods where you're simply sending out valuable marketing content that's of interest to your audience if everything you send is sales email or sales social media posts people will unfollow really really fast make sure as I said that they're planned ahead of time so you're not suddenly thinking oh goodness me I need to do an offer I'll do one next week you've got that planner and you're thinking okay my next one is going to be in April and it's now February so I've got plenty of time to think ahead you know how long am I going to be doing kind of organic nice value-based posts now it's time to build up to that offer and remember that people love a special offer it doesn't have to be anything massive just that special offer tiny discount code free postage and packaging whatever you can do adding it if someone buys a print you know maybe buy one get one half price or if they buy a this print then they get a packet cards for free just for a short period of time so you want to use deadlines limited numbers only five available or 48 hours only that sort of thing and then number five and this for me is really really important and I think again a lot of people get this wrong they try and use ads too early in the game oh I've got a brand new business and a brand new product I'm going to put some ads behind it and that will help send traffic well it will do it will send and what do we mean by traffic you know that's when we send people to go and look at an online listing so imagine for a moment you set up your own website and you've decided to run some google ads or some facebook or instagram ads and you've got this budget and you put this budget behind ads to these products but if we don't really know if people are going to buy the product you could end up spending a huge amount of money for nothing yes you might get people going and looking at the website you might with fingers crossed get some people signing up to the mailing list but you don't have any guarantees that you're going to make any sales so what I recommend instead is step five you wait until some sales are happening and you'll see after a while if you've got I don't know 10 prints for sale and you've seen three of them are what people typically buy that they're the most popular ones that people buy that's the moment that you say okay well if I'm making 10 sales a month from these what if I put some ads behind that and I started making say a hundred of these per month how would that change my business so for me you only start using ads when you've got something that's working organically right so if you're doing some marketing you're sending people to look at that listing it's converting people are buying it then really what you want to do is get more people to buy it right and that's when you use the ads and you can use Etsy ads on the Etsy platform you could use Pinterest ads if you're using the Pinterest strategy or you could use Facebook and you can use Google you can use any of it right any it doesn't matter which one you choose you choose the relevant one for where your listings are so in conclusion folks arts sales online don't just happen you are going to make them happen right you are in control of your art business you're in control of how many of these sales that you want to make and you can see by now I think probably with this video and the previous video that there are some steps that you need to follow right there's some hoops to jump through now if you're really struggling with all of this and you'd like a bit of help and support then forget that I do have my membership open at the moment the art business academy that's a monthly membership for artists looking to build their business and you get help and support and of course there's a ton of content everything you need it's kind of like a one-stop shop to building art business so if you're watching this you're thinking I really want to do that but I'm I'm unsure about that email piece or I'm unsure about the customer or oh my god you know I could buy the course on on the business planning for sure but now I feel a bit alone I want to hang out with other artists doing the same and I'd like to be able to ask my questions to Sophie directly and have them answered which is something I do every month then you might want to consider joining our membership it's just 32 32 Australian dollars per month you can sign up on the link below there's no contract so if you don't like it after a couple months you can leave we hope you don't we hope you stay and enjoy the process of building your business now I hope you've enjoyed this video today I'm pretty passionate about helping you all make more sales as you can probably understand like I said at the beginning the process is simple that are these different parts though you do need to go through all of these steps missing one out is mean it's going to mean it's a bit like an ingredients isn't it you're going to make a cake there are seven ingredients of the cake but you've only got five of them you know if the two are missing from the cake like your eggs and your sugar's missing that's not really going to make a great cake it's the same here all right so make sure that you follow all of these steps and give us a shout out in the comments if you are excited and you're going to be doing this process and you want to make more sales we'd love to hear from you thank you so much for watching and we'll see you on the next one bye