Hiscox Inc. is an insurance provider that at the same time has produced one of the best pieces of online art-sale research I have ever seen I’m my life (and I’ve seen like 4 or 5 at least)! And what they found is absolutely great news for anyone that sells their art online:
First of all, the online art market is booming and more and more people choose to buy art directly via their computer or phone! Almost a quarter of all the people they surveyed said that they bought art online without ever buying anything arty in person — meaning that they were first-time buyers.
This is really important, because if more and more art is being sold online, and the best tool for selling ones art directly — without the need for gallery representation or agents — is some form of online shop, well, that puts us artists in a great position!
And the best news? More than 3/4 of all art sold online was priced from 100€-5000€, and half of all art was under 1000€. That means a larger and larger abundance of “cheaper” — or let’s say more affordable to make it sound better — art is being sold.
The big tip here, that all of us can use: Price your art in that range, preferably under 1000€ if it still makes sense to you (the sweet-spot I have found was around 300€-400€ for the majority of my smaller work).
By having a price that is most likely to strike a tune with the majority of online buyers, your chances of being considered can go up a lot. But wait, there’s more!
Hiscox found 5 of the most important factors that can make or break a sale for the average online buyer:
The quality of art on offer; this one’s really straight forward, most people want to buy good art and expect the art they find online to be at least as good as the art that they can see in person (otherwise it really doesn’t make sense to take the risk of not being able to physically inspect the work before they buy). The point I guess is not to make crappy art, but I’m sure this one’s quite the no-brainer!
Search and navigation; for art sellers this mostly means to have a well-made website, meaning that they have an easy-to-use search engine set in place. But for us common folk it means being present, especially on Instagram — 80% of art buyers use Instagram to find new work!
Reputation of the online seller of art; while not fully under our control, reputation is just another way to describe a good social standing with other people in your profession. The point is, get out there, attend openings, drink a bunch of free wine and comment on other people’s posts (sincerely, not generically — the whole point is to start being part of the community) and just get on with building your reputation as the guy or gal that makes great art.
Price transparency; most buyers value price transparency, manly due to the fact that most galleries don’t even put price tags on their work and set the final price depending on who the buyer is — rich investor Clara will get a quote that’s 5x as much as the one average hipster John got for the same work. The art world is funny like that.
What we can do is to be sincere about our prices, not hide our value and maybe even announce every sale publicly (if the buyer agrees, of course). While it seems weird to tell everybody how much you charged for your work (hopefully enough, otherwise it’s understandable that we wouldn’t want to disclose the numbers), it could land you more sales, because now people actually know how much you charge.
Many would probably love to have one of our works but because they don’t want to risk hearing what for them would be considered an enormous number and looking poor in the eyes of a painting hippy artist (effectively doubling the produced shame factor and dealing bonus pity damage, if we would then try to give them a discount) they never do anything and we end up losing a sale we never even knew existed in the fist place!
- They want information; I have probably blabbered on about high-quality pictures ad verbatim, but that’s what buyers want. A clear, crisp image of the work, a photograph of the work in some place (hung on a wall, placed inside a living room or office …), a bunch of details of the work (image of the back, sides, corners, texture, signature) and on and on. The more the merrier, really.
But we can also compliment the information with a good and well-prepared CV, portfolio of works and a nice, easy-flowing presentation (maybe even a video of us talking about our work). We need to make them feel connected to our story, because it’s only the story that we tell about our work (and ourselves) that makes their decision to buy an original work of art by someone who actually cares even plausible.
If all they wanted to buy was some wall furniture to cover up the white wall space in their office, they would most likely go to IKEA or order some generic print online.
We must never forget: We sell stories, not object.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://survivingart.com/2019/04/26/5-tips-for-selling-more-art-backed-by-the-sweet-power-of-science/