The Creations of Independent Art Business & How to Conquer It.

For the longest time, the common problem between creatives has been the phrase, “ You can’t make a living out of art, ” and for years that has been true to many. But with the increasing number of independent artists going to Conventions, selling online, and being more encouraged in a world full of slop and mass market products. The concept of selling one’s art is a more achievable dream. Even with the lack of creditable information, it’s impossible to start, but that’s what this essay is going against. Helping creatives figure out how to grow a brand and demographic, to the inner workings of the five P’s in business, along with the problems that arise and how to face them. Making the journey from hobby to possible career.

The need to start selling your creations and sharing your art with the world will be strong at the beginning, but finding your audience and demographic is what’s going to carry a business, especially if starting from the ground up. Finding your demographic depends on the products you want to sell, rather it be stickers, prints, commission pieces, ect. There is always someone who would want to buy your art. You just have to cater to them, hence, it requires market research.

Following that a business has to go through and study competitions analysis, going to similar or future competing brands to find out the best way to grow and be unique. Ways to gather such information come from the U.S. Small Business Administration Website, “Asking consumers yourself can give you a nuanced understanding of your specific target audience. But, direct research can be time consuming and expensive. Use it to answer questions about your specific business or customers, like reactions to your logo, improvements you could make to the buying experience, and where customers might go instead of your business.”(S.B.A). This is great for people with existing audiences and people searching for an audience through popular social media forms.

As they already know the type of art medium you work with and honestly give an opinion on what they like to buy it as. For people with no audience, it is a great way to introduce people to your art, and gain individuals that would like to see more of your pieces. However when it comes to asking an audience questions, it’s good to keep costs to more thorough research, as the value of art can vary for everyone and could not only affect how you see your art, but cause problems for other small businesses if charging is too low or high. This is a sentiment all artists share, from beginners and older artists. Beginners pricing their art a low prices due to pressure and personal struggles, and older artists trying to set a price and being unhelpful judges, (FIND VIDEO FOR COMMISSION PRICING) The topic of price has always been a bit controversial depending of the market, but that shouldn't determine your pricing all the time, it just means to price your art where you can gain enough to make a living from it or extra money.

Another issue that comes when making art, is gaining an audience, and what's harder is keeping people around. When it comes to art and non-essential products, finding loyal customers is a struggle, with keeping is two-times harder. It’s important that you keep their attention and provide enough information on your product/service. Before going straight to creating content and scheduling posting and production dates, it’s important to research things such as trending sounds/videos, popular topics, and recently searched topics that fall into the category of the art you're selling. In Kelsey Rodrigues video called, “How To Grow An Art Channel Without An Audience ★ SEO for Artists,” expands on it, “to focus on search driven content, making search driven evergreen content that is designed to show up in YouTube search and funnel more people into my channel, but also establish myself as a person worth following–the first thing is to research your video ideas using some kind of YouTube SEO plugin like tubebuddy or vidqi, the second thing is to make your titles chalk full of good keywords you're going to use.”(Rodriguez, Kelsey).

Now what Kelsey is talking about is gaining an audience on YouTube, but this applies to many and all form of social media, it’s important to find out what your target audience likes or is interested in to capture their attention, it could be in the form of thumbnails, trending memes, or audios. Take channels like Emma Artly channel, specific videos on her channel have nearly a million views due to the topic and how it was presented.

But a captivating post will only get a person so far, especially if the amount and time management is not scheduled. When gaining an audience a posting schedule is a need, help “social media likes active users being active will improve your engagement and your art will reach more people, people post actual art once a week if possible I post twice a month and that's usually good enough, but the more you can upload in a consistent schedule the better your reach will be at the end of the day being active will make getting noticed by the algorithm a lot easier and help people remember you and your work you want to stay at the Forefront of your audience mind.”(Bluebiscuits).

With that being said, keeping a constant flow of content is hard, and many don’t want to watch the same piece every time. That’s why reusing older content is recommended. If a person were to make a large number of prints that didn’t sell like they should, reheating old videos or images about said product would bring in more sales, and clearing way for new projects now that those prints are selling.

It also falls into promotion, which Talia Cohen talks about, “social media as an outlet for announcing sales, discounts, contests and giveaways. Create a social media calendar so that your posts are designed and ready to go up by each holiday or special occasion that you’d like to commemorate.” (Talia Cohen). Brands from grocery stores, schools.

With growing the business growing and becoming more successful, problems tend to arise, from finances, productions, figuring out if you want to sell at vendors, artist alleys, or online. All business and careers have their ups and downs, but with art, those ups and downs could be the equivalent of roller coasters. When it comes to finances it’s taxes and production cost that small businesses frit over, while those are valid problems creators and employers tend to forget the metal strain participating in the market is, “Surviving in the Creative Industry – Analysis of Innovation, Challenges, and Opportunities Faced,” by the students of BMS puts it to words better, “I think one of the challenges I faced was to put in a capital. Although I do digital art, you must pay for platforms to purchase them and to maintain them.

We need to upgrade the software and all of that,”(BMS). The process of making art is a mental gymnastic, with digital art it could be the fact you have the ability to make it “perfect” or the effects of staring at a screen for too long, and the stress of cost and selling art products to make a living. One way to combat it is similar to scheduling posts for social media, preparing and planning ahead when creating products for future events. However, this would affect the finances placed into the business, one being the taxes, from Jackson Hewitt Tax Services, “If you are self-employed, you should keep records of the income yourself. The income may be reported on Form 1099-NEC, Non-Employee Compensation, or on Form 1099-K if you received credit card, debit card, or other types of payments through a payment processor”(Jackson Hewitt).

The forms required can also be done by the person that did your taxes, making the process easier and putting less pressure on the self-employed person. The problems that come to owning a business can usually be solved with the right amount and time to solve them quickly.

The process of starting a small business will always be a struggle, from getting it off the ground in the first place to figuring out the steps along the way with the external help from online sources and in person experiences. From the start to try and gain a frequent audience while figuring out how to connect to your targeted demographic.

Providing enough information and content to keep people loyal, along with the million other problems that follow the many problems within finance and mental struggles going through with the goal of a small business. It’s with that, that some of the major unanswered questions have been giving a solution/outline to starting a small business, going from sitting and waiting for something to happen to crafting their own proper plans and actions taken, getting the knowledge on how hard and simultaneously easy.