I read Plein Air Magazine and I’ve been seeing ads promoting artworks of people who also sell on DPW. The difference in prices is astounding. For example, DPW artist Barbara Schilling’s larger works are selling for over $1,000. Nancy Paris Pruden has a piece priced at $3,350 in NOAPS 25th Best of America Exhibit. My point is this: artists can’t depend on one market (DPW or Etsy) or way of selling (online) for their income.
Artists who approach selling art as a business have developed other markets through entering competitions, juried shows (local, regional, and national), teaching and demonstrating their work, etc. Winning in the monthly DPW contest earns the artist a position at the top of the What’s New page for a month. They may or may not have an active blog, but many do. And quite a few of the artists who blog are sharing their knowledge and experience and not just posting images of what’s new and available. In the marketing world, this is recognized as “pulling” people in with content rather than “pushing” content at people.
I think there is a huge untapped potential for sales of modestly priced original art. I don’t mean cheap sales where artists feel less than satisfied by the transaction, but rather a purchase where the buyer feels they finally can afford real artwork at a price where the artist gets fairly compensated for their efforts. Think how many walls are out there screaming for something better than a print from some box store. Think about how many paintings we all collectively have waiting for good homes. We just need to find a way to connect the two in a win/win arrangement.
Is it a question of advertising? Do we need to work together somehow as a community to bring more of the right eyeballs to DPW? I don’t think we should be relying totally on the staff of DPW to do this for us. They have created an excellent site where buyers can come, conveniently view and purchase very good art at reasonable prices. But I sometimes think (I don’t have any data to back this up) that a large portion of the views are by other artists. This is good for the artists but not so great for sales. We need to somehow increase visits from the general public. This is a tricky business. For example, you could place an expensive ad in an art magazine without getting farther ahead because the readers are mostly other artists.
One thing we all can do is add our gallery widget to blogs and websites. This draws views back to DPW and vice versa. It is not hard to do. Just go to your gallery, click on admin tools and then my gallery widget and follow instructions.
There must be other things we can do collectively to increase the right kind of traffic to DPW. Maybe it could be as simple as putting the link to your DPW gallery on your business card.
I agree, @garyw Gary, with your thoughts about an untapped market for modesty priced art, and that artists should expect to be adequately compensated for their work. The “starving artist” mindset only serves the buyer. I paid $250 for a framed print that I gave to my daughter.at Christmas time. She loves the print, and she’d like to decorate more of her walls with original pieces.
I agree, also that we need to do more to make people aware of DPW. To that end, I save/pin what I feel are the “best” paintings to a board on Pinterest, and I tell people about DPW. I also have the DPW widget on my blog. But I could do more to raise awareness of the site.
I think we all benefit when artists like Barbara Schilling and Nancy Paris Pruden sell their art on DPW for “modest” prices IN ADDITION to their sales of larger, higher priced pieces. Others may be doing this as well. On Friday, I plan to attend the opening of an exhibit of “small art work” at a gallery in Woodbury, MN. I’m curious about the public’s response to small format artworks, and I am curious about prices and sales. I also hope to learn that this showing is not the first nor the the last exhibit of small artworks at this gallery.
I’m interested in knowing what other DPW artists are doing to market their work and connect it to DPW.
@davidmarine are there stats about “new” visitors to the site? What percentage of visitors are new every week/month?