Shortly after we launched ArtEmpowers.Me, there were a few standout students who immediately went to work overhauling their web presence. Michael Whitlark was one of them. We recently sat down for an extended Skype interview to talk about how Michael has gone from selling 1 piece of art every other month, to now having to raise his prices because he can’t keep up with the demand. Pretty amazing place to be in, right?

Here’s the edited clip of our extended interview.

Here’s his website when he started:

Here’s what it looks like now:

It’s a pretty dramatic difference, but that’s just where the story starts. Below, I’ve outlined what I think are the most important points of Michael’s interview.

Recognize That You Need Help

When he started his website, Michael mentioned that he thought if he just put up a website that people would suddenly start buying his art. We both had a good laugh about that.

So after flailing about for a year, Michael went online and searched for the right resources about selling art online. He found TheAbundantArtist.com and began following the lessons here, and then signed up for ArtEmpowers.Me, where he was immediately able to get instant feedback on his site and his marketing efforts.

Do The Work

Many artists whine about wanting to just spend all of their time in the studio. If you’re going to make a living, it’s just going to require more than that. Period. You’re creating something that people want to buy, but so are hundreds of others. Michael mentioned that he did a lot of homework, looking at other people’s websites and using the ArtEmpowers.Me lessons to turn what he observed into what is not a stunning website.

It has been really fun seeing Michael go out, do some work on his site, then come back and report what he did for more feedback. He iterated quickly, and it paid off in droves.

Offline to Online

Michael not only redesigned his website, but also started hitting art shows hard and putting his work in coffee shops and restaurants. He went to the ArtEmpowers.Me forums and asked other artists for advice on how they approach live events. He got lots of good advice and then went and implemented it.

One of the biggest reasons Michael has gotten to $1,000 in monthly profit so quickly is that he got everyone at the live events to sign up for his email newsletter. From there, he was able to remind them of who he was and where they saw him.

Become an Email Ninja

I was a little bit stunned when Michael told me how he approaches his email newsletters. Not only does he regularly email everybody on his list, but he uses segmentation and A/B testing with Mailchimp.com.

This means that when he puts people into his mailing list, he breaks them up into groups like “people I met at such and such art fair” or “people who saw my stuff at X restaurant.” Then, when he has new work at that restaurant, or he’s going to be at an art fair again, he’ll hit those same people up. He uses Mailchimp’s A/B testing feature to send a small set of emails with one subject line, and then another set of emails with a different one, to see which one gets people opening more. Once he knows that, he can then send the rest of the emails. It’s an advanced strategy that pays off in incremental improvements.

Michael recently got his first direct sale from his mailing list when a previous collector purchased a piece as soon as Michael announced it. Good times.

The Game Changer Calls

Michael is very talented, as you can see from his work. But there are a lot of talented people out there. What has set Michael up for success is his hard work and his desire to get better at what he’s doing.

Part of what got Michael started down this path are the free Game Changer Calls that Melissa Dinwiddie and I put together. In those three calls, Melissa and I talked about what it means to build fulfilling career as an artist, how the Internet has changed the fine art world, and how artists can take advantage of this brave new world.

You can listen to the Game Changer Calls for free here – http://artempowers.me/

So…questions for Michael? Leave them in the comments!

A couple of weeks ago I asked readers to submit their questions to Michelle Ward, the When I Grow Up Coach. Michelle and I sat down and talked about your questions and riffed on the challenges that creative people face in their careers.

Some great questions:

[3:00] Vidya asks – When do I make the move to being a full time artist? How do I know it’s the right move?

[6:34] How do you figure out what your comfort zone is for risk?

[8:30] Karen asks how we can come to terms with enormous amounts of rejection?

(oh my gosh, Michelle and I went OFF on rejection. It’s the boogle-dee-boo of creatives and one of the hardest things to deal with.)

[12:40] Christine asks How do I make my web presence more personalized? How do I make people feel like they are meeting the real me online?

[19:40] kmheuser asks: Should I be waiting until my site is totally ready before I put it on the website?

[24:50] Carol Ann McFarland asks How do I identify my target market and start making sales?

[29:10] Sharon Williams asks How does an established artist slow down and not lose momentum totally?

[36:50] Boxomail how does an artist make an impression that leads to sales?

[44:20] Michelle talks about her rhyming workbook, Operation: Creative Career Cheer! The Illustrated Workbook. As I mentioned at the top of the video, Michelle is totally amazeballs, and her work inspires me every time I talk to her. Click here to view more details

*the law requires that I tell you that if you buy Michelle’s totally amazeballs book, I get a small commission. Nobody’s getting rich here – think of it like milk money. Now seriously, go check out Michelle’s book – it’ll leave you in stitches.

Amazeballs?

My friend Michelle Ward, the When I Grow Up Coach, has agreed to do a special (free) Q&A for The Abundant Artist readers!

If you don’t know Michelle, she is an actress turned Life Coach for creative people, and amazeballs is her favorite word. She uses it like every other paragraph in her blog posts. But that’s not what’s cool about her.

Michelle is the real deal when it comes to coaching creative people. There are just a few people that I look up to in the creative coaching world, and she’s one of them. Michelle has been featured in the New York Times, on TLC, and she’s so booked out that you can’t get an appointment with her until September. She’s just that good.

At any rate, here’s what’s going down. Michelle and I are going to record a Skype conversation where i ask her your questions about what it takes to live a creative, fulfilling life.

I NEED YOUR QUESTIONS! What are your questions about:

I’ll take all of your questions and roll them into a fabulous interview with Michelle, and then post that interview on the blog. Michelle is super busy, so her agreeing to do this is a big opportunity for you to ask her the tough questions.

Leave your questions in the comments below, or email me at cory at theabundantartist.com.

Each month at The Abundant Artist Community, I post an in-depth interview with artists who have not only make a living with their art, but who are living an Abundant Artist lifestyle. This month’s interview was with Gwenn Seemel, a personal favorite of mine. I’ve posted 5 minutes of the 30 minute interview here.

Gwenn_Seemel_Excerpt

In this excerpt, Gwenn says, “Work doesn’t have to be better than mediocre to sell.” Do you worry about whether your work is good enough to sell? Odds are, you should take a look at how your art is packaged, framed, and the buzz that you create around our brand.

In the Community, we have action items and downloadable worksheets around these interviews, as well as lessons on search engines, social media, and what makes a great artist website. Visit TheAbundantArtist.com/Community for more information.

Some time ago I received an email from Trevor at FoundMySelf.com, letting me know about his free selling platform for artists. I thought it was a pretty neat idea, so I decided to ask Trevor to answer a few questions.

1. Tell me about yourself Trevor. What’s your background? How did you come to start Foundmyself?

I created Foundmyself in 2003 as a personal project after I graduated college. I had a general concept of what I wanted it to be, which was friendly, simple, and useful to creative types of all sorts. Foundmyself was also a great excuse to hone my programming and design skills, which, looking back, were both in dire need of honing.

Foundmyself is indeed free for all artists, from the setup to the commission-free sales of their work. If an artist decides to give back to the community in the form of donation, we use it to support the hosting and advertising costs. We also offer certain upgrades, like exposure points that advertise an artist’s work across the site, and Reach websites, which are dot-com art galleries. Finally, there’s a small amount of traditional advertising on the site, although that’s a recent addition.

When it comes down to it, the focus of Foundmyself is the artist who uses it and benefits from it, so if worse comes to worse it will be paid for out of pocket. The site has grown so much but to me it still feels like an ongoing project, and I’m fortunate to have found a great number of loyal users… many who have been on the site since the very beginning.

Yes! These achievements belong 100% to the artists, of course. Recently, an artist who frequents the site was accepted into the Ocean Artists Society, which aims to use art to inspire positive environmental change. Other artists on the site have had their own terrific successes (one has a painting that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, for instance).

My favorite story line that I see in the forums is when new artists, or artists who haven’t picked up a brush in years, have found the site and talked with others there and have made art a big part of their life. I sort of selfishly borrow some of that accomplishment.

We have tons, and we try to make our features as easy on the artist as possible. Our most important feature is the Honor System, which allows anyone to sign up, use the site indefinitely for free, and then give back when they make a sale, hit the lotto (still waiting for this one), or when the mood just strikes. There might be another art site out there that does that, but if there is, I haven’t seen it.

Aside from the honor system, we have Reach, which is a simple dot-com website for artists that quickly creates a standalone, professional web presence. We offer guides, as well, and have many promotional tools that are all aimed at presenting the artwork cleanly and simply to potential buyers. Finally, the artists on the site are very helpful, and the forum is an excellent resource for artists new to selling their work online.

We have the top twenty donors listed on the site (Resources > Donate), which gives an abstract view of some of the contributions. Because we truly are on the honor system we don’t track sales, though. I should point out that with our honor system, users aren’t only rewarded for donating, but also for participating. They can earn exposure points, front page placement, Reach websites and more regardless of which angle they take to get their honor.

Mobile devices are so commonplace and their screens so sharp (not to mention the tiny projectors they have now) that I think more and more artists will have a “pocket portfolio” that they can show off on the go. Innovations in search are going to help people really narrow down what they’re looking for visually, so that they can sift through the massive amount of art available online with less typing. Something like a more focused Google Goggles, for example.

The toughest hurdle from a tactile, connectivity point of view, will be to replicate the real essence of an original piece of art. Seeing the way light bounces off high and low points on a painting as you shift your view is something that will be hard to reproduce, although eventually I think we’ll get there. In the meantime, and as awesome the tools we have are, I think most people will prefer to look at the real article if given the choice. For now, I most definitely appreciate being able to view art from Germany one minute, Japan the next without the jet lag and price tag.

Have you tried FoundMySelf.com? What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

Paula Manning-Lewis is a painter who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I met Paula on Twitter and after getting to know her better, she shared the amazing fact that she has sold more than 30,000 pieces of art. That’s quite the accomplishment! I asked her if she’d talk a little bit about how she did it. Here are her answers.

HOW HAVE YOU MANAGED TO SELL 30,000+ PIECES OF ART?

A majority of the art pieces I have sold have been reproductions and limited edition prints. When I first started selling my work in 1991 my husband was my sales rep. While he hit the road traveling all over the country selling my work, I stayed home with the kids and made more art. In the early 1990s I had over 300 shops in over 10 states (galleries, gift shops, tourist shops, etc) selling my work.

After my divorce in 1995, all sales were up to me. With three young sons to take care of I took a short break from my art from 1995-1999. After graduating from college in 1999 and getting my first computer, I set my mind to selling my art online. I started selling on Ebay (1999-2004?) and sold off over 6,000 of my prints with my married name Paula Beck. I had gone back to my maiden name and wanted to keep the Beck sales separate from my new art.

In 2000, we moved to Albuquerque, NM and I started getting more involved in the local art scene. I sold at arts and crafts shows, farmer’s markets, the State Fair and basically anywhere I was able to set up a booth. I also sold directly out of my studio and through galleries in the area. In 2006, I set up shop on Etsy.com after tiring of the fee increases on Ebay. In 2008, I signed up on Facebook and Twitter and started connecting with old friends and collectors, using the friend finder and my email mailing list.

I am VERY active online, blogging, updating my status anything to drive traffic to my online shops and website. Also in 2008, my husband and I opened Chroma Studios which is a studio space for us and other local artists. We rent studio spaces (27 in all) to other artists and musicians. We also ran a gallery out of the space for just over 2 years, however we closed the gallery in January of this year so I could get back to being an artist full time. I am and have always been a prolific artist, painting on an almost daily basis, some years better than others. I couldn’t begin to count the number of originals I have drawn/painted and sold over the years. In my earlier years as an artist I didn’t do a very good job of cataloging my work.

(Note from TAA: Paula’s a poster child for how the social web enables an artist to connect directly with their own fan base)

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SELLING ONLINE VS. SELLING OFFLINE?

Online sales are much more convenient for the artist. No long days setting up and sitting at a booth, beating the streets scouting for and submitting to galleries, etc. Online is wonderful too, because you have a more direct connection to the buyer. Except for in person booth sales, online can be much more personal. I prefer to represent myself as an artist, there is less chance of misrepresentation, something I have had first hand experience with. Galleries and other offline venues are notorious for causing damage to art work. I have had my work stolen by restaurant owners who closed up and disappeared in the middle of the night. I have had galleries damage my work and refuse to pay for it. Not only that, but I truly believe that the internet is the way all sales are headed. When I first started online in 1999 I would argue with other artists and gallery owners that the internet was where we were headed, people have a difficult time accepting change I have found. Now EVERYONE who is serious about selling their work is online!

WHAT ARE YOUR KEYS TO SELLING ART ONLINE?

Consistency, posting something everyday. Being EVERYWHERE! Not just posting your art and leaving it there, but networking! Visiting other artist’s blogs, commenting, interacting. I spend at least 3 hours EVERYDAY, online, making connections etc. I have a website/blog, an Etsy shop, a Facebook fan page, a twitter profile, a Linked in profile and profiles on countless art related websites. I have even returned to Ebay starting this week, posting one auction piece per week. You have to get your NAME and your art work out there, everywhere possible!

(from TAA: check out this Open Letter to Artists on Twitter)

WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP DO YOU HAVE WITH YOUR BUYERS?

A lot of my buyers/collectors are friends, either people I knew before I was an artist, or people I have befriended because they bought my art. You have to be approachable! When someone emails me about one of my prints that they found somewhere, I email them back immediately! I have time for everyone! You have to be accessible! I thank every person who buys my art, every person who comments on my art whether they buy or not, every person who I come in contact with related to my art or not. Gratitude is important, letting people know you appreciate their support of your art is very, very important.

DO YOU HAVE A MAILING LIST? HOW DO YOU MANAGE IT AND HOW OFTEN DO YOU CONTACT THEM?

I do have an email list, however I am just getting back to it after the 2 years as a gallery owner. Before the gallery, I tried to send out a newsletter to my list at least every other month. In the early years it was an actual printed newsletter, now it will be an email newsletter. Postcards are another inexpensive way of keeping in touch with my list. I used Campaign Monitor for my gallery mailing list and will be transferring my art email list over to them soon, once I get back to my own newsletter. Staying in touch with collectors or even people who show an interest in my art is very important. I can always count on a few sales in the weeks following a mailing. People need to be reminded of you in their busy daily lives.

(Need to know how to start a highly effective artist newsletter? Check out Email Newsletters: So Easy An Artist Could Do It)

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR STRUGGLING ARTISTS WHO ARE TRYING TO MAKE A LIVING?

NEVER give up! It’s not an easy life, but it’s definitely worthwhile! I am so grateful to be doing something I love for a living. Never stop learning, researching, reading and searching. I have read every art marketing and self promotion book I could find. I read blogs like TheAbundantArtist.com and Alyson Stanfield’s Art Biz Blog. Wetcanvas.com is another great educational site for artists. Learn as much as you can about marketing and business. MOST important though, paint, create, master your art! Before you try to sell it, you have to have something worth buying.

Brian Sherwin is an art critic, and until recently, the Editor of MyArtSpace.com’s blog. He has interviewed hundreds of artists from all over the world and when he approached me about doing an interview for TheAbundantArtist.com, I jumped at the chance. Brian’s a smart guy and knows the future of the Art industry. Check him out further at his blog, Brian Sherwin, Art Critic.

This is a guest post from the amazing Melissa Dinwiddie. I’ve been working with her off and on for several months and I think her story is instructive to many artists. This is the second post in a series on how her art evolved into a thriving full-time business that supports her mortgage.

In Part 1 of this series, I shared my story of how I became an artist and grew a business from my art.

In a nutshell, I fell in love with the art of calligraphy, and fell into the business of creating custom artworks for clients, primarily ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts) for engaged couples.

At first it was all sweetness and light: I was making art, trying new things, and getting paid for it! What could be better, right?

But after my divorce, when I really had to make a living, the hard kicked in. For a number of years I worked like a dog to build up my line of ketubah prints, while at the same time accepting client commissions because I couldn’t afford not to. As my line of prints grew and I spent more time processing orders, I found myself effectively working double-time.

The commissions were inevitably squeezed into overtime hours, and always with a hard deadline to meet — somebody’s wedding! For a number of years my mantra was “I wish I could afford to stop doing commissions.”

In 2005 my line of ketubah prints was bringing in a decent income, and I designed a line of invitations and stationery to match, which brought in a bit more (and also started a trend in the highly competitive ketubah “industry”). Late that year, after three months solid of all-work-and-no-play, I crunched the numbers, took a long, hard look at my life, and realized that not only could I probably afford to stop accepting commissions and live on print sales alone, but I couldn’t afford not to.

I was running myself into an early grave.

How had this happened? I got into the art business because I loved making art, and wanted a career that would allow me the freedom to do the things I love. Instead, the business side of my art business sucked up most of my time and energy, and I got so burned out that when I did have free time, I didn’t spend it making art.

My art had become “just a job.”

Money changes everything

One of the problems with turning your passion into your income source is that money has a dangerous tendency to color relationships — let’s face it, to poison them — including the artist’s relationship with her art.

When I got started as an artist, I lacked the imagination and confidence to think I could make whatever my muse inspired me to make, and then find an audience to buy it. (In my defense, this was even harder to do back then, when the internet was still in its infancy.) Instead, I took what seemed to be the path of least resistance, and I made the kind of art that I already knew clients were looking for.

In and of itself, this is not a bad thing. However, over time I stopped thinking in terms of “what does my soul want me to create?” and got stuck thinking “what can I do that will make me money?”

And when everything becomes about money, it just stops being fun.

Gradually, I found that my soul was no longer getting the nourishment from my art that it used to. When I had free time, I no longer turned to my drafting table for my fun, creative thing.

(On a side note, there was a surprising silver lining to this sad state of affairs. Because sitting at my drafting table felt like a busman’s holiday, I started making music during my free moments, and discovered a new creative passion. Over time this evolved into a second art career as a jazz singer/songwriter! I will admit, though, that I’m hyper-vigilant about not wanting money to poison my relationship to my music. I’m very clear I don’t ever want to depend on my music to pay my mortgage, which may be part of why I haven’t pushed my music career as hard as I might have.)

Here I was, making my living as an artist (in expensive Silicon Valley, no less!), but spending very little time actually creating new art. I was a working artist, but I wasn’t very happy.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that my business model had a number of weaknesses as a path for my long-term happiness.

1) I wasn’t following my true passion

When I first took up calligraphy, making a ketubah was a big, exciting goal. And getting paid for it was a dream come true! I was proud and eager to wear the label ketubah artist.

But although I still enjoy making ketubot, my real passion was never ketubot, or weddings. My initial groove turned into a rut, and I got stuck in it.

Whereas some people are happy to dive into one thing and stick with it for a lifetime, I’ve always been multi-passionate, and my creative impulses wanted to forge new artistic paths, try new things. Because the ketubah and custom calligraphy business was paying the bills, though, I “followed the money,” rather than following my bliss. And although I pushed the envelope of ketubah design, working in a variety of styles and media, it still wasn’t enough to fully satisfy my artistic needs.

2) I didn’t have clear goals

Looking back, I can see now that my biggest problem was that I literally just kind of stumbled into the ketubah business, rather than starting with a clear picture of what I really, really wanted, and then working to build it. To paraphrase Steven Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I climbed the ladder of success, only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall!

3) What goals I did have were set way too low

Artist and coach Ann Rea says that the biggest problem most artists have is in not setting their goals high enough. This was certainly a problem for me.

I was cowed by the “starving artist” myth, and couldn’t envision success as an artist doing what I really wanted to do, so I settled for what felt possible, doing work that I enjoyed but wasn’t passionate about.

It’s worth noting here that I also set my financial goals too low. I couldn’t envision myself making a lot of money, so I settled for a goal of “just enough to get by.”

The thing about goals is that whatever goals you do set are what you’re programming yourself to achieve. Sure enough, I created a business that made just enough to get by, doing work that I enjoyed but wasn’t passionate about.

Better than working in a cubicle, for sure, but not the best I could get.

4) I didn’t set set clear limits for myself

Not having a clear vision of alternative ways that I might consciously create an art business, I fell into the business of doing private — and heavily art-directed — commissions.

At first it was exciting to be paid to use my artistic talents, but not only did I soon tire of being underpaid, I also chafed at having to fulfill my clients’ vision instead of my own. Don’t get me wrong — taking commissions is not all bad; I enjoy the challenge of realizing a client’s vision, and it has pushed me to create artwork that I never would have created otherwise, of which I’m very proud.

However, I got into art because of an internal desire to create, to feed my soul. And I will not kid you: the commissioned pieces I was making could be fun and satisfying in some ways, but they weren’t the art I was aching to create. Plus, although a lot of my clients were a pleasure to deal with, some were… um… not.

(I have since encountered artists with a completely different model of commissions, in which the artwork is entirely the artist’s artistic vision, and no art direction by the client is involved. But back when I got started, for whatever reason, I was simply unable to imagine that this might be a viable possibility for me.)

Setting limits was especially hard for me when money was tight.

To this day, whenever I feel scared about my money situation, I tend to fall into the trap of taking every job that comes my way (usually for much less money than it’s worth). This is always a mistake. Not only do I end up resenting the jobs, but I probably scare away more sales than I attract.

My attempt at a solution: streamlining

Although I was increasingly dissatisfied with my art life, my business was steadily growing (and without a lot of active marketing efforts on my part). Success is validating, and it seemed only logical to keep heading in the same direction.

After years of busting my butt, though, I was burned out and desperate for a break. Print sales were good, so I decided to spend a year “coasting.” I consciously “retired” from commissions and let the business chug along without any new input on my part: I actually set an intention to create nothing new for the business for a full year, in the hopes that it would get me back to creating for me, to feed my soul.

It all seemed so logical: if I could simply liberate my energy away from the custom work and streamline my business as much as possible, the less time I’d have to spend in the business, and the more time I’d have for my creative things.

The surprising result: boredom!

As it turns out, my “year of coasting” evolved into two and a half years, and the results were not at all what I expected. At first, it was a huge relief to coast for a bit and not create anything new. But after awhile I realized that now, with the exception of designing proofs for client review, my business was 100% drudge work, with very little creative benefit to me at all.

It’s true I worked for myself, in my own home, but I wasn’t doing anything fun or creative.

I wasn’t truly satisfied, but my situation wasn’t uncomfortable enough for me to make a change. I had a nagging sense that I wanted to make things different, but couldn’t figure out what or how. Besides, business was going great, and I was feeding my creative needs with my music, so why complain?

I see now that I was stuck thinking in a box. I bought into the lie that it’s not possible to do what you really love and make a living from it. I settled for the standard vision that a job is a job, that the goal is to spend as little time as possible at it, to allow as much time as possible away from it to do what you really want.

Then the unexpected: the Crash

From the day I officially formed my business in 1996, it had grown steadily upwards. 2007 was my best year yet, and I was sure I would hit my personal income target the following year.

Instead, 2008 happened: the economy crashed, and my business dropped dramatically. Around the same time, I discovered that without realizing it, I’d been spending more money than I brought in, using savings to make tax payments and IRA contributions when I didn’t have the cash in my checking account. Oops…

The universe effectively walloped me upside the head with a 2×4. I was heading for an implosion.

Next up: more mistakes, more wallops upside the head by the universe, and finally, a renaissance

Melissa DinwiddieAs an artist/designer, freelance writer, jazz singer/songwriter, and teacher/coach, Melissa Dinwiddie likes to call herself a Multi-Passionate Creative ARTrepreneur. She combines her varied passions on her blog, Living A Creative Life. Melissa’s current project, the Thriving Artists Project, is an online course for anyone who aspires to turn their art or creative thing into a full-time career.

Matt Richards is a good friend of mine. A while ago we spent some time in his studio talking about his work as kinetic sculptor and mobile maker. In this interview he mentions, and I’ve seen him do this regularly, that he will do commission pieces for $25,000 – $50,000 or more! The Starving Artist is a myth indeed.

This video is about 10 minutes and contains excerpts from our interview. The full interview (23:15) is available to members of the Abundant Artist Community.

Some of Matt’s killer tips:

• Start small and build your portfolio.
• Use Google Adwords
• Ebay isn’t nearly as good as it used to be.
• Make sure you have a good website.

If you want to catch the full 23 minutes with Matt, all you have to do is join us at TheAbundantArtist.com/Community – it’s a resource for artists just like yourself where you’ll get exclusive access to courses and discussion forums for selling art online. It’s great stuff!

This is a guest post from Misha Penton.

The Indie Performing Artist

It’s time to reconsider the nonprofit model as the only way to do business in the performing arts. When it comes to performance works, smaller really is better: a smaller enterprise lends itself to hybrid business practices that continue to emerge as artists use their creativity to tackle the business side of making art. Embracing a for-profit model or a hybrid for-profit/non-profit enterprise (like fiscal sponsorship), are viable business options for artists. Funding organizations really do roll their eyes these days, when yet another nonprofit, pops up with its hands out. Reality: no one is gonna pay your tab.

Independence

Remaining independent as a performing artist and forming project-based artist cohorts yields a creative process that is more easily funded and managed – from page to stage – than is possible with traditional institutional models. I’m not sure if we can dump donations altogether, but moving toward a for-profit arts model gives artists more independence from donors and granting institutions, and more time to focus on making art. Unjustified dogma in the non-profit world blames the for-profit sector for being beholden to the whims of their audience. Really? Perhaps those critical of for-profit arts might consider taking a good look at the absurd specificity of many grant guidelines (including their funding time-lines) and the beyond-the-pale hoops they entail, as well as admitting to what goes into coaxing Grandma to fork over a grand for next season. The party line states that traditional fundraising strategies are easier/better/more profitable than experimenting with non-traditional revenue generation. Hmmmm….I question that.

Speedy Feats

Making fast, non-committee decisions is super-effective. It is your Secret Weapon as an independent artist. No, you do not need to have a meeting about a meeting to decide when to have the meeting to pick the colors for the flyer. Get people involved in your process whom you trust to do their brilliant work on and off stage. The world changes daily and there is simply no time to wait for a board to meet twice a year. Nonprofit organizations respond far too slowly to creative needs and cultural shifts.

Community

Audiences are interested in connecting personally with the artists; therefore, collaborate with the same performers and the same creative team consistently (as is reasonable). A performance company is the same as a rock band. People come to see you and connect with you. Put a face and a personality on your company or cohort. No one wants to support some impersonal organization. Build one-on-one relationships with other artists, peers, and audience members. Commit to your personal artistic vision and forget about the “market” or what the audience might “want”. Focus on presenting a polished, minimal, high quality performance. Consider that In Process can be Polished – don’t worry about Finished Product. Open your Process to your audience. Your audience will support you if you have a strong artistic vision and are committed to personally connecting with your community. I promise. Create productions that are made for and funded by a small, personally connected audience. A traditional non-profit arts organization, especially as it grows, simply cannot provide this. This is Secret Weapon #2.

Collaboration

Collaborate with other artists, combine audiences and resources. Create work that can “plug into” other artists’ processes. Don’t worry, many companies don’t want to do this, so expect resistance – but you’ll find that successful artists and progressive thinkers will see this as valuable. Let the rest eat your dust.

Keep your creative life project-based, collaborative, community-minded and artist-centered. And don’t worry too much about longevity. Just do your work. Daily. As crazy-cool-inspirational conductor and speaker, Ben Zander says, “In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.”

A few groovy sites:

Check out The Field, Fractured Atlas and your local arts service organizations for more info on fiscal sponsorship; and peek at James Undercofler’s blog State of the Art, in part, her addresses issues pertaining to arts business models.

The dance ensemble, Momix is probably the best and oldest example of a successful for-profit arts company.

Misha Penton is an opera singer, theater artist, and artistic director of Divergence Vocal Theater, a multi-performance arts cohort based in Houston, Texas.