Great question Ellen. This is a screen shot from the How to Sell Art Online Facebook Community Page.

It’s one that artists of all stripes wonder. There are thousands of jewelry makers around the world who sell hundreds of thousands of pieces online. How can you get anyone’s attention?

Making Art Stand Out Is A Process

In January of this year I wrote a blog post called Your Art: An Opiate to the Masses. In that post I talked about how you you can make your art stand out. I’ll break it down for you here in a succinct way.

Define your target audience or collector. No matter how great you are, your jewelry will never be loved by everyone. Who really likes your stuff? Who do you know that has said, “wow, I really love your necklace/painting/song?” Of all the people who’ve said this to you, what do they have in common? How old are they, what are their interests, approximate income?

Define what makes you unique. Even if you consider yourself just another jewelry maker, chances are that your work is unique in some way. Perhaps you make jewelry out of recycled glass? Maybe you really like to make customized pieces? Combine that with the unique things about your target market.

Sell to your audience. Don’t worry about standing out for everyone who sees you. Once you know who you’re trying to reach and what makes you unique, just put yourself in the places where those people hang out. Display your work on Etsy, Amazon, and the other places to sell art online that are out there, but then start visiting niche blogs that your target audience is reading. Find a way to get your art featured there.

Build a List. This is crucially important, and too many artists miss this. Once you start getting attention you need a way to keep their attention. Sign up for an email list management service like Mailchimp.com, and then put up a signup form on your website. Put on your website that you offer special offers to your mailing list and let people sign up for it. Most of your sales will come from your mailing list.

From there you can try lots of interesting things like Facebook advertising for art, Google Adwords, video and other targeted forms of marketing – but first you need to identify what makes you different.

Tagged as: facebook, selling art online, usp