This is such an important post. I've had a bad case of social media burn out lately. It's more than the fact that only a handful of people (mostly artists) give my work a Like. Seeing so much other work in a short period of time gets overwhelming. Some days, if I'm already tired, perceiving that other artists are "rocking" their careers and I'm not, actually makes me think, "Why bother?"
Comparison is the thief of joy. Beyond that, spending too much time online cuts deeply into my studio time (which is limited because of life). If I'm spending time whiling away the hours on social media, I am not growing or producing my artwork - which is essentially making it impossible for me to offer new work.
Second: being online and seeing too much artwork confuses my goals. I think, "I could do that!" That give me ideas - alas I end up with too many ideas and end up with analysis paralysis. I begin thinking more about what I could do that will sell than pondering my personal vision. In other words, I'm spending entirely too much time in my left brain, and that never leads to growth or pleasure while painting.
A few months back, I made myself a promise to spend more time in the studio than online while eliminating, as much as possible, all the visual clutter of what everyone else is doing. Focus on my own vision, good or bad, is where I need to be.
And relating back to the message of this post, the resulting work will be fodder for my newsletter, which I've fallen behind on because I haven't had anything new to show. It's time to get back to being an artist instead of vying for attention through social media where attention spans are short.
I also yearn for the “good old days” of blogging when people actually connected and had “ conversations “. Although I sometimes still write blog posts, the old back and forth of those days has long gone.
This dynamic, which I also miss, moved to social media. It's a drag. Social media took over what used to happen on blogs and then ruined the experience with engagement and rage bait.
I"m going Old School, Clint.I have about 1200 subscribers for my FASO newsletter. It took me a number of years to build that list. I'll still post on Instagram, but state an incentive to get viewers there to sign up for my email newsletter. This post got me to thinking about how to do that.
I recently put the link on my Intagram profile to connect to my email subscriber page instead of my website main page. It's working pretty well. More people link over to my subscribers page than they did previously to my website main page. Perhaps If my Instagram followers are seeing all of my work on Instagram, what's the incentive to get them to the main page of my website? Mostly, they just keep scrolling and don't visit my profile page anyway.
So, perhaps my posts need to have an incentive for scrollers to look at my profile page and sign up for my email newsletter?? I have nothing to lose by experimenting.
Hi Marian. I remember you from "the good old days". The greatest number of hits I currently get to my website is for my blogs. I've decided to go Old School - I have a pretty large email newsletter list. It's probably mostly artists, but I'm fine with that.
The most important task at hand for me is to create about 20 new works that I can market. I spent about 5 hours in the studio today and that's where I need to be.
This is excellent advice. My newsletter is a crucial pillar of my painting career, at times it has been the backbone of my career. FASO makes it easy to send my newsletters, and it was on the advice Clint published in Fine Art Views (years ago) that encouraged me to get started with a newsletter.
I use my newsletter to connect with people who love my art. Most of the time, I am just simply telling stories about my paintings, where I painted them, why, etc, and sharing any good news. I don’t make them “salesy” but I do put the price on any paintings that are shown. I am sending it every two weeks currently. This regular contact with people who are enthusiastic about my work means when I have something exciting to promote I get good uptake, whether it is a class or a series of paintings.
That's good news Poppy. You're providing a good example of how it should work. I think I met you at the first Publisher's Invitational?? In any case, love your work!
I think we met as well, but not at the Invitational, I’ve never been. Plein Air Convention, maybe? I also love your work and all your writing to encourage and help artists!
Thanks for the kick in the seat. I needed it. I get spammed so much myself, I hate to send one more item to my subscribers, but you’re right. This is sacred territory. They have asked to hear from me about what I’m doing. It’s an honor and a privilege and I will handle it that way. Henceforth, I am going to do better. Thanks again!
Not specifically. It could work for that, but we recommend our product, FASO which is optimized for it. Substack isn’t really optimized around art, it’s built for sharing long-form work like essays.
I agree -- the newsletter is extremely important. A fellow artist hadn't sent out a newsletter in 3 months. I urged not to let it go that long between letters. (They might forget who you are or even that they signed up.) Perhaps he felt it was merely an exercise because he has very few subscribers, 25. I pointed out that many of the people on the list had purchased his work in the past. Past collectors are exponentially more likely to purchase again. One collector equals 100, maybe 1,000, subscribers who haven't purchased.
He sent out a newsletter. The next day the doorbell rang. They wanted to see one of the new works from the newsletter.... A sale.
I said, "Draw a straight line between sending a newsletter on Monday and selling a work on Tuesday." He said, "Yes, and he was a past collector, too."
This makes sense. Past collectors are often the best source of new sales. I mean when I was in the gallery business most of our sales came from people who had already purchased from us. I mean that’s why they’re called, “collectors.”
One odd thing I’ve noticed regarding this. I’ve purchased many artworks over the years and not a single artist that I’ve purchased from has ever send me a follow up when they have new art, never sent me a newsletter, etc. Only if I proactively think to go sign up for their newsletter do I even get it. I’m surprised that more artists don’t have an informal “newsletter” for their collectors whom they send out notices just of new works before they are shown to “the world.”
That's interesting that artists don't follow up on their purchasers from collectors. Hmm.. maybe I'll go back and look at my buyers (that I know of) and contact them, asking them to sign up for my newsletter. I'll check first to make sure they're not already subscribed.
You probably already know this, but others may not. If they purchased through your website, they are listed under COMMERCE --> SALES on your FASO control panel.
this is like a widow opening. I have been a paid Faso user for over year, website not finished, and never ever had the intention of writing a newsletter. yet always wondering how to communicate my thoughts , discoveries , and observations...how stupid am I... I will looking this seriously at the end of my present movie, job, with an exhibition coming up, & a fresh look at everything ...
I wish I could gain more of a newsletter following, not that I don't have a good following now. Bigger is always better. Only place they see to join my newsletter is when they visit my website or I invite them to join on social media. It's like art is a hard sell online. I sell much more through personal contact than I ever have online. The problem with email is that everyone is bombarded with so much of it they tend to read very little of it, if any. The rest discarded. If you send me a hundred emails a week, I can assure you I won't read any of it. It's disrespectful of my time and when you do it goes under the delete button. That's the problem with over burdening email. Aside from sales through personal contact, I sell more online than my website. the only reason I have a website is to have a place to send people interested. The deal gets closed more often in person than on my website. I'm not sure what the answer is, but to try it all and see what works for you but sending too much email I am pretty sure is not the answer. If you annoy your customers, you will drive them away. For that reason, I only send a quarterly newsletter. IT seems to work best and I try to write my best explanation of my artwork, my blog, what happening with me and even some art history not associated with me. IT makes it interesting and I have people write after each publication to tell me they enjoy it. IT gets my art seen and the blogs get posted to the website. Surprisingly enough, The blog post get read and is another attraction to my website. Just a personal take on the topic to digest and hope it helps on your path forward.
I have been sending my FASO-based newsletter for 4 years now….at least once a month, often once a week when in various shows. I have only sold one painting through my website and that was to an old friend from the Faso New Artwork emails. For the 125 artworks I’ve sold in the last 4 years, all other sales have been at art fairs, solo exhibitions and group exhibitions. I expect that people want to see the artwork in person.
how many shows do you do? Perhaps some of those who subscribe to your email newsletter wait for the in-person shows if they attend those regularly and see/buy the work there?
Especially if a lot of the newsletter are show announcements. Anyway, we are always working on new discoverability tools to increase the possibility of sales. I haven’t written much about this and FASO has seemed very quiet the past three years. I will share more about this but we spent the last three+ years seeming not to ship much new. But we did. It was all back end systems and infrastructure. Our original system was built by me back in the late 2000 mid 2010s. Our current team rebuilt our entire infrastructure to be far more scalable and cloud based over the past three years. That was the foundation to unlock what is coming next. THe first public facing piece of that is the new, updated UI which is rolling out now and is already rolled out for the major areas of the site. The next piece is a complete revamp of our contest into a full blown Artist Society with exhibitions, awards, signature artist etc. Following that we have SEVERAL initiatives to use AI and some unique ideas and features to drastically increase the discovery surface where collectors can discover and follow artists across the platform in many ways. Our use of AI will always be to support human artists and never in any way to “replace” them.
Thank you for this information. I was watching a youtube film of the National portrait awards show now I really should be there by now. I am sobbing daily because I can get no one to help me with my social media and I post every once in a while so I can get some attention from the outside world and then I start doom scrooling. I have had enough! I am just running out of time. It is 8:30 my time in Germany soI will upload a new commisson I just finished. I have plenty to talk about in my newsletter.
Kathryn Bishop commented here and said she does ask to add people to her email newsletter list when they see her work at in-person shows, and so she sells most of her work from those shows but not from her newsletter. I'm wondering if she is announcing the shows in the newsletter if those readers just wait to go to the show - they feel no urgency to buy online. She hasn't said anything more about that, so I can't be sure that's what's happening.
Something popped into my head just now. I might try it. Set aside some works to sell only from my email newsletter. First come, first serve. They can be small, perhaps unframed and easy to ship - maybe offer some incentive, like free shipping and slightly lower price and a date when the offer ends. I think of Bill Anton, a western painter who sells his works through galleries and museum shows. I often see his "miniature of the month" offer on his Facebook Page. It's just a simple landscape (no cowboy's or horses). They're still pretty expensive (because he's so well collected), but he does sell them within days of posting.
Hmm... maybe I'll make a special offer on small works on a regular schedule to my email newseltter subscribers. What do you all think?
If I were an artist I think I’d send my newsletters in two stages. 1. a segment of past buyers. announce a piece to that group and let them know it’s going public on X date in the future but you always show your works to past buyers first and that it’s available. 2. Post publicly send to everyone on the list, let them know it’s shown to subscribers before going full public on social media etc. 3. Go post it on instagram/whatever. It feels sometimes to me that this happens in reverse. Having said that. I get it. I’m not always the most disciplined myself. I get that sometimes we want the dopamine hits of “lIkes.”
This is such an important post. I've had a bad case of social media burn out lately. It's more than the fact that only a handful of people (mostly artists) give my work a Like. Seeing so much other work in a short period of time gets overwhelming. Some days, if I'm already tired, perceiving that other artists are "rocking" their careers and I'm not, actually makes me think, "Why bother?"
Comparison is the thief of joy. Beyond that, spending too much time online cuts deeply into my studio time (which is limited because of life). If I'm spending time whiling away the hours on social media, I am not growing or producing my artwork - which is essentially making it impossible for me to offer new work.
Second: being online and seeing too much artwork confuses my goals. I think, "I could do that!" That give me ideas - alas I end up with too many ideas and end up with analysis paralysis. I begin thinking more about what I could do that will sell than pondering my personal vision. In other words, I'm spending entirely too much time in my left brain, and that never leads to growth or pleasure while painting.
A few months back, I made myself a promise to spend more time in the studio than online while eliminating, as much as possible, all the visual clutter of what everyone else is doing. Focus on my own vision, good or bad, is where I need to be.
And relating back to the message of this post, the resulting work will be fodder for my newsletter, which I've fallen behind on because I haven't had anything new to show. It's time to get back to being an artist instead of vying for attention through social media where attention spans are short.
Hi Lori,
I often find myself thinking the same thing.
I also yearn for the “good old days” of blogging when people actually connected and had “ conversations “. Although I sometimes still write blog posts, the old back and forth of those days has long gone.
This dynamic, which I also miss, moved to social media. It's a drag. Social media took over what used to happen on blogs and then ruined the experience with engagement and rage bait.
I"m going Old School, Clint.I have about 1200 subscribers for my FASO newsletter. It took me a number of years to build that list. I'll still post on Instagram, but state an incentive to get viewers there to sign up for my email newsletter. This post got me to thinking about how to do that.
I recently put the link on my Intagram profile to connect to my email subscriber page instead of my website main page. It's working pretty well. More people link over to my subscribers page than they did previously to my website main page. Perhaps If my Instagram followers are seeing all of my work on Instagram, what's the incentive to get them to the main page of my website? Mostly, they just keep scrolling and don't visit my profile page anyway.
So, perhaps my posts need to have an incentive for scrollers to look at my profile page and sign up for my email newsletter?? I have nothing to lose by experimenting.
Hi Marian. I remember you from "the good old days". The greatest number of hits I currently get to my website is for my blogs. I've decided to go Old School - I have a pretty large email newsletter list. It's probably mostly artists, but I'm fine with that.
The most important task at hand for me is to create about 20 new works that I can market. I spent about 5 hours in the studio today and that's where I need to be.
totally get you on this. good luck and happy times ahead
This is excellent advice. My newsletter is a crucial pillar of my painting career, at times it has been the backbone of my career. FASO makes it easy to send my newsletters, and it was on the advice Clint published in Fine Art Views (years ago) that encouraged me to get started with a newsletter.
I use my newsletter to connect with people who love my art. Most of the time, I am just simply telling stories about my paintings, where I painted them, why, etc, and sharing any good news. I don’t make them “salesy” but I do put the price on any paintings that are shown. I am sending it every two weeks currently. This regular contact with people who are enthusiastic about my work means when I have something exciting to promote I get good uptake, whether it is a class or a series of paintings.
That's good news Poppy. You're providing a good example of how it should work. I think I met you at the first Publisher's Invitational?? In any case, love your work!
Hi Lori,
I think we met as well, but not at the Invitational, I’ve never been. Plein Air Convention, maybe? I also love your work and all your writing to encourage and help artists!
Thanks so much for your encouragement about my art and writing Poppy. It must've been the Plein Air Convention.
Thanks for the kick in the seat. I needed it. I get spammed so much myself, I hate to send one more item to my subscribers, but you’re right. This is sacred territory. They have asked to hear from me about what I’m doing. It’s an honor and a privilege and I will handle it that way. Henceforth, I am going to do better. Thanks again!
Yes! People don’t hate email per se, they hate spam.
Clintavo, Do you encourage artists to also use Substack for connecting and sharing art
Not specifically. It could work for that, but we recommend our product, FASO which is optimized for it. Substack isn’t really optimized around art, it’s built for sharing long-form work like essays.
Hi Sherry! I am sure your readers will be delighted to hear from you!
Hi Poppy! You made me smile and encouraged me. I’m already working on it! I’m sure your readers love to hear from you too! Thanks!
I agree -- the newsletter is extremely important. A fellow artist hadn't sent out a newsletter in 3 months. I urged not to let it go that long between letters. (They might forget who you are or even that they signed up.) Perhaps he felt it was merely an exercise because he has very few subscribers, 25. I pointed out that many of the people on the list had purchased his work in the past. Past collectors are exponentially more likely to purchase again. One collector equals 100, maybe 1,000, subscribers who haven't purchased.
He sent out a newsletter. The next day the doorbell rang. They wanted to see one of the new works from the newsletter.... A sale.
I said, "Draw a straight line between sending a newsletter on Monday and selling a work on Tuesday." He said, "Yes, and he was a past collector, too."
This makes sense. Past collectors are often the best source of new sales. I mean when I was in the gallery business most of our sales came from people who had already purchased from us. I mean that’s why they’re called, “collectors.”
One odd thing I’ve noticed regarding this. I’ve purchased many artworks over the years and not a single artist that I’ve purchased from has ever send me a follow up when they have new art, never sent me a newsletter, etc. Only if I proactively think to go sign up for their newsletter do I even get it. I’m surprised that more artists don’t have an informal “newsletter” for their collectors whom they send out notices just of new works before they are shown to “the world.”
That's interesting that artists don't follow up on their purchasers from collectors. Hmm.. maybe I'll go back and look at my buyers (that I know of) and contact them, asking them to sign up for my newsletter. I'll check first to make sure they're not already subscribed.
You probably already know this, but others may not. If they purchased through your website, they are listed under COMMERCE --> SALES on your FASO control panel.
this is like a widow opening. I have been a paid Faso user for over year, website not finished, and never ever had the intention of writing a newsletter. yet always wondering how to communicate my thoughts , discoveries , and observations...how stupid am I... I will looking this seriously at the end of my present movie, job, with an exhibition coming up, & a fresh look at everything ...
It's never too late. :^)
I wish I could gain more of a newsletter following, not that I don't have a good following now. Bigger is always better. Only place they see to join my newsletter is when they visit my website or I invite them to join on social media. It's like art is a hard sell online. I sell much more through personal contact than I ever have online. The problem with email is that everyone is bombarded with so much of it they tend to read very little of it, if any. The rest discarded. If you send me a hundred emails a week, I can assure you I won't read any of it. It's disrespectful of my time and when you do it goes under the delete button. That's the problem with over burdening email. Aside from sales through personal contact, I sell more online than my website. the only reason I have a website is to have a place to send people interested. The deal gets closed more often in person than on my website. I'm not sure what the answer is, but to try it all and see what works for you but sending too much email I am pretty sure is not the answer. If you annoy your customers, you will drive them away. For that reason, I only send a quarterly newsletter. IT seems to work best and I try to write my best explanation of my artwork, my blog, what happening with me and even some art history not associated with me. IT makes it interesting and I have people write after each publication to tell me they enjoy it. IT gets my art seen and the blogs get posted to the website. Surprisingly enough, The blog post get read and is another attraction to my website. Just a personal take on the topic to digest and hope it helps on your path forward.
I have been sending my FASO-based newsletter for 4 years now….at least once a month, often once a week when in various shows. I have only sold one painting through my website and that was to an old friend from the Faso New Artwork emails. For the 125 artworks I’ve sold in the last 4 years, all other sales have been at art fairs, solo exhibitions and group exhibitions. I expect that people want to see the artwork in person.
Katy Bishop
A question: When people purchase your artworks do you add them to your newsletter list? Or at least give them the option?
Yes, definitely.
how many shows do you do? Perhaps some of those who subscribe to your email newsletter wait for the in-person shows if they attend those regularly and see/buy the work there?
Especially if a lot of the newsletter are show announcements. Anyway, we are always working on new discoverability tools to increase the possibility of sales. I haven’t written much about this and FASO has seemed very quiet the past three years. I will share more about this but we spent the last three+ years seeming not to ship much new. But we did. It was all back end systems and infrastructure. Our original system was built by me back in the late 2000 mid 2010s. Our current team rebuilt our entire infrastructure to be far more scalable and cloud based over the past three years. That was the foundation to unlock what is coming next. THe first public facing piece of that is the new, updated UI which is rolling out now and is already rolled out for the major areas of the site. The next piece is a complete revamp of our contest into a full blown Artist Society with exhibitions, awards, signature artist etc. Following that we have SEVERAL initiatives to use AI and some unique ideas and features to drastically increase the discovery surface where collectors can discover and follow artists across the platform in many ways. Our use of AI will always be to support human artists and never in any way to “replace” them.
Thank you for this information. I was watching a youtube film of the National portrait awards show now I really should be there by now. I am sobbing daily because I can get no one to help me with my social media and I post every once in a while so I can get some attention from the outside world and then I start doom scrooling. I have had enough! I am just running out of time. It is 8:30 my time in Germany soI will upload a new commisson I just finished. I have plenty to talk about in my newsletter.
Kathryn Bishop commented here and said she does ask to add people to her email newsletter list when they see her work at in-person shows, and so she sells most of her work from those shows but not from her newsletter. I'm wondering if she is announcing the shows in the newsletter if those readers just wait to go to the show - they feel no urgency to buy online. She hasn't said anything more about that, so I can't be sure that's what's happening.
Something popped into my head just now. I might try it. Set aside some works to sell only from my email newsletter. First come, first serve. They can be small, perhaps unframed and easy to ship - maybe offer some incentive, like free shipping and slightly lower price and a date when the offer ends. I think of Bill Anton, a western painter who sells his works through galleries and museum shows. I often see his "miniature of the month" offer on his Facebook Page. It's just a simple landscape (no cowboy's or horses). They're still pretty expensive (because he's so well collected), but he does sell them within days of posting.
Hmm... maybe I'll make a special offer on small works on a regular schedule to my email newseltter subscribers. What do you all think?
If I were an artist I think I’d send my newsletters in two stages. 1. a segment of past buyers. announce a piece to that group and let them know it’s going public on X date in the future but you always show your works to past buyers first and that it’s available. 2. Post publicly send to everyone on the list, let them know it’s shown to subscribers before going full public on social media etc. 3. Go post it on instagram/whatever. It feels sometimes to me that this happens in reverse. Having said that. I get it. I’m not always the most disciplined myself. I get that sometimes we want the dopamine hits of “lIkes.”
Good information. I new to the website