Start Selling Some of Your Creative Work and See What Happens
It’s time to experiment with selling your creative work in order to test the market. I’m going to talk about how to start out slowly and small.
First, it's important to keep in mind that doing the work to sell something is always an experiment. This is no different. I forget that a lot. It’s easy to make up the story that everyone except for you is blithely selling everything they can make all the time, and you’re the only one who isn’t.
The truth is, though, every business is always experimenting with selling, whether they’re multi-jillion-dollar corporations or you and me.
Second, selling something by sticking it up on your website or on a fulfillment site like CafePress or FineArtAmerica, then crossing your fingers, never works, unless you’re already famous. There is a bunch of pre-work that has to happen first.
Here’s the pre-work.
Figure out what you’re up to in your creative practice. What’s the WHY behind what you make? Read here to learn a fast and simple way to figure out what you’re up to.
Once you know that, start talking about it wherever you are on the Internet. Learn how to talk to your people in this post.
Then pick something you made that you like and are proud of, to sell. Choose something that you can charge under $75.00 for. That’s an arbitrary number, but it’s not a LOT of money to spend on something made by a real artist.
Pricing something under $100 helps your people take their first risk on you.
When people buy art from real artists, they’re taking a much bigger risk than if they buy some print off the wall at a furniture store. They’re relying on their own taste, which is scary. Selling something that’s not too expensive is a way to help them take the risk.
When you’ve chosen something, if a voice pops up in your head saying things like this:
- “Are you sure you want to sell that?”
- “That’s not your best work. You need to spend the next six months/years practicing before you show your stuff to anybody, let alone try to sell it.”
- “Nobody is going to buy that.”
One of your parts that has opinions about you selling anything has sprung into action to protect you from being hurt or disappointed. You’ll have to talk to this part and make friends with it. Otherwise, it will fight against you selling and most likely win. (You can learn how to talk to your parts here.)
Also, try reminding yourself that this is only an experiment with selling your creative work in order to manage any fear you're facing.
Once you’ve done the pre-work, learn three different pricing models here and here and here to learn different ways to price your item.
It's tempting to give up, but worth it not to
Can you see why it’s challenging to sell something? You have to make a lot of decisions. It’s no wonder many creatives never get around to trying this experiment.
If you’re struggling with any of this, make a 15-minute appointment to chat with me. I’ll give you clear directions to reach escape velocity.