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In Episode 73...  

Sam Groom is a printmaker and collage artist from the UK. She creates relief prints and sculptural artworks that are bold, colorful and joyful.

Sam has been successful at selling her artwork thus far, but she is trying to figure out the best way to generate more income. Most of her sales come from live events, but she also sells in local stores, through her website and on social platforms. She would like to be selling more online by increasing her presence there to draw a larger audience for her work. Should she raise her prices, focus more on her originals, or something else?

Sam spends a significant amount of time on her originals, which are her passion projects, and would really like to be making more for her time and skill. However, she is a bit risk averse about going bigger, being bolder and increasing her prices significantly.

Listen in as I coach Sam on where she should increase her prices and other strategies she can use to get her art in front of more people.

Key takeaways:  

  • Experimenting with your pricing can lead to increasing your profits. (00:08:48) 

  • Being comfortable with your pricing will increase your confidence when selling. (00:14:06) 

  • Breakdown where your sales are actually coming from to make informed changes. (00:22:09) 

  • Use the results of your evaluation to determine where to change your pricing. (00:28:12) 

  • Determine if making changes will support your main goal. (00:31:09) 

  • Create a list of contacts from live events and find ways to nurture those people. (00:34:57) 

Resources and links mentioned:

Learn more about selling your art:


Read the Transcript for this episode

Jessica Craddock: Welcome back to Intuitive Art Sales. Today, I am here with Sam Groom who creates relief prints and sculptural artworks that are very bright, fresh, colorful playful, abstract, graphic textures, lots of fun. Sam has done a pretty good job of selling thus far, but she is trying to figure out what's the best way to increase the income coming in, whether it's raising her prices, focusing on originals, or something else.

 So today we're digging into how experimenting with your pricing can lead to increasing your profits. Without eating up more time, and doing that in a way that feels sustainable, both for you and the customer. So with that, let's get into it.

Jessica Craddock: I am here with Sam Groom, who is a printmaker. We've been chatting a little bit on Instagram back and forth and decided that I would love to have Samantha on here to kind of walk through a couple of issues or mindset blocks or whatever you want to call it that she's been struggling with. And this is the easiest way to do it.

So, we get a little bit of interactive face time, one on one, see where we can go with this. So, tell me a little bit about, if there is something particular on your mind, what's happening in your art business that you want to fix, tell me a little bit about that.

Sam Groom: Okay. So, I suppose what I would say is happening that I'd like to fix. I like to make big, bright, bold prints, and I would quite like to maybe sell some of them for a bit more money. Um, they tend to be one off pieces. So, I suppose, maybe, I'm a little bit risk averse about going a bit bigger, going a bit bolder and just seeing if I could sell them for a bit more money and just have a bigger audience, you know, more people see what I do.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. Okay. So, we're going to start off. We'll see how much time we have, but we're going to start off talking about pricing. Does that sound good? We haven't done that in a while on this show. Actually, I don't remember a particular episode where we have done that. So, I think that that would be a great topic to cover, kind of the mindset blocks that go along with that and how we can play a little bit within our comfort zone, but also push it a little bit and where is that balance?

Can I ask you about money? Like, what do you charge? How much are you making per print? That kind of thing. Are you comfortable answering those questions?

Sam Groom: Yeah. I mean, as much as I will be able to answer.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. Just to the approximates. But what is. What is the high end of your pricing and what is the low end of your pricing?

Sam Groom: Well, I guess the high end would see maybe about four hundred and fifty five hundred pound. Okay. Maybe a, a piece that has taken a long time, so I know I'm not really making a great deal of profit from this. Um, whereas, reproduced prints, digital prints or giclees might go for around 20 35, that kind of price.

Okay. And they're going to make a good profit.

Jessica Craddock: Interesting. So, do you mind me asking about what it costs you to print a giclee or something that's 20 35?

Sam Groom: Well, I tend to get them done in bulk.

Mm

Jessica Craddock: hmm.

Sam Groom: It's, you know, maybe a few pounds per print.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. Yeah. So, around two. And that. It takes you, if we're adding up all the time that it takes, I like to include time and pricing. We're doing them in bulk, so maybe a couple of hours for the bulk. How many are you ordering? 20 or 30, I'll say 25 just to make it easy. And do you package those up and print them or package them up once they're ordered and send them off yourself? Yes. Okay, so if we're taking all that time, we have to photograph it originally, color correct it, find the printer, which it sounds like you already have, order that in bulk, packaging up, shipping it.

How much time would you say it takes you for one print, if we could guess?

Sam Groom: Well, you mean the, well. Do you mean, including, because obviously I've designed the, the piece?

Jessica Craddock: That's true, but I'm thinking more specifically about the execution of the print.

Sam Groom: Well, I mean, it's difficult because like I said, there's obviously designing and then there's the photographing and then tweaking it on Photoshop and, I mean, that's probably more like a couple of hours.

Well, with digital prints, they're open edition, so, you know, I can print it as many times as I like. So, well, if I've got that print, it's maybe just five minutes. Yeah. Or 10 minutes. Okay.

Jessica Craddock: Let's add in a little bit because. You know, it's going to depend how many you sell overall and how many you're ordering and all of that. But we want to get those couple of hours in there too. So, let's say it takes you 10 minutes. So then when you, on the high end, you said 500 pounds, it takes me a long time. 450, 500 pounds was specifically what you said. How many hours?

Hundreds. Hundreds? Hundreds. Oof. Hundreds of hours. I don't even know where to start with that. No one's ever said hundreds of hours to me before.

Sam Groom: I don't know where I'm ending up when I start. That's what I love, you know, that I just start printing onto a piece of fabric. I mean, I'm thinking of the textile pieces in particular.

Jessica Craddock: They're just passion projects almost.

Sam Groom: Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So, hundreds of hours. Two hundred hours. And when we're thinking about the cost to produce it, how much money do you think might go into one of those?

Sam Groom: In terms of material cost? Oh, not very much.

Jessica Craddock: Not very much?

Sam Groom: Found, found fabric and, you know, it's probably like five pounds. Something like that.

Jessica Craddock: Five pounds. Okay, so if we're calculating that out, 200 hours times 60 is 12,000 minutes. So, if we're saying, let's go high end, 500 minus five is 495. That's your profit. But we're dividing that by the number of minutes. That’s about four cents a minute, times 60. So, we're making about two dollars and fifty cents an hour on the big ones. Yikes!

And then on the small ones you said 20 to 35 pounds, should we just average that somewhere in the middle? Let's say 28. 28 pounds divided by 10 minutes is 2.8 pounds per minute, which equals about 168 pounds an hour. That's a big difference. Now, there is the whole, I have to market, to sell that much per hour, so then we could add in marketing costs and all of that, but this math isn't looking so good.

[00:08:48] Experimenting with your pricing can lead to increasing your profits.

Jessica Craddock: The smaller stuff is pretty good. Let's keep that going. That's working. It's the big stuff that's not working, but some of those bigger passion projects are the things that attract more people to you that allow you to sell those smaller prints in the first place. So, we've got that whole thing going.

What if just, let's just roll with me here for a minute. What if we greatly increased the price of the big stuff just to see what happens? Because I'm guessing the majority of your income is coming from, at the moment, maybe I'm wrong. Where's the majority of your income coming from? You said earlier 50 percent workshops, so the other 50 percent is art. Break that down for me the best you can.

Sam Groom: Well, I'd say it's mostly like you were going to say. It's the reproduction work and greeting cards. With occasional one-off prints, which are not in that 500 price. The passion pieces that are 500, I don't even really expect to sell them, to be honest. But, I put that price on them because I look at them and I think, I couldn't put them on for more.

Jessica Craddock: Why not?

Sam Groom: Because, I don't know really, because maybe I'm not completely convinced by them always myself. I've been doing them as a bit of an, like I said, a bit of an experiment. Just see what happens, you know, as they surge as I go along. And the thing is they inform other pieces of work. So it's part of the overall process of my body of work.

And as I go along, I'll have a piece that's finished and I'll, I mean, you possibly I could put it at a higher price, still not expecting maybe to sell it, but just because of the work and the effort and the passion that's got into it. Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Right. Okay. So, the way I like to think about pricing is kind of a small, medium, large.

And it doesn't always fit into that mold. Sometimes you can change things so that it does. That's kind of my template starting place. So, what I'm hearing from you is you almost have that in place already. The large, whether it's actually bigger or not, is that passion project. Here's just really what I want to be doing.

It's my biggest version of myself and my art and what I want to create. And it's going to be my most expensive and maybe it gets sold and maybe it doesn't. But we're going to charge accordingly. We've got a middle, which I'm classifying these smaller originals as where you said 150 to 300 pounds. And then we've got our smalls, which are the 20 to 35 pound prints, which are our biggest seller.

Is that what I heard?

Sam Groom: And cards, because I also make greeting cards.

Jessica Craddock: And cards.

Sam Groom: Really, I don't know if it's the same where you are, but in the UK, it is. It's really popular to send greeting cards, and they're probably my biggest seller, actually.

Jessica Craddock: Really? Okay. Well, we will not write that off then. Normally, when I hear people have cards, I'm like, that's great. How are they selling? And either they're selling really well, but they're making hardly any profit off of it at all, or they're just not really doing anything. So that's good to know. Those are doing well. How, what are the prices on those?

Sam Groom: So, they're 3 pounds each.

Jessica Craddock: Do you sell them in sets or individuals, or what do you do?

Sam Groom: I sell them in sets of four or seven, and I sell them individually in a few shops. And they just fly out the door. They're really popular and at events as well.

Jessica Craddock: Great. Okay. So, if we're looking at this small, medium, large. Now I'm thrown off. There's four. What do I do? I'm still going to put the cards off to the side because I don't want to include it in our pricing strategy.

That sounds like they're working great. Let's just put them off over here. Let them be. For our 20 to 35 pounds prints, we're going to go with 28 as an average. What I like to do is to multiply that times 10. So, 28 times 10 is 280. And in theory that would be the price of our largest piece. Now in this case, that's not really working. We're not doing that.

So, what we're going to do instead, is we're going to look at this middle price, 150 to 300 pounds, and somewhere in the middle of that is 225. So we're going to multiply that times 3, which gives us 775 pounds. That still feels low to me by quite a bit, but it's quite a bit higher than 500. How do you feel about selling those for 775?

[00:14:06] Being comfortable with your pricing will increase your confidence when selling.

Jessica Craddock: So, what I'm looking for is if I sold it for 775 pounds, I would feel happy, grateful, good about that exchange or not. That's part one. How do we feel about that exchange?

Sam Groom: I'd be delighted.

Jessica Craddock: You'd be delighted. Okay, great. So that's a good starting place. Great. Thanks. The second part of that is if I had to say that is 775 pounds, how hard on a scale of one to 10 would that be for you to spit out?

Sam Groom: A little bit hard.

Jessica Craddock: A little bit hard. But so hard that you would second guess yourself every time you had to give the price? So hard that you might not market it so you wouldn't have to tell them the price? Anything like that?

Sam Groom: No, I don't think so. I think I've got more confident over the years about just saying it's that much.

Jessica Craddock: Good. So, that feels like a good middle ground. You are delighted with the exchange, and it's a little bit of a stretch for you to say but not so much that you're going to hold yourself back from doing it. So, we have a new price. How does that feel?

Sam Groom: It feels like a good number to me. It's not going up towards a thousand. That’s not too much. Yeah, I quite like it. I quite like that 775.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, so we're still, I'm not going to do the math again. The math per hour is still not great, but that's not the main reason we're doing it. So, we're going to let that slide. And reevaluate in a year or six months. See what happens.

Sometimes when things cost more, they actually sell better. It depends on your audience. We're going to have to test it and find out. But if we're not worried about it selling particularly anyway, it's worth testing. So, then we've got 225 as our middle price. In that middle range what's the difference between your high and low price there? Is it the size? Is it the number of hours it takes you?

How do you charge?

Sam Groom: Well, the size, the amount of work, and to be honest, with the 300 to 350, they'd probably be framed. Whereas at 150, they wouldn't be.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So, let's say 225 unframed, you can add on a frame. That's an upcharge. With that in mind, if that was our only price, just to make things easier, what would you do differently in order to make the ones that were 300 worth you doing for that same 225, would they be smaller? Would there be a few less hours in there? Like, what kind of changes would you make? Just out of curiosity.

Sam Groom: They just wouldn't be framed.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, great. So, we're not really changing anything on that one. Now, we've got our 20 to 35 pound prints. If we're using my formula that I'm, again, saying doesn't always work, we would take that 775 and divide it by 10.

And they would be 77 a piece, the ones that you're currently selling for 20 to 35 pounds. Would you be comfortable at all raising the price on those, or are we really happy with those being where they're at?

Sam Groom: I think for the digital ones, I'm really happy where they’re at. I think the giclees, however, I could raise them a bit.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Sam Groom: Definitely. Because at the moment they're maybe A3 in size, so I could offer them at A2.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. Okay. So, we're going to leave those pretty much alone. I'll let you play with the fine details of those, but essentially what we got to is we're really just raising the price of our highest. So, we're good there.

So, you had also talked about reaching a bigger audience with some of these things. You said my cards are my bestsellers. My prints are my second bestsellers. And then there's the occasional original slash passion project that sells. What are you doing besides putting cards in greeting shops to sell all this work?

Sam Groom: I attend quite a few print fairs, and art fairs throughout the year. And I put my work on my website, and I occasionally share it. Well, I share it on social media, on Instagram.

Jessica Craddock: Mm hmm.

Sam Groom: I would say at the moment, I sell most of my work probably at live events. Like bigger pieces, although not always.

Jessica Craddock: Makes sense.

Sam Groom: It's really hard, what I've found over the years is there's no rhyme or reason to when things sell or who buys them. I mean, from what I just said, it did make sense, but now I'm thinking, but then there was that time when I just posted a photo and someone said I want that and bought it.

Jessica Craddock: Well, there's always the occasional outliers, but what we're looking for are the overall patterns. Like if we could say, for example, you said most of my work, I sell at live events. So, when you said that, I think you meant. My originals and passion projects normally sell at events, but occasionally, a sale will come through on Instagram when I post it.

Did I get that right?

Sam Groom: Yeah. And my reproduction work as well. I mean, even at live events, that work sells more than anything. Those are more likely to sell at a live event than on my website or from posting them on social media.

Jessica Craddock: Mm hmm

<< COMMERCIAL BREAK >>

Jessica Craddock: I'm going to take a quick pause here, because I know that pricing your work is one of the things that feels so complicated. One, do people even want to buy it? Two, is it too expensive? Is it too cheap? Am I selling myself short? This thing takes so long, and this thing, I don't really love doing, but I know people love buying it.

And so putting together what you are selling combined with your highest work, the work you really want to be making, plus figuring out how to price it, can feel really overwhelming. And it's one of those things that if you feel like I could just figure that piece out, everything would work better. I'd be able to sell more so I could make more money so I could make more art.

Social media wouldn't feel so all consuming because I have a purpose to every time I'm posting. Same thing with my newsletters. Like, what am I even selling, and are people going to buy it? And is it just a waste of time? So figuring out that perfect sweet spot can really take a lot of worries off your plate. And that is why it's the very first thing we go over inside of Consistent Income.

The very first week you join, you go straight into deciding what to sell next and how to price it. So that making the work you love and the work that people will buy from you becomes the same thing.

If you're interested in finding out more, go down to the show notes, there is a link to the page with all the information on it. And also on that page is a place where you can enter your name and email address to let me know if it's something you're thinking about, so we can look at where you're at together and decide if it's the right fit for you.

Okay, let's get back to the show.

<< NOW BACK TO THE SHOW >>

[00:22:09] Breakdown where your sales are actually coming from to make informed changes.

Jessica Craddock: Let's do something really quick. Now we've got cards, we've got prints, we've got originals, and we've got passions.

That's what we're calling them anyway. Okay. So, what I did was across the top of my page, I wrote all the places that you said you make sales. Live sales, websites, social media, greeting card stores. Maybe that's not quite right, but we'll go with it. And then down the other side, I put cards, prints, originals, passions.

I know you're not going to know this necessarily 100 percent accurately off the top of my head. Your head. Ha, ha. But I want to get some approximates here so we can start to make a little bit more sense of things. So, I'm just going to real quickly go through these and say cards, and we're going to say what percentage we think of our sales we're making from each of these places.

So, remember, we've got live sales, website, social media, and stores. So, when we're thinking about cards,

Sam Groom: Do you mean what is the percentage of my total income from cards?

Jessica Craddock: No. What percentage of cards? Hmm. Let me, let me see if I can ask the question better. Where did the cards sell? What percentage of them sold at each of these places? So, we've got a hundred percent where we're starting off with cards. It doesn't matter how many you've sold. That's still a hundred percent. So, in live sales, maybe 50 percent of the cards you've sold have come from that. Does that make more sense?

Sam Groom: Yeah. And that's probably about right.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So, what about your website?

Sam Groom: How many cars I sell through my website?

Jessica Craddock: What percentage of that hundred do you think comes from your website? And this is an actual exercise that you could go in and do to get real numbers and say, where did all these sales come from, but we're approximating today.

Sam Groom: Recently, I did have an Etsy shop and I've just stopped with that.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Sam Groom: With Etsy, it was probably maybe, it's gone down recently, but maybe 10%.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Sam Groom: From my website, very little because I've only recently moved over.

Jessica Craddock: Gotcha. So, I'll put maybe like one or 2%. Okay. What about social media?

Sam Groom: Nothing.

Jessica Craddock: Nothing. And so stores, would be, if we're looking at the the rest of it, we've got 62 percent taken. So, does 38 percent in stores sound accurate?

Sam Groom: Yeah. I mean, I was just thinking there when you said about social media and I thought, but I post images on my Instagram. Then I know that people will go to the shop and get them. So it's all connected.

Jessica Craddock: Right. But the actual sale did not come from the social media. I know what you're saying. Let's go with 2 percent on social media, just so we give it a little credit here. So, then that would add up to 50, 64, which means 36 percent of our card sales are coming from stores. Does that sound right?

Sam Groom: I don't know. Yeah.

Jessica Craddock: Well, we're approximating here. You might want to actually go back and do this, maybe. Okay, so then with prints, we're going to do the same thing. We've got 100 percent of our print sales, no matter how many that is, what percentage is coming from live sales, Etsy, website, social media, and stores.

Sam Groom: Hmm mm.

Jessica Craddock: So maybe an easier way to do this would say, Where do the most sales come from and what percentage would you assign that?

Sam Groom: 80.

Jessica Craddock: And then the next highest between Etsy website, social media stores would be website. What percentage would you assign to that?

Sam Groom: 20.

Jessica Craddock: Okay, so zero everywhere else?

Sam Groom: Oh, hang on. No, maybe more. More like 10% local shop, and let's say 30% website. And whatever the rest is.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So, you're not making any print sales off social media. Do we want to give it a little or no?  

Sam Groom: Well, they might see it there, and then they go to my website. So, I guess that's how I was thinking of it.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. Let's, I'm going to say they're probably not, maybe I'm wrong here, but they're probably not just finding your website and buying something off of it. Would that sound accurate?

Sam Groom: Yep or like emailing subscribers or, you know, things like that. And then they will go to my website because I've put a link or a shop.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. I almost feel like we should put website and social media and email together. So, 30 percent comes from that website, email, social media. Zero from Etsy, so then 60 percent would be our live events. Now we've got originals. Where is the highest percentage from and what percentage would you say?

Sam Groom: 90.

Jessica Craddock: 90. So then are you selling any originals at stores or Etsy?

Sam Groom: No.

Jessica Craddock: So then the remaining 10 percent comes from website, email, social. Okay. And then the, the big ones, the passions. Where is the highest percentage from and what percentage would you say?

Sam Groom: Live sales. But then I advertise those events and my website and social media and send out emails about them. So, they initially might see them on my website and then from seeing it and thinking about it, they may be purchasing.

Jessica Craddock: Okay. So, if you did not have the website, email, social media, that live sale probably wouldn't happen, but they definitely wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been at that live place. Okay. So, 90/10 again.

[00:28:12] Use the results of your evaluation to determine where to change your pricing.

Jessica Craddock: All right. So, we've got across the board, of course, like you already said, live sales are definitely the highest percentage. Website, email, social media, we've got 4%, 30%, 10%, 10%. And then stores, we've got 36 and 10. So if we added all that up just for giggles, and we're giving it a score. This doesn't make a hundred percent sense, but we're just doing it.

Then live sales get a 290 score. Etsy gets a 10, which is why we probably cut it out. We've got 4 and 30 and 10 and 10 so 54 and we've got 46 so website, email, social media and stores are pretty close, a score of 54 and 46. And our live sales, we have a score of 290.

So about six times more sales are coming from our live events. Did that make sense at all what I just did? Not really. That's okay. Because it didn't really make sense to me there. I was making that last part up. I just added all the, the percentages to see, give us some way to measure which one was doing better.

Sam Groom: I kind of, I like doing the live events, but I don't want to do more than a few a year. And they're so unpredictable, you know, so even though they are really good way of selling my work, I could attend six or seven and two of them would be fantastic and the remainder wouldn't be great. So, it was like a lot of effort.

Jessica Craddock: Right. I almost look at it like you have to take the sum of all of the live shows and average it out because some years this one will do great, and this one will do bad and then the next year they'll flip flop. So, it's almost like the bad ones, it's like gambling, which ones are going to be good and which ones are going to be bad. The more places you show up, the higher percentage that, that is going to do well at some point. So, I know you say you don't want to do a lot of them. How many is not a lot?

Sam Groom: Maybe six, seven a year, something like that.

Jessica Craddock: What have you done in the past?

Sam Groom: Well, maybe five years ago, I might have done 20 or 30.

Jessica Craddock: Oh, wow.

Sam Groom: Well, maybe not quite that many, but it felt like that many. Yeah. But my energy levels are much less, you know, after COVID, I think it just, everything changed. The work involved, I've just felt, I feel, possibly it's not the right attitude, but I just feel like it’s hard work and when they're not that successful, it can feel like a lot of work.

[00:31:09] Determine if making changes will support your main goal.

Jessica Craddock: Mm hmm. So really it comes down to what is the right attitude. the goal. Obviously, you're in this to make money, but is that the main goal? Do you need it to do really well? Or is that just a, is it an ego thing for it to do well?

Sam Groom: That's a good question. I don't need it to do well in the, I'm getting by, but I think that it would be, I think I really ought to be earning a bit more. I suppose it is just thinking of the fact that I'm quite determined I want to do this. So, it is just the challenge I'm setting myself of, if I'm going to make these pieces that I love to make, these passion projects, which are great.

I mean, when I look at them, I think that's a, that's a really great thing that I've created. And it's just, somebody could really love it. I don't know how to put it really. But I just think maybe what I'd like to do is be able to sell more online, just raise my profile a little. More people would come across me, I guess.

Jessica Craddock: Yeah. So, I will say a couple of things. One being, online is the biggest learning curve. This is a typical spread for people who do a lot of live events.

Most of their income comes from those live events. And you know, if I need to make more money, the easiest way to do that is either workshops, which we didn't really get into because you mentioned you do those, or more live events. Now, does that mean we should just give up and force ourselves to be tired all the time and do 20 a year still and forget about website and email and social media?

No, we still want to be improving our skills in those places, but there's so many skills stack on top of other skills. It can take longer for that to grow as fast as you want it to. So that's a whole other topic that we don't have time to really touch on today, is how do I grow that website, email, social media.

But I will also say that just looking at this sheet that we put together, while your stores were a little bit lower than the website, email, social media category, they weren't lower by much. So that's another option. In the, I know if I can get in more stores, I can sell more greeting cards, more prints, more quickly.

So, while I want you to continue growing website, email, social media, if we're thinking, what's my fastest way to more income, it's going to be one of those other two categories probably, while you skillsets. Which is not always the answer people want.

Sam Groom: No, I think it's a good answer. And I think that already kind of realized it. Well, and I think, what you're saying is true. I just need to keep on going to live events, which I have already decided. Yes, I will do whilst improving my website, and figuring out all those technical frustrations that you get. Just, it's like a very gradual process, isn't it? You just improve things bit by bit by bit.

And then you turn around, you go, Oh, okay. Which is what I've found really over the course of years. Things are gradually getting better, but it just seems to slowly grow. It's a long time, but that's what it's all about, isn't it?

 

[00:34:57] Create a list of contacts from live events and find ways to nurture those people.

Jessica Craddock: Well, and the other thing that I want to point out that you probably already realize to some degree is that those live places that you are going. Those are the places where you collect people to make the website, email, social media work better, and it sounds like you're probably already asking them to join your newsletter or follow you on Instagram and all of those things, but I'm just going to leave you with this question to think about.

What other ways can I nurture them besides just adding them into a list of people who get my content? I like to teach my clients to keep a list of what I call ideal art buyers, leads, people I might collaborate with, in your case, such as stores or places that might host workshops, all of those different kinds of categories, past clients. And use that list as a place to make those stronger connections, along with this content that we're putting out the website, email, social media, so that the content actually works alongside what you're doing with that list of people. Because they're able to see you in those places and experience you as a person as well.

That's when they can work really well. So, if you could just think about that little tweak and how can I, how can I do more with those people besides add them into my content list? I think that's going to give you a leg up on growing that last piece.

Sam Groom: Have you got any suggestions of ways you might nurture?

Jessica Craddock: I'm trying to think how to answer your question briefly because we need to wrap this up, but give you a good answer that you can go off of. One, go listen to more episodes. I talk about this a lot. But two, think about what your interests are, your hobbies, your values, your love language, the things that would make you want to connect with someone in the first place.

 Let's go with love languages because that's the easiest one to give examples for. If your love language is gifting in your, I'm going to call it nurture process. We're probably wanting to do some gifting that might be writing a handwritten card to that person that you met at the event and sending it to them with a card for them to mail to someone that they love. That's an example of a gift.

Words affirmation. Maybe that's your love language, and that's what you're really good at. You could ask them, instead of following you, ask if you can follow them. And then you can go look at what they're up to and write them a very lovely, genuine note about something or other, and they end up following you in that way.

Hey, I'm that artist that you met, and I just wanted to tell you that blah de blah de blah de blah de blah. If someone writes me a note like that, I'm following them back. That kind of thing. So, again, the easiest way to go about this is think about your love language. How do you like to show it? And how can I add that into my ways to give love to my potential buyers, buyers, people I might want to work with, et cetera.

Is that short answer enough for you to go off for brainstorming at least?

Sam Groom: Yeah, I'll have to have a good think, but yeah, that's something to go on, definitely.

Jessica Craddock: I would also really recommend going back through the other episodes and see which ones say things like nurturing, engaging. Anything along those lines, there's probably some more ideas in there.

Sam Groom: Yeah, I will definitely do that.

Jessica Craddock: Okay.

Okay Sam, we almost made it. We did 45 minutes instead of 30, but we can cut some stuff. Tell anyone who's listening, if they're interested in finding out more about you, more about your work, where should they go?

Sam Groom: You can find me on Instagram at SamGroomPrintmaker, or my website is samanthagroom.co.uk.

Jessica Craddock: And where are they going to get the most goodness from you? If they don't know what to pick between your website, your Instagram, what do you want them to do? What do you recommend?

Sam Groom: Well, I'd recommend they go to my Instagram, and have a look at what I've been up to. And, uh, then they go to my website and find out a little bit more about me.

Jessica Craddock: All right. Do it all.

Thank you for being here, Sam. Thanks for being brave, one, and also trusting me with your hour, because that's how long this whole process takes. I know it's eight o'clock for you, so it's late. You could be in bed or nine. It's almost nine.

Sam Groom: Bedtime. Well, thank you so much for inviting me onto your podcast. It's been really interesting. I'm having a good think about what you said.

Jessica Craddock:  Of course, and I’m so glad.

I would also recommend as homework, maybe go in and evaluate some sales and see if these numbers are accurate because sometimes we think they're one thing, but when we go actually look at the data, there's something else that might give you more insight into I should or shouldn't be doing this or that.

Well, have a very good sleep. We'll talk soon.

Sam Groom: Thank you. Bye.

Jessica Craddock: Bye Sam.

<< CLOSING >>

Jessica Craddock:  I hope this episode gave you some amazing insight into where to be spending your time to make more art sales.

And while we barely scratched the surface here, this is the heart of my Consistent Income program. Know what you're selling, know how to price it, know who to talk to. Know where to spend your time. All of those aspects of using your time wisely, connecting with the right people, so that the time that you spend selling art actually gives back to you. Allowing you to make more art, feel more fulfilled, and make more money without it being so all consuming.

So again, if this is something you're looking for, you're going to want to check out Consistent Income. There's a link down below, and we'll talk next week. 


More about Intuitive Art Sales

This is the show where I, Jessica Craddock, am going to teach you how to source your art marketing from within. You're going to practice claiming that authentic art business that you want and leaning into the most natural way for you to get there. You're going to learn to get connected to your intuition, your confidence and your community, so that you can sell your art consistently while holding strong boundaries on your work life balance.

Most of my episodes are full of interviews with your peers. In these and all episodes moving forward, I explore what each artist wants and give them the next steps to get there. You can take their struggles and their challenges and learn how to navigate your own and create actionable steps towards creating more art sales, more consistently at higher prices than you've ever sold before.

Just a note to our long-time listeners: We're doing away with our "Seasons", but you can still find this designation abbreviated at the end of the show titles for Seasons 1 & 2. From now on episodes will be numbered chronologically at the end of the title as well as in the episode description.

You can find all the episodes here.

About the Author

Jessica Craddock

I mentor intuitive visual artists who are sick of one-size-fits all formulas sell more work, more consistently, at higher prices — with better work/life balance. My clients regularly make 3x more in art sales within a year.

Using my signature Consistent Income method, we’ll push you over the precipice of some really amazing growth so you can become the creator of your next chapter.

My secret sauce is that we focus on not just the "doing", but also the "being". Affirmations, trusting yourself, knowing when to go slow and when to go fast, practicing getting out of your comfort zone and making room for the feelings that go with that... all this is equally as important as the action steps.

For once, you'll be ahead of the game and understand what's right for you.

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