If you work as an artist, or you want to start working as an artist, the only real way that you can do this is if you’re able to find people who are willing to pay you for your work. And while you might get a one-off client on occasion, what’s really going to put you over the edge into becoming a paid artist is if you’re able to find clients who love your work, are willing to pay you for it, and keep coming back from more. Although it can be hard to find these people, there are some things that you can do to help make this a bit easier.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for finding clients as an artist.
Let Your Art Speak For Itself
While having a great personality and putting yourself out there as an artist can help people get interested in you and what you have to offer, in the end, you’re going to need to let your art speak for itself and allow people to fall in love with it.
To do this, you’ll need to learn how to best market your art to the type of customers or clients that you’re looking for. If you’re wanting to keep your art local, you’ll want to use local citations and other forms of SEO to make sure you’re targeting local clients. But if you’re willing to send your work all over the globe to clients who believe in you, you’ll want to expand your digital marketing presence.
Along with making it easy for your work to be found online, you’ll also want to do things like print an art book that you can take with you to events or give out to people you think may be interested. A portfolio works similarly and will showcase some of your best work so that you can win people over to becoming a client of yours.
Set Up A Referral System
Once you get a couple clients, it will often be easier for you to find more clients if you’re able to leverage your relationships with your present clients through something like a referral system.
Something you can try is sharing with your clients that if they’re able to refer you to someone else, they can get a discount on future purchases from you, one-of-a-kind pieces, or some other perk that would be appealing to them. Then, if your clients really love your work, they’ll talk you up to anyone in their network that may be interested in the art that you do, potentially getting you far more clients than you could have gotten on your own.
Look For Opportunities To Collaborate
Another idea that can help you to get new clients as an artist is to find people that you can collaborate or partner with. When you do this, you’re both able to tap into not only the clients that you have, but also the people who know your collaborator but haven’t been introduced to you yet. This can help to open you up to a lot of new people within the art world.
If you need to find more clients that yourself and your art, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you in doing this.