THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: Last month, the artist in my community reported over $110,000 in art sold in one month. So here’s how they did it.
Speaker 2: It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast, an art World Insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: Hey, in case we haven’t met yet, I’m Miriam Schulman, author of Artpreneur and your curator of inspiration today. So let’s dive in and look at what actually happened, because the patterns of this is so much more interesting than the big sexy number. In June, some artists in my community made a lot of tiny sales and other artists made a handful of very large ones. And when you compare with those two groups, actually walked away with the gap is a lot bigger than you’d think. So I’m going to show you the exact breakdown in a minute, and it’s going to change how you think about your price list completely. Let’s get into the numbers. I broke down the sales into things sold under $50 50 to 100. 100 to 500. 500 to 1000. 1000 to 2500. And then what’s sold over 2500. That was 216 individual sales across 41 artists. But before I break down the pattern, I do want to share with you why you should be able to trust these numbers. Yes, this is just a sample. It is not a census. These are only the artists who chose to share their sales results with me. There are plenty of artists in my community who sold work in June and never told me about it, and obviously there’s thousands of artists out there selling art who have never heard of me. So this is just a window.
Miriam Schulman: It’s not the entire art world. Second, this is just one month. If somebody had a slow June, that’s not a verdict on their business. I’m using this to give you a snapshot of the market and not to judge or grade the artist. And third, one of these numbers, $10,000 came from a single artist one day show reported to me as one number. So keeping that a little bit separate from itemized sales. And I’ll tell you her story later because it’s a really good one. Oh, and one more thing. I did round these numbers because when I went through the results and they had to share every single receipt, every single picture of things sold, I saw that some artists included the sales tax in their numbers, but then they also deducted what their credit card machine or the processing fees were. I was not going to go through like Ernst and Young and audit every single thing to take out sales tax or add back in processing fees. So we just round it and we’re going to take it as approximate. Okay. So here’s the data under $50. 56 sales $1,500. 50 to 137 sales $2,500. 100 to $500 items. 72 sales $17,000. 500 to 1000. 22 sales $14,000 and art between 1000 and 2500. 18 sales 9000. But here’s what I want you to pay attention to. Artists selling art over $2,500. There was only 11 sales, but that accounted for $45,000 of our total.
Miriam Schulman: This is why I’m always telling you to raise your prices and sell higher end pieces. Because look at what happened at the two ends of the spectrum the top two rows, everything under $100. That’s 93 sales, 43% of all the transactions that happened this month. But 93 times somebody had to pack something up, had to talk to the customer, wrap something, answered an email, answered a question, ran a card, set up the booth, broke down a booth, 93 sales, but only $4,000. Now look at the people selling art for the highest prices 11 sales, 5% of the transactions. $45,000. Artists who are selling higher end pieces are building a fundamentally stronger business than artists doing volume. Fewer transactions, less packing. Less shipping. Less time following a table. And yeah, for more money. And here’s what I want you to hear. Those 11 sales, they weren’t all paintings. You know, there’s oil in there, acrylic, mixed media. But there also was a cyanotype, a mural commissioned portraits. There’s no magic medium. There’s a size and there’s a price. So you’re not underpaid because of your medium, but you might be underpaid because of your price list. Now, if that just landed for you and you want insights like this every single week, hit the subscribe button. That’s how I know to keep digging into the real numbers for you.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, let’s look at the top because I think a lot of you have quietly decided that nobody’s buying real art anymore. And I want to bust that myth because Nisha made $10,000. That was one artist, one day, one art show. Yeah, we’re going to get to her in her story later. Don’t worry. $5,000 that belonged to Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan, a 36 by 60 painting called Pacific Sparkles. And that was the biggest sale of her career. $4,700 that went to Joan Chamberlain, two originals. And she’ll tell you herself she sold them because she raised her prices. $4,500. Bow Sapphire, a cyanotype on canvas, 2.5ft by five feet. And also the biggest piece she’s ever sold, or Kelsey Merkle, who sold over $4,000 in reproductions, or Gregory Malphurs, who sold a 3600 oil on canvas. And Cheryl Shannahan, who sold a $3,000 painting, 24 by 36, or Pamela Behre, who sold this artwork for $2,700. That’s a 48 by 36 oil and cold wax. And Amy Wetmore, twice two commissioned portraits, took deposits for $2,500 each. All right, so let’s look at that list 36 by 60, 48 by 36, 30 by 42.5 by five feet. The money wasn’t in our little eight by eight inch paintings. So we know the top of the price ladder is where the money got made, but what actually sold was it paintings, prints, fiber, art, photography, commissions, classes. When we come back, I’m going to break down every single dollar of that $110,000 by category.
Miriam Schulman: And I’m going to show you the one category. Nobody in this entire community built their month on, even though I bet money you spend more time on that category than anything else. But first, a quick word. Hey, artists, if you’re lowering your prices because you want your art to stay accessible, or you don’t follow up with a collector because you don’t want to seem pushy, or you don’t email your list because, well, you don’t want to bother anybody. And you tell yourself, well, you’re just being a nice person. Here’s what I’ve learned in 20 years of doing this. Being kind isn’t the problem, but the need to be liked, to be a people pleaser, to be easy, agreeable, accommodating is going to quietly sabotage your art business. That’s an invisible ceiling. And the reason it’s invisible is that every one of those thoughts sound completely reasonable. So I’m doing something about it. It’s called the Invisible Ceiling Session, and I’m hosting it with Sean Roney, the certified mindset coach who’s been coaching artists inside the Artist Incubator since 2020. Sean will coach artists live. She hears the story underneath the decision. I’ll tell you what that decision is costing your art career. And no, you don’t have to be the one getting coached. That’s the whole point. It’s a lot easier to recognize a belief when you hear somebody else saying it out loud first.
Miriam Schulman: Different circumstances. Same invisible ceiling. One of our members did this work, and she’s the gal who sold $5,000 for one painting this month. A new personal record. She didn’t become a different person, but she stopped letting fear run the sales conversation. So come find your invisible ceiling. Go to SchulmanArt.com/invisible. That’s SchulmanArt.com/invisible. And now let’s get back to the show. Now we’re going to do the category breakdown. Every dollar sorted original art including commissions $82,363. That’s 75% of everything that’s sold. Prints and reproductions also good. Just under 13,000. That’s 12% photography and photo based work. About 5000 printed products. Oh. Printed products. That’s your art. Printed on cards, tea towels, totes, mugs, bags out of $110,000 that only accounted for $3,365. 3% of the total sales. Classes and workshops. $2,500 handmade goods that included jewelry, pillows, that kind of thing. About $1,200 and books. $191. Okay, let’s slow down now. Original art is 75% of this, and I want to be straight with you about what that does and doesn’t prove. Now, most of the artists who reported their sales to me are painters. So painting, winning in a room full of painters tells you about my room and my community. It does not tell you what the art market has officially decided that. Painting is king. I don’t have the data for that today.
Miriam Schulman: And honestly, neither does anybody else who’s telling you what’s hot right now. But what I can prove is for the artists who shared the results, what the prices were and what sold. And that one holds no matter what you make. Prince. The reality check. Let’s talk about prints. Because prints were the second biggest category. Almost $13,000. But let’s look at how they got there. That’s 50 separate transactions in order to make $13,000. Maybe 50 booths, maybe 50. Credit cards run. Maybe 50. Things packed. So prints are adore, but they’re not a house. They let somebody enter your world at $45. And that is genuinely valuable because that person can become the collector who buys your $2,500 piece next year. But if prints are the business, then you’ve built a business where you have to sell 50 things in order to make $13,000. And that’s why I don’t like those websites that are print factories, because that is a fast track to burnout. Prints are a bridge, but they’re not the ceiling. The truth about products? Printed products. What are those cards? Tea towels. Totes. All of it. All of it. Across all this. $3,365.47 separate sales. That’s an average of $72 a sale and 3% of this month. But that’s not the finding. Here’s my finding. Out of 41 artists who reported to me, not a single one of them has built their month on products.
Miriam Schulman: Only seven artists sold any printed products at all. And for every single one of those seven artists, products were a minority of what they made. Not one person’s biggest revenue source was cards or towels or totes. Not one. I’m not here to tell you products are bad. In fact, for some artists, it was a nice supplement to their income of their originals and their prints. So I’m not going to say that products are a fine garnish, and they pick up the person at the market who loves your work has $40 in their pocket, and that person is real. That person matters. And someday that person might buy something bigger. But let’s look at what the data actually says. Nobody, not one out of the 41 made products the main event. The market already told them. And I think a lot of us are still spending our energy on these products like it is the main event. I remember one of my BFFs spending all her time designing shower curtains. And yes, the shower curtains sold for a lot of money in fine art America. But at the end of the month, she found that her profit was so small for the amount of money she took in, and she was handling a lot of returns that was eating into her profit as well. But here’s what’s happening in my community 47 sales, $3,000.
Miriam Schulman: That’s a lot of customer service and a lot of packing tape for 3% of the month. Commissions. The quiet winner. Here’s the category that nobody talks about. And I think it’s the most underrated thing in this entire data set. Commissions almost $17,000 across 16 sales. That’s an average of $1,061 per commission. When the average sale across everything was only $511. So commissions is a way of doubling your income. Commissions had the highest average value of anything in this data. Anything. And here’s the part that matters. Every single one of them came from somebody asking, okay, I’m going to share that with you. Suzy Van Deventer reached out to a business owner. That’s what she shared with me. Called $2,165 commission. Daniela Haro Aguayo made a cold call and walked away with a $2,000 deposit on a mural. And Amy Wetmore did $5,700 in portrait commissions and deposits. Cheryl Shanahan asked her existing clients for their next piece and got it. And Rochelle Colgan, another $1,000 commission. Commissions are the highest paying thing in this entire month, and they don’t come from posting. They come from outbound marketing. They come from asking. You got to be brave to ask. Okay, we need to talk about photography. Quick. I want to include it because if you’re a photographer and you’re wondering with any of this applies to you. Photography and photo based work accounted for $5,000 this month.
Miriam Schulman: But I want to be precise with you because $5,000 sounds like a category, but it was actually only two sales. So both Sapphire did a cyanotype on canvas two and a half by five feet and it was $4,500. And Melody Locke, an original lumen print for $460. Same medium family, but ten times the price. And the difference was in the medium. The difference was that Bo’s piece was five feet long, one of a kind and priced like a serious work of art. So if you’re a photographer wondering if this stuff is for you, it is. The price ladder applies to you too. All right. I’ve shown you what’s sold. I’ve shown you what it’s sold for. But the question I get every single time I share numbers like these is what did the top selling artists do differently? When we come back, I’m going to read you in their own words. Exactly what these artists said made the difference, including the artists who made $10,000 in a single day. She’s going to tell you herself on video exactly what changed? But first these words. Artists. Here are something nobody warns you about. You do the work. You raise your prices. You get the sale. And then, right when it’s time to go bigger, you pull back. Do you offer a discount? Are you suddenly hesitating to raise your prices again? Are you not sending the email because you don’t want to be pushy? You don’t want to bother someone.
Miriam Schulman: You’re not chasing the opportunity you actually want because you’re not sure you’re allowed to be this visible, or maybe this well paid, or maybe this ambitious. But that’s not the story you’re telling yourself. You might be hearing a different thought. And by the way, it’s not a strategy problem either. You already know the strategy. There’s a ceiling. There’s an invisible ceiling, and a new one shows up every time you break the last one. This is exactly why I created the invisible ceiling session with myself and Sean Roney, a certified mindset coach who’s been working with artists inside the Artist Incubator since 2020. Shawn coaches artists live. She gets underneath the problem you can see and finds the belief sitting under it. And I’ll tell you what that belief is costing you in prices and sales and follow up and opportunities you keep preparing for instead of pursuing. Now, don’t worry, you don’t have to be the artist in the hot seat. Honestly, sometimes it’s easier to hear your own story when it’s coming out of somebody else’s mouth. You’ll be answering Shawn’s question in your own head the whole time. Come see what’s been making your decisions for you. Go to Schulman Art dot com slash invisible. I’ll say it again Schulman Art dot com slash invisible. And now let’s get back to the show.
Miriam Schulman: This is my favorite part. What artists said that made the difference when these artists reported their sales, I also asked them what they thought made the sale happen. And I want to read you what they actually wrote. Not my summary their words, because six patterns came up over and over again. Number one, they asked for the sale. This was the single most common phrase in the entire data set. So Christy Lindgren wrote some version of I asked for the sale on 15 different sales that she reported, and Caitlin Shoot wrote pretty much the same thing. I never would have asked for the sale directly before joining the incubator, and Cheryl Russell wrote confidence to keep asking for the sale. Yeah, I know every one of us has stood in a booth or a studio or a gallery and watch somebody love our work and compliment it, and you thank them and then they walk away. Yeah, I’ve done it, too. The most common thing artists credited this month was learning to just ask. That’s it. That’s the whole trick. Tactic number two. They raised their prices and it worked immediately. Joan Chamberlain $4,700. That’s $4,700. Two originals. Here’s what she shared. I increased my prices across the board and was confident that the right collector would buy without hesitation. Or Stephanie Nuzum, a $400 sale, she wrote courage Not to Underprice. And Cheryl Shanahan sold a piece for $600 and wrote.
Miriam Schulman: This time last year, my nine by 12 sold for $495. This one went for $600. And here’s one of my favorites. This is Amy Wetmore. Amy had a past client, somebody who’s bought from her before and used to pay her somewhere between 75 and $150 for similar work. This time she charged 550 per piece and they said yes. Every artist I just read, you got the same result. They raised their number and the buyer said yes. Number three, the email listed the quiet work. Three different artists told me. So one artist crediting the email list is a nice story, but three artists crediting the email list. That’s a pattern you should pay attention to. So here’s the pattern. Melanie Stewart sent the first email of her entire life to a list of 22 people 22, and she made $450 on one sale, and Kimberly Chan made a sale, and the collector specifically told her she came back because Kimberly added her to the email list on day one of the event. So the collector came back the next day to shop, and Kelsey Merkel made $4,000 in reproductions, and she shared that it came from utilizing my existing email list better and getting more emails for future collectors. Wow, look at that. 22 people on a list sending an email for the first time. $450. One collector added to a list on the same day she stopped by a booth.
Miriam Schulman: Another sale, an existing list, but just working a little harder for her $4,000. Same lever. Three totally different points in the journey. That’s not a fluke. That’s what email lists can actually do for you. And notice, not one of them called it marketing. They called it staying in touch. Tactic number four. Somebody had to go first. So Susie shared. I never would have reached out to this business owner if I was not part of this program. $2,165. Daniela. I felt motivated to introduce myself on a cold call. $2,000 mural deposit and Amy Wetmore again. She wrote that the program gave her the courage to reach out to a client who had failed to pay the full deposit. And then she got paid on an old bill because she finally asked. Tactic number five bigger work. Cheryl Shanahan $3,000 original and her words. Miriam wisely advised that I start painting bigger and get off the eight by eight treadmill. She was Right. Jennifer Dawkins just wrote three words making larger art. Tactic number six. And I think we have seven of them. Tactic number six. Oh, this is the follow up you almost didn’t send. This is Brittany Voegele $1,700 sale she shared focused on solving his problem, not telling about the art. Followed up even though I was worried it was too much. Following up, she was worried she was following up too much.
Miriam Schulman: No she wasn’t. She was following up just the right amount. How do we know she got a $1,700 sale for it? That’s the whole game. The follow up. You almost didn’t send. Okay, tactic number seven. Three artists broke their career ceiling this month. Three of the sales this month weren’t just good sales. They were personal records. The biggest work each of these artists had ever sold in their entire lives, and they broke their ceilings for three completely different reasons. First, Sangeetha Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan sold her first $5,000 painting of her life. She sold paintings this size before. She just never asked $5,000 for them and she emailed me the next day. And here’s what she wrote. Hi Miriam, I wanted to share that I just sold my first $5,000 painting at my art show this weekend. I used the tips from the last coaching session about the missing hagglers, not convincing people to buy and being patient. And somebody came by and swiped $5,400, including tax, to buy my 36 by 60 painting so easily. And now she’s considering buying my 48 by 72. Sangeetha Ceiling broke in the moment of the sale. You can call it patience. I call it mindset work. Not chasing, not convincing, just holding the confidence. Next, let’s talk about Bo. Bo sold her largest cyanotype ever. Two and a half by five feet, $4,500. And she wrote about it in her email newsletter.
Miriam Schulman: And I want to read you part of that email, because it’s not the story you’d expect. 20 minutes after I opened my booth, Richard and his wife collected the largest piece I’ve ever created. What many people don’t see is that this piece began long before I ever stretched the canvas or laid down the plants. It began with a decision earlier this year. I relocated from LA to Sacramento and rented a house with a garage instead of another apartment. What felt like a practical decision ended up changing my work completely. For the first time, I had the space to create larger canvases and make work that simply wouldn’t have been possible before. This sale felt bigger than selling a single artwork. It felt like months of planning risk and hard work, quietly coming together and saying, keep going. So bow ceiling didn’t break in the booth. Bow ceiling began to quietly crack six months earlier when she picked a house with a garage instead of another apartment, and had the courage and the belief that the audience was out there for her largest cyanotypes, and she had the courage to price it appropriately. And last, I want to share. Nisha. Asia sold seven originals in a single day and made $10,000. That’s the biggest number this entire data set, and I want to make sure you hear what she told me in her own words.
Nesha Cornett: I am proud of the art show that I just did. I just did a sell thrown art show, and I sold seven originals and I made ten grand and it was amazing. And I want to say this quickly that at the beginning of the program, I did a art audit. And it’s been a little hard because you told me you looked at my art and you said, stop doing this, do more of this. And I reflected on it and I said, you know what? I joined this art program for a reason. Let me listen. And I switched to doing more of my figurative art, and I have not looked back. And you told me to paint big and I painted big. And that was the result.
Miriam Schulman: Three artists, three ceilings, three completely different reasons. Sangeetha ceiling broke in the moment of the sale. Bow ceiling is broken, a real estate decision, a ceiling broke and an honest conversation she didn’t want to have. Not one of those sales was luck. Every single one of them was months of decisions coming together for their big day. And here’s what matters about breaking ceilings. You don’t go back. Sangeetha’s baseline is now $5,000, not 500. And that same buyer is already shopping for her bigger painting. Bose baseline is now five foot canvases. Next baseline is now seven originals in a day. The ceiling doesn’t move by itself. Somebody has to help you see that it’s there. And sometimes, like Nesha said, what they tell you is going to sting a little. One more record that I just want to share. It’s about a month. Not just one sale. Every store I told you was about a sale. But I want to give you one more, because this one’s a little different. This one’s about the whole month. Deborah Friar emailed me this. I sold a lot of art in June, and this is my highest sales month to date in my first year of being a full time artist. Her first year full time and June was her best month yet. That matters because one big sale. Maybe it’s a fluke, but a whole month isn’t. A month means the pricing held up again and again, and the follow up happened more than once, and the asking happened more than once. That’s not a lucky day.
Miriam Schulman: That’s a business starting to work. Oh, and let me give you two more firsts. These are small numbers, but they’re worth mentioning. Deena Siddiqui made her very first sale ever, Her and she shared the program helped me gather the confidence to believe my artwork is worthy of selling. And this was my first sale. Three exclamation points. And Amy Crandall wrote three words on her report. First studio sale. Those weren’t the biggest numbers, but they might have been the biggest wins. So let me ask you, what’s a ceiling you’d like to break this year? Drop the number in your comments. Is it a total for the year? A total for the month? Is it your biggest painting? Biggest photograph print. Tell me. I want to hear the number because sometimes saying it out loud and putting it into writing, that’s the first crack. All right, we’re about to wrap up, but I want to give you the eight lessons. Eight things I want you to take out of this episode. One the price ladder is the whole game. 11 sales made 41% of the money two sides sells. Go back and look at the dimensions on that top sellers list. Three raising prices worked immediately for every single person who did it. Four commissions have the highest average value of anything in this data, and they come from asking. Five prints are an entry point, not a business. 50 transactions to make $13,000. Do that math on your own time. Six products are a garnish. Zero out of 41 artists built a month on products.
Miriam Schulman: Seven the email list, the follow up, the ask the outreach. That’s where the money actually came from, not the posting. Eight ceilings break. Three artists this month sold the biggest work of their careers, and those numbers are their new floor. Look at those eight. Which ones are you already doing and what are you willing to start doing? What are you not doing yet? Share in the comments. All right. Here’s what I want to leave you with. If you’re exhausted from selling more and more things, the problem was never your work ethic. 93 sales in one month proves your work ethic. The problem is those sales sit on your price list. And look, I know some of you are thinking right now, oh, I know I should raise my prices or follow up, but the economy or this or that, that’s why I wanted to show you the data of what happened in June of 2026. Why aren’t you raising your prices? It’s not a strategy problem. It’s an invisible ceiling. And that’s exactly what we’re doing in the invisible ceiling session with Sean Roney. Finding the belief that’s been quietly making your decisions for you and getting underneath it. So to save your spot, go to Schulman Art dot com slash invisible. That’s SchulmanArt.com/invisible. And my friend, whatever you sold this summer, a card, a commission, a $5,000 painting. Go put it in the comments. I want to celebrate you. So I’ll see you at the same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/SchulmanArt, on Instagram @SchulmanArt, and of course on SchulmanArt.com
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