THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: How to sell your art before it’s even finished. If you’re an artist who wants to sell more of your work, I’m going to show you how I sold a painting before I painted it, and it wasn’t a commission, and how you can use the same method to create real urgency. Give collectors a reason to buy now and do it without running a discount.
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: In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Miriam Schulman, author of Artpreneur and creator of The Inspiration Place. And if you’re new here, Subscribe. I have a new episode for artists that drops every Tuesday. Years ago, I did this strategy with a painting of sunflowers. Except when I put it up for sale, there weren’t any sunflowers on the painting yet. All I had done was the background, and it wasn’t even a field. It was like an abstract background. And underneath I wrote a paragraph describing what I intended to paint on top of it. That was the entire listing, a background and a promise, and it sat on a page as part of a series of paintings collectors could actually see. So real works in progress, real photographs of my art. You could see the composition, you could see the colors, you could tell where they were going, but they weren’t finished and the least finished painting on the entire page was the one that sold first. A commission that wasn’t a commission. Here’s what that sunflower painting actually was. It was almost like a commission. But it wasn’t a commission with a real commission. The collector is asking you to make something for them, and they might pick the subject, the size, maybe even the colors. And yeah, that’s somewhat negotiable. Maybe some revisions, everything that makes commissions, sometimes a little bit anxiety provoking for artists. I had none of that. I already decided what I wanted to paint, my idea, how I was going to do it.
Miriam Schulman: They were basically committing to a painting that wasn’t finished yet based on what my idea was, so they were definitely not co-creating with me. I was completely in charge of the entire creative process. The collector just got to commit to it before it was finished. So the collector gets some of the anticipation of a commission. Why? That changes the sale. Most artists give a collector exactly one moment to buy after the painting is finished. A wet paint sale turns the making of the painting into an event. Now there’s something to watch. Something can change. Something can sell. And suddenly there’s a reason not to wait. Because they know that everybody else was given the same opportunity to commit to this painting before it goes to market officially. Now, I wasn’t the first one to invent this. Matisse definitely did it first. So I want to tell you about how Matisse did it. In May of 1935, he started a painting called The Pink Nude. He worked that canvas for about six months, and he repainted it over and over. It started out fairly realistic, but it ended up flat, simplified, radical the whole time. He photographed it every state, 22 of them. And he mailed those photographs to Etta Cone in Baltimore. She got the works in progress in two different letters, one in September of 1935 and one in November. By the time she stood in front of that painting in Paris the next summer, she already followed it through 22 stages.
Miriam Schulman: She’d seen versions that didn’t survive, and the final one that did. And she bought that painting in 1936. It’s in the Baltimore Museum because she donated it there. And you can stand in front of it now. This is a technique that Matisse used over and over again, not just with Etta Cone, but with some of his best collectors. And that is showing work in progress photos. Now, a lot of you are already doing this. You’re doing it on social media, and you’re doing it on Instagram or wherever you’re doing it. But the difference is this. I’m telling you to offer it for sale before it’s finished, and a lot of you wait until the end to ask for the sale. There’s a lot of collectors out there that are willing to bite and willing to commit to it before you finish it. That is part of the fun. Now let’s get tactical. So one of the reasons I’m even bringing this whole episode up again is because over the summer, I was telling artists inside the Artist Incubator about my wet paint sale because they were complaining how July was so bad. And when I went back to my emails, I said, oh, wait a minute, I actually ran this wet paint sale in July when it’s usually kind of dead for art sales.
Miriam Schulman: That’s one of the reasons I did it. I didn’t want to wait till the painting was finished and wait to sell it and get paid in the fall. I wanted to see if I could sell it in the summer. So here’s exactly how I built the strategy. The first email I sent in July, over half the list opened it, and that first email brought in $1,200. The subject line was, I’ve never done this before. Pretty intriguing. Subject line The preview text. You know the little gray line next to the subject line. But Matisse did so together. Those two lines made people curious without giving away the whole thing. And most artists let the preview line default to. Hi, Susan, I hope you’re having a great summer so you’re wasting that space. Then came the offer. I told them I was doing something for the first time, a wet paint sale and the preview page was private. I called it a secret garden. Newsletter subscribers only. Not on the website. Not on social media. And then I gave them a deadline. And this is the part I’m still proud of. The offer was only good until the paint had dried. Two days. The deadline came out of the painting. It wasn’t a countdown timer that I manufactured and put into the email. It was true. And that’s what you can use even if you never run a wet paint sale. Your deadline comes from something that’s actually happening before an exhibition opens, before the work shifts to a gallery, before a studio preview closes, you see? Those are three new opportunities.
Miriam Schulman: The scarcity was real because there was really only one sunflower painting in that group. Now, here’s the part that everybody gets wrong. I didn’t only send that one email. I sent a sequence. So the lesson isn’t send more emails. The lesson is give yourself something new to say. So my second email said the sunflowers are gone. That was that email. They’re gone. Somebody bought them. That doesn’t claim urgency. It proves it. So many artists write. These won’t last. Don’t miss out. But no one believes it, including the person typing it. I could tell them that the paintings were selling, but the sunflower actually being gone was far more persuasive. Everybody who read that first email and thought I’ll decide tomorrow or later now knew that waiting meant losing the piece. And this only works because of the format. So the format for sending emails is not Monday. Here are my paintings. Tuesday. Here are my paintings. Still nothing happens. No new news. We’re just talking louder. But the wet paint sale gives you something to report. This one said, oh, here’s what’s left. So you’re not nagging anybody? You’re just reporting what’s true. And if you’re thinking to this listening. Okay, Miriam, I need more ideas like that for actually getting people to buy my art. That’s exactly why I’m doing Artpreneur Boot Camp live.
Miriam Schulman: September 28th, 29th and 30th. Now, the general admission to my boot camp is free, but I want you inside the VIP experience because that’s where selling gets real specific. Vip is where we get much more hands on. You’ll get three live VIP semi-private group coaching sessions with me. Bring your real sales questions and I’ll be coaching artists live in those rooms. You also get my luxury collector attraction kit, which is concrete stuff. No fluff outreach scripts, a soft inquiry to sale follow up sequence, and what to say when somebody asks what you have that’s cheaper so you don’t fold and discount. And then you get the AI collector concierge prompt pack for writing all of it faster. Zoom caps. How many people I can have in this meeting? So VIP spots are limited. Go to SchulmanArt.Com/vip-live. That’s SchulmanArt.com/vip-live. Okay, now let me tell you what I would do differently. Two things. So the sale definitely brought in a lot of money. A little over $1,200. Don’t copy my pricing from back then. I was underpricing my art. And also this was years ago, so prices have gone up. I want you to copy the strategy, not the numbers. But the other thing that I did was I ran a 15% off coupon and with the code wet paint. And here’s the thing some people didn’t even use the coupon, so the coupon was definitely not the most important part of this.
Miriam Schulman: And yeah, I would, I would skip the coupon completely if I was running it now. Let me tell you how to run your own sale. Four things. Number one, choose work that’s genuinely in progress. Not almost finished, but actually in progress and let them see where it is. Don’t make it look more polished or finished. Two tell them what your intention is with it when they can’t see the finished painting yet. Your description has to do a lot more of the legwork. And I mean plain words, not artsy words. Like I’m exploring liminality. Tell them what you’re making and what’s exciting about it. Three give your email list first access with a real deadline. Keep the window short and tie it to something real about the work. You could always say, though, on this date is when I’m releasing it to everyone on social media, that’s fine too. But you’re keeping a deadline where they have special access for follow up. When you have something new to report, what changed? What’s sold? What’s left? Not. Here’s a reminder. Wrap it up. Every artist I know runs on the same instinct. Finish the artwork. Photograph it perfectly. Frame it, list it, perfect it before anybody even sees it. And I understand why nobody wants to be judged on something half finished. But the finished painting isn’t the only interesting part of your story.
Miriam Schulman: Your collectors almost never get to see what happened before the painting was finished. Now, not all of them will care, but some of them will. And you’ll never know which ones if you don’t invite them in early. And I want to tell you one more thing. This is based on a YouTube comment I got. So the commenter was saying they were pushing back on my email philosophy and saying, oh, they never open emails. They have 15000 unopened emails. Fair. But don’t build your strategy around the way you act. Some people love emails, some people hate them, but some people love them. You’re sending the emails for the people who love them. Okay, go look at what’s on your easel right now. Go look at the thing that’s nowhere near ready. The one you would maybe not even dream of sending anybody. That’s the one you’re going to put in your wet paint sale. And if you want more strategies you can actually use to sell your art. Come join me live at the Artpreneur boot camp. General admission is free, but I want you in VIP. So go to SchulmanArt.Com/vip-live. That’s SchulmanArt.com/vip-live. And I’ll see you there. All right, my friend. Thanks so much for joining me. And I’ll see you 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 at @SchulmanArt, and of course on SchulmanArt.com.
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