Revisiting the "Online Sales" Dilemma
This morning, I spent some time on a conference call with somebody who is allegedly very skilled at marketing art, specifically for online sales.
My reason for doing so is my ongoing quest to translate what is essentially a pretty successful venture, in terms of selling my work face-to-face, into an equally successful venture selling online.
Once upon a time, my online sales were a lot better, but they seem to have fizzled out... pretty much since the whole Covid circus.
Sadly, the call didn't really leave me with any firm solutions.
However, talking to somebody who has spent a lot of time marketing art did help me clarify what exactly the issues at hand are and that's certainly a bit of help.
Just to Recap:
The fundamental challenge here is how to bridge the gap between being able to go to a weekend event, set up a vendor booth, enjoy considerable sales success with Alchemy Stones face-to-face, and likely coming home with probably $1500 to $2000 at the end of the experience.
On the other side of the bridge is the fact that I have the exact same items available for sale online and yet I feel fortunate if I make two or three sales a year totaling less than $100.
But it's not that simple! In order to find a viable solution, I first have to become very specific about where exactly the challenges are.
Issue #1: people don't actually know that they want what I have for sale until they see it and hold it in their hand. Moreover, they don't even know these items exis until they have them in front of them. Which leads us to...
Issue #2: it is all but impossible to do anything useful with SEO or keywording or tagging when people aren't actually searching for what you have for sale. Which leaves pretty much the option of "accidentally placing the product in front of the right people."
Issue #3: the bulk of my buyers (at events) are actually not art buyers or crafts buyers but come from a very broad range of typically UFO researchers, paranormal investigators, metaphysics, massage therapists, Reiki practitioners and "tinfoil hat" type buyers. It is a widely scattered demographic.
Issue #4: store-in-a-box type solutions are not useful to me because most of those base their success on various forms of print-on-demand and customization, which lends itself well to painters and photographers, but not to what I do.
What's more, I have a constantly changing inventory because during any given on-the-road event I end up selling 50-60 items and they have to be pulled from inventory and replaced with new items. And this isn't exactly something you can put on T-shirts, couch pillows, mousepads or coffee mugs. That removes a whole load of ready to go solutions from the running.
Of course, this process merely identifies the hurdles, without offering up any kinds of solutions.
The only real suggestion I got was to experiment with highly targeted advertising, mostly as an experiment to determine who actually responds best... which, of course, takes me right back to Facebook.
Whereas I am not a fan of Facebook, niche advertising did work fairly well to build my Facebook page following for my jewelry supplies business, some years back.
It was also suggested to me that I was "wasting my time" with eBay and Etsy because there is just so much clutter there, and keywords are less useful for me than knowing my niche demographic.
Anyway... still much to think about!
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2024.05.30 AS-TXT-263/233