Spring Clean Your Art Business: Cut the Dead Weight, Double the Revenue

0:00Coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, spring clean your art business. Cut the dead weight, double the revenue. Specifically, spring cleaning isn't just for your closet, it's for your art business. Most artists have a broken lineup and don't know it. Three things happening right now that make this urgent. And by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to restructure your lineup for maximum customer acquisition this spring.

0:42All right, well, welcome back to another episode of the Art Marketing Podcast. And before we kick this one off, blown away, floored, okay, floored. That last episode, I think in the history of this podcast, that last episode, I have received the most direct feedback in the form of memes that you guys are sending me. I'm getting them in our private community. I'm getting them sent to me on Instagram, on Facebook. I've been emailed them.

1:12Some of you guys have not even used the whole meme concept as it's currently known. I've seen some where people painted, they have their own painted meme, so they're not even using a cultural one, and they're throwing text on top of it. Absolutely unbelievable. You guys are going to start charging up the engagement battery, and I'm just thrilled. I mean, just thrilled to see that. But to the topic on hand, if you haven't listened to that episode, go back one episode and listen to it. It'll help. But today, it's about spring cleaning, right?

1:44And the spring season is here. It's Easter this weekend, so I'm a little bit behind the times releasing this right now. But spring is less about the fact that it's Easter this weekend or Mother's Day, which is a big art-selling holiday coming up, or Father's Day, which is also a good art-selling holiday. Spring is just a mentality that you get into, right? And spring cleaning is a thing. It's a thing for all of us. Energy levels are up in spring. Winter is over. It's time to get focused on our art business, what's going on inside of it.

2:15One, the tax refund cash is going to start hitting bank accounts immediately. Ask me about this because my wife and I got defrauded and stopped at fraudulent. I'm not going to talk about it. Anyway, average tax refund in the United States, $3,100. That's a painting, probably a painting of yours. But also, wall space opens up generally, right? Buyers are relocating, swapping winter for spring energy, throwing stuff away, repurposing spaces. It's a good time to look critically at your business. And by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to restructure your lineup for maximum customer acquisition, which is really, really important.

2:54And a lot of these topics I've covered over the years, but I'm not naive, okay? I know people that discover this podcast or listen to this podcast, it's not like you go back and listen to every single solitary episode from the very beginning to the very end. So, some of the hits, we have to recover, we have to rehash, we have to hear them again and again and again, because sometimes the lessons don't completely stick, right? They don't completely stick. So, let's do a lineup audit, okay? The lineup audit. And I would say the problem that most artists, most photographers, most creatives have is you don't have enough diversity in your lineup, right?

3:36If the only thing that you sell are originals starting at $500 or the only thing that you sell are photographic prints starting wherever you start them, okay? And going up, you just leave a ton of money on the table. And I've said this a bunch, but it just bears repeating, okay? Because there's this giant misnomer, myth, mental gymnastics hurdle blockage that there's some definition of what constitutes a fine artist.

4:08And what that definition is, is that you need to have this prestigious lineup. Like, stop, stop. There are basic rules of business, okay? There are basic rules of business. And you are running a business. We are all attempting to sell our creations. And there are rules. There are rules that have applied for centuries, for millennium, if you like, okay? And in my humble opinion, this works across the board. It works if you're selling tens of millions of dollars a year, okay? A la Weiland, okay?

4:39Or if you're struggling to break 10 grand a year. Or if you were just attempting to sell your art and you just started yesterday. It just works, okay? It just works. We're going to go through my pricing and lineup rant, right? And I think back to last week's episode. And I'm reminded of a story. Artist that's on our platform. And he came to me and he had a big celebrity deal. And he was so stoked on the celebrity deal. And he's got a big list. And he's got a healthy business. And I really like him.

5:09So he's like, man, you got to help me out with this, right? You got to help me out with this. And he does this big celebrity launch. And he has a tightly defined niche. And he has these limited edition, hand-signed, celebrity-endorsed prints, right? And he's selling them for $2,000 a piece. And he blasts all of them into his email list. And I think he sold right out of the gate. It's like $45,000 worth of them. It's in his niche. It's an artist in his niche. A musician. It was just perfect for him, right?

5:39And he was just so buoyed by that success. He's like, you got to help me. You got to help me run some ads. I just know I'm going to be able to run some ads. And it's totally going to work. And I've already done $45,000 on this. I just, help me do it, right? I was like, I don't think you should do this. I think this is a bad idea. This is not how art sells. You don't just lead with a celebrity, a cold audience. But I was like, you know what? I could use a case study. Let's go, right? And so he advertises, he spends, I don't know, I can't remember, $1,500, $2,000 or something like that on people that love this particular artist.

6:14And he burned through his budget near immediately. Yeah, he got some followers. And I think he got one ad to cart. And that's it. Nothing else. Not a single solitary sip, right? And the reason is, is because he was attempting to lead with a $2,000 hand-signed original to a bunch of cold traffic on Facebook and Instagram, which just never, never works, okay? There's too much friction in a wall art purchase. That is not how selling on social media works.

6:47If he did that, and instead of just a $2,000 hand-signed limited edition print of this particular musician, he would have done just fine. Because you have to have the price ladder framework in place, okay? And let me just say this again. The greatest selling artists in the United States elsewhere have this in place. They don't care what it says about them as an artist and whether they're a bougie, she-shee, museum, ha-ha-ha-ha, highfalutin, fine artist, okay?

7:19Yeah, you've heard me say it, but I'm just going to say it again. It's important to revisit this when we're in spring. You need to have something in the $0 to $100 range, okay? You need to have something in the $0 to $100 range that is non-wall art-related. And I'm going to go into detail about the size of this market in comparison to the art market in a second. But it opens you up to impulse purchases, low commitment, okay? Low friction items, and it doesn't matter what it is, okay?

7:53It's spring. Maybe you've been reluctant to do this. I don't care what it is. Coasters, phone cases, tote bags, stickers, postcards, photo books, yoga mats, throat pillows, tote bags, magnets, smaller things that are related and adjacent to whatever your creativity is. You've got to get something. It's spring. It is time for some cleaning. You've got to get something in your lineup in that range, okay? The $100 to $1,000, most of you guys don't struggle with this. Smaller prints, medium-sized prints, large prints, smaller originals, pretty easy to hit.

8:29The $1,000 plus, your originals, your large formats, your limited editions, commissions, whatever, right? You have to be able to answer for that buyer that doesn't have time to measure their wall, talk to their significant other, marinate on it, go back and forth, and then come back, right? You need to be exposed this spring, going forward to summer, as we round the corner, to fall and into Q4, you've got to have this dialed in. I know you've heard me say this, but I literally want all of you to take it seriously.

9:02Zero to 100, 100 to 1,000, 1,000 plus, okay? It just makes sense. And it's two markets. It opens you up as a creative to two markets, not just one. The art market, okay, which you're all in, which is a giant, multi-billion-dollar market for wall art, okay? But also the gifting market, which is enormous, which is in hundreds of billions. So if you're selling only wall art of your creations, you are participating in one market, okay?

9:34One market. Add non-wall art items, and you're playing in both. You have exposure to both, right? And all the successful art galleries, you know, and these are springing up more and more. And, you know, I mentioned Weiland earlier, or I think about, you know, 10 or 20 episodes back or so, the humble donkey who's in that tiny town in Round Top, Texas, does extremely, extremely well by having a retail gallery and having the smaller items with your creations on it.

10:08People love buying these things. People love gifting these things. Every single solitary, one of them constitutes a sale, right? And it doesn't matter, you guys, if you're in the highest high-end of markets to the lowest low-end of markets or anywhere in between. All of the highest-grossing art sellers have low-ticket, low-friction options, okay? You've got to get them. Spring is the time when you've got to look seriously at your lineup, okay? They are the low-ticket items, your secret weapon.

10:39They are your secret weapon? When I say it, weapon. And I talk about, like, you know, why the reasons for this exist. And I know some of you have heard this, but let's just hear it again. The compounding interest argument, okay? In business, fundamentally, as an online merchant, an offline merchant, as a retail merchant, which all of you guys are some combination of the three or all of the three or one of the three, you're trying to get revenue, right? And the rules are the rules.

11:10The easiest customer to get is the one that you already have, meaning it is easier to get someone to come back and purchase your art again than it is to get someone to purchase your art for the first time, right? You know, if you go through the year, if this spring goes and you don't fix this deficit in your lineup and you go through the rest of the year, spring turns into summer, turns into fall, back to winter, and you don't fix this hole, you know what the number of customers you are going to acquire this year looks like, right?

11:40For the average small art business or even medium-tier business, it's 7 to 10, maybe 20, maybe for the more successful ones, 30 to 50 customers. You add in these low-ticket, low-friction items, and your 7 to 10 customers goes to 50 to 60 or 70 or 80, right? Because it's a transaction where these people that are exposed to your creativity and your new profound skill as a meme lord, as a meme smith, as you listened to last episode, they are going to reward your creativity.

12:12They are going to reward you for entertaining them with a purchase, okay? And when you have that list, as you get to the end of the year, every marketing initiative you run, it goes to a larger pool of existing buyers, all because you've opened up your lineup for this exposure, okay? And it just, it turns into this situation compounding and compounding year after year after year. And I always say this because it's true, and it's like, I see so many artists in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and yes, 90s,

12:44and they've never done this their entire career. And had they done this, especially earlier in their career, okay, their customer list would have been a staggering size. It would just keep compounding and compounding and compounding, right? Like, do you know what your business would have looked like if you did this when you were 25 years old instead of starting at 70? Yes, still got to start, okay? And, you know, one of the other things, especially as we're talking about like the lower range of the market and these items, like low-ticket items drive high-ticket sales, right?

13:19I grew up in a very bougie neighborhood. I'm not saying it is a flex, but I always laugh at, you know, the Ferrari hat principle, right? Like, why do guys who buy Ferraris and drive Ferraris, and I'm not knocking you if it's you, okay? But why do you always have to buy the hat too, right? You bought a Ferrari, and you got to buy the hat, and you're wearing the hat around. Like, you have to let people know two times that you're driving the Ferrari, right? Sometimes I see it in McLaren. The Lambo guys don't do it. They have Integrita. But the point is, the high-ticket drives the low-ticket.

13:50The low-ticket also drives the high-ticket, right? If you buy a $5,000 original, if they buy a $5,000 original from you or a $2,500 original from you, they love that work. They are going to want to have your coffee table book, because the coffee table book signals the prestige of the item on the wall, right? This is just psychology, and it works both ways. Like, if they have the coffee table book, and they see that art all the time, they're going to want a piece on the wall. No different than that guy in the Sergio Tashini jumpsuit that has the Ferrari hat on.

14:23He's driving the Ferrari. No joke, my buddy's dad, like, bought this Dodge driver, and he had the Dodge driver hat, and he used to wear Sergio Tashini jumpsuits. It just makes me laugh, the mental image. Like, yeah, okay, you came here in a Viper, and you got the Viper hat. It was like right when that car came out. It was hot. It doesn't matter. The high-ticket drives the low-ticket. The low-ticket drives the high-ticket. They just work together. They work together beautifully, right? And I think back to my buddy, Joan, and then again to, like, the humble donkey. Both have been guests in this podcast. Like, they kill it with the low-ticket, $100 items in their gallery.

14:58All day long. All day long, right? People come. They want to reward your creativity. Do you have something to sell to them that is non-Wallart related? You've got to get this going. You've got to get this going. Spring is the time to get this dialed in in your lineup, okay? Then we can talk about order bumps and revenue boosters, right? And everything that we seek to do online, and how many times have I used this example?

15:29Why do all the art storefronts' websites look so minimalist and simple? Because all we're attempting to do with the online experience is mimic the real-world experience. What is the real-world experience? It is art galleries. It is museums. They all look the same all over the world. Every culture, every language, plain white walls, just the art. So the online experience attempts to mimic the offline real-world experience, okay? Well, let's talk about you guys being retailers. Let's talk about you guys attempting to sell your retail creations.

16:03Why is it that for some reason, people in the art and photography markets are not supposed to mimic the tried-and-true, what has worked in retail for decades, probably centuries, probably millennia, right? And I talk about this in the capacity of an order bump and or a revenue booster. And, you know, again, everyone always uses the McDonald's example. I'll use it. Would you like fries with that? McDonald's originally was selling burgers.

16:34Someone came up with a bright idea. Hey, why don't we just include fries with that, right? And it completely drove up revenue. And I think about this all the time because, one, the order bump, do you want fries with that? And then, two, the revenue booster, which in this capacity I'm using as after the purchase has been made, you offer them yet another item that they can buy, you have a much higher propensity to increase your AOV, your average order value. Very important for any business.

17:04Extremely important for your business, right? And the analogy I always give for the offline online is, like, go to your local hardware store. What happens? Or you could even say the supermarket. You're waiting in line to check out. And in the hardware store example, they snake you through all those low-ticket items. Beef jerky and electric fly swatters and duct tape and key chains and Yeti mugs and all kinds of stupid brick-a-brack.

17:36And they've got the ice cream there so that your kids will grab it. Like, they do that because it significantly increases the AOV, right? And then you finish your sale, right? And by the way, or you're about to make your sale. By the way, hose nozzles are on sale. $19.99 this week only. Do you want one? No, I'm okay. Thank you. Which is, like, you know, the pre-purchase booster, which is the order bump. In addition to everything that you've just been snaked through and they hope you grabbed. And then, after the fact, right, on the post-purchase, do you want to round your change up to donate to such and such?

18:10The credit card's already in. Like, you're done, right? That same psychology, take a shot at selling something additional with the art when they're purchasing the art. Then take a shot after the transaction to try and do so again, right? Hey, someone buys a $1,200 metal print, right? Do you want to add a set of coasters for $39.99? After it's all done, do you want to add a matching cell phone case? You have to be able to play these kinds of games.

18:43They're not even games. They're just tried and true. Always worked for retail. Works in person. Works online. Undefeated. Undefeated, okay? The fundamental tenants that work in retail work online. They're important for absolutely everyone, including you, the artist, okay? Part three of this, right? The cell phone case. I've got to talk about it again. I did a completely dedicated episode on this. I don't know how many of you have listened to it. I find the cell phone case, okay? The most powerful art photography creations advertisement vehicle on the planet.

19:20I don't think anything's even close, okay? I don't think it's even close. I want every single solitary one of you offering cell phone cases. I would go as far to say that if I was an artist trying to make it right now, I would include a couple of these things with every single solitary piece of art that I sell and just include it in my prices. It just comes automatically. Why? I got updated 2026 stats for this. Americans check their phone 186 times per day.

19:53Per day. 11.6 times per hour. The average daily screen time in the United States, four hours and 30 minutes. Okay? Four hours and 30 minutes. 84.6% check their phone within 10 minutes of waking. We're all guilty of this one, let's be honest. I'm surprised that number's not even higher. 45.8% consider themselves addicted, up from 43.2% in 2026. This one scares me, and I'm just saying this to say this.

20:2653.1% have never gone 24 hours without their phone. That's crazy. Are you in that bucket? Have you gone 24 hours without your phone? Fun fact for me is I like riding motorcycles, and I've taken a couple of trips with this outfit where they take the cell phone from you, and they make a whole ceremony out of it. It's like a big Pelican case, and they put all the cell phones at the beginning of the trip in the case, and they lock it up, and they don't give it to you until three days later. It's freaking glorious, you guys. It's amazing how much better you feel on day two, day three,

20:57when you finally realize that thing's not in your pocket. You've got nothing to check. Can we just go back to the good old days? But anyway, 87.4% use their phone while watching TV. The U.S. cell phone case market is $26 billion annually, okay? And so why do I love the thought of your creations printed on a cell phone case? Because if somebody picks up a phone on average 186 times per day, that is 186 times per day that your art can potentially be seen.

21:31If these people that are going to pick up their phone 186 times per day, or leave it on the top of a bar or a coffee barista's table or a table at a restaurant or in their purse or in their wallet or pull it out, that is 186 times a day that your art can potentially be seen by somebody in the real world. I don't know how you'd beat that. That is insanely powerful marketing, okay? There is nothing that I can do digitally. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Pinterest ads, Google ads, email ads, radio.

22:02There's just nothing else that comes close to giving you 186 shots a day. It's someone experiencing your work, okay? Someone experiences your work that many times, the minute that they are going to be ready to purchase art, who is going to be top of mind? It's you. It's you, okay? Next, merch as advertisement, not product. Merch as advertisement, not product, okay? It's a mindset shift.

22:33And you could almost, because everyone's like, oh, Patrick, I don't want to do this. I don't want to open myself up to this. I know it's string cleaning, and I'm feeling the string vibes, and, you know, really, I want to turn things around the string. I hear you. You're saying, I just don't want to do it. I'm not going to make any money on it. You know, I make $7 here, $10 here, $12 here. We're going to do a bunch. It's just marketing. It's just the most effective marketing when you open yourself up to these lower ticket items, okay? You could afford to break even on every single solitary one you sell.

23:03That is still a massive win, because those are your advertisements that just go around everywhere. I love the cell phone cases, yes. I also love the coffee cups. You're in someone's kitchen every single solitary day. If they drink coffee in it, even three days a week or two days a week, like, that's incredible, right? You should break even on that just because it gets your art in all the places that is so not competitive, right? Getting someone's attention, despite you now being a meme smith and a meme lord,

23:35is really hard to do on phones, on tablets, on computers, on TVs, for that matter. Merch gets you a beachhead, okay? It gets you a beachhead, and I shouldn't even say merch because it has a negative connotation. $100 or less cheaper items that you can get into people's hands all day. They go about their day and they will see it. That is the Shangri-La, you guys. It's the Shangri-La. I always talk about, like, you know, my refrigerator and, like, my kids have such a great time

24:06putting stickers on it. We collect stickers from all our trips and, you know, from this and from that. And the product comes from Amazon and it came with whatever. They're all over the fridge, right? They're all over the fridge. I see it every time I go into my fridge to get an adult beverage, okay? I'm reminded of these things, right? It's just such powerful advertising. It is such powerful advertising that you need working for you in your business, reminding people you exist, okay? That you have creations, okay?

24:37And there are so many smart ways to do it. Like I said, with the pre-order, do you want fries with this, right? The order bump, if you like, and then the post-revenue, those are all great, but, like, contemplate the things you can do with these lower-ticket items. It just gives you so many more weapons. And, you know, I sit there and I think about, like, all the tactical recipes that you can do on a phone case. You know, you can bundle them. You can do three-pack, seven-pack, 10-pack, different cell phone models. You know, open yourself up to corporate ordering.

25:09Open yourself up to office party. Open yourself up to stocking stuffers. No one is stuffing, okay, your $3,500 original into a stocking, right? It's just not happening. That's just not happening. And there's so many different ways that you can get creative with your marketing, okay, by opening yourself up to these items. So I really, really want you guys to audit your lineup, okay? Audit your lineup. Come up with a spring cleaning action plan.

25:42And I think this is just a great time of year to audit your current lineup. Write down everything you sell and its price point. Do you hit the ladder? Do you have things in the zero to a hundred? Do you have things in the hundred to a thousand? Do you have things well over a thousand? Also really, really important. If you don't add a low cost item, please, this week, okay? We're not the only gig in town, okay? If you're on Art Storefront, you can sign up for Art Storefront. It's great. We're going to give you all that opportunity. If not, find another way to do it. I don't care if it's handmade, whatever it is.

26:13When you open yourself up for this, okay, you are going to get impulse purchases. You're going to get purchases that require zero spousal consultation, okay? POD, print-on-demand, makes this trivially easy. For you other adjacent creatives, it's very easy to just think about how can I make something that's a little bit smaller and a little cheaper, right? You've got multiple promotional opportunities. Easter's pretty much come and gone. But you've got Mother's Day, you've got Father's Day, you've got tax return sales.

26:44There's so many different marketing opportunities that you can use and leverage these in. It's crazy, right? And the analogy that I'd love to give is like, you know, depending if you don't live in the serious, serious boonies, in which case you would have to get this online, but like go into Target or go into a Walmart and be very cognizant of when they change all of their marketing, all of their branding to get ready for a season. Like if you walked into a Target right now, there would be Easter everywhere.

27:15The minute Sunday's done and gone, all of the Mother's Day stuff is going to be in there. The minute Mother's Day is gone, all of the Father's Day stuff's going to be in there, right? Everything that we seek to do online is just duplicate what's always worked offline, right? What's always worked offline. And you have so many opportunities for flash sales, right? And it's really hard to run a flash sale on your same artistic prints that start at $375

27:45and you're going to knock them down to $300. Like, is that really a flash sale? No. But you could offer up your cell phone cases or your coasters or your greeting cards and for no reason at all, just run a flash sale on a Thursday and do an Instagram live, create a meme for it and throw it on there. Like those are the types of things that sell on social media. That's how you acquire customers, right? And I think it's just so, so important. And I think spring is the time, right? It applies to the biggest artist

28:16on down to the smallest artist, right? It applies to absolutely every single solitary business that's trying to acquire customers and is trying to increase their revenue. And I saw a comment recently in our community and he was talking about how like selling just simply doesn't work on social media. They were convinced of it. Saying it was a waste of time. Why would I attempt to sell my stuff on social media? And it's like, that's where I get to breathe heavily. Selling on social media has its own language, okay? If you went to Japan next weekend,

28:48love Japan by the way, it's really hard to get around not being able to speak Japanese. Quite frankly, it was the hardest country I've ever been to. No one speaks English over there at all. Or at least when I went 10 years ago. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, whatever. Social media is like that. It has its own language. If you went to Japan and you came home and you're like, man, it is really hard to get around that country. And someone goes, well, yeah, you kind of need to know the language to be able to do that. That's what social media is. That's what selling on social media is. You have to know what the language is.

29:19And the language is not, I'm going to post my high-end art and I'm going to sell a ton of my high-end art and that's how it works. That's not how it works, right? Like, I sit here and I think about like that artist and he's like, it just doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. He's tried and he's posted his art. He's posted his art. He's posted his art. Got some likes. Got some comments. No sales. Couple sales. Sale here or there. It just doesn't work. This is just not working. And I think back to this fly versus the ant story, right? And you know when a fly gets stuck inside of your room

29:51or stuck inside of a car or whatever. Like, what does it do? It desperately tries to escape. And what does it end up doing? It just ends up going whack, whack. It just keeps hitting the window and keeps hitting the window and keeps hitting the window and keeps hitting the window. Trying to sell your art on social media in a digital capacity, a lot of you guys are doing the fly thing. Let me just try it again. Whack. Let me just try it again. Whack. Let me just try it again. Whack. What was last episode all about? Last episode was trying to unlock a way to do things

30:22that is not something you've done before. Stop being the fly and flying in the window. Whack. And flying in the window. Whack. You ever put an obstacle in front of an ant? Some of us have to flash back to one of our kids and ants and the magnifying glass and that whole thing. But put an obstacle in front of an ant. It does not take an ant even more than a second. They hit it. And they're like, nope, can't go that way. They start going left. They hit it again. Nope, can't go that way. Then they start going right. They go right around it, right? They go right around it. An ant doesn't keep trying the same thing over and over and over and over and over again

30:54like the fly does. You got to be like an ant, okay? Selling your art in a digital capacity when you do what I am advocating you do, opening yourself up at the bottom of the market for lower ticket items that are under $100 that don't have a ton of friction and you look seriously at your lineup like that, you are opening yourself up for impulse purchases in a digital capacity. You are being an ant instead of the fly, right? And remember back to last episode, what does BarkBox do, right? 55 million a year in sales.

31:25They don't post anything about their product at all. They're just memorable as a brand. They're just entertaining, right? So when you're going to try to be entertaining and you're going to post the memes and you're going to mix your content up and then instead of taking a whack with the original, which you should still do, you can take a whack occasionally with some of these lower ticket, lower commitment items. And you're going to end up getting sales. And then when you get the sales, you have a relationship, you talk to this person, you're emailing them, they're going to think about you

31:56when it's time to make that big purchase. The vacation house. We moved into a new house. We just moved. I need a piece for here. All of those things. So your lineup is your business infrastructure. If you fix it, everything else, marketing, ads, emails, social selling will work harder. Okay? The spring season is right now. Pax refund money in bank accounts. Almost mine in a fraudulent one.

32:27That's happening today. Walls are going to start being redecorated because of spring this week. Okay? Artists are actually really good at marketing. You're really good at marketing when you apply your creativity to it. Right? You've just not done it consistently and you've not done it with a lineup that truly has you exposed to all of these items. So, go audit your lineup. Get a low ticket item in there. However you can. Do it immediately. Plan a spring sale and do it this week. Not next one. On that note,

32:58thanks for listening. And as always, have a great day.