Business Plans for Artists: What Every Artist Should Know
Writing a business plan is a necessity for any creative.
If you are making and selling artwork, congratulations! You can officially call yourself a business person – and every business person needs a business plan.
Unfortunately, most arts programs don’t teach their students how to actually sell their work, let alone create an outline for how to make their skills marketable. A business plan makes it possible for a great artist to become a profitable one.
Why do you need a business plan?
If you’re new to considering your art practice a business, putting together a business plan might seem like trying to learn a foreign language.
The truth is, a business plan is your ticket to making your art career profitable. While it’s not something that’s typically taught in art school, learning how to write a business plan for artists takes the stress out of your creative pursuits. You’ll have a clear-cut pathway to profitability thanks to your business plan.
It’s especially helpful to have a business plan if you are planning to sell your work at art fairs. Instead of finding yourself scrambling to pull together all the odds and ends of the business side of your studio, you’ll have much more time to spend on preparing your artwork and calling in prosperity!
What is a business plan?
A business plan details the who, what, when, where, why and how of your art business. Luckily, a lot of this information can be pulled directly from your artist statement, making less work for you! However, much of your business plan will require some dreaming, asking you to write down what your ideal art career will look like.
Let’s get into the WWWWWH of things:
The “Who” of your art business is you. Artists who are part of a collective or group will include anyone else who may be creating artwork with them in this part of the business plan.
Set for the “What” of your art practice. What are you in the business of creating? What is your medium? What niche or audience does your artwork speak to? In what ways can your skills or particular style translate into different types of work – can you paint large-scale community murals, or design furniture, or work on clothing collaborations?
What is your production schedule like? This will be included in the “When” part of your business plan.
Where will you be selling your artwork? Will you create an online store as well as selling your work in person at art fairs and gallery events? Knowing where you’ll be selling your artwork will help you price and distribute it.
Why do you create art? What drives you in your pursuits?
Take stock of what is important to you about your art practice and what will be necessary for you to consider your art business successful. We’ll get more into these elements of your business plan below!
How do you make a self-employed artist business plan?
Creating a business plan takes the guessing and uncertainty out of working for yourself. Most likely, you already have the components of what needs to go into your business plan floating around in your brain. Like beginning a new work, the best way to create your business plan is to just get going!
We took our learnings from artists, gallerists and our time running the best art fair for independent artists and distilled it into this simple plan.
Superfine’s Artist Business Plan Example
Create Your Mission Statement
Creating a business plan can be fairly similar to crafting your artist statement. They include similar information, like who your target audience is and how does your work serve to reach those people.
If you’ve never written an artist statement before (or maybe it’s been a while since you crafted your last one), start by asking yourself these simple questions:
Why did I become an artist?
What themes or topics do I explore with my art?
What materials do I use when creating art?
What do I want people to feel, know or experience when they interact with my work?
After doing this exercise, you will most likely find yourself with enough information to write up to a 5 sentence mission statement that will help you focus your business plan and communicate effectively with your customer base, potential collaborators, art fairs and other art professionals.
2. Define Your Vision Statement
Once you’ve nailed down your mission statement, think about how you’d like to see your business evolve. This is called your Vision Statement, and details what you’d like to accomplish with your business over the next several years.
What do you want to be known for? Where or in what publications, institutions, or stores would you like to see your art featured? Is there anyone you would like to collaborate with?
3. Set Realistic Goals
Many people like to have long-term and short-term goals to help keep growth of their business in perspective. The most important part of goal-setting is keeping your desires realistic.
How many works a month would you ideally like to create?
How many collectors would you like to have in 1 year from now?
What is an achievable goal for how many people you would like to have signed up for your email subscriber list?
How much money would you like to make in a month? How much in one year?
By keeping your goals realistic, you are taking the first step in setting yourself up for success.
Take your goal-setting to the next level by breaking down your larger vision into steps. One method that works particularly well is to break down your larger goals into smaller actions. What can you accomplish in:
One week
One month
Six month
One year
5 years
Try it out with your art business goals and let us know!
3. Research Your Competitors
Knowing who your competitors are is standard practice for any business – including art business owners! Research what your competitors are doing as part of their art practice, how they present themselves, their social media and email marketing strategies, and more.
Understanding your competition gives you a greater knowledge of some of the business strategies and hurdles you may be up against. Ultimately, this knowledge will help you stand out from the crowd.
When assessing your competitors, keep the following things in mind:
How is your practice similar to theirs?
How are they succeeding in areas that you are not?
What can you do to improve what you are doing?
Where are you succeeding in areas where they are not?
How can you continue to stand out as a front runner that collectors will be drawn to?
4. Finances
Having a handle on the financial part of your art business is crucial to seeing success. How will you pay for supplies? How much will you charge for your work? Knowing these details will help you stay on top of not only your bills, but your art business as well. When you know exactly when and how your studio rent is due, you can spend more time working on your next conceptual piece.
Create a simple list or, if you’re up to it, a spreadsheet of the financial ins and outs of your business. These are the basic expenses you should list on your spread sheet:
Expenses – do you rent a studio space? How often do you purchase supplies, like canvases or paint tubes, and how much do they cost?
Funding – many artists have side-hustles (and even full-time jobs!) in addition to their art practice. How will you fund your creative endeavors? Is there a set percentage of your monthly income that goes to your art practice to purchase supplies, run advertisements on social media, or apply for art fairs? You may also want to consider applying for grants, or even crowd-funding some projects.
Pricing – how will you price your artwork? What kind of monthly income will you need to see in order to turn a profit? If you’re not sure, check out our helpful pricing matrix.
Anyone who is in the business of selling something has a payment processing plan. Set up a program, like Square, QuickBooks or through your website host (like SquareSpace or Wordpress) to generate invoices and process payment.
Another perk of taking payments through a processing plan (instead of only taking cash or check) is that it will make your end-of-year accounting so. much. easier.
5. Create A Marketing Plan
You could have the best business plan for artists in New York City, but if no one knows about you and your artwork it’s not serving you! Draw out a marketing plan so you can spread the word about your work and put yourself out there.
Create a website. This is a perfect place to host your online portfolio!
Create your social media profiles. You’ll be able to start interacting with members of your community right away. For tips on how to get the most out of your social media practice, check out this AMA we recently did with Kat from Create! Magazine.
Map out your social media marketing strategy. This is especially helpful to review anytime you are gearing up for an art show!
Set up you email list. We recommend MailChimp!
6. Streamline Your Art-Making Process
As an artist business owner, you know that the process of creating and selling art doesn’t stop with varnishing a canvas.
It’s helpful to know in advance what will happen with your artwork once the creation process is complete so that it can spend less time in storage and more time in the possession of your collectors.
Here are a few simple steps for optimizing your creation-to-marketing process:
Catalogue the work. Not a fan of spreadsheets? There’s no time like the present to get organized. Make a running list of the works you’re finishing, including the title, materials, date started and finished, dimensions and price. This will serve as an easy-reference for doing things like promoting your artwork, listing it online and more.
Photograph the work. You can’t sell your work online without a reference photo for people to look at! Plus, photographing your work also serves as an archive of what you’ve accomplished. Add the images to your website portfolio to show off what you’ve done and what is currently available to purchase. You’ll want to have great photos of your work, so we recommend supporting a fellow creative and hiring a professional photographer who specializes in capturing your particular type of art.
Let your fans and followers know. Send out an email blast to your list, post on social media, and otherwise get the word out! Your work deserves to be seen, especially if you plan on exhibiting your newest creations at an art fair like Superfine Los Angeles.
7. Make a Sales Plan
How do you plan on selling your artwork? Established salespeople in most industries will tell you that the key to maximizing profits is to diversify your approach.
A good practice to follow entails publishing your newest work on all of your online platforms immediately after you’ve finished, archived and photographed it.
Try listing your artwork on the following platforms to gain exposure and reach new collectors:
Email newsletter
Instagram
Facebook & Facebook Marketplace
Superfine Art Fair (we look forward to your application!)
Pinterest
Any other online sales platform that you think is right for you!
Ready to put your art business plan to work?
Now that you have this artist business plan outline for reference, practice making your own. You’ll find that ideas come easier and you will be less stressed with the technical details once you have your art business plan in place!
We’re currently accepting applications for our 2021 art fairs in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, DC. Apply now!