Here’s a truth about being an artist. You are rare.  There is only one of you, and you can only make so much.  This is great news if you are trying to sell your art, because people know that artist are unique creatures and make one-of-a-kind things.  A smart creative business owner will understand and leverage the thing that people already understand instinctively.  We can call this the power of urgency and scarcity. Urgency convinces people that they must take action NOW, because the opportunity will be lost very soon.  Scarcity is the principle that there is a limited amount of the thing, so the buyer must take action NOW because it will run out.  (Notice the theme: TAKE ACTION NOW) For artists, this fits very nicely into the rhythm of a studio practice, and it is in no way a false claim —like I said, artists are rare.  Handmade, unique art is RARE by design.  Today I want to talk about 3 ways to build urgency and scarcity into your art

Should I put my art on sale?

The most conventional way we see urgency is via sales.  There’s a price, it is marked down, and the lower price will only be available for a short time.  I think this is great for commodities who are in a very competitive market, but I don’t love the idea of sales for artist.  I don’t like sales on art because it devalues the art.  Higher end brands rarely go on sale.  That said, I think there are some exceptions.  One exception could be a discount code associated with an email sign up.  Getting someone’s email is highly valuable, and it would be worth it to me to offer something in return.  You also might consider a “studio clearance sale” that happens VERY seldom.  I do something like this usually once a year to clear out any back stock and I offer very attractive prices.  But it is RARE and I make sure that the offer is exclusive to my email list.

The Reverse Art Sale

Another way to create urgency is to create what I call “The Reverse Sale”. When you are just starting out, you will likely offer lower prices on your work. When you release new art for sale, you might say, ”This new release has a lower price, but the price will be going up at the next release.”    As a side note, you can always raise your art prices, but it is harder to lower them without devaluing your art.  So you can work that in to your marketing to let people know the price will be going up soon, so get in now!

Limited time Art Sales

As you may know, one of my favorite ways to create urgency and scarcity is to sell my work only for very limited times.  I do a shop update of my paintings once every 4-6 weeks.  To learn more about how this works for me, watch my vlog ”To sell art stop selling”.  Once again, this is not a falsely drumming up some smarmy urgency that doesn’t really exist.  The urgency is real.  Even if a favorite piece doesn’t sell, the collector is by no means assured it will be offered again in a month’s time

Offering my art for sale once a month or so works very well with my studio rhythm.  I am only able to make so many pieces, they’re all different, and when they’re gone they’re gone.  I definitely recommend this to artists who are in the early stages of building their business.  You can find the timing that works for you, but once in a while offer “a collection”, keep it available for a set amount of time, and then pull it. 

 You can read more about my methods here.