Promote Your Art Without Feeling Icky

The first thing is that artists are deeply uncomfortable with sales and promotion.

That is okay.

Comment and tell me how many people here are uncomfortable with the idea of sales and promotion and how uncomfortable because varying degrees, hopefully we can get you guys down to being mildly uncomfortable instead of deeply.

But this is where I think being with other artists and talking about this really it's a change of mindset it doesn't have anything to do with information or how good your work is it really is a way of shifting how you think about it because most of us artists out there We're not trying to be sleazebags.

At least I hope we are not.

I think most of us have good intentions, which is that we're artists, we make these beautiful things, and we oftentimes would like to make a living, or at the very least, make a little bit of extra cash from that.

And there is nothing wrong with any of those things.

Inherently, none of that is sleazy.

And also, I think people do appreciate that someone's an independent artist.

It's not like you're buying something from Target.

You're buying from an artist who is very invested in what they do, who cares deeply about their creative process.

And we have to be able to say to ourselves, I am not a sleaze.

Fundamentally, I am not trying to rip people off.

I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad.

That's a very earnest... initiative that we want to do, which is perfectly natural.

I mean, you ask any artist out there and you say, would you like to make some money from your art? I mean, maybe some people like really, really don't care.

And I could understand how for some people it might feel disruptive.

But just like as a basic concept, making money from your art is is not sleazy.

And for some reason, I think a lot of us see it that way.

And that's why it is so hard to do.

Artists will say to me, promoting just feels so awkward.

And I feel like an idiot.

It feels really embarrassing.

Who here has felt embarrassed when you tried to promote something or tell people about your work in a way? Because let's face it, all of us, are going to be in situations where we're like, I don't really like this that much.

However, look at it this way.