Why Artists Struggle to Sell Their Work (It's Not What You Think)

Most advice about selling art starts in the wrong place. It starts with strategy - pricing formulas, content calendars, the right way to talk about your work online, etc. And that is useful. But if you've ever followed the advice and still felt like something was off, like the business side of your work doesn't quite sound like you, there's a reason for that.

Selling is not where the real work begins.

Art has always existed in tension with commerce. What's new is the speed of it, and the particular pressure of an algorithm economy that rewards repetition and gives you roughly two seconds to capture someone's attention. In that environment, a lot of artists end up managing multiple bodies of work — the work they must make, the work that sustains them, and the work that keeps them visible. Many have lost track of which is which.

What I've found, working with artists for over 25 years, is that the struggle is rarely about marketing knowledge. It's about having lost the thread back to yourself.

Before strategy, before visibility, there is the deeper question: who are you as an artist, and what do you actually stand for? Your values. Your why. Your habits. Your rhythms.  The conditions your creativity needs to stay alive. When those things are clear, decisions become cleaner, pricing stops feeling like a fight with yourself, and the way you make and speak about your work rings true.

This is the foundation of everything I teach inside The Artists Well — a living community for artists and creatives working in any medium, anywhere in the world. We work on the inside before we work on the outside, because that's the order that holds.

This is what I mean when I talk about being a self-determined artist. This is not a mindset practice – it’s a genuine understanding of yourself that commerce cannot compromise.

The well opens May 31st at 10am Pacific. If this is the conversation you've been waiting to have, I'd be glad to have you there.

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