What I stopped doing in my art business

Quick question: remember the things you used to do alllll the time that you can’t imagine doing today? Like eating a whole tin of frosting from the jar in one sitting or doing unknown drugs with a strange man twice your age. Yikes, right? Well this post is about that. But in an art business way. There are some things I simply don’t do anymore while running an art business and couldn’t imagine doing the way I used to. Let’s talk about it.

Using physical tracking tools for art sales

I stopped using pen and paper to keep track of sales. Now I use online tools which work way faster.

When I was viewing my art practice as a hobby, I didn’t keep track of sales at all. A sale of a painting (acrylic on canvas, back in those days) was a welcome surprise. During this phase I also gave my work away for free as gifts to friends and didn’t track that either.

When I started using my art practice as a side hustle, I would count the money in my wallet before and after the show.

Sales started to pick up and I decided I should know what my best sellers were. I would rip a sheet of paper out of my notebook and jot down what prints sold as I sold them. But then people started requesting digital payments, and I had to switch it up again.

When I got my Square reader, I could take card payments as well. I would manually enter in the price of each item as “custom amount” and it would add up how much I made each day. And I still counted the money in my wallet. I still used pen and paper to track which specific pieces sold.

When I decided to take art seriously as a business, I knew things needed to be different. I built my website. On the website, I take payments through Stripe and their software tracks my sales and tells me which items sold. That data is really helpful.

At shows, I still use Square. But now I make sure each sale is attached to an item and not simply a custom amount for a mystery item. This involves manually adding in each new item that I list for sale with details about price, title, etc. Listing each item allows me to know how much I make at each event and what I made it from. This is important because I sell more than just prints and originals now: mugs, notebooks, tapestries, calendars, cards, etc. It’s necessary to know WHICH products make me how much money. 

The automatic features of the online tools help a lot. Sure, I have to manually list each item on the website and again on the Square app. But once it’s listed, I can sell art and have a lot of data about that sale. It becomes very useful as time goes on and patterns start to emerge.

To top it off, I use Trello as the master record to track all of my income and expenses each day.

It consolidates all the info from my other two apps and corrects any errors that might’ve happened. It’s the final record and I use it for my taxes.

Here’s what my Trello boards look like, for those of you who are curious:

Trello is a free notetaking app. I use it for tons of ideas, organizing projects and more. On the Income/Expense board, I manually enter all expenses going out for the business, and every purchase incoming. It is very tedious. Especially as my business grows, I can see this becoming unsustainable. But for now it’s still something I use and I update it at the end of every day. 

Using pen and paper was sloppy, and often I would be busy chatting and forget to write things down. It was hard to determine a best seller or a solid track record. 

But with Stripe tracking online sales, Square recording all my in person sales (even cash), and tallying the two up on Trello at the end of the day – now I know exact data for my art sales. Even if I’m chatting up a customer and focusing more on the conversation than the sale, I can still capture all that data without trying to memorize it and still remember it by the end of our conversation (good luck with that lol).

The new way is infinitely better and I could never go back to how I was doing it before.

I stopped leaning on a social crutch

I stopped drinking at shows. I don’t need liquid courage to sell to strangers anymore. 

When I was first starting out, I was unsure of what to say to sell art and it made me feel a bit awkward. People can always sense your vibe no matter what you say, so the awkward part ruined anything I said and made it worse. 

So I started drinking a bit at art shows. Honestly, it really helped. 

I didn’t feel so shy and started speaking what I wanted to speak and being myself. I tested out sales lines and learned what worked and what flopped without caring too much about the results. It did serve me well for a time. 

But once I got comfortable selling to strangers, I toned it down a lot. 

I learned that people are really cool if you be your whole self. You don’t need to put on a super professional air if that’s not you. 

Letting myself relax let me be myself more, and genuinely get to know people – personally and from an art business perspective.

And once I got comfortable I knew it was time to move on. 

Now I might still have a drink if I’m at a late night bar show, but that’s just for fun. And I still limit myself when I’m “on the clock” for purposes of counting money and not getting distracted and etc. 

Disclaimer on this one: I’m not recommending this. Just sharing my personal experience! I used to be a heavy drinker in general so a few drinks at an event wasn’t wild for me. It was tame and useful at the time. A social crutch works in many situations. I know from thousands of past experiences about my behavior while intoxicated and knew it wouldn’t be an issue. If you aren’t a regular drinker and you don’t feel super shy, don’t try this! 

Consignment based on verbal agreements

I stopped doing consignment without a contract. Now I rarely do consignment at all and if I decide to make a special exception, a contract is necessary. 

I’ve been burned too many times. Yes, even when it’s a friend. Get it in writing and don’t leave your art with them until you do. 

Consignment is when a store or gallery hangs your work for sale and takes a percentage when it sells. When you don’t exchange money before you give them the art, and hope to receive money/sales afterward, that’s consignment. The venue or brick-and-mortar isn’t buying the art – but potentially a customer of that establishment will.

It can be a good deal because the venue is doing a lot of marketing for you – that’s why they charge their consignment fee or percentage of the sale.

But if you don’t have a contract, it can get messy.

I’ve had places close down and never return my artwork. I’ve had places sell my work and never give me my percentage fee. I’ve had places take in my work and never hang it up, then just give it back after a while. I’ve had places damage my work. 

A good contract will protect you and the place selling it. Normally the gallery/shop isn’t liable for damages and they ask you to get insurance on your art if you are concerned about that. Normally there’s a set date for drop off and pick up. There should be a clause that defines how much you get paid, in what form, and when. It should describe what happens if you fail to uphold your side of the bargain. 

Getting things in writing creates agreements BEFORE there is a problem in case there is one. It saves relationships, saves money, saves time.

I can’t imagine dropping my art off with someone without these agreements anymore!

I stopped prioritizing my artist resume

I stopped keeping track of all my art shows. I used to keep a CV document of each art show I did, in what city and when. Truly it’s something still worth doing. But I had so many I let it fall off. 

I’ve got annual festivals lined up for adequate income, and my reputation isn’t huge but it’s enough to get me into gigs without sending a laundry list of prior proof. That’s what it was for – helping me get into other shows by showing on an application that I’m not a newbie and I would be worth accepting into a bigger and better show. 

But once you start to make connections, people DM you with opportunities and they accept you into great events without that record. They know you’re good for it.

I SHOULD still do this but its status as a priority has faded. 

Do you keep a record of what events you’ve shown your art at? Which galleries or private collections your art hangs in?

I quit giving out hyper-personal info

I stopped putting my home address on packages. It was necessary to do this when I couldn’t afford a PO Box fee, but I’m happy to have switched over now that I can. 

I would write my real home address on any order I’d ship out. So all you had to do was spend $5 to learn exactly where I lived. Yikes when I think back to that.

Then I used my parent’s address because I was traveling constantly and never had a stable address. This was only marginally better.

But after gaining more popularity, I realized it can be unsafe to put a personal residential address on a package shipped to a customer who you don’t know. Even when it’s not really my house. I know we should have a loving trusting society but, creepers are out there and I’d like to require a bit more effort (at least).

Now I use a permanent P.O. box. And since I’m more stationary these days, I can get the long term discount. 

It’s also more reliable since I’ve had such trouble receiving mail at our house. Living in the country has its issues, one of them being the GPS always lying to everyone and even the local delivery guy not knowing where your house is. 

Everyone can locate the post office, though.

It’s been a welcome upgrade.

Stopped doing what you used to? You’re growing.

As you grow, you’ll naturally outgrow things. Processes that were once so important to you will feel like a waste of time. Ways of managing your records that at one time seemed like “Wow I’m finally keeping track,” will start to feel sloppy. You’ll heal out of your crutches. You might even stop making the art you thought was your life purpose because you outgrow that purpose. 

What habits or tasks in your art business have gotten left behind? 

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