As an Artist Your Value Proposition Separates Your Work from the Crowd
What is it about your work that makes it deserve a sale? Think about the last time you purchased or supported another artist’s work. Why did you do it? How did it make you feel? What was the value of the purchase to you?
Consider that buying artwork is not like buying a commodity product like salt or gas. Art is not purchased because it’s the lowest price or you had a coupon.
Out of the zillions of available art works and photographs on the market that you could purchase, for some reason this particular piece of artwork compelled you to love it and purchase it.
Some of the factors involved might be:
- You met the artist face to face
- You saw a documentary about the artist
- You read an interesting article about the artist
- The artwork provoked a strong memory
- The artwork was the perfect size or color for a space in your home
- A friend recommend this artist
- The artist reminds you of a more famous artist that you can’t afford
- The artwork created a gut reaction
- The art makes you happy
- The art makes you think
- The art sets a mood
- The art matches your decor
- The art matches your theme
- You like the artist positions
- You like what the art has to say about the world
- The art is modern, the art is retro
- The art gives you a positive feeling
etc, etc, etc.
One thing to remember when selling art is people buy or support art for a very different set of reasons than anything else they spend money on. Not only are they receiving a product for their money but they like to know they are supporting an artist so they can continue to create.
Support Artists To Support Your Set of Values
If you see work you like, you should support this work, even if you don’t end up owning it, because this artist is creating the kind of beauty you want to see in the world. By helping this artist survive and continue to make work, you’re helping someone change the world in the way you want it to change.
Your Value Proposition
Your value proposition as an artist sets you apart from your fellow artists and photographers.
VALUE PROPOSITION – (in marketing) an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers.
In an never ending flood of amateur snapshots uploaded daily on social media, a professional level quality and execution. Consistently, editing, selection and subject choice can be enough to pull your work out of the masses and into the realm of quality worth spending money.
Your followers will come to expect focused images with good composition, free of dust spots, grain and poles sticking out of people’s heads.
My value proposition as a fine art photographer would go something like this:
Using professional equipment, honed post-processing skills, years of study, effort and passion for my subjects, creativity and a unique vision, I offer a unique and compelling images suitable for display in the finest homes and offices.
Further my collectors come to appreciate my style of clean and uncluttered compositions. They might also take comfort knowing that my work has been shown in galleries, on book covers and magazines around the world.
The fact that professional image buyers have selected my work to grace book covers and illustrate magazine articles doesn’t make someone love it, but it does provide affirmation that their choice is a solid one. After all, if it’s good enough for a book publisher to bet the success of a book launch on, it’s probably good enough to grace a guest room.
See my portfolio at: https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/
