Sell Online Like a Creative Genius

A Guide for Artists, Entrepreneurs, Inventors, and Kindred Spirits

Brainard Carey

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781621536499
• eBook ISBN: 9781621536512
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: Business

How to sell art or anything else online without leaving your home. "The go-to guide for any internet entrepreneur." — San Francisco Book Review Whether you're selling original artwork, jewelry, or a unique product, this is the book for you. Brainard Carey offers advice with solid examples of how building an online business is something every creative person can pursue.Carey draws from his extensive experience and interviews with others to show artists and creative people how to sell their work independently and efficiently. Readers will learn how to establish an online store, develop a presence, promote their goods, and reach customers. Chapter topics include:

• Designing a website or profile on an existing site
• Effective marketing strategies
• Creative ways to advertise your product
• Building your social media following
• Finding new customers
• Real examples of artists and entrepreneurs who succeeded in selling their work online
• And much more

With chapters divided between practical how-tos and case studies, Sell Online Like a Creative Genius™, offers readers both instructive and demonstrative lessons in making their small online business a reality. Everyone can do it with the right tools, and Carey offers an insider's guide to an otherwise daunting process.

Chapter 1

CHANGE THE WORLD

Who is your audience? How will you reach them? How will they buy what you’re selling?

Change the world. Let your ambition lead you through this book.

If you want to sell something online—from art you make to a small business with products you are launching or a service you provide—there are three main things to think about.

One: who is your audience, and who might buy what you have to sell?

Two: how will you reach them?

Three: how do they actually buy and receive what you are selling—from credit-card processing to shipping?

Those questions may seem elementary, but actually they are part of what we will get into in the next chapter on funnels. Your audience is often more of a specific niche than you think. For example, if you are selling candles, you might think everyone needs candles, so your audience is everyone. But actually, age range, among other factors, will narrow it down. Children and teens probably don’t want candles, and the technologically obsessed may not want your candles. Survivalists will want them for sure, and so will other people, depending on what’s in the candles. If they are made of organic beeswax with no additives, for example, there is a specific audience that is concerned about indoor air quality and will be interested in a product that is less harmful to inhale.

If you’re selling art, it may also seem like everyone can buy art, but there is an age demographic there, too. Perhaps there is an educational demographic as well because buying art is a bit sophisticated on one level—to understand why something is beautiful and of value as an artwork is not an easy evaluation to make as a buyer. It often takes an education to understand art and to make a decision about buying it. You have to have a form of “visual literacy.” All of these are parameters you need to take into account when deciding who your audience really is.

For the second element concerning how you will reach your audience, there is what is known as “targeting” an audience. Your audience may live in a certain part of the world or in cities or away from major cities, or they may be doing certain online activities.

In the examples I have discussed so far, I used survivalists and art collectors. Survivalists may not be living near a city center, may have specific political affiliations, and would most likely be interested in going to specific websites or attending events and camps designed to support their interests. Art collectors also have habits that are similar in terms of what they might do and see and where they live.

The third element of this book is about the funnel I will describe—which is probably of greatest interest to you, or at least that is the part where success is measured. How do they actually buy from you online and through what process? Are they using their credit card or PayPal, and how easy or difficult is it for them to go through the steps it takes to purchase your product? The final part of this is the cost of shipping and handling. That may seem like the easy part, but that is where many small businesses get bogged down in spending too much time on the processing of orders, which can cut deeply into profits.

Before we jump into the architecture of a sales funnel, let me outline a few basic methods that many people use to start making sales without a funnel.

The well-known site eBay is a platform with built-in buyers. You can sell your new invention or product or your art there. The process is fairly straightforward. On eBay, you can post images, make a video to help discuss your work, and of course, you have a few options in terms of selling. You can have a “Buy-It-Now” price, and you can also create an auction. The auction is an exciting format no matter what you are selling because people feel like they might get a really good deal—and they might! You can always have a reserve price, but if you sell some of your products or your art at a reduced rate, it gets people interested. And when several people don’t get the item in an auction, it generates a desire to want it in the future.

Amazon is also another very popular platform for selling your products and testing the market as well as selling art. Both of these methods require promotion to keep sales going, as well as reviews, but you can help that along by being very active on those sites.

For eBay, that means posting something every day. I do mean every day. You will build up an inventory this way, especially if you are an artist, and if something doesn’t sell for the reserve price or higher, just keep relisting it.

On Amazon, you can keep adding more versions of your product, or you can keep adding more content by adding to the description and testimonials from previous buyers.

I will talk more about making sales this way in Chapter 9 “Selling without a Funnel.”

There are dozens more sites like these two where you can get your feet wet in online selling, but if you want consistent sales, you will need a campaign and a funnel, and this is where Chapter 2 picks up.

CHAPTER 1
TAKEAWAYS

1. Who is your audience?

2. How will you reach your audience?

3. How will they pay you?

4. How will they receive your product or service?

“If you take a print magazine with a million-person circulation, and a blog with a devout readership of one million, for the purpose of selling anything that can be sold online, the blog is infinitely more powerful, because it’s only a click away.”

—Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek

Chapter 2

THE FUNNEL EXPLAINED

When we talk about online selling, what we mean is that people will find your product on the web, and they will buy it. They will see it while browsing on their phone, tablet, laptop, or home computer. Since many users are looking at Facebook or Twitter or another social platform, that may be the first place they learn about your product or service, and that is where they may make the decision to find out more and possibly buy from you. The process by which an ad on the web leads to a sale is called a “funnel” because it funnels people down a particular path that leads them to a place where they can purchase something.

Most funnels work like this: Place ads on Facebook or Instagram. The ad gives away something, or people sign up for a mailing list to learn more or get a discount, or there is a free webinar. Now you have the potential customers’ emails and can send them repeated offers until they buy. The End.

That is the basic architecture of a funnel, but let’s break that down a little further.

The first step is the initial ad or ads you are placing. There are some alternatives to ads of course, like neighborhood posters or writing an article that gets national attention, but ads are still the best way to ensure consistency. If you have an ad campaign that works, you can keep it going and reach a national or international audience. I will use Facebook as my primary example because, right now, it is still the dominant platform for advertising, with Google coming in second. The reason for this is because we all tend to give Facebook a tremendous amount of our personal information. I am not talking about the quiz apps that illegally took information from users in 2018; I am talking about the information that we all willingly put on there. Information like where we live, where we grew up, our gender, our education level, our relationship status, our interests, and more.

We all tend to give Facebook a tremendous amount of our personal information. . . . Because of that, it is an extraordinary place for advertisers.

FACEBOOK AND YOUR INFORMATION

Because we give all that information to Facebook, more than any other platform, it is an ex...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 | Change the World
• Chapter 2 | The Funnel Explained
• Chapter 3 | Making Your Funnel and Testing It
• Chapter 4 | Sending Out Bulk Emails
• Chapter 5 | Growing Your Funnel
• Chapter 6 | Automation of Sales
• Chapter 7 | Automation Problems and Solutions
• Chapter 8 | Building a Remarketing Campaign
• Chapter 9 | Selling without a Funnel
• Chapter 10 | Raising Capital
• Afterword: Your Health
• Suggested Reading
• Index