:54 - Flora introduces herself and her book. She sells original art, prints, licenses her images, and is one of the most in-demand art teachers in the world. 

2:30 - how Flora ended up taking up teaching after she already had a full-time painting career. Many painters are very lonely after spending hours and hours alone in the studio. 

4:40 - what Flora’s art business looked like before she started teaching. She was making a good living selling through galleries. Now her business is much larger. 

8:25 - how Flora gets 400+ to sign up for her online painting courses

13:00 - what artists do every day is really special to most people. Flora talks about how the practice of painting translates into everyday living. 

17:35 - Flora talks about Papaya, the licensing company that she works with that sells most of her art licensing. Flora also works with a handful of other companies. 

22:00 - having your own style is really important. Check out our interview with Lisa Call for more details on finding your style, and the blog post Working in a Series. 

24:30 - Flora’s next paid product: behind the scenes studio videos

27:30 - Art teachers should teach online. There are lots of people taking classes online

28:25 - Flora talks about how to use their creative process to engage with their audiences. 

30:00 - Flora has a huge following on Facebook and Instagram. She talks about how she got there and how it has affected her business. 

Please note that there is some microphone noise because we were recording over the Internet. 

Pye Jirsa and his 2 partners run a photography studio in Los Angeles, California. LinandJirsaPhotography.com and SLRLounge.com. 

1:00 - how Pye & his partners started their photography studio. They weren’t originally photographers, but fell into it accidentally when a client needed some photos. 

5:00 - Pye talks about how he built up his photography skills, the shoots he does just to build skills, and how many photographers don’t do this. 

8:30 - the team booked gigs off of Craigslist for free or $50 just to build their skills. Pye talks about how they grew their skills by doing these free gigs. 

10:30 - SLR Lounge & Lin & Jirsa photography have about 20 people working for them. They shot 300+ weddings and portrait sessions in 2014. Pye charges $8,000 minimum for a wedding day shoot, and he talks about how he got to that number. How beginning artists undermine their own credibility by trying to charge too much. 

18:30 - how Pye & the team created additional income streams from their art, and how SLR Lounge came into being. 

25:00 - a lot of artists try to run more than one business at a time. This is very difficult to do, and needs to be handled strategically. Unless you have some sort of specific advantage, you can’t build more than one business at a time. 

Thanks to ArtStoreFronts.com for sponsoring this episode

Go to TheAbundantArtist.com, where you can sign up for our free email course on how to sell art online. 

Today’s episode is sponsored by ArtStoreFronts.com. Maximize your Art Sales, By Having a Website that is Built to Do So. Build a website today, and you'll compete on a new level tomorrow.

Main Segment

If you’re going to sell your art online, you need to be at least passing familiar with how things work online, both technically and culturally.

Doing research is important because you’ll understand how other artists are already selling their art.

I’m not talking about researching what art to make. You should make whatever inspires you.

You can start with a simple Google search for the kind of art you make. For example:

• pet portrait painting

• plein air ocean

• bug art

Make a note of the top websites that you find in these searches

• What do you like about their websites? What do you dislike?

• What is their pricing?

• Do they talk about successful sales?

• From a collector’s point of view, is all of the relevant information there? Size, price, shipping, descriptions, etc

There are some neat tools that will allow you to figure out a little more about how successful an artist’s website is.

The Moz toolbar shows you domain, page authority, backlinks, and social shares of that page.

From there you can look at the artist’s social media activity.

• Do they interact with their fans? Which social media accounts are the most active?

• Do they have any social media promotions? Common hashtags? Who do they follow?

Take a look at Instagram. Use the search tool to look for art in your niche. Click on the hashtags that they use.

Other tools:

• similarweb.com

• Facebook graph search for pages liked by your friends, pages liked by people who like your page, groups your friends have joined

• look at the blogs of artists you like, who is on their blog roll or who do they talk about?

Hi there! I’m Cory Huff, and this is The Abundant Artist Podcast, where we teach you how to sell your art.

Go to TheAbundantArtist.com, where you can sign up for our free email course on how to sell art online.

Today’s episode is sponsored by ArtStoreFronts.com. Maximize your Art Sales, By Having a Website that is Built to Do So. Build a website today, and you'll compete on a new level tomorrow.

There's Dreams, which are ethereal qualities – I'd like to have more money, more free time, or I'd like to make more art.

A lot of business coaches tell you that you should set goals. It's one thing to dream up big goals for yourself. Setting big challenges is fun, but where I see a lot of artists burn out is setting their sights on something that they don't actually want because they think that they should.

This is often in the form of getting a big break, or getting into a gallery.

This kind of thought is important because it guides your daily actions. It guides the kind of art you want to create, who your ideal collectors are, and how you will share your message with your ideal audience.

Here’s one of my current Fantasy Ideal Day Schedules (as of this moment – I reserve the right to have as many Fantasy Ideal Day Schedules as I want, and so do you):

7:00am - Wake up, exercise, and eat

8:00am – Spend some time in meditation and spiritual study

9:00am – Make art – writing, painting or something else. Dedicated studio time.

12 PM – LUNCH!!

1:00pm - Email & social media

2:00pm - Consulting sessions with collectors

5:30pm – Dinner with my wife

7:00pm – rehearsal or show

This Fantasy Ideal Day Schedule is not super-realistic. For example, my time on email, Twitter & Forums currently takes up WAY more time than shown here, and at the moment I’m rarely in bed by 11:00 or awake by 7:00... Plus this schedule doesn’t account for any of the client work I currently have to do. But that’s okay – remember, this is a Fantasy Schedule.

It’s a template, because it’s something I aim for, but don’t always hit. That’s okay. Just having a template to shoot for helps me stay on track.

:22 - Cory & Melissa talk about why they ended the Creative Insurgents podcast, and what’s happening next

Go to TheAbundantArtist.com/podcast to see the new podcast

1:30 - we talk about why we are ending the podcast and what you can learn from it, and how we decided to partner together

4:00 - how we created a shared document that covered our partnership details

6:45 - our guests (you) expressed specific interests that they wanted something out of the podcast that Melissa wasn’t really interested in doing

10:00 - how we will continue working on the new podcast together. We are going to document how an artist starts an art print business. Melissa talks about her own experience with selling prints up to now

17:00 - Melissa talks about her experience sharing art on Instagram and how it’s transformed her art making and creativity business

24:10 - we sign up and Melissa totally embarrasses Cory with her sign-off