Not So Evil Art Sales

Who am I creating art for and why? Who do you think about when you think about selling or sharing your work? Are they individuals or a faceless crowd?

Yes, I venturing into a conversation that revolves around selling but even if you don’t sell, considering the value of your work, even if it’s just to show to online viewers or give to family and friends, can really help increase the joy you get out your creative process and your artistic life. I think you’ll also be surprised at some of the faulty ways we look at the process of selling, our perception of money, and how we as artist value, or don’t value, the work we create.

Join me in my cozy corner for a different kind of conversation about the role of sales and sharing in your creative process and artistic life.  

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CREDITS:

Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko

Music by Playsound

Episode Cover Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

Transcript

Transcription (AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors.)

Hello, all My amazingly talented and highly valued creatives out there. Thank you for joining me today on the Sage Arts podcast. This is Sage here, of course, on a kind of solo adventure with you, although I never really feel like I’m alone when I’m doing this podcast, I always feel like you’re with me or that I’m speaking directly to you. Even if we’ve never met. I think in large part I do this because I was trained like ages ago to think of my audience in very specific and concrete terms, not as a crowd of people, but just one person usually. And in this case, that person is you just you out there listening to me today. I don’t have an image of you necessarily. Or maybe it’s more of an ever shifting idea of who is out there.

But in my mind, I am talking to one person, someone I feel like I know that I have hung out with. That is like me, always curious and wanting to understand why and how they do what they do and how to shift, how they see things, to give them new ideas and make their work a never ending wondrous discovery.

Now,, maybe that you maybe just some of that is you, but you are who I’m talking to. And because I think in terms of this just one person, just you, I’m not worrying about talking to a big crowd. Just like when I sell my work, I try not to think of the potential mass of people who could be interested in my work. I think of that one person who is going to love and value this one thing that I’m making at that time, and there’s a number of reasons why this is important, and it’s a big part of the subject today.

So, yes, I’m going to be talking about selling as a basis for a lot of this information. But even if you don’t sell, considering the value of your work, even if it’s just to show online or to give to family or friends, this can really help increase the enjoyment you have in your process, what you get out of your creativity and your artistic life. So before we get into all that, I feel like I just completely skipped the intro and went right into the subject. Let’s get ourselves all situated here. Take care of a few things. I am in my podcast room today on So Strange Another Rainy day in Southern California. I can’t remember when it last rained in May. In the last seven years that I’ve been here, I don’t remember it raining this late. We’ve been it’s been raining here since November anyways. We’re just all just flipping out. We don’t know what’s going on. It’s like we live in Seattle or something. But in any case. So that’s my day over here. How’s it over where you’re at? I do have to say, with all the rain, we have craziest, most beautiful wildflowers going on right now. They’re just mad out here in the hills. So I’ve been getting on hiking. I’ve been enjoying that, but it’s just gorgeous outside, so I hope you’ve been able to get out and enjoy your spring or your fall if you’re down in the southern half of the globe. But for now, why don’t you come on in with me and have a seat if you can. Amber, My black German shepherd is in a dog bed I set up for her next to the big comfy chair. So plenty of room for you. Grab yourself a cozy beverage, whatever that means to you. Today, I made myself a kind of caramel latte. If you add just a touch of brown sugar with a good rich creamer to your coffee, you get kind of a caramel taste. I try not to do a lot of sugar, but a touch of coconut sugar, which tastes very much like brown sugar. Kind of did the trick for me. So that’s my beverage. But I’m also munching, I have to say, on this really good chocolate I found, I’m kind of obsessed with it, unfortunately. Well, maybe not. Unfortunately, the brand is good, Sam. It’s all one word. Good. Like be good and Sam, like the name. And it’s like a fair trade chocolate sweetened with Allulose. So it’s a pretty healthy sweetener, but it’s not sugar. So you get your chocolate without all the sugar and they have the salted caramel bar. That’s amazing. And no, they didn’t pay me to say this, but if anybody knows them and they want to sponsor this podcast, hey, I’ll talk up the chocolate any days. It’s just nice to have something where you can have a few bites and not feel like you’re being bad. Case. I hope you’re settled in. We have some really interesting things to ponder today, but a couple of shout outs to start with. Joe Baraka, who was my guest on episode 19 when he turned around and supported me by buying me a few coffees this past week like another guest of my did. So I don’t want my guests to, like, turn around and support me in more ways than just being on here. Thank you so much for doing that, Joe. It really means a lot to me. Also to Christy Friesen, also guest first person I interviewed on this podcast. I think it was episode five. We wanted to listen to that and you haven’t yet. It was a great conversation. She talked me up on one of her Sunday chats. You can find her on Facebook on Sunday mornings under Christy’s Creative neighborhood, and she talks about her life there in Hawaii and polymer clay and just creativity in general. So it’s kind of a fun Sunday morning thing. And because she chatted at the podcast, a multi creative named Lori Fagan heard about the show and dropped in to let me know how much she was enjoying the interview with Megan Skelton and a couple other conversations with friends about the community episode. And it just really hit a lot of us, just that we’re not thinking that much about community these days, especially if we have a business. We think more about selling or promoting or whatever it is. But community is such an important part of what we do. And so if you haven’t heard the last episode with Megan Skelton, please do. It’s a great reminder to just reach out and connect with the people. So thank you, Lori, for your feedback and thank you, Chrissy, for talking up the podcast.

Now, if you want to give me any feedback, you can do. So by going to the website of the stage arts dot com and go to the contact page while you’re there. There’s an email form and you can also reach out to me on Facebook and Instagram. Both those pages are under the Stage Arts podcast. You can also write me when you donate if you want to give back because you value this podcast and you can find those buttons for donating through, buy me a copy or PayPal. And PayPal does have the recurring donation if you want to get into that. And that’s on the home page of the Sage Cars.com website. Okay, let’s get on to our subject matter. So yes, I decided to talk about selling, even though this is not that kind of podcast, it’s going to work on helping you build your business or double your sales in 30 days or whatever, that kind of thing. I’m all for working on increasing sales. I have been helping people with that, writing articles on that for years, but mostly I enjoy changing the way people think about selling because it can be such a fulfilling part of your creative life. But I don’t like the idea of selling. So what does that mean? Well, first of all, let me tell you, I’ve been doing this for years. I started my first magazine. Oh, I want to date myself so much like 30 years ago. And then I was a freelancer and then I was an artist. And then I was producing magazines and other stuff in between, but almost always had a business. And so I was always selling something my services, my art, my publications and I have to tell you, or maybe I don’t, because you probably already know it can feel kind of soul sucking, right? Trying to get those sales, trying to convince people they need what you have. And it’s really just not the best way to go about it. If you want to continue to enjoy what you do and the entire process, including the selling. So I have several points to help you shift your thinking. So the act of exchanging your work for money doesn’t feel like such a dirty, devious, desperate sounding endeavor. A lot of alliteration there. Sorry. Same thing goes for just trying to get attention for your work or interaction online on social media, that kind of thing. There are so many people out there trying to do the same thing we’re trying to do, and we’re all just jumping up and down goin, Look at me and and we’re standing there among the man is thinking, How the heck is anyone ever going to find me? How can I get more attention? How can I compete with all of this noise? Well, let me just tell you right now, you don’t you don’t need to compete. It’s not about competition. And that’s kind of at the root of what I want to discuss today. So let’s give you those questions to keep in mind today. And I think a real key set of questions is who am I creating for and why? And I think knowing those answers in very specific terms tells you, at least to some extent, if selling or being seen is your primary objective or one of your primary objectives, or if you just want to be seen or share your work with family or friends. But the thing of it is, it’s good to have a handle on your position, so you’ll see why the who and why question is so important as you go along. As a kind of second layer, who do you think about when you think of selling or sharing your work? Are they individuals or is it a faceless crowd? This is going to be super important. Keep that in mind. I know selling is complex and it’s often emotional, and for many artists it’s just not a natural thing to sell.

First of all, it can feel like selling or not selling is a judgment of your work. If people buy it, then they must like you. I mean, that’s how we say it, right? Oh, they like me or they like my work. And we feel very much a part of the judgment if people don’t like it, we can feel personally rejected for the same reason. It’s also a lot of work, not just making the work but selling the work, and you don’t know if it’ll pay off. So with that, we have a lot of this ego struggle, and if we’re uncertain about the value of what we do, it can make it really difficult to move forward. If selling is a goal or objective of yours, or we might be dealing with the frustration just to be heard or felt. Like I said, if you could just get all these people’s attention, surely they will love what you do and they’ll buy it. Or you’re wracking your brain trying to figure out if you can create that catchy, trendy, unique or whatever thing that everyone will want. And if you can, then you’re good, right? The problem with all of these views on selling this expectation of kind of judgment, the wanting to be seen, the desire to be in demand, especially if these are primary or the only set of views you have on it, is that they’re all about you.

Now, creating is all about you. The exploration is all about you, the discovery, the process, the completion of a piece that’s all about you, or could be, depending on how you look at it, might even say should be honestly. But the selling is not about you, not if you desire to sell well and in a way that doesn’t suck all the joy out of what you’re doing.

First of all, let’s establish a known fact. No one is everyone’s cup of tea. So you’re not everyone’s cup of tea? I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. None of us are. There is no one person in the world whose work is universally loved or even universally respected. So you aren’t selling to the whole world. You aren’t even selling to all of a particular crowd. The truth is, you’re just selling to one person each time you make a sale, right? I mean, in essence, that’s what’s going on. It only takes one person to buy your painting, to buy your showpiece necklace, to buy your one of a kind quilt. And it’s that one person who exchanges payment for that one particular piece that you need to be thinking about, that you need to be speaking to when you’re so-called selling. I know that sounds not only obvious, maybe it sounds a little cutesy or hokey, but the point is we tend to think of the masses we were trying to reach when we should be focused on the person who the work will be living with. When it leaves us. For one, it makes the exchange of your art for money. We’re going to talk about that dirty word in a minute, but it makes the exchange more personal, like there’s more of a connection and less of a transaction going on right. It also seems so much more possible to reach a single person than to be heard in a crowd. And it’s tricky sometimes finding that right person, that that piece will be appreciated by. But doesn’t that make the process of offering your work feel maybe more magnanimous, more about sharing your experience with another human being than just selling? So that was kind of my like little free for all view on selling. But let’s talk more specifically about what it means to sell and change your mind about a few of the approaches and even the definitions of some words that we use when it comes to selling or even showing our work.

First of all, let’s talk about being an artist and selling. Know that you don’t have to sell in order to be an artist. There have been many artists throughout history that have sold very little or none and are still considered artists to this day. I mean, take Vincent Van Gogh. He he did sell some. I actually read one case that said he only sold literally for money one piece and was just like little over $100. And that was supposedly the only thing he sold during his lifetime. But several other sources pointed out that he was commissioned by family members and that he also used his art to trade for food and other art supplies with his friends and such. So he really did sell, maybe not always for money. His work during his lifetime, but it was very little. And nonetheless, he is considered one of the greatest artists of the last century, at least in Western civilization. So keep in mind, you can be an artist without selling. It’s not what defines you being an artist. Selling has nothing to do with the role your creativity plays in your identity unless you choose to let it. Alternatively, it doesn’t make you less of an artist because you sell. You don’t need to be a starving artist. You don’t need to be doing this for posterity or some greater good or some other highly elevated concept in order to be an artist. Then of course there’s nothing wrong with doing that. But you don’t have to do it at all or all the time. It’s completely up to you. You choose your goal. You choose what is right for you, for your artwork. But if you decide to sell and you’re selling really trendy work or small cut pieces or you just sell really well, you don’t need to feel you’re less of an artist. And some people do, thinking that they’ve sold out. I hate that term. You don’t sell out. You chase what you need to chase in order to meet the goals and the needs that you have for what you’re doing. Just keep in mind that quote unquote, real art does not somehow transcend commerce. It actually can and often does work in partnership with what we deem as commerce. But that brings us to that dirty word, money. And I want to talk about changing our attitude about what money is. So money, it has a lot of negativity around it. It’s associated with all kinds of terrible things that happen throughout the world. People are killed for money. They suffer for want of it. It drives the wheels of a lot of crime. It causes heartache and ruin in some families, all these things, right? So money is essentially evil, right? Well, know all these things that we blame on money, that’s an incorrect view. All those things have to do with greed or power or some related human failing. Money’s not the actual source of those issues. It just happens to be part of the picture. So have a good understanding of what money is. It is a valuation that allows us to acquire things from others and others to acquire things from us without having to literally trade what we have. Like back in the day, you needed wheat, so you brought a goat to the wheat farmer and said, I’ll trade you, you know, X number of bushels of wheat for this goat. And you know, you’d have you have your trade or you would make your artwork and like Van Gogh would be like, Can I have dinner? I’ll give you this painting. And there was a literal trade. So money replaces that. It becomes kind of a middleman for what used to be direct trade to trade, but it is only a representation of value.

Now,, understand, money doesn’t actually exist in any tangible way. There is paper and coin currency, but it’s just a representation of an agreed value. We can exchange for things. It’s just a concept. If this is true, if money is really a matter of value, is valuing something evil? No, of course not. So selling your work, if you think about it, is about valuing it both by you and the person or people who buy it. So asking for money for your art is asking that someone values what you do and represents that by handing over this understood amount of value through money.

Now,, not selling doesn’t diminish the value of your work either. Just like you may not sell your favorite piece of jewelry or your pets, your dog, your cat, you value them so highly you actually don’t have anything that you’d be willing to exchange them for. Right? Okay. Maybe there’s a price if be willing to sell them for. But that just says that you value what you can trade them for only when the trade is sufficiently significant.

Now,, for most dog owners, I know there is nothing in the world that is good enough to trade for them because the value of their life is higher than anything we could trade for now. For some reason there can be this intimation in some situations and for some people that art should be like the family dog. It should be priceless that to take money for the art, for teaching, for sharing your creative experience in any way should be either priceless or free. And it goes both ways. It’s just very weird. But selling cheapens it, and yet giving it away for free elevates it. Do you know what I mean? If you’ve had these experiences, like when I did the magazine, I strangely was often written to by people who were wondering why I wasn’t doing it for free instead of asking people to buy a magazine. And it always struck me odd that people think that when it comes to art, everything should be given to them for nothing. When all of us as artists put a lot of time, effort, supplies, money, literal money into what we do, just like the plumber that comes to fix the toilet, or just like the grocer who’s selling you your food, or just like the accountant who does your taxes at the end of the year. They all expect to be paid for the value of their work. So I don’t really understand why there is such a pervasive sense that artists shouldn’t get paid for their art. I think it’s simply because we think the artists love what they’re doing and we do love what we’re doing. But should we not get paid for the things that we love? Because they’re doing it at least in part because we love it? Should we not have value return to us? For those who want to have part of what we’ve done, I honestly find it terribly sad that people think art is not worth as much because we enjoy what we do and it’s not just the people who might purchase our work. It’s just not non artists that think this. There are artists that also feel this way. Maybe not holy consciously, but there’s a sense that we shouldn’t ask for a lot of money, that the value of what we do is less because it comes from our heart, because we would do it whether we paid for or not. People should really be happy to pay to have that artwork. I’d rather pay an artist for a piece of artwork than a plumber to fix my pipes, you know. How much better is that? How much more enriching is that for my life? I mean, granted, you know, a stopped a toilet is kind of a drag on life, but a good piece of art is just a wonder to have in your life. So why should that not be highly valued and paid appropriately?

Now,, the one thing that is priceless is your artistic experience, mostly because it’s something that can’t be transferred. And maybe that’s where people get confused because your personal experience is not for sale, but its outcome can be. So yes, art is a wonderful, magical thing. It gives many of our lives meaning and purpose, but it’s also something that we can share in terms of the outcome and do so with an agreement that has a certain value to both the artist and the person who would like to acquire it. So you see, the sale of artwork is not a transaction where you are asking for money, but rather it’s a confirmation that there is value in what you do, particularly for a single person willing to show the value at the hand you over money going, I love what you do and I am going to show you that value by paying for it. But then I ask you, what do you think they’re actually buying from you? I would venture to say they are not buying an object. So let’s put it this way. If you choose to sell something, you’re not actually selling the object. I mean, you are you handing it over to them, you shipping it to them, whatever. But in reality you’re selling the result of a personal experience. It’s a culmination of your skill, of your knowledge, your insight, all your hard work. It’s part of you that you’re willing to share with others from the other side. Realize that people don’t buy your work merely to own the object. They buy our creations because it gives them or seems to promise them an experience or the hope for one. If the buyer is gifting the work to someone else, our work offers some kind of desired feeling that they want to have again and again. Your work may be for them a source of joy. It may make them smile. It may make them wonder. It could be inspiring, it might trigger nostalgia. But they have a reaction to your work and makes them desire to have that in their lives. So there’s this whole host of feelings that your work could elicit from people that make them want to have it available to them at will any time to come home and live with them so that they can look at your print on the wall or put on your earrings or wrap themselves up in your beautiful shawl that you knitted. They buy your art because it makes them feel right. I think this is important because sometimes we get down on ourselves. We wonder what the heck we’re doing, you know, why are we working so hard, especially trying to sell work? Because it can be very hard. Remember, there are these people out there either with your work or could have your work that will make them happy, that will make them feel pretty if it’s something they get to wear or make their house feel cozy or whatnot. The life of your art reaches far beyond that point of sale. It goes on to enrich people’s lives.

Also, this can speak to like when you don’t sell a piece, I don’t think there’s ever an unwanted piece. I think each piece you have has a person that will want that experience that it offers. If it doesn’t sell at one opportunity, I think it just means that that person didn’t show up that day or they haven’t found your website yet or what not. And it’s not a rejection of you or your art by the masses in general. It’s not that kind of judgment. It’s also not that everyone values other people’s work more than yours. Again, it’s just that one person that does value it, that will value it hasn’t found you yet, but be patient or maybe try new markets. If you’ve been trying to sell this for a while or decide that the one person who will value it the most is you and then just keep it.

Now, that we understand selling is really about value in your work, let’s talk about you valuing yourself and your art, because a lot of artists don’t value their work as much as they should. And yes, what I’m talking about is pricing too low. And I wanted to talk about this in particular because I think this one aspect has caused a lot of problems for a lot of artists because they’re not making enough money to cover what you’re doing to pay your bills, to buy your art materials, whatever reason you’re selling in the first place, it can cause a tremendous amount of frustration. It can cause some people to quit creating altogether. And it gives you a very different view of what you could get out of selling your art than you’re actually experiencing. Because as much as we believe in what we do, we don’t always really think anyone else is going to pay what we need to be paid for doing our work. I speak from experience on this. I was one of those who couldn’t imagine anybody would pay what the formulas out there said I should be charging. And part of the issue was that Art was paying my bills, so I was really worried about just selling in general. If you had that kind of mindset, sometimes you will just price low to make sure that you’re making sales at all. But what it does is it says the art isn’t worth all that much. And I’ll tell you, when you realize you can’t pay yourself a living wage on the price, as you’ve said, it can be very hard to raise the prices and keep those sales up at the same time and yes, the market needs to be considered, but if you have a market that you don’t think will value your work for what it’s actually worth, then it’s probably not your market or you need to make smaller or more quickly produce items that will have the level of value that those customers are willing to pay for and that earns you enough to make it worthwhile. So I was going to try to give you a super brief primer on pricing in case you hadn’t done any pricing formulas before, but I’ve tried several times to record something that was concise and it just just gets complicated. So I’m not going to go into a ton of detail because what you need can vary wildly depending on the type of work you do and how you sell on that type of thing. But let me just summarize possible expenses in case you’ve been trying to work out a formula and you’ve been forgetting some things, and then I’ll tell you quickly how I price things. If you’re not familiar with the formula approach to pricing, you work. At least with this, you’ll be aware of all the possible expenses to include in your calculations and kind of what you need to do. But then you can go online and find formulas that work for your specific situation a little bit better. But in any case, expenses, of course, include things like materials and supplies, and it also includes the value of your time. So you pay yourself a base wages if you’re a worker at this hour, business of yours. But don’t forget the initial cost of setting up your studio or the price of those expensive tools, the electricity you use, the shipping materials you buy, the cost of your website, your accountant, your Internet services, all of those things that come out of pocket. And what about all the time you spend promoting on social media, maintaining a website or an online shop, emailing customers, taking photos of your work, applying for shows? The cost of those shows, the cost of your booth setup, the gas, the lodging, the meals and the time you aren’t able to create when you’re at those shows. And all those expenses should be included when you calculate the value of your work. So for myself, it’s fairly simple because the costs of my materials don’t vary a lot from one project to the next. Not like a jeweler whose cost on a silver project with turquoise is going to be drastically different from a gold piece with rubies. And because I don’t do in-person shows anymore, I don’t have to work in those expenses as well. So like I said, there’s a lot of different formulas for different situations out there. So just go online, put in the keywords for your art form and for the way you sell your work and look those up for me. I can look at all of my out of pocket costs over the year, just like look at my credit cards and my Amazon accounts, whatever, and divide that number by the number of hours that I create in a year. So if it’s like 20 hours a week that I create, then that’s like 1040 hours a year, I think. So I would just divide my total expenses out of pocket by those hours. And then I base my hourly wage that everything’s going to be built off of on my areas. Stated living wage, which you can look up just by putting in your country or your state in some places, even your county. And then the phrase living wage and you should find that. Then I also look at how many hours I put into those non art making parts of the business each year and I multiply that number by the living wage. So I get an expense for my time for non creating things and I divide that by my creative hours as well. And then I add that to that base living wage. So it’s a living wage here is $21 an hour, which I think it is right now, which is so not enough. My out-of-pocket expenses divided by my creative hours comes to maybe $3 an hour and my art business other hours expenses is probably another $6 an hour. So then my hourly art wage should be about $30 an hour so that I can now calculate the price of my piece based on how long it takes me to make it. But to get my retail price, I take that hourly wage, I take whatever that comes to and I triple it. So if I sell earrings, it took me an hour. The retail price is not $30 an hour, it’s $90 an hour.

Now,, why so much? Well, it’s because every time you sell there are more expenses that will take bites out of that money that you’re supposed to receive.

So, like there’s merchant fees and listing fees and commissions selling online for me. She takes a total of about 15% of my sales, plus all bear the expenses. If anything breaks or is lost in shipping or doesn’t sell and that kind of thing. Right. Galleries take as much as 50%, but they also do more of the work and they take more of the risk. So from galleries I’d get for that one hour set of earrings, I’ll only get $45 off of that $90 retail price. That leaves me $15 in profit, $30 hourly art wage less. What I received is $15. That’s not a ton of money, but it’s doable when added to how much I pay myself as a base wage. And no, your hourly wage is not profit. That’s all expense. Everything that you put out of pocket all the time that you spend all the labor that you put into it is expense. And I know that can sound odd, but you want to make a profit, not just cover exactly what you spend in supplies in the amount of time you work on it so that you can weather the downtimes in your business when there isn’t much coming in. It also gives you room to put things on sale or give discounts and still make what you’re worth and that’s what you’re after. I really think you should be going for what you’re worth, what your art is worth. And these kinds of formulas will help you realize and get to a number that is actually realistic for you to sustain an art business if that’s what you’re trying to do now, if all you’re trying to do is make enough money to buy more art materials, it’s going to be a different formula for you. If you do a lot of shows, it’s going to be a different formula for you as well. If you do galleries and online, there’s some finagling with your formula there as well. So you need to look at your specific situation to figure that out. But there’s probably a little math that’s going to be involved. So if you have a math head in your family because it’s not, you go grab them and let them help you out with that. So those are my main points about selling or not selling. Do these points and views help make you feel better about selling or does it change your mind about selling? There really is no right or wrong answer as to whether to sell or not, but I hope you realize there’s a lot more to the idea of selling than just making some money at it. Because honestly, that’s probably the most uncommon reason to make art. I think first and foremost, we make art because we need to. We love to. It’s part of a process that is integral to who we are and to our lives. On the other hand, if you’ve hesitated to sell because the whole thing just feels so yucky or it’s too much work, I can’t say I disagree with you about it’s downsides. But setting a value for your work, even if you’re not going to sell, is a great idea. So when someone does say, Hey, I love what you do, can I buy a piece? You’ve already settled in with a certain idea of what the monetary value of your work is, at least some general idea.

Now,, if you’ve been hesitant to sell it, maybe this is getting you thinking about it a little bit. Just take it slow. Try some really low key sales by opening like an Etsy shop or offering things on Facebook or Instagram. They have shops there as well. You can also find a commission store in your area and see if they might be willing to carry a few of your things or a co-op gallery even, which is great, because then you also get the community of the other artists at the co-op. You could also sell at local art fairs or bazaars or church events or whatever, and those are great because you get the experience of interacting with other people, getting feedback on your artwork and getting to know other usually crafters and creatives in your area. So you could do that, you could sell or you could not sell. You can just give your work away. It’s so completely up to you. I just hope that the idea that selling is a matter of just commerce that seems so far removed from the creative process that you would like not to associate it with, your work has shifted a little bit. If it’s been problematic, I think we should all feel good about selling our work when it makes sense for us to do so, and that we won’t define ourselves as artists by selling or not selling the potential for selling our work. I do think it’s a component for almost all of us on our artistic journey that at some point we would consider selling our work or at least ponder whether that’s something that we want to do or not. So hopefully these ideas I discussed today will help you make a determination as to whether you want to sell your work, or maybe it’ll help boost your feeling about selling your work because you are selling it or you do you have to sell your work, and that making it a regular part of your life is not yucky or a way to define yourself as an artist.

Now,, if you have any questions about any of this, I would be more than happy to answer them. Or if you have a story or view on the subject you think I should share, please do write me. And again, you can write me at the Sage Cars.com. Go to the contact page there. You can also reach out on social media at the Sage Arts, podcasts on Instagram or Facebook pages as well. And if you value what I’m doing and you want to give back, I would so appreciate that you can find donation buttons on the home page. About halfway down there is a Buy Me a coffee and PayPal button. The power button includes one time gifting and monthly recurring gifting. All these things that I give you, by the way, are also in the show notes. Or if you’re listening on a podcast player or on my RSS feed, can find those links in the page there as well. So that’s really easy and know that you can also review this podcast. And apparently that’s a thing people are supposed to ask for, and I haven’t wanted to do that up to this point because I felt like I needed to do at least a couple dozen. So if you want to help this podcast reach more people, I so appreciate you stopping and giving me review and an honest one. I want to know exactly what you think truly, so you can do that under your podcast Players. I do want to hear back from you, but also people that are interested in the podcast would love to hear from you to understand what it is that you’re getting out of it. And you can also, of course, share anything that I put out there with anybody so we can reach the people who want to be part of this kind of conversation, who want this kind of information and ideas to boost their creativity and their artistic life. In the meantime, get out there, feed your muse, be true to your weirdness, and join me again next time on the Sage Arts podcast.