Promoting your art online vs in the real world

When you want to make a living as an artist you will have to start promoting yourself at one point. If you don’t want to call it a promotion, you can call it making connections. One way or another art-promotion will happen. Online promotion and real life promotion will often overlap. But what makes online promotion easier than real life promotions? The endless possibilities and opportunities!

This is for those artists that are not sure if online promoting is for them! Because it is!

Make sure you share this with the artists in your life to give them more opportunities! 

Big audience

One of the most obvious reasons online promotion is easier is because it comes with a massive audience. At this moment over 3 billion people have access to the internet. That is more than I can imagine

Of course, this doesn’t mean they will all be finding you. But it does give you a big playing field.

Also for me it makes it a lot easier to network! I don’t feel as shy as I would in the real world and I actually dare to reach out on the web sometimes. (That is a very scary thing to do for me!) 

Tools

There are already plenty of tools around for artists around to help them build their online web. Think of communities, forums, social media and galleries.

With all these tools you can build your online presence and get yourself in front of all these wonderful people.

Free 

My favourite reason for online promotion is that most options are free! You can have a wonderful promotion strategy without a cent leaving  your pocket! Take for example; copromote is my new favourite tool. You don’t pay anything but you share others work for yours to be shared!

Social media is free, commenting is free etc. 

It might take you some extra work when you can’t buy all the fancy programmes to schedule everything but it will cost you nothing. In real life promotion, a lot of your money might go into printing promotional materials.

In real life promotion, a lot of your money might go into printing promotional materials.  Of course, as an online business/artist/blogger, your business card can still help you loads so don’t forget those!

The downside

Unfortunately, online promotion comes with a downside as well. The competition can be tough for example. But more importantly, the online world is not a very nice place. The internet trolls can be very rude and mean. If you are promoting your art, you are in risk of art thieves.

Unfortunately, I underwent that last one not even 24 hours ago. I didn’t think I would be at risk of art thieves but here we are. I can tell you that it is not a nice feeling.

Dealing with art thieves is very frustrating! 

Opportunities 

I also mentioned something about endless opportunities didn’t I? Did you know that there are loads of blogs that accept submissions?

For example; eat, sleep,draw , a massive Tumblr where you can submit your drawings. There are many initiatives like this across the web!

I think that for me online art promotion is a much better fit. Making them overlap is for me the hardest part!

Pstttt; I am writing an entire e-book on online art promotion and I definitely sneaky included some information on how to make a living as an artist that I have found out along the way. Find out more here >>>

How to promote your art easily online; the full guide

You will be the first to get it when it comes out! 

Online promoting can look complicated but I still prefer it over real life promotion every time!

What is your favourite part of the online promotion of you artwork? Or what part do you struggle with?