The Top 5 Reasons Photographers and Artists Should Sell Products

September 08, 2021

How do you become known as a photographer or an artist? Social media and other marketing methods are great, but they require a lot of resources — i.e time or money.

What if you could get your name out there and make money at the same time? This is just one of the reasons why photographers and artists should be selling products with their artwork on them.

Many photographers or artists feel resistant to printing their work on less expensive products and selling those. After all, doesn’t it devalue your $5,000 koa wood framed photograph when a copy of it appears on a $15 cell phone case?

While you want to save some exclusivity for your best, most expensive works, selling products is actually a huge boon to your business and popularity as an artist. Curious to find out why? Read on for 5 reasons you should start selling products today.

1. Collectors Run Out of Wall Space

Your customers only have so much wall space. In other words, they have a limited need for framed photographs and paintings. Each customer (unless they’re reselling your stuff) will only buy one piece of artwork for you — a handful if you’re lucky. Then, your relationship ends because you have nothing more to offer them.

You already know how hard you have to work to get noticed. You spend X amount of marketing dollars to earn every customer you have. With products, you have much more to offer the same customer. As customers spend more money with you, your marketing cost goes down — which is something we can all get excited about!

2. Original Artwork Is Expensive

You are also probably painfully aware of how hard it is to get people to see the value in your art. The truth is, artwork doesn’t have much of an intrinsic value, unlike a physical product.

For example, say you’re selling homemade soap. You figure out your price point by looking at the cost of the materials, the time it took you to make it, and what other homemade soap bars are selling for.

Artwork is decidedly more difficult to price. Paint, canvas, and brushes for a painting don’t cost thousands of dollars, and how do you price a photograph? While camera equipment is expensive, printing and matting the photo can cost less than a hundred dollars.

Thus, the cost of your artwork is based far more on the value that your customer perceives.

There are many people that see a ton of value in art and are willing to drop big money on it. But rarely does this happen with unknown artists. However, if they get to know you first by buying a few of your products that they fall in love with, they’ll be far more willing to spend thousands of dollars on your big-ticket items.

3. It's Great Exposure

As a photographer or artist, you might cringe when you hear the word exposure. Everybody wants you to take this photograph or paint that little trinket for free touting that “it’s great exposure!”

Well, set that impulse aside for a second. Exposure is a good thing and when you sell products, you’re both getting exposure and earning income.

This is particularly true when you sell your products wholesale to stores and/or galleries. You might make fewer dollars per item, but having your stuff sitting on store shelves is putting it in front of more eyes. Plus, people are buying it, falling in love with your work, and (hopefully) coming to look for more.

4. Passive Income

Finally, selling products is a great way to increase the amount of money you can make per piece of artwork. If you only sell original paintings or photographs, you have to create a new piece in order to make more money. Your money-making potential is limited to what you can produce.

However, if you start printing your artwork on products and selling those, you will earn passive income. You can sell an endless number of products from a single piece of artwork rather than being limited to only one sale.

Print-on-demand services in collaboration with other vendors is an easy way to do this with a low cost for getting started. You simply design the products you want to sell and the vendor makes it when a customer orders it and ships it directly to the customer. You don’t have to pack up and ship anything nor spend money on maintaining an inventory.

5. Inexpensive Entry Point for New Customers

Finally, let’s be honest, not everyone has the expendable income to spend a few hundred (or thousand) dollars on original artwork. Many people might love your work, but it’s just out of their price range.

When you sell products, you open yourself to a whole new customer base. What’s more, you can do this without devaluing your original artwork. You can still sell your original paintings and photographs at higher price points to people that appreciate your art and have the money to spend. But with less expensive products you now have something to offer a much larger group of people.

Selling Products With Foterra Jewelry

Intrigued by the idea of selling products? What type of products can you sell? Pillows? Mugs?

But everybody else is already doing that.

How about turning your artwork into exquisite jewelry pieces? Now that’s something a little more exciting!

That’s what we do here at Foterra Jewelry. We print your amazing artwork and immortalize it in resin to create gorgeous jewelry. All you have to do is design your jewelry collections and we’ll take care of the rest.

Not sure how to turn your artwork into jewelry? We’ll be there to help you get set up. Then, when someone buys a piece, we make it and ship it. All you have to do is collect your commission. Pretty awesome, right?

Interested in learning how to turn your photography and art into beautiful photo jewelry? Sign up for our free design workshop. We will teach you how to create a winning design and give you a sneak peek into the Foterra Artist Community. Sign up HERE!