Top Business Mistakes Artists Make – Tip 1

I took the plunge in 2003 taking my art from a hobby stage to professional, and I didn’t do it by going out and purchasing expensive equipment and calling myself a professional. In doing so I learned a lot about myself, my talents and art in general.

As I’ve grown I can now recognize many things artists do that hurts their ability to be successful in their profession. So here is a list of things I’ve learned as I took the plunge and what I observe other artists doing that hurts their career.

Here is one of the series of tips that will come out each week to help artists achieve their dreams.

1. Difference between a Profession and Hobby

Many artists don’t know the difference. Artists tend to go out and buy the most expensive equipment and call themselves professional. However, they don’t understand the term “professional”.  Expensive equipment does not constitute you as being ”professional”, your art and how you depend on it does.

Someone who does art as a “hobby” does not care if they make money at it or not  because they are doing what they love. They are content to make works of art at random, and if one sells here and there, great!

A professional depends on the sale of their work and commissioned jobs to survive. They put all their money into their art and must market themselves as a business.

If you do not want to commit the time to run a business, I suggest you treat it as a hobby. That doesn’t mean you are amature in what you do, it just means you don’t want to take this to a professional level.  Like any business, without exposure, committment, networking and investing in your product- you will fail.  Doesn’t matter if its art, a restaurant or what have you.  Its all the same in the business world.

If you are a hobbiest, and do just the bare minimum but expect professional like results, you are sadly mistaken, it probably won’t happen… although there is always that one that defies the odds.  To that one, I applaud you… it was meant to happen so consider taking your efforts to a higher level and see where you can soar.

Let me now show you some poor efforts -

1. Entering shows that you paid good money for and not attending the “meet the artist night”; or placing your work and never make an appearance unless you are there to get paid or pull your work is a low effort on your part – you’re doing bare minimum. (See the next tip – Communication & the Community) for further explaination coming next week.
2. Promise people you are going to do a job, and not get to it… or you get to it on your own time when you are ready. This is another poor effort that most hobbiests would make, not a professional.
3. You show up to a job completely unprepared. (I do understand, even a professional can show up unprepared, but they usually don’t make a habit of it).
4. Failure to market you and your work.

I see too much of this in the art world and those that follow what I just mentioned, tend to be the biggest complainers of their lack luster success.