Art Money & Success

by Maria Brophy

  Below is a list of Self-Promotion and Marketing strategies that you can implement right now:

  Never leave home without your business cards. Your card should have an example of your art on the front and your complete contact information on the back, including your phone number, email address and a website where they can view your work.

  Whenever you meet someone new, tell them you’re an artist and hand them a business card. Ask them to let you know if there’s anything you can do for them in the future.

  Auto Wrap or paint your vehicle with your artwork. Drew painted our big Ford van all the way around with a beautiful surf inspired mural. On each side of the van, we have attached weather-proof business card holders.

  Get out of your comfort zone and meet new people. Join art associations and clubs. Join the local Chamber of Commerce. Go to events or functions where you are most likely to meet your right buyer.

  Go directly to clients, galleries, or businesses that you want to sell to, and meet them. Don’t hide behind emails and social media.

  Post youtube.com videos of you creating. This is very effective. People want to buy from people they know—and if they watch you on a video, they feel like they know you. To get results, this method requires consistent video postings over a long period of time and a second method of getting the videos out to people, either by newsletters or other social media channels. *Caution: If you make “how to” videos, you will attract artists, not art buyers. When creating the videos, be sure that the language you use and the subject matter you shoot is designed to speak directly to your right buyer, not to other artists.

  Send newsletters. Most of our art sales come from newsletter mailings. Build up a list of friends, family and fans and, with their permission, send them a bi-monthly newsletter with news of what you’re working on.

  Send a press release to the media when you have something to announce, like a new exhibit, an open house or a new series that you are creating. Learn how to properly write press releases so that the media wants to pick up your story. There are many books and blog posts on how to do this.

  Teach a class. Give something of value to your local community, share your knowledge, and gain a few new customers. If you are a webmaster, give a two hour class on SEO or how to set up a website. If you’re an artist, give art classes or hold a “wine and paint” class. Share your expertise, and you’ll become known as the expert in your field.

  Volunteer at a networking event, trade show or business gathering. This is an easy and fun way to meet influential people in your area. If you volunteer to help at an event, you’ll inevitably meet everyone there. Help clean up after the event, and most likely you’ll be rubbing elbows with the most important people, because the leaders are the ones making events happen and often they’re the last ones to leave.

  Join a Meet-Up Group that shares your same interests. Go to www.meetup.com, type in something you’re interested in (i.e. “photography” or “ceramics” or “writing”) and your zip code, and you’ll find many options. This will expose you to people that can lead you to opportunities.

  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+ are just a few of many social sites that artists are using to post their artwork and reach people online. Elsewhere in this book we lightly cover social media. For up-to-date details on how to set up and run your social media accounts, do an online search to find one of many articles that will help.

  Let’s do a little brainstorming on promoting your work. Get your notebook and a pen, and write the answers to the following questions:

  List five People who have bought from you in the past. Then list how they found you and your work.

  List five people or companies that you would like to do business with. Then write down places where you can meet these people.

  List five live events or function that you can attend. Then write down the dates that you will attend them. Put these dates on your calendar and commit to them.

  18

  ART LICENSING

  Many artists dream of seeing their artwork printed on products and placed on store shelves. Imagine walking into a Nordstrom and seeing your art printed on silk scarves or men’s neckties. That would feel great, wouldn’t it? To make this happen, you either have to build your own manufacturing business, get investors, and spend years building up sales with retailers, or, you can license your art to a manufacturer and let them do all the work.

  Licensing is a much easier way! When you license your art to a manufacturer, they are responsible to make, market and sell the products that your artwork is printed on. Your responsibility is to provide the artwork. In return, you are paid either a flat fee or a royalty.

  A few years before I left my corporate job, I worked part time managing Drew’s art business. We were selling Drew’s art prints to retailers and original painting commissions to collectors. The retailers were placing $300 print orders. Each order required the time to mat and bag the prints, then ship them, then bill the customer and later make collection calls. The profit margins were good, but we had to sell to hundreds of stores to make a good living from it. We hired two full time employees to help. The employees required managing from us as well. We learned quickly that this business model took a lot of energy and effort to generate the kind of money we wanted to earn.

  Though we were selling a lot of art, we had become hamsters on a treadmill. The more successful we became, the more behind we got. During busy months, in addition to orders from retailers, I would have many commissioned projects for Drew and the cash would flow in. But, Drew would have to bust his butt to churn out the work. Sometimes he would work seven days a week for long hours just to keep up with the demand.

  While having a plethora of commissioned projects is a dream for many artists, it’s a tough spot to be in, because creating art then becomes like digging ditches. You are only paid once, for each ditch that you dig. You take that money and pay your mortgage and feed your kids, and then the money is gone, and now you need to dig more ditches. Digging ditches 24-7 is exhausting work, even if you love it.

  While Drew is extremely efficient, the constant “digging ditches” became a never ending cycle of exhaustion and burn out. We realized that we would have to leverage his artwork so that we could make money off of an image more than one time. This way, for every “ditch” that he digs, we will be paid for it not just once, but many times for years to come.

  It was in 2001 when we had our “aha” moment about licensing art. We had closed a deal with Wham-O, one of the largest toy manufacturers in the U.S. We licensed a line of Drew’s wild surf and fish art for their kid’s boogie boards. We had a friend who worked at the company, Petie, who helped make the deal happen for us.

  Wham O boogie boards was our first official art licensing deal and it was what gave us the idea that we could utilize Drew’s large library of artwork for thousands of products. At the time, licensing only made up about 10% of our income. We decided that year that we would make it our focus to increase our licensing to 60% of our income.

  The artwork we provided Wham-O was a combination of existing artworks and new illustrations. Drew creates art old-school illustration style. Everything he creates is an actual painting, which we get a high res scan of. When licensing, you only have to provide your client with the digital images. So we kept the original paintings and sold them to collectors, which earned us more money. We also licensed the images to other companies for non-competing products, such as t-shirts and stickers. We were making money from the same art over and over again.

  We had a few artists ask if we felt that it would hurt Drew’s brand, putting his art on boogie boards. We had worried about that initially. Later, we found that instead of hurting Drew’s brand, it enhanced it. One of Drew’s goals is to bring joy to people with his art. Seeing kids happily playing with his boogie boards on the beach is evidence that we have reached that goal. Bringing joy to people can never hurt your brand!

  Our deal with Wham-O went huge;
they sold hundreds of thousands of Drew Brophy boogie boards each year, all over the world. In 2006 Drew took a surf trip to South Africa and was excited to see kids on the beach near J-Bay playing with his boogie boards. The Brophy boogie boards were everywhere, and each one bore Drew’s art, signature and name.

  We continued our license with Wham-O for many years, giving them new artwork to freshen up the line every year or two. Our deal ended seven years later, after Wham-O was sold to a Chinese company.

  The best thing about our deal with Wham-O, and other licensing deals with large companies, is that we are paid licensing fees while at the same time, Drew’s name and art is being marketed on a level that we could never do ourselves. It’s definitely a great way to work smarter, not harder.

  LICENSING AS A BUSINESS MODEL

  Licensing your art is a business model that generates an additional stream of income, allowing you to earn money off of your images again and again.

  Licensing means that the artist (the Licensor) grants another entity (the Licensee) the rights to use the artwork for a temporary period of time for a specific usage. Some people would describe licensing as “renting” images to a manufacturer to print on their products. As the owner of the artwork, you continue to keep ownership of your copyrights to the artwork while it’s licensed, and, you can choose to do anything you want with the artwork, as long as your contract doesn’t restrict it.

  An example of art licensing is an artist who creates a line of Elvis themed images and gives temporary rights to a manufacturer to print those images on clothing, ceramics and music boxes, and then sell them to gift stores. The manufacturer benefits by having art that will make their products sell well, and the artist benefits by being paid for it.

  A very simple example of licensing, one that many artists are already doing and don’t even realize it, is when an artist creates a t-shirt design for a company and allows that company to print and sell the t-shirts.

  Before our first official art licensing deal with Wham-O, Drew had been unofficially licensing his art to the surf company, Lost Surfboards. For many years, Drew’s art adorned Lost’s surfboards, wallets, clothing, and stickers. Since both Drew and Lost were inexperienced with licensing in those days, they didn’t have a formal contract. Instead, Drew would hand-write on his invoices what the usage rights were. Drew created thousands of images for Lost over the course of many years and he owns the copyrights to every image.

  After Drew’s surf trip to South Africa, he was inspired to paint Sunrise, a painting that has since become wildly popular. So popular, in fact, that it is one of the most copied artworks in surf. The original painting was painted on a large canvas and sold quickly in a Corona del Mar, CA gallery. Since then, we have licensed Sunrise to many different companies. It’s been licensed to a skateboard company, a wall-art company, a glassware company, a cell phone cover company and many others. All of those companies paid us a royalty to use the artwork on their products. Since each agreement limited their use to their specific product, we licensed the art to other companies for non-competing products. At the same time, we continue to sell paper and canvas reproductions of Sunrise to our own collectors through drewbrophy.com store and in our gallery. To date, we have earned over a quarter of a million dollars in royalties just from Sunrise. Just think, if we had sold the original painting and all of its rights away, we would have earned only a fraction of that amount.

  Many artists will ask me how much money they can make by licensing their art. It depends. Some artists, the very rare, super successful ones, earn over a million a year in royalties. Some artists will sign license deals and never see a dime. And some artists have made it their full time job.

  The amount of money you can make in licensing depends on three things:

  How well your art applies to commercial products

  How popular your images are (or can be), and

  How much time you are willing to put into the business of licensing

  THE LICENSING CONTRACT

  The agreement you have with a licensee will determine how much money you make and what they are allowed to do with the artwork, and what you are allowed to do with it, while the license is in effect.

  Every agreement is different and depends on the details of what the licensee will be doing with the art, such as: How many products will they print the art on; how many images do they want; where will they be sold; what are the sales projections; what is the retail price; will they use existing art or require you to create new art? These questions should be answered in the first few conversations you have with your licensee, before agreeing to a price or royalty.

  In a typical agreement, the artist grants rights to their licensee to use the art for a temporary period of time (i.e. 2 years), in a specific geographical territory (i.e. the United States), for a specific usage (i.e. silk scarves, ladies hats and handbags). While an image is being licensed, the artist can continue to create and sell other products with the artwork, as long as their agreement doesn’t restrict it. All of these details, and more, should be included in a written agreement.

  Most companies will want to use their own licensing contract. In that case, please have an attorney that specializes in licensing help you with it. It’s important to be aware of contract language that can harm your future earning potential.

  If you plan on regularly licensing your artwork, it’s best to invest in having an attorney create a license agreement for you that you can use again and again. I also have a license agreement template that you can use. You can find it at www.mariabrophy.com.

  Remember, every agreement is negotiable. If the contract has language that you don’t want to agree to, ask them to change it. You don’t have to agree to anything you don’t want to.

  MORE TO KNOW ABOUT LICENSING

  Anyone can license their art if they own the copyrights, including cartoonists, digital artists, painters, sculptors, photographers and writers. In addition to licensing artwork, if you’re a well-known personality or athlete, you can license your name and likeness. Snowboarder Sean White has an entire line of boy’s clothing for sale in Target under his own name.

  Often I’m asked if abstract art can be licensed. The answer is, sometimes. Abstracts typically don’t work well with commercial products, however, there are always exceptions. I’ve seen beautiful abstract art printed on ladies silk scarves and luxury items. Also, licensing isn’t just about products, it also applies to wall art. Most abstracts will do well with wall art.

  Traditional licensing is when you license your work to a manufacturer and they sell your commercial products in mass market or mainstream retailers. This is what many artists aspire to do. But, traditional licensing tends to pay less, and to earn a good living from it you must have dozens of active licenses and your artwork must have a very strong commercial appeal and be up to date on recent trends.

  Sadly, in traditional licensing there is a large number of artists vying for the deals, and in their desperation, they have lowered their own value. Artists that are not business-educated, or that are desperate, will agree to bad license deals that pay nothing up front and very little in royalties. I have seen contracts that offer the artist zero up front advance with a 2% royalty and no guarantees.

  Artists who agree to bad deals have ruined it for the professional artists who are trying to make a living, because now manufacturers are trained to not respect the artist. They say “well, if you refuse to license at these rates, there are a hundred other artists who will do it for nearly nothing.” And so it is.

  Non-traditional art licensing is where the money is. I consider non-traditional licensing to be when you license your work for advertising campaigns or a company’s branding or for boutique retailers or for a niche market or any other usage that doesn’t fall under traditional licensing. You’ll earn more because so few artists are making their work available in this way and they haven’t screwed up the market value yet. I’ve been able to consistently get anywhere from $6,000 to
$30,000 advance payments in these markets, where in traditional licensing I can barely get any advance at all.

  If putting together a licensing deal takes twenty hours of work, and you’ll be paid an advance of $0 with one licensee, or $6,000 with another, which would you choose? Think about this before putting too much time into a deal where there is little money up front. It takes the same amount of time to put together a good deal as it does a bad one. Choose to put your focus, time and energy into the good ones.

  There is so much more to know about putting the deals together, what to charge, how to negotiate, how to find licensees, and more. If you plan on licensing your art, take the time to read everything you can find out about it. You can access a lot of free information online. You can also attend the Licensing University, put on by LIMA. And, of course, work with consultants and attorneys in the beginning to help you make the best decisions.

  The most important thing to know about art licensing is that while there are rules in licensing, you don’t have to follow them. You can make your own rules. If you envision your art on high quality products, you don’t have to agree to low quality products. If you want to license your art to many different kinds of companies, you can. If you want to make your expensive, fine art paintings available to print on products, you can. No one can tell you what the best business model is for yourself. You get to choose.

  ROYALTIES AND FLAT FEES -

  HOW TO PRICE LICENSING

  Many years ago when Drew and I committed to growing our licensing program, I enrolled in the Licensing certificate program through LIMA’s Licensing University. I was very excited to attend one of the classes titled “What to charge for licensing; Royalties and Advances.”

  Sitting in the front row, eager to get guidance as to what to charge, I had my notebook ready. A panel of five licensing experts sat at the front of the room, about to share their wisdom.

  Pen in hand, I listened intently, waiting for the mystery to unravel. What should I charge? How much of an advance should I ask for? How much in royalty rates?