H&H forum artists, have you ever put an advert in the magazine?

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Artists of horse and hound forum, have you ever put an advert in the magazine, classifieds or an actual advert.
Did it work for you, was it worth it?

I'm just getting into commission work and I'm not sure if people are going to look in H&H for an artist? But on the other hand I'm not sure where people would look. Lately I have just been getting work from word of mouth and facebook.
 
Hi OP,

I'm not an artist myself but I put an ad in the Evening Standard a few years ago for my freelance work and it generated zilch.
I tend to think that classified ads are too expensive for the returns and there are much better options.
Have you tried using Etsy? FB ads targeted at the horsey community might also be effective. Have you got a blog?
 
maggiestar said:
Hi OP,

I'm not an artist myself but I put an ad in the Evening Standard a few years ago for my freelance work and it generated zilch.
I tend to think that classified ads are too expensive for the returns and there are much better options.
Have you tried using Etsy? FB ads targeted at the horsey community might also be effective. Have you got a blog?
Click to expand...

No I don't have a blog, I do have a Facebook page I suppose that's a bit like a blog. I also stick things on instergram.
I didn't think about Etsy I thought it wans just an American website.
 
No, Esty is international and there are lots of talented artists selling their stuff on there. It's a marketplace which attracts huge numbers of buyers.
Instagram is a good site too so well done for that.
I'd get a website with a blog and start using social media to drive people to your site. You can create a sales page with an Etsy button so browsers don't even need to leave your site to buy.
 
Not an artist, but do work in marketing. Facebook ads would probably be more cost effective - targeting people with an interest in horses.
You could also try a competition on facebook to get in front of horse people (offer the chance to win a portrait if people share your post and perhaps tag in a horsey friend).
Are you on Twitter? If you are there are a number of horse hours you could get involved with to share your work.
 
Just a point but remember marketing through facebook/twitter/blogs requires a long term plan of action. However you choose to market yourself through those they only really work if you are regularly posting up content.
Nothing is worse than advertising yourself through a blog that hasn't had a post in months - or having an active website that links to a dead blog etc...

So if you go that way make sure you've got an idea of how you're going to keep marketing yourself long term - esp as most might take a while to actually get off the ground and start working well.


I've also seen artists who have effective marketing move toward doing some comissions on bidding. Ergo once you've got enough people wanting that you've got more requests than you can fill you can try putting up comission slots on a bid; people pledge more and more and whoever offers the most wins (of course payment up front as normal).
 
Thank you so much guys!
I will have a look at Esty today and try set something up. I'm not quite sure how twitter works yet.

The bidding thing is interesting, I'm going to keep it in mind fro a bit. At the moment I don't charge up front, I only ask for payment if the customer likes the painting. (Luckily everyone has liked them up to now) Maybe when I get a bit more confident in my abilities and a few more commissions coming in.
 
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