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If I had a successful offline art business but am struggling online, why isn't my past success translating?

The internet doesn’t care about your offline history. It doesn’t matter if you’ve done 35,000 art shows over 20 years and sold $3 million worth of work—online, none of that matters if you don’t have attention (an audience). The fundamental equation still applies: incentive plus scarcity times attention. If the attention piece isn’t there, your past success is irrelevant. This is a perspective issue that affects many established artists moving online. You’re essentially marketing for the first time in a new medium, and you have to build that audience from scratch. Your previous accomplishments don’t automatically transfer. You need to invest the time and consistent effort to build up your online presence and audience, just like any new business would.


Asked by an established artist moving online · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-10-17