What's the biggest challenge for artists trying to build an online art business?

Artists don’t have a website problem or a product problem — they have a traffic and marketing problem. You could have your art on any website anywhere in the world; it wouldn’t matter if no one sees it. The fundamental challenge is that almost no artists want to do the work of marketing themselves. They don’t want to capture emails, send emails, post consistently on social, tell their story, or run sales. Learning that process and staying consistent with it is difficult and often miserable at first, like learning to do a thousand push-ups when you can only do three. The biggest challenge isn’t the tools or platform — it’s getting artists to actually do the marketing work consistently and not quit when it gets hard or boring. Most artists want to hide behind the canvas or the lens, but that’s a recipe for stasis. You have to do the things you don’t want to do, and do them consistently, or the business won’t grow.

---

Asked by implicit question from the teaching context · Answered by Patrick · Art Business Webinar · 2026-08-24