When is the best time of year to start building my audience?

Spring is traditionally an ideal time to start ramping up efforts to build your audience and get your work in front of new people. You’re planting seeds in spring so that by year-end, when the most art is sold and consumer spending peaks, you have a strong audience ready to buy. February through early spring is perfect because you’re past New Year’s resolutions but have the full year ahead to test, refine, and build. That said, this approach works no matter when you start—the loop of building audience, testing material, and capitalizing works regardless of your start date. The key is giving yourself enough runway to experiment and discover what resonates before your major sales period.

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Asked by synthesized from teaching · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2026-02-19