Why do some artists succeed right away while others struggle for over a year?

When artists use the same tools and follow the same guidance but get wildly different results, it usually comes down to several diagnostic issues. First, do you actually have physical inventory—finished products ready to ship—or are you just showing digital images? Second, are you actually doing the marketing work consistently, or expecting the website alone to generate sales? Third, are you following the guidance exactly, or are you ‘coloring outside the lines’ and modifying things based on your own ideas? Fourth, perspective—do you understand that building an audience (the ‘attention’ multiplier in the sales equation) takes time, or are you expecting instant results? Finally, is your work truly validated—meaning, have strangers actually purchased it? These are the systematic checks you need to work through to diagnose what’s holding you back.

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Asked by an artist wondering why they’re not getting results · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-10-17