What's the reality of competition in the online art business?

There is almost no real competition if you’re willing to do the actual work. Millions of artists and photographers exist, and everyone has a phone and internet access, yet almost nobody is doing the fundamental marketing work required to build a business. The vast majority follow unsuccessful people like sheep off a cliff—they think they should just get into galleries, upload to online marketplaces, and wait for sales. They don’t build direct businesses or do real marketing. This means it’s blue ocean for anyone who commits to direct marketing and treats this like a real business. The differentiator is incredibly easy: just be willing to do the marketing and work that real entrepreneurs do. Most people won’t, even when told exactly what to do. So if you make the decision to actually execute, you’ll be in a tiny percentage of people who succeed. The competition is a mirage—it looks like it exists, but in practice, very few artists are doing what actually works.

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Asked by general teaching · Answered by Nick Friend · art-marketing-podcast · 2022-01-08