How do I know if I've truly validated my art and if it's ready to sell?

Validation isn’t just about making a single sale—it’s about consistent market response over time. If you’ve been marketing consistently for six months and have only sold fifteen hundred dollars worth of work, you have a validation problem that needs to be addressed. Similarly, if you’ve been at it for a while with very minimal sales, that’s a signal that something needs to change before you invest more heavily in marketing tactics. True validation means your art is resonating with buyers at a level that supports sustainable business growth. This is why getting close to your customers and getting direct feedback is so critical—it helps you understand whether you have a marketing execution problem or a deeper product-market fit issue that needs to be solved first.

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Asked by an artist struggling to generate consistent sales · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-09-24