One of the members of NakedGenius mentioned that he just wasn’t any good at presentation.  And many artists fail right at that point in their self-promotion.  They didn’t study design and presentation.  They aren’t marketers.  They “do art.”  But, as any galleryist can tell you, if the art isn’t lighted right, presented in the right circumstance, and surrounded by a complimentary setting, it ain’t gonna show itself well.

Now collectors can spot a good work, a valuable work, even when it’s stacked in some dark corner somewhere.  Their eye “knows;” their hand reaches, their negotiations in mind, their wallet ready.  But that’s a skilled eye and mind – not your target customer for prints, cards, and t-shirts at RedBubble, not your calendar and cup buyer at Zazzle, not your t-shirt buyer at Spreadshirt, and certainly not your high-priced giclee buyer at ImageKind — no, not, never on this last.

So how to sell to the world? 

Can you do it with a website that may focus on one image on its front page? Not in my opinion.  Can you do it by splattering your efforts across an infinite communication and presentation media like the Internet, from facebook to MySpace to eBay to art.com and more?  Not if you want to keep your sanity, you can’t. 

One way — the hard way – is to get your chosen venues – a handful like RedBubble, ImageKind, Zazzle, Spreadshirt and others which are very good at what they do – ranked on the world stage, the limelight focused on you.  To do that, you have employ the members of the venue to promote that venue  (Notice I said PROMOTE THAT VENUE) worldwide, getting traffic to that venue.  Then, in order to reap some benefit, you have to promote yourself within that venue so you “rank well on the inside” – this last a difficult thing at best.  However, the benefits of getting the VENUE (RedBubble, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, Imagekind.) to become a household word is that people won’t be afraid to shop there.  That’s number one priority if you plan on selling through that venue.

So then what?  If you can’t get yourself “featured” at the venue, how can you reap the benefits of all the traffic being generated by membership advertising the venue itself?   It’s all in the PRESENTATION, and PLANNING, then EXECUTING THE PROLIFERATION of that PRESENTATION.

• Presentation has to be exciting, impeccably presented, well-planned, and stimulate potential buyers to pull out their wallet. 
• Proliferation of that presentation must effectively return a profit on the money you invest, that return immediately reinvested in further effective PROMOTION.

Then, because the VENUE is “trusted” by consumers, the fact that you sell there when they specifically come looking for your work on your website, allows them to feel comfortable pushing the BUY THIS button.

Now, onto some nitty gritty about getting your presentation out there — HOW: Build yourself flyers, business cards, a catalog.  Gather a mailing list of local, regional, national and international shops, gather a mailing list of individuals who might be interested in your work, offer incentives to LOOK — important that — incentives to LOOK, place advertisements in magazines where you’ll gain some following — small and large — get featured in an article, get your art featured, give cards and cheap, small prints away…there are a hoard of methods and mechanisms.  Job number one, though, is make your PRESENTATION effective so that, WHEN it’s seen, it GRABS.  Does yours?

Here are some samples: