Building an Audience

Today, more than ever, there are many ways for independent artists and illustrators to build a fan base.

In addition to traditional media, the web has opened up thousands (millions!?) of forums, social networking sites, blogs and portfolio sites for artists to show their work to a prospective audience. However, with so many choices one must carefully choose how to proceed with limited time and resources since it’s impossible to do it all. It’s helps to formulate a plan of attack.

Beware: You cannot do everything at once. (It’s impossible, and really, you don’t need to.) If you carefully choose what you do when, you can build upon your successes and move your reputation higher and higher.

As always, these are simply my opinions based upon my own personal experience; your mileage may vary.

Also, this article assumes that you want to be a commercial success. There are all kinds of success out there, and commercial is just one facet of the bigger whole. You don’t have to be a commercial success to be a successful or interesting artist. I’m working in the commercial world, so this article assumes that you’re looking for commercial success, too.

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Foundation

You need to have a foundation to work from so people can begin to appreciate what you’re doing.

Choose a name:
You’re going to have to have some sort of name to promote. Ideally, it should be memorable, unique and Google friendly.

• Are you going to promote a company name? Examples include: Meomi. XL5 Design. Specimen Design Steam Crow Press.
• Are you going to use your own name? Gary Baseman. Paul Frank (Industries). Andrew Bawidimann. Brian Ewing.
• Are you going to use a pseudonym? Attaboy. Gris Grimly. Daniel m. Davis.

It’s far easier to promote a single name, so don’t go crazy with all kinds of sub-brand names to start with. Just choose one, stick to it, and make sure you can get the domain name for it too.

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Your Illustration / Art

This is the most important part. You need to be doing something of quality for others to enjoy. I’m assuming that you’ve got this one handled already.

Do something worthwhile:

• Be original
• Fulfill a need
• Have your audience in mind
• Follow your own personal interests and passions
• Start out specific
• Do a great job
• Aim just shy of perfection
• Do work that you’ll be proud of (at least) 5 years from now. (You want to build an audience, right? You’ll need a body of good work. This takes time.)

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Get your work online:

• Start an art blog. (WordPress rules)
• Start a Myspace / Friendster / etc.
• Post art on Flickr
• Build a full-on website
• Post your illustration on an art forum. Add your URL to your forum signature.
• Post your illustration on an illustration directory

Prepare some cheap print collateral:

• Business card. Please don’t run it off of your printer. For $25 you can have some nice professional cards made. Put your URL on them.
• Postcards. These cost more money but are more impactful. Again, promote your URL on them.
• Make a flier. Cheaper yet, but make them cool.

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Attracting Fans

Okay, now that you’ve got some foundation in place, how are you going to attract people to your great work? (And your web presence.) How can fans find you?

I suggest going after them.

Here’s a big ugly list of some ideas that you can use:

• Get a table at a comic/horror/anime/sci fi convention. Show your work and hopefully sell a little of your work to them.
• Put your business cards/postcars/fliers up at the art store. Post them up at cafe bulletin boards. Plaster them up at the local college campus. Go guerilla.
• Arrange an art show at a local gallery/cafe/business/dance hall. Goal here is to get your work seen. Make sure that you have the print collateral ready to go.
• Team up with a band, and offer to make them a poster for their upcoming show. (For free.) Do their cd art. They’ll help you promote your work.
• Get a card table, and feature your art on the local monthly “art walk” if you’ve got one. Here, people set up shop in empty lots and seem to do pretty well.
• Feature your art at the local comic book store, if they’ll let you. I’ve been doing “Free Comic Book Day” for a couple of years now, and I don’t even do comics.
• Make friends with other artists, and see what they’re up to. Sometimes they’ll have other contacts that will help you. Help them with what you know and you’ll both benefit.

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Staying in Contact

So, you’ve managed to attract a few hundred fans. This is great. Now, you’ve got to keep them. Otherwise, with all of the distractions of the modern world, they’ll forget you in lieu of somebody else knocking at their door.

Don’t let that happen.

Here are some things that you can do to stay fresh in their minds:

• Keep updating your site with new art and info. Seriously. This is key if you’ve been using the web to build your audience. For some reason, it rarely happens.
• Use Twitter so that people learn about you, your story, and what you’re up to. But don’t just talk about yourself; create a community.
• Keep doing your art. Post it regularly. This is why you’re in the game, right? You’ve got to keep creating no matter what.
• Continue to build new projects/products. Whatever it is that you do, keep making more. Fans want to come back to you for something new. If you’ve got something new, they’ll likely get it. It’s easier to get them to buy from you again than convince someone new to buy your stuff.
• Start a mailing list at your art show/website/blog, and send out a newsletter religiously on a schedule. I’d suggest monthly. You’ll have to follow spam laws here, so Google the “Can-Spam Act”, and follow that.

These guys are cheap, reliable, and professional newsletter folks:

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Rinse, repeat. Continue.

Basically, the name of the game is to keep going, no matter what.

I’m finding that I continue to revisit each of these, and improve them as time goes on. After a while, you’ll have great art, a great website, and hopefully a growing and interested audience.

Good luck, and keep working hard.

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Daniel m. Davis is the co-owner (with his wife Dawna) of Steam Crow LLC,  a Phoenix, Arizona studio that creates characters/stories/goods with a monster imagination.

He also creates the Monster Commute, a 5 day a week monsterpunk adventure comic.