The Marketing Tools Of Non-Starving Artists

Over the years, I have received wonderful emails from Denver artist, Bob Ragland. Known as the Non-starving Artist in Denver, these emails are clever and loaded with nuggets of art marketing tools and information. 

This post is a compilation of those emails along with Bob’s Marketing Tools Of Non-Starving Artists list below. 

Bob has been featured on NPR. I hope you enjoy his wisdom and wit.

Bob says he has found the secret to weathering a financial crisis:

• He is big on doing simple business tactics and works on PR (personal relationships with customers) and marketing moves every day.
• Bob gets up everyday and gives his art career the best that he can give it.
• He may not be the best artist, but he gives the best effort.
• Bob says, “Art schools ain’t gonna do it.”
• Workshops would be great, if they had a nuts & bolts business component.
• Bob insists that people will spend money no matter how hard times are.
• During recessions – people buy less, but they buy better.
• The most neglected part of art life is the mechanics of business. Please see Bob’s good ‘art brother’ Dean Mitchell. He’s a brilliant businessman.
• Send career updates to people.
• Live cheap, have skills and low, low bills – don’t have do bad art deals!

Work on some home shows.
Table top shows.
Be practical.
Keep cash.
Business tactics win!
Just do it.

• A few more thoughts from Bob: Read THE OUTLIERS by -Malcolm Gladwell– focus on 10,000 hours chapter.

One of the other things that he notes is the idea of 10,000 hours. Every single person who has perfected his or her art form (athletes, computer programmers, and musicians) each has managed to put in 10,000 hours of practice time.

This number has been one of the most notable patterns. However, each of the above people were also given unique opportunities to that allowed them to reach 10,000 hours of practice time.

Here are Bob’s Marketing Tools Of Non-Starving Artists

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