The Weekly Glow Up: May 10, 2023

May 10

Welcome back to the Weekly Glow Up, where I share tips and resources that you should know about as a creative who wants to make money from their art.

Here’s what I’ve got this week:

1. 🤑 Money Talk: 3 Things You Need in Order to Start Charging Higher Prices

If you’re looking at your current rates and wondering how you’re EVER going to go full-time with your art business or reach your income goals, here are 3 things that can help you start charging higher prices:

✨ A niche. Specialization = higher prices. People are willing to pay more for someone who’s seen as an expert in a specific area rather than a jack of all trades.

🙃 Clear differentiators. When you can clearly explain or show why you’re a better choice than your competitor, you give your clients a reason to pay more. When you’re exactly the same as every other lettering artist or designer or photographer out there, your clients are going to look solely at price and make their decision that way. It’s critical to define what clients can get uniquely with your products or services that they won’t get anywhere else.

🙋 Social proof. These are reviews, testimonials, referrals, anything that shows your audience that other people trust you. When you have this proof, you’re less risky, and you can charge a higher price for your demonstrated track record.

When you’ve got these 3, plus an understanding of the ranges others in your industry are charging for similar products/services, you can start upping those prices.

Remember, if clients NEVER balk at your prices or you don’t lose ANY for being too expensive… you’re likely not charging enough. 😉

2. ⚙️ Systems for Success: Testimonials & Reviews

Speaking of social proof—do you have a system set up to ensure that you’re regularly gathering reviews and testimonials from all the people you help with your products & services?

These reassure your future buyers that you can deliver on your promise, and grow your authority in your niche.

Here are some tips for crafting a system to you get more reviews and testimonials from your customers in order to build this repository of social proof:

If you’re using an e-commerce platform, many of them have options to prompt customers for a review after their purchase. See what options exist in your platform, customize it to your voice/brand, and use it!
Make it EASY for someone to write a testimonial for you. Create a form they can fill out with short, simple, direct questions instead of expecting them to write a full paragraph summing everything up themselves. You could even write the testimonial for them, then ask for their approval/edits before using it to really make it easy.
Ask for a testimonial BEFORE you’re done working with a client. Even the most well-intentioned client is more likely to forget about filling out your testimonial form once your project is out of sight, out of mind. Try asking for the testimonial when excitement is at a peak, like when you’ve shared a key draft or version of the project that they’re excited about (but before you make the final final edits)

Don’t forget to outline the steps or the SOP (standard operating procedure) for what you need to do after you get the testimonial:

Will you add it to an existing page on your website? Do you have a template for a social media graphic to share testimonial quotes on your social accounts?

Make it easy for you to use and maximize the testimonial, too!

3. 🍵 Client Tea: How Do You Approach Research Before Launching a New Product?

In last month’s Artist Happy Hour, someone asked about how to approach the research stage when you’re developing a new digital product.

They were wondering if you should go for something that you like or would want yourself, or if you should just look at trends.

There are reasons to do each—let’s break it down.

If you are creating a product because you like it and it serves a need for you, it’s very likely that other people have that need too.

Which means it’s very likely that there are people out there who would buy that product.

People buy products and services to solve a problem they have, or fulfill a need.

So if you’ve discovered something that can do that for you, and you have similar pain points/needs as your ideal client—then that’s a great idea for a product!

Here’s an example:

In my lettering artwork, I would often decorate my lettering pieces with floral illustrations.

It took up a lot of time drawing the same florals around my lettering over and over again, so I invested the time to make stamp brushes in Procreate that would make it much faster for me to add these illustrations to my pieces.

That solved a need/addressed a pain point that I had—and I knew a lot of other letterers had that pain point too.

So I sold it as a digital product in marketplaces where I knew letterers came to buy tools for their art creation.

Developing products that solve specific, largely unaddressed problems is a great way to go. Now let’s talk about trends.

There are certain products that are so common and widely available, it’s not a ground-breaking new idea. It’s a commodity.

Let’s take fonts for example.

Everyone knows what a font is. When someone needs to design something involving text, they know that they need to go shop or look for a font.

So if you sell a font, your product isn’t solving a unique, novel pain point for your customers. It’s solving the same basic pain point as all the other fonts out there.

This is where it can be useful, from a sales strategy perspective, to look at what styles of fonts are trending.

By designing something that’s in style right now, you may have a greater chance of selling more of them.

Or, on the other hand, you can totally buck the trends and go in the complete opposite direction to make your product stand out more—which can help your sales too.

But to do either of those, you need to do research into what the current trends are in the first place 😉

P.S. There’s another Artist Happy Hour coming up on May 25 - this month we’re talking about PRICING. If you want tips that will help your biz, and to get your specific questions answered, save your spot!

4. 📙 More Good Readin’: Starting an Art Business 101

I’ve heard from a lot of clients and followers lately that they’re frustrated with Instagram.

Their reach has shrunk, they don’t want to only make Reels, they’re sick of the algorithm.

I’m right there with you, which is why I’ve recently started putting more effort into my email list (thanks for being here 💌).

If you’re curious about what it takes to start one yourself, how to grow it, or wtf to talk about, this podcast ep from The Professional Creative is worth a listen.