Making More Money From Art-6 – Workshop Strategy
A Workshop strategy outline
What is the purpose of a workshop strategy? First of all it should contribute to the overall goal of helping you make more money from your art. Secondly, a workshop strategy should help you focus your mind on the art that you paint. It can also help you focus on getting you new customers, and more customers coming back for additional workshops.
What is Strategy?
A strategy is a larger, overall plan of action intended to achieve a long term or overall aim. Tactics, are smaller, focused plans that are part of the larger overall plan. Previously, the words strategy and tactics was originally used in a military context. Now, they are frequently used in many everyday settings especially business.
A Possible Military Strategy
A military strategy might be to “occupy and deprive the enemy of their agricultural production land to reduce their capability to feed themselves”. Tactics could be “Airborne divisions to take the far bank of the border river to form a bridgehead. Then, combat engineers to build bridges across the river to allow rapid movement of armour and infantry across the border river”.
A Possible Art Strategy
An art workshop strategy might be to “make more money from art by increasing the number of new customers, and repeat customers attending workshops”. Tactics could include better use of advertising in various locations, and matching workshop sessions to specific individual subjects.
What is a Workshop Strategy?
What is a workshop strategy? A workshop strategy is a medium to long term plan aimed at helping you be more successful. A good workshop strategy could help you increase the number of students and the number of repeat customers that you have. Having a clear purpose for the subjects of your workshops should also keep your students interested, enthused and motivated to keep coming back for more tuition. A clear workshop strategy could also help you increase sales of your finished art.
Different Workshop Subjects
Workshops To Improve Art Skills
Why not run a series of workshop to improve student skills. If each workshop leads on from the previous workshop then customers are more likely to return for the next instalment. The easiest sales are made to the customers that you already have.
The first workshop would teach basic techniques to produce a relatively simple painting, Subsequent workshops would cover similar subjects that require increasing levels of skill. This would allow attendees to easily build on what they learnt in the previous workshops. Different courses could be taught covering different subjects.
It would be wise to run 2 classes at each level, but paint a different picture each time. This would give attendees a choice of dates that they could attend, and not worry about missing a session. You should spread a course of 5 or 6 days over a 6 month period.
Workshops On Set Subjects
Archaeology, bird watching, Koi Carp breeding, rose growing, Zen Buddhism. The world is full of clubs and associations that cover all forms of interest and hobby you can think of, and some you can’t. First of all, look at the subjects that you are most comfortable painting and see what clubs you have locally that cover those subjects. By locally I mean within an hour’s drive of you.
Maybe you like painting railway scenes? Therefore do some direct advertising to local clubs that cover railways as this could result in extra attendees. Be creative, think of live steam preservation societies, and model railway societies. If we use the model railway engineering hobby as an example, you could teach modellers who build their own model locomotives, how to paint their creation,
Many pet owners would like to have portraits of their pets. Therefore advertise to cat and dog owning clubs. It still pays to advertise in newsletters and journals. Take out a paid advertisement in the journals that cover your area of painting expertise and see what happens.
Workshops For The Seasons
The landscape continually changes as the months move on. A view in summer can look totally different to the same view in the winter. Teach different techniques to paint the same landscape in different seasons. Use colour techniques in the spring, monochrome in the winter.
Workshops For Festivals
The best known festivals in the Christian world are Christmas and Easter, in the Muslim world Ramadan and Eid. Diwalli and Ganesh Chaturthi are the main festivals of the Hindu faith. All the religions of the world have their own festivals, It is now a common custom to send cards to family and friends during these festivals. A scene based on the relevant festival could be the subject of a painting workshop. Then upload the paintings to a POD site (as described in Making Money From Art-4). Your customers will then be able to print and buy their own cards and send them to friends and family.
In Conclusion
I feel that sitting down for a short while and developing a workshop strategy could help artists who run workshops. It would help get more customers, and turn some occasional customers into regular repeat customers.