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How to set up for an Art/Craft Show- Checklist
Victoria Case

There's nothing worse than setting up a great booth, and right before show time, realize there's something you have forgotten. So, I created a checklist for myself which I recommend to anyone planning to attend an event. Of course, depending on what you sell, yours will have other items to add.

My list begins with money and promotion (after all, that's what it's all about). I usually bring $100 worth of bills/change in a small box or "fanny pack". And the following items:

• receipt book
• business cards (don't forget to advertise your website!)
• large sign with name and/or logo
• easel for large sign
• two lined paper pads for writing orders, names, phone numbers
• several pens
• calculator
• bags for items sold (with a business card inside each one)

Next is my display(some items are adjusted for indoor or outdoor shows)

• 10 x 10 tent (I recommend a white tent)
• buckets with sand for weight
• pre-formed concrete-filled buckets for tent poles (especially useful when setting up on asphalt)
• safety pins (for anything)
• large white sheet/material for sun protection pinned to tent's back wall or sidewall (if needed)
• display tables
• material to cover display tables
• small broom/dust pan
• several garbage bags
• Windex and other cleaners (jewelry, wood, etc.)
• card racks or picture holders (mannequins, boxes, items used to hold your crafts for sale)
• display signs with item categories and prices
• tape (for anything)

A Marketing Plan for Your Craft Business

James Dillehay

Do you have a marketing plan for your craft business? I am not speaking of a business plan, which is a more formal lengthy manuscript used mostly when attempting to raise money from lenders or investors. Instead of a multi-page document, the marketing plan consists of seven sentences which guide your progress in the coming months and years. The seven sentence plan can be drafted on one or two pages.

1. What is your most desired result to be achieved from your marketing activities?

The first part of creating a marketing plan is envisioning what you want the success of your craft business to look and feel like. Start by writing down exactly what you want your craft business to accomplish and by when. If you want $5,000 in sales each month within the next six months, write that down. If you want to get 20 items listed on eBay in the next sixty days, that’s a target. Go ahead and make that list right now.

2. What benefits does your work provide?

The second step is to list the benefits of your art or craft. What do people get by purchasing what you offer? Be careful not to focus on the features of your products. Features differ from benefits. For example, feautures of art and craftwork include dimensions, weight, colors or materials. Benefits to the buyer include escalating value, gratification, confidence, pride, good taste, and satisfaction from owning an original work by a reputable artist. Get specific and write down what makes the benefits of your items unique or different from other artists. What makes your items stand out? What’s in it for the customer? The more benefits the better.

3. Who is your audience?

If you think it’s everyone, guess again. Even if everyone is a potential customer, you can’t possibly reach them all. The purpose of step three is to zero in on your target audiences, thus allowing you to carefully plan how to promote to their specific needs. Experienced artists selling their work already know that women are responsible for most purchases of handmade items. Creating marketing material that appeals to women then becomes a clear necessity. Get as specific as you can about identifying who is your most-likely-to-buy audience(s). Define them by age, sex, race, income, hobbies, purchasing habits, and any other demographic fact that helps you describe them completely.

Read more tips here!

Every musician currently living on the Planet Earth would love nothing more than to wake up tomorrow in the midst of their glorious peak of superstardom. But, as Rome wasn't built in a day, neither is the career of any one musician. A musical career is a long, sometimes arduous journey of tiny advances and minor setbacks filling the fragile shell of big breaks and huge disappointments. It's up, it's down, it's all around and hopefully, as time passes, you can see the course of your career building up slowly through weeks and months and years of steady progress.

But how can you tell if your career is actually going somewhere? How do you know if you're really getting closer to your musical dreams? How can you determine whether or not you're on the right path? How do you know what to focus on in the immediacy and what paths can be left for another time when you are better equipped to tackle them creatively and concretely? While there is no one set way achieve rock superstardom, the clearest way to realize musical success is to simply set goals.

As mundane as it may seem, setting goals, both long and short-term, for your musical project lends the same kind of structure and discipline to your career that an athlete would use to train for the Olympics. Realistic goals enable you to build your band's list of accomplishments the way a runner builds his muscles, pumping up your musical achievements as you lift off the weight of each entertainment roadblock. And the good news is that you can start today. At any time you may put into effect a list of goals, large or small, aimed at boosting your career in any given area.

The following are a few tips that will help you to set some goals so that you may get on your way to achieving all that you want from your music and the entertainment industry in general:

1). Set Goals You Can Achieve--- Nothing is more depressing for an artist than setting lofty goals for yourself and your music only to bottom out with hopelessness when none of the goals are achieved by the deadline. So, much of what keeps artists plugging away in the industry, against all odds, is the positive re-enforcement of feelings of accomplishment. Keep that upbeat mojo going by setting goals for your band that you can absolutely actualize with lots of elbow grease and some good creative flow. Take a minute to assess each potential achievement and put a realistic time allotment on it so that you're setting yourself up to succeed and move onto the next musical goal.

2). Keep Your Eyes On The Prize--- It's all well and good to set goals just to see if you can do them, but if you're ultimate goal is to be a big ole humongous rockstar, then try and set goals that will help you on your way to a Rolls Royce, a Bentley and a 2,000 square foot infinity swimming pool. Set a goal to get one article of press each month, to book a decent gig every two weeks, or to update your website daily. Give yourself six months to finish your full-length album, three months to raise the money for your band's t-shirts or a year to find a good manager to pitch you to labels. Each one of these goals is a great achievement on its own but also an important piece in getting your band where you eventually want it to be. So it's a win/win for your career, any way you slice it, and the feelings of accomplishment will certainly empower you to keep pushing on in the ever-frustrating music business.

3). One Goal At A Time--- It's okay to have twenty goals on the table but they should be lined up in order of immediacy and priority so that each one is given their own individual time. Trying to work too many angles at one time may jumble your ability and focus, and leave you at your deadline with six or seven goals only partially achieved. In an industry so dependant on "what have you done lately," it's always a good thing to get a goal completed in a timely manner and move onto the next so that the outside world sees a band that is always accomplishing things, always achieving, and always succeeding.

4). If At First You Don't Succeed--- No matter how hard you try, there will always be goals that elude you past your self-imposed deadline. While it's good to discipline yourself into a regiment of goal-setting/achieving, don't beat yourself up if circumstances beyond your control lead you to fall short on a deadline or two. The most important thing is that you realize your goal. Secondary to this, is for you to accomplish your goal in a timely fashion. So, put your emphasis on the success and the positive achievement and don't give up on your music and your goal if the deadline rolls around prematurely.

Once you set a line of goals in front of you, it's easy to focus on achieving rather than worrying about failing. As you begin to achieve goals, you can rely on the confidence of all you've done and dismiss the angst of worrying about things that haven't happened yet. You'll never be able to accomplish everything all at once, so why not relish the successes that you can manifest immediately whilst dreaming of the goals you still have yet to achieve. Don't waste time. Sit down after you read this and scratch out a list of goals, each with its own timeline. Find something you can accomplish today for your music, something you can get done by tomorrow and something terrific you can nail down by the end of the week. Your band will look better to industry and fans alike and, most importantly, you'll look and feel great to yourself and your music. RockSuperstardom awaits! Start knocking back those goals and kick the music biz in the butt, one positive achievement at a time!

Sheena Metal is a radio host, producer, promoter, music supervisor, consultant, columnist, journalist and musician.

How to Sell Items at Festivals in 7 Steps

Jackie Bagwell

Ready to take your arts and crafts on the road? In this article, we'll go over how to set up your products at a craft show in a professional way.

Step 1. Create Your Product

Before you get started on finding a festival, you'll want to determine which of your products you can make easily and quickly, and can set up at a craft show. It's a good idea to choose items that are unique to your style and that you can mass-produce when needed. Keep in mind you'll be traveling with this product, displaying it, and will be creating a lot of the product at any given time. You'll want enough items to fill a large (10' x 10') display without running out of items. If a customer is forced to wait for the product until after a craft show, they'll likely lose interest.

Step 2. Find Your Festival

In addition to using FestivalNet.com, an excellent way to decide what kind of festival is best for you is simply to go to festivals. Take a look at the vendors that are currently booked at certain shows in your area, and what the attendees are looking for. Keep in mind that you don't want too much competition for your own product, but you do still want to stay relevant to the theme of the festival. Talk to the vendors at the show to see what their experience is. Be sure to do your homework.

Step 3. Get Booked And Get Going

Take a look at the vendor requirements for your chosen festival, and contact the event organizer with any questions. Fill out any application required by the event, and be sure to follow up after submitting via email or phone to check on your application's status. Make sure you have enough time between application approval and the event date to create any product inventory you may need. It's also a good idea to get event insurance. The last thing you need is to be financially responsible for any off-chance accidents that could happen. Sometimes the event offers insurance, most times they do not.

Promoting: If they don't know, they won't come.

Larry Ward

Organizers of even the most successful events cannot afford to sit back and hope that crowds will continue to show up year after year. The results of inaction could result in no crowd at all. To avoid this disaster, appoint a Publicity/Promotion committee and make certain that its members develop an effective promotional strategy early in the planning process.

Remember, you are not selling a product; you are selling the benefits of the product. The benefit you are selling is entertainment! A festival is essentially show business. Consider these benefits as part of the entertainment package when creating the image for your festival:

• Excitement, fun, happiness
• Relaxation
• Social interaction
• Prestige, ego satisfaction
• Education

Members of the publicity committee need to be aware of the following concerns:

1. Much of what is promoted - entertainment, for example - will be arranged by other committees. Therefore the publicity people must have a good working relationship with everybody helping with the festival.
2. With so much to do, timing will be critical in many instances. Establish a timeline.
3. Be sure local and regional people whom the media are likely to contact for what is going on know exact times, dates, and your media contact's name and telephone number.
4. Supply the local tourism sector (motels, service stations, restaurants) with printed maps and schedules so they know times and directions to events and can pass that information on to their customers and guests.

Read More Here...

Guerrilla Promotion and Artist Development

David Codr Founder of Musicpage.com

After promoting or producing around 1,000 concerts, managing bands, booking tours and scouting talent, you pick up a few tricks of the trade. That's how I started doing artist development work. The gang at Festival Network Online asked if I would share a few of my artist development techniques in this newsletter.

So if you are looking for some artist development techniques, read on.

How to Get 3,000 New Fans in the Next 12 Months, For FREE

Running a web community like Musicpage.com, I get a lot of artist development questions from our artist users. When I do, one of the first things I do is ask how many fans a band or performer has. If I get a non-specific answer like "a lot" I know the band isnt doing a very good job of collecting information or growing their fan base.

Most bands have figured out how to get people to become their friend on facebook or twitter, but that's not a real fan base. A fan base is more than a list of names. A real fan base is a growing entity with its own quirks and personality.

Maybe its best to consider WHY you are trying to build a fan base. Sadly, most artists think its simply to have the biggest list. But your fan base shouldn't be about quantity as much as it is about quality. In the most simple terms, building a fan base is all about cultivating a list of your customers.

Think about it, why do you advertise and promote your shows? You're trying to reach a group of people who will come to see you play. Well if you get the names and contact info for people at your current shows, you can go straight to the source when you start promoting your next show. This is much more effective than just running ads or handing out flyers to reach your fans the next time.

Reaching out to your existing fans is your "Sure thing" while your other forms of advertising are there to add to your total. When you combine tactics this way, you will see a dramatic increase in the number of people who attend your show.

Most bands that do try to collect their fan's information have a clipboard on the front of the stage or at their merch table - and that's about all the effort they put into collecting their fan's info. But collecting your fan's information is crucial. Aside from your performance, its literally one of the most important things you will do at your shows.

Thing is, people dont like writing down their contact info on a sheet of paper that anyone else in the bar can see. So you end up with a lot of fake names or illegible emails. The clipboard also usually only gets a few names a night. So you're getting low quality and low quantity, a bad combination.

I tell bands I work with to print up "Fan cards" an old one is pictured here (click to enlarge). Fan cards are 3x5 index cards with pre-printed fields for; name, address, city, state, zip, age, birthday, facebook and myspace addresses, phone and cell phone numbers.

You always want to get someone's zip code when getting their email address for your list. This is especially important for touring acts. Having a zip code allows you to only email people who are close enough to the venue to make it out to the show (if its a single show announcement rather than a list of all upcoming shows).

Read more here...

Art Festivals: Frequently Asked Questions & Other Practical Matters

"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's." - William Blake

When I first started the art festival guide I had a somewhat clear organization and, once I decided on the main points to cover, I kept to my outline more or less faithfully. During the course of art festivals, I would think of bits and pieces and almost all of them fit neatly into my chapters...almost. Another phenomenon that occurs in art festivals is that some of us get a lot of visits from artists that want to entertain the idea of embarking upon the art festival adventure. Most of them ask the obvious questions but some pose a few practical and sometimes not so obvious questions. There is so much more to know!

On an average year, whatever that may be, I figure I spend about 30% of my time making art, 30% selling art, 30% on the various business tasks and 30% taking care of the home front. If you notice, that adds up to 120%, not counting sleeping and eating, which is the appropriate amount of time to dedicate to making a living as an artist. Seriously, I have never worked so hard or so long on anything, although the rewards of making a living as a living artist are without question worth every minute of every day and the minutes in between. Nobody said it was going to be easy!

While you are starting out and still not knowing who to ask, I will just answer the most frequent questions that came pouring to my booth and my website and that logically made me fashion this last chapter as a summary of Frequently Asked Questions. They are arranged in no particular order; I simply jotted them down as people asked both in person and online although I guess I tried to address them in order of importance or at least relevance to the business. You might call them tricks of the trade, nuts and bolts, tips from the experienced or frequently asked questions. I will also try to answer them succinctly since I have already explained most points in the previous chapters. Well, I might throw in a story or two, but that's to be expected by now. So here are my loose ends, whatever didn't neatly fit into the previous chapters, I kept for this last one. Now you can't say nobody told you!

Judge and Jury: What to Expect When Entering Art Shows
Annie Strack

Entering an art show, at any level of your career, is a wonderful means of gaining validation and recognition. For beginning artists, receiving appreciation from people other than friends and family can be very encouraging. Competition is an excellent way of building up a resume, especially if one is fortunate enough to win an award. Plus, more people may see your work, increasing the possibility of sales and getting into galleries. 

Overpricing

Many years ago, a certain art professor showed his portfolio slides to a class I attended, as a sample of how to put together a body of work for presentation. His beautiful ceramic perfume bottles were quite impressive and skillfully made.  Along with the images were prices for each item, which averaged in the range of $600 each, which was his example of pricing to the class.

Not long ago, I happened to speak with an artist who by chance got the same talk from the same art professor with the same slides. She, however, had the presence of mind to raise her hand and ask "How many of these perfume bottles have you sold?"  The answer: Zero.

The Power of Personality
by Bob Baker

When you promote yourself via e-mail or with the words you use on your web site, you have a choice. You can be straight-forward and matter-of-fact (also known as bland and boring). Or you can communicate with pizzazz.  

12 Tips for Selling More Art in a Recession
by C. Sharp

Fellow artists and gallery owners share 12 tips for holding your ground during a recession. 
Fine art isn’t always easy to sell even when the economy is good. Now with this latest economic downturn, artists everywhere are commiserating about how to ramp up their marketing mojo to help them survive. In some ways it’s not all bad. Crisis is often an opportunity in disguise, challenging artists to focus their energies and to keep at least one eye on the big picture. Here are some suggestions on how to survive the recent economic slump.  

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