20/08/2026
There Is Always a Cost to Acquire a Buyer for Your Art
One of the most important ideas we discussed in today’s Artist Business Academy live stream was this:
There is always a cost to acquiring a buyer for your artwork.
Always.
The mistake many artists make is believing that if they sell their work themselves, they have somehow eliminated the cost of selling.
They haven’t.
They have simply changed how they pay the cost.
You can pay for acquiring buyers with your time.
You can pay for acquiring buyers through commission.
Or you can pay for acquiring buyers with advertising and marketing dollars.
But somewhere along the line, somebody has to do the work required to take a person who has never heard of you and turn them into someone prepared to hand over their money for one of your paintings.
And that process has a cost.
The Painting Doesn't Sell Itself
As artists, we naturally spend most of our time thinking about creating the work.
We think about subject selection, composition, drawing, colour, values, brushwork, edges, technique, framing and presentation.
We might spend days or weeks creating a painting.
Then we put a photograph of it on Facebook or Instagram and wonder why it hasn't sold.
But creating the artwork and creating the buyer are two completely different activities.
There are thousands upon thousands of good artists producing good paintings.
There are also millions of images competing for people's attention every single day.
Simply producing good artwork doesn't automatically create a market for it.
Someone has to:
* Find potential buyers.
* Get their attention.
* Introduce them to your work.
* Build familiarity with your name.
* Establish credibility.
* Tell your story.
* Present the artwork professionally.
* Answer questions.
* Follow up enquiries.
* Build relationships.
* Create opportunities for people to see the work.
* And eventually ask for the sale.
That is the business of acquiring buyers.
And businesses understand that acquiring customers costs money.
Artists need to understand the same thing.
Option One: You Pay With Your Time
Let's say you decide that you don't want to pay gallery commissions.
That's perfectly reasonable.
You decide to sell everything yourself.
So you start posting on Facebook.
Then Instagram.
Then perhaps TikTok, Pinterest or YouTube.
You photograph your paintings.
You edit the photographs.
You write posts.
You make videos.
You create Reels.
You respond to comments.
You build an email list.
You send newsletters.
You contact previous buyers.
You attend exhibitions.
You network.
You enter art shows.
You invite people to studio openings.
You maintain your website.
You write artist statements and stories about your paintings.
You package and ship work.
You follow up enquiries.
You might spend 10, 15 or 20 hours every week doing these things.
You haven't eliminated the cost of acquiring customers.
You are paying for customer acquisition with your time.
And your time has value.
This is something artists frequently fail to include when calculating the economics of their art business.
If you spend 15 hours promoting yourself to make one $1,500 sale, there was a significant acquisition cost attached to that sale — even if no money left your bank account.
The cost was your time.
Option Two: You Pay Someone Else a Commission
The traditional solution to this problem has been galleries.
A professional selling gallery effectively says:
"You concentrate on producing the artwork. We'll concentrate on finding and developing the buyers."
For doing that, the gallery takes a percentage of the sale.
In Australia, NAVA notes that commission for full commercial gallery representation generally varies between 40% and 50%, depending on the circumstances and services provided. ([NAVA Code of Practice][1])
Artists sometimes look at that and think:
"They're taking half my money!"
But that isn't really the right way to look at it.
The better question is:
What is the gallery doing to earn its share?
A good gallery has premises.
Staff.
Marketing.
Advertising.
Exhibitions.
Opening nights.
Websites.
Email databases.
Collector relationships.
A reputation.
Years of relationship building.
A database of people who actually buy art.
Perhaps most importantly, the gallery may already have the trust of the buyer.
You are effectively outsourcing much of the customer-acquisition process.
That is what the commission is paying for.
Of course, not every gallery is equally good at doing this. A gallery taking 50% and selling nothing isn't particularly useful.
But a gallery taking 50% and consistently putting your paintings in front of qualified collectors who purchase them can be an extremely valuable business partner.
Option Three: Online Galleries and Marketplaces
The same principle applies online.
An online gallery might take 30%, 35%, 40% or some other percentage of the sale.
Again, artists sometimes become fixated on the commission.
But ask another question:
What am I getting in return?
If that platform has built a large audience of people actively searching for original artwork, then it has spent money and resources creating something extremely valuable:
Buyer traffic.
The platform has invested in technology, advertising, SEO, content, email marketing, staff, branding and reputation.
You are paying for access to that ecosystem.
The commission becomes your customer-acquisition cost.
Option Four: You Buy the Buyers Yourself
This is where things become particularly interesting for the modern self-represented artist.
Today we can effectively build our own gallery.
We can have our own website.
Our own email database.
Our own social media following.
Our own collector database.
And platforms such as My Art Bio allow an artist to present and sell their work directly while retaining 100% of the sale price.
That's tremendously powerful.
But there is a trap.
Keeping 100% of the sale doesn't mean you should spend 100% of it.
Because now you are the gallery.
And therefore you have to fund the marketing department.
The 30–40% Rule I Want Artists to Consider
This is something I encouraged our Artist Business Academy members to think seriously about today.
Suppose you sell a painting directly through your own platform for:
$2,000
Instead of mentally thinking:
"Fantastic. I made $2,000."
I'd like you to consider thinking:
"My art business generated $2,000 in revenue."
Those are very different statements.
Now imagine immediately allocating 30–40% of that sale to a separate marketing and customer-acquisition account.
At 30%, that's:
$600
At 40%, that's:
$800
That money isn't necessarily there to be spent immediately.
It's building your war chest for acquiring future collectors.
It can be used for Facebook and Instagram advertising.
Google advertising.
Promoting exhibitions.
Printing catalogues.
Building your email database.
Producing better photography and video.
Direct-mail campaigns.
Retargeting previous website visitors.
Promoting new collections.
Running open studios.
Creating events.
Or whatever marketing activities you discover reliably bring qualified buyers into your world.
Suddenly you're operating like a business.
Think About What Happens Next
Imagine selling ten paintings averaging $2,000 each.
That's:
$20,000 in sales.
If you allocated 35% of those sales to customer acquisition and promotion, you'd have:
$7,000 available for marketing.
Now you have something powerful.
You have the ability to deliberately go looking for your next group of collectors rather than simply hoping they discover you.
And this is where the economics can start compounding.
You advertise.
People discover your work.
Some join your email list.
Some follow you.
Some visit your website.
Some visit your gallery or studio.
Some buy.
The buyers go into your collector database.
You continue communicating with them.
Some buy again.
Some tell their friends.
Your audience grows.
Your collector base grows.
Your reputation grows.
And eventually something very important can happen:
The cost of acquiring each additional sale can start falling because you have built an audience you own.
That is one of the great advantages of becoming a self-represented artist.
Don't Think About Advertising One Painting
There's another important distinction here.
Artists sometimes run an advertisement for a painting and think:
"I spent $100 advertising that painting and it didn't sell, so advertising doesn't work."
That's the wrong measurement.
You are not simply advertising a painting.
You are building a market for the artist.
That's a completely different objective.
Someone might discover you today.
Follow you next month.
Join your mailing list three months from now.
Visit an exhibition six months later.
And buy a $4,000 painting twelve months after they first encountered you.
Which advertisement made the sale?
Possibly all of them.
This is why professional businesses think about **Customer Acquisition Cost** rather than judging every advertisement in isolation.
Customer Acquisition Cost — CAC — is essentially the amount spent acquiring customers divided by the number of new customers acquired. ([Joy Subscription][2])
Artists who want to build serious businesses need to start becoming comfortable with concepts like this.
There Is Another Number That Matters Even More
Imagine it costs you $400 in advertising and promotion to acquire a new collector.
At first you might think:
"That's expensive."
But what happens if that collector buys a $2,000 painting?
And then another $2,500 painting two years later?
And eventually a $4,000 painting?
That collector has now purchased:
$8,500 worth of your artwork.
Suddenly that original $400 acquisition cost looks very different.
This is why building relationships with collectors matters so much.
The goal isn't simply to sell paintings.
The goal is to acquire collectors.
There is a profound difference.
A painting sale is a transaction.
A collector relationship can potentially last decades.
This Also Changes How You Think About Pricing
If you know that somewhere between 30% and 50% of your retail price may ultimately be required to distribute, market or sell your work, then your pricing needs to accommodate that reality.
This is why artists should be very careful about establishing artificially low direct-sale prices.
Suppose you decide:
"I need $1,000 for this painting."
So you price it at $1,000.
Then a good commercial gallery wants to represent you and requires 50% commission.
Now you have a problem.
Either you receive $500 instead of the $1,000 you need...
Or you suddenly increase the painting to $2,000.
Neither situation is ideal.
A much stronger approach is to build the cost of selling the artwork into your pricing structure from the beginning.
That allows you to maintain consistent retail pricing whether the painting sells through a gallery, online platform or directly through you.
The Question Isn't "How Do I Avoid Commission?"
I think this is where many artists are asking the wrong question.
They ask:
"How can I keep 100%?"
I'd replace that question with:
"What is the most profitable and sustainable way for me to acquire collectors?"
Sometimes paying a 50% gallery commission might be the best answer.
Sometimes paying an online gallery 30–40% might make sense.
Sometimes spending 30% on advertising might produce better results.
Sometimes building an organic social media audience might work beautifully.
And quite often the best strategy will be a combination of all of them.
The objective isn't to avoid costs.
The objective is to make sure the money, time or commission you're investing produces a worthwhile return.
Start Thinking Like the CEO of Your Art Business
This is ultimately what we are trying to teach inside the Artist Business Academy.
You are the artist.
But if you want to make a meaningful income from your art, you are also running an art business.
And businesses have departments.
There's production.
There's administration.
There's sales.
There's marketing.
There's customer service.
There's finance.
When you're self-represented, initially you are all of those departments.
The danger comes when the artist wants to keep 100% of the selling price but doesn't want to fund the marketing department.
That doesn't work.
You cannot expect an endless stream of buyers to magically appear.
Someone has to acquire them.
So Here's the Challenge
From your next artwork sale, try something different.
Don't simply put all the money into your normal bank account.
Create a separate account called something like:
ART MARKETING & GROWTH
Then consider allocating 30–40% of every direct artwork sale into it.
If you sell a painting for $500, perhaps $175 goes in.
Sell one for $2,000?
Perhaps $700 goes in.
Sell one for $5,000?
Perhaps $1,750 goes in.
Now you've created something most artists never have:
A dedicated budget for building the future demand for your artwork.
And here's the important part.
Don't think of that money as money you've lost.
Think of it as capital you're reinvesting into building your collector base.
Because whether you sell through social media, an online gallery, a traditional gallery, your own website or your own physical gallery, the fundamental principle remains the same:
There is always a cost to acquiring a buyer.
You can pay with your time.
You can pay with commission.
You can pay with advertising.
But you will pay somehow.
Once you understand that, the 30%, 40% or even 50% associated with selling your artwork stops looking like money being taken away from you.
It becomes what it really is:
The cost of creating the market for your art.
And if you learn how to invest that money wisely, you're no longer simply hoping that someone buys your next painting.
You're building a system designed to create the next collector.
That is a very different way to build an art career.
[1]: https://code.visualarts.net.au/selling-and-marketing/commercial-galleries-and-representation/detailed-discussion?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Detailed Discussion — NAVA Code of Practice"
[2]: https://www.joysubscription.com/glossary/customer-acquisition-cost-ecommerce?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Customer Acquisition Cost Ecommerce - Definition & Meaning | Joy"
