7 Business Mistakes That Taught Artists Valuable Lessons

One business mistake I made early in my career was saying yes to every exhibition opportunity that came my way. In many ways, it was incredibly valuable. It gave me first-hand insight into how exhibitions are curated, how art projects are developed, and how different organisations operate. Those experiences helped me understand the art world far more quickly than I could have by working in isolation.

However, there came a point where I realised I was constantly filling forms, emailing submissions and competing for attention, wall space, and visibility. It was also gruelling, I was exhibiting in two, sometimes three shows a month. There’s a certain appeal to having your work selected by others, it provides the kind of validation we artists often crave because art is so personal, it’s easy to feel insecure. At the same time, I was spending a great deal of energy pursuing opportunities rather than building something distinctive around my own art practice.

That experience taught me the importance of being selective myself. Instead of applying for everything, I began choosing only opportunities that aligned with my artistic direction and long-term goals. The biggest shift came when I started networking beyond the art world and connecting with people from different industries. Those conversations opened doors to collaborations, exhibitions, and projects that I could shape from the outset.

Today, I still love participating in group exhibitions because there is so much joy, such a unique energy and sense of community that comes from creating alongside other artists. The difference is that many of those exhibitions now sit within projects or concepts that I have developed myself. Rather than waiting for opportunities to appear, I focus on creating them. That mindset has given me greater creative freedom, stronger professional relationships, and a much clearer sense of purpose in the business side of my art practice.

Paola Minekov, Artist, Paola Minekov Art

One mistake I made early on was treating the business side of my art as something separate from the art itself.

When Swil Arts first began, it grew very organically. I was coming out of a decade in software engineering, slowing down after burnout, and reconnecting with the kind of creative presence I had missed for years. I followed the spark wherever it led: original paintings, prints, commissions, small-batch goods, wholesale, collaborations. There was beauty in that openness. It gave the studio room to find its own shape.

But over time, I learned that openness without structure can quietly become overwhelm. When every opportunity feels meaningful, it’s easy to say yes to too much, price too softly, or move faster than the work actually wants to move. For a studio rooted in presence, care, and intentional slowness, that was an important realization.

The lesson was that the business has to be built with the same values as the art. Clear pricing, thoughtful timelines, sustainable production, and aligned partnerships are not cold or corporate. They’re part of the care. They protect the creative process, the client experience, and the long-term health of the studio.

Now I approach the business side of my art as another creative practice. I ask: Does this help people pause, remember, and feel connected to place? Is it made with care? Is it sustainable for the people, materials, and community involved? That shift has helped Swil Arts grow from a personal creative practice into a values-led art and illustration studio rooted in Southern California, creating work that honors small moments, memory, and a slower way of moving through the world.

Sara Wilczynska, Artis and Founder, Swil Arts

The moment something is given for free, it loses its value.

Requests to “donate” my services have occasionally found their way into my inbox over the past few decades. “It’ll be great exposure for you!” is often presented as compensation and, as both an artist and a small business owner, I have at times agreed to provide services without pay – investing my time, materials, and expertise entirely at my own expense and, ultimately, to my own detriment.

This was a practice that I learned from and eliminated almost immediately.

Exposure rarely covers lost income from paid bookings, materials, travel, insurance, prep time, and back-end admin work. If visibility is genuinely valuable, it should accompany compensation rather than replace it.

Reciprocity is vital to my business. It creates trust, loyalty, and long-term mutual success. To establish that foundation with those requesting complimentary services, I require some form of investment from them, so that both parties are equally committed to creating a meaningful and successful outcome.

Investment can take many forms depending on the nature of the collaboration, and may include in-kind sponsorship opportunities, strategic referrals, a reduced nonprofit rate, promotional partnerships, vendor introductions, social media and marketing visibility, and other mutually beneficial exchanges of value.

When both parties contribute in a meaningful way, there is typically greater communication, intentional collaboration, increased accountability, and a shared commitment to the overall success of the project or event. In my experience, these balanced relationships create the most positive and rewarding outcomes while cultivating long-term professional connections grounded in mutual respect and appreciation.

Roxy Szigat, Live Event Personalization Artist, ROX INK Calligraphy & Engraving

The biggest mistake I made early on wasn’t the pricing formula. It was the side of the table I was pricing from.

I make hand-knotted natural stone talismans, edition-of-one. My first instinct was to price from the seller’s side: labor hours, material cost, a reasonable margin. The math was defensible. The result was a flat structure where a piece using local Magnesite cost roughly the same as one using estate Tibetan thokcha with documented provenance, because the inputs balanced out.

What that math missed was the consumer’s side. Buyers weren’t paying for hours and materials. They were paying for the curation I did before they ever saw the piece — which stone matched which intention, the ritual encoded in the knot pattern, the knowledge layer behind why this material for this person. The care, the choosing, the meaning — that’s also service. I wasn’t pricing for any of it.

There was also a confidence layer underneath. Early on, I priced low partly because I didn’t feel I’d “earned” higher numbers yet — like the work needed more years before it could ask for more. That’s the undeserving instinct most makers carry, and it’s wrong. Everything starts from a rough scratch. You don’t earn your way up to your real price after years of proof; you price for the buyer you’re actually serving today.

The hardest moment was seeing other makers using inferior materials and less careful technique, pricing higher than me. The first reflex was self-doubt: my materials are better, my craft is more careful, my prices are even lower — why am I not selling like they are? Eventually I understood: they weren’t winning on craft quality. They had clearly identified an audience whose specific pain point they were solving. They weren’t my competition. They were doing different work for different people.

That reframe was the actual fix. I rebuilt pricing into a four-tier matrix — Entry, Core, Heritage, Cultural — with $195 to $725 spread by material provenance and cultural depth. Same craft across all tiers. But the structure now spoke to who the piece was for, not what it cost me to make.

The real shift: pricing isn’t measured against your competitors or your own labor. It’s calibrated to the consumer whose problem your work actually solves. Find the people who appreciate what you make. Price for them.

YIFENG TAO, Founder, à la luck

The mistake: For my first year I judged the shop by its traffic. My analytics showed a steady stream of visitors, so I kept pouring time into search-engine tweaks—rewriting product pages, chasing keywords—and waited for sales that never really came. When I finally looked closely, most of that “traffic” was bots. I’d been optimising for a number that wasn’t real people, while ignoring where buyers of wall art actually spend their time.

What changed: I stopped trusting flattering metrics and started measuring only what matters—real visitors and actual orders. Then I went to where my customers already are: visual platforms like Pinterest, not just Google search. The shift was from “make the website perfect and they’ll come” to “show the work where people are already looking for art for their walls.”

The lesson: Build your distribution before you polish your storefront. A beautiful shop nobody can find is just an expensive hobby—and the numbers that flatter you are rarely the ones that pay you.

—Lucian Roman, artist and founder of Lucibe (lucibe.com), an independent online art-print store based in London.

Lucian Roman, Artist & Founder, Lucibe

The business mistake I made as an artist was thinking the performance was the whole product. Early on, I put most of my energy into the music and not enough into the boring parts around it, like quoting clearly, confirming timings, setting expectations and making the booking feel easy for the client. That changed how I work because I now treat every gig as a full client experience, not just a setlist. The art gets you noticed, but the business side is what makes people trust you enough to book, refer and come back.

Callum Gracie, Professional Event DJ, DJ Callum Gracie

At our company, I was not very patient with our progress, and my impatience cost the company months of valuable hard work. I introduced a set of high-quality, premium content packs before we had a firmly established audience for them, resulting in poor sales and feedback that hit harder than I anticipated.

For almost three months, the launch of our paid product resulted in stagnant growth. The silence from the parents and educators who had previously been sharing our content was much more telling than any report that shows the traffic to our site. I looked at those who trusted us as a revenue source before I ever looked at them as people who deserved to be protected.

At this point in time, taking back the premium package was our only viable and morally correct option. We went back to having every game for free again because it allowed us to revolve around one rule: no game is released until our core customers are allowed the opportunity to weigh in. How they react to the game now influences everything we do regarding the games themselves. After re-building our business, our retention numbers returned to their previous levels and increased the amount of organic shares and word of mouth referrals that were generated. Trust is something that needs to be established first before you can use it to grow a business.

Peter Baraník, Founder & Publisher | Brand, Growth & Community Strategy | Internet Marketing | Digital Marketing & SEO Expert, ColorWee