Selling Art in 2015 vs. 2025: What Changed—and What Didn’t

☕ Today’s breakfast is with my “Means Business Friend” (note the s — she’s only mean when she skips carbs), aka the Spreadsheet Tamer.
She’s here to help me break down what’s really changed in selling art over the past decade — for artists, galleries, and the whole art business ecosystem.

Grab your espresso. And maybe your PowerPoint.

I’ve been at this long enough to have lived both sides. Before I even dared call myself an artist, I worked promoting artists — so you’re also getting a little time travel here.

TL;DR (for my fellow LinkedIn skimmers 😘)

✅ In 2015: make work → hope for a gallery → wait for collectors → maybe post on Etsy.
✅ In 2025: build your own business from scratch — website, CRM, prints, social, content, customer service — while still making the work.
✅ Artists now wear all the hats: marketer, photographer, copywriter, strategist, accountant, tech support… and painter.

Here’s what I’ve learned living through both eras — and why artists today might just be the ultimate entrepreneurs.
Stick around; I have a knack for making serious stuff funny and useful.

Flashback: Selling Art in 2015

🎨 For centuries, being an artist was “simple”: make art, hope to find collectors, and maybe catch the eye of a gallery or patron.
That bottleneck created the “starving artist” cliché — more artists than buyers, galleries playing it safe to sell what they showed.

Then came the Internet.

And two big things happened:
👉 Art sellers took their offerings online — suddenly, collectors in small towns could shop for art without leaving home.
👉 Artists realized: wait… we can show our own art to the world ourselves.

Boom.

✨ My story? In 2014, I was leaving my first dance & fitness studio in the UK to start another in Chile — with zero social media presence — when I got offered my first solo exhibition.
For which I had… not a single painting ready.

I painted fast, and the show nearly sold out on opening night. Hooked.
I got myself Facebook and Instagram accounts, built a very questionable website shop, opened an Etsy store, and got to work.Still lot of papers and in person stuff.

It became me + my little sweatshop: people ordered, I painted, they waited for the oils to dry (bless Santiago’s dry, sunny climate).

I hustled on Etsy, blogged about my process, posted, engaged — and it worked.
But only at a pace that required another job to survive.

That “starving artist” archetype? Yep, thriving.

 

If you stopped posting? Algorithms forgot you.
If you got busy elsewhere? Collectors forgot you.

Ed.note : That has not changed.

That “starving artist” archetype? Still alive and well.

Fast Forward: Selling Art in 2025

Today, the art world has exploded — and artists had to explode with it.

I started noticing ads: “Make money selling your art online!”
Late to the game (there was a nightclub involved — long story), I had to find out why everyone suddenly wanted to “help” artists.

Answer: print-on-demand.

Print-on-demand is the artist’s modern-day fairy godmother:
No stock. No inventory. Fast delivery. Lower costs.
It’s the prêt-à-porter of art — letting more artists actually make a living and still pursue originals and collectors.

✨ Magic? Yes.
But there’s also a midnight reality check smelling a lot like burned midnight oil:

• Build & maintain a professional website
• Integrate print-on-demand, manage shipping & fulfillment
• Set up abandoned-cart emails, sales flows & customer journeys
  (Pro tips & customer service name-drops coming in the next Pop Notes 👀)
• Take pro-level photos of your art (and learn why photographers are magicians)
• Use software to match print colors to originals (not just picking “blue” and hoping)
• Watermark, license & protect your work
• Generate daily social content — living like your studio is a Big Brother house (without the stocked fridge)
• Deal with banks & accountants who don’t even know what to call you

Oh — and still produce your best collection yet.

We’ve gone from relying on galleries to becoming our own galleries — while still making authentic, meaningful work.

Am I complaining? Not at all.
This is my dream life — and artists have never had this kind of access before.
But if you still picture us floating around in berets with glasses of absinthe… think again.

I might have a Pimm’s later — but only because I packed 10 orders without popping all the bubble wrap.

We’re not just artists anymore.
We’re full creative enterprises — and it’s worth documenting in real time.

It’s got more plot twists than a reality show but better dialogue — and always on salmon-coloured FT-worthy pages.
I always knew the Financial Times was a closeted artist at heart.

📬 Nodding along, curious where all this is going? — subscribe to the Pop Notes newsletter.

I have biscuits.

— Lau***

You were just her for the shopping and got sidetracked , I ll pop you right back to Shop.