Q&A: How to market “lockdown art” project?

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Hey there, what's up? Thank you for tuning in to Side Hustle School. In today's episode, a caller from New York City becomes well known for posting drawings and paintings to an Instagram account during pandemic lockdowns. And now he's wondering how can he monetize the attention he's received? Great question. We're going to look at it with perhaps a bit of a contrarian answer.

Also, we are looking for new stories. We are looking for new stories of people to feature here on the podcast. Our listeners are very loyal. Thank you listeners. We often hear really cool reports of how the businesses we featured have received more customers or some other supporter connection after being featured. So if you know someone with a side hustle or a small business

that brings in at least $500 a month while they're also working a full time job, we would love to know about them too. So on the website, there's a form you can access sidehustleschool.com/get featured. And get featured is two words with a dash. So get dash featured. If that's you fill out the form. If it's someone you know, send them the link. And as I said, we're always looking for new

stories, we would love to feature more people. All right, that question from a New York City artist and my answer coming up after this quick thank you to our sponsor. Hi Chris, this is Matt from New York. When the city shut down in 2020, I started posting drawings and paintings to an Instagram account. They're the types of designs you might find on threadless or designed by humans. They're street scenes based mostly on photos I've taken. I sold a few t-shirts

over print on demand sites, but realized how tiny the margins are and how fierce the competition is. So recently, I bought a domain got a free trial with Shopify, and I'm setting up a store. It'll be mostly clothing, but also some wall art and notebooks and things like that. What are the best ways to drive people to the site? Facebook and Google ads, blogging about the stories behind the items, building an email list? This is my big question, I think, because just putting a form

on the site and creating opt-in offers with ads are one thing. But how can I find leads to build a cold email list the way you would in like B2B sales? I realized this is a multi-prong question, but I figured that you'd be able to boil it down to its essence and offer some strategies that go beyond the most basic. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate your help with this and enjoy the show.

Matt, what's up? Good to hear from you. I appreciate the challenge, boil it down to its essence, etc. So I do have some thoughts here. And since you're a New Yorker, I hope you don't mind if I'll be a little bit direct, just in the hopes of getting us something helpful.

So let's start with the good news. Good news is the art is really cool. Like listeners, I was checking out his website, mylockdownsketchbook.com. Beautiful art. It's really awesome. So as for driving traffic to the site, well, first things first, listeners,

go check it out, mylockdownsketchbook.com. However, that's the good news. The other news, let's say, is that you really can't market art in the same way you would another consumer product, using some of those strategies you mentioned. I just recently worked on this story about something that is a shower handle, like a shower attachment handle. It's called the Rinseroo. We

did a story about it. So not to compare your art to a shower attachment handle, but we are talking about things for sale. So Lockdown Sketchbook, to me, it seems kind of like a moment in time. It's a project. You're going to work on many projects throughout your life. And some projects

will be that moment in time. Then you go on to start another project. I think if you want it to be more instantly marketable, it has to be more shareable. Because when I look at the art, I'm like, oh, this is pretty awesome. I'm not necessarily going to tell the world about it, except you're on this podcast. I'm not necessarily going to make a purchase. So if you want it to be

more commercially appealing, you might have to make some different artistic choices. And of course, I don't want to make those choices for you. You should make whatever art you want to make. I also don't want to discourage you. But I think it's better to know this going in and ask yourself, like, is this really where you want to focus if you're trying to make money? Or might there be

another iteration of this idea? Or do you want to do this with the goal of making some money, but not necessarily your future retirement plan or whatever? So that's my two cents. Again, the work is really great. So let us know what you decide and we can go from there.

All right, listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions will continue to feature them along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thanks so much. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. from the Onward Project.