Starting your own art business is incredibly exciting. Whether it’s a side hustle or full-time, you’re in for an adventure.

Brand new business owners, particularly solopreneurs, enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out multiple functions on their own, like pricing strategy, finances, legal, IT, sales, etc.

And then there’s marketing. Every artist we know pretty much dreads this part of the job. They know they need to do at least some marketing, but they’d rather spend time creating.

Most artists realize that they need a website. Many start working on it themselves, wanting to save money and figuring it just can’t be that hard. We hear that a lot (after they contact us for help).

There are several reasons why outsourcing website design and building is a smart move, but here are the two most important ones:

1) It’s cliche, but true — your time is money. We’ve seen it repeatedly; what takes the average DIYer 1 - 2 hours to figure out and do takes us minutes. Given wording and images, we can build and publish a stylish, responsive basic site within hours.

Frustrated people contact us after spending lots of time trying to DIY it on various platforms only to discover that building a professional-looking art business website is not as simple as they’d hoped.

These are highly intelligent people who see ads telling them how “easy” it is to use a given website tool, only to either give up, spend hours reading Help articles or watching videos, or end up with a painful starter site that has to be rebuilt. They see it and they know it, but it’s only after so much wasted time.

Then there are people who say, “Just build a website for me and teach me how to maintain it.” Unless you’re a technical person with website experience and are prepared to update your website frequently, this notion inevitably goes back into the loop of struggle and wasted time. Unless they update their sites a few times a week, they’re simply not using the system enough to retain the information (plus platforms make changes to their tools frequently). It has nothing to do with their intelligence level.

If you’re spinning your wheels in website creation, you’re losing exposure, opportunities, and creative time that you’ll never get back.

2) Your results will be so much better when you use experts. Trust those who work in websites and eCommerce every single day. We have our own special blend of expertise: design, user experience, processes, writing, technical competence, and an understanding of marketing trends.

Building a professional website that inspires confidence and credibility in potential customers involves much more than dropping in a few headlines and pictures.

For example — I can cook, but I’m not a chef. A chef is an expert at their craft; they know exactly what they want to buy; they don’t need to meticulously read recipes; they have a feel for it, or better yet, create their own. They’re artists with amazing technical skills too. And they can do both the artistic and technical aspects of their job quickly and on a large scale … not just for a family, but an entire restaurant full of people. Every day.

When it comes to digital marketing, you can cook something up on your own or hire a master “chef”.

We understand the dilemma; there are so many agencies to choose from and their services aren’t cheap. But if you want to build a solid art business from the get-go, choose experience.

For more information, schedule your free consultation or read Website Pricing: What It Really Takes to Design and Build a Professional Website.