Hi, new to trying to sell my art. Revamped my website this week, I’ve been online since May 2026 with zero sales. I have some followers on instagram (less than 100) and try to post consistently. I’m at the stage where I don't know if Im doing something wrong, if my art isnt good enough or are my expectations too high and I need to be posting for a lot longer before viewers find me? Would love some feedback please!!!!
Hi! Two months with zero sales and under 100 followers is completely normal. You're not doing anything wrong, and this is not an art quality problem. Here's what's actually happening and what to do about it.
With fewer than 100 followers, Instagram is showing your posts to maybe 10 people per post. That's not enough eyeballs for anyone to buy, no matter how good the work is. The issue isn't your art or your effort, it's audience size. A few moves that will change the math:
- Post more short video (reels of your process, your workspace, a piece in progress). Reels get shown to non-followers, which is how you grow. They don't need to be polished. Phone propped up, 15 seconds of you painting or arranging a display, done.
- Comment meaningfully on 10 other artists' posts every day for the next 30 days. Not "love this!" but something specific about the piece. This puts your name and profile in front of their audience, which is how early followers find you.
- Try the Custom Artwork Strategy for your first sale. Post a story or reel saying you're offering a small number of custom pieces at an accessible price with a short deadline (this week only, 3 slots). This works because it flips the dynamic from "browse my shop" to "grab this before it's gone," and it regularly produces first sales for artists at exactly your stage.
- Make sure your website link is in your Instagram bio and your bio clearly says what you sell and who it's for. "Original [medium] paintings of [subject] | Ships worldwide | Shop below" is the shape. Visitors decide in 2 seconds whether to click.
The artists who start selling consistently almost always describe the same arc: months of feeling invisible, then a slow build once the audience crosses a few hundred engaged followers. You're in the invisible phase. It ends. Keep posting reels, keep commenting, and try the custom artwork push this week to get that first sale momentum going.
Want me to look through your collection and pick the strongest piece to lead with?
Other resources you might find helpful:
- What Arty Said! - May 22, 2026 11:19 AM — Specific strategies to increase buyer visibility: pair pieces with narrative context, create video content showing texture/scale, and use room mockups to help collectors envision purchases.
- Beyond Galleries: Pooling Our Reach for Direct-to-Collector Art Sales — Artists share concrete buyer-reach strategies like newsletter swaps and cross-marketing that converted inquiries into actual sales.
- 🎪 Show & Sell — Where to Display & Sell Your Art Around Boston (June) — Specific Boston-area markets and venues where artists can display and sell work directly to buyers, with application details and entry barriers clearly outlined.
Arty is our artist super-assistant. Trained on all things related to art business & marketing. use @arty in a post or comment to ask Arty directly. upvote & downvote to provide feedback.
So many questions before I can give you a solid answer.
I'm going to VoiceText this because i have a lot of answers to deliver
Number one sales is a Numbers game and it doesn't matter so much how many followers you have as it matters how many conversations you can start about your art because followers is a vanity metric that has some merit but I've seen Artist with hundreds of thousands of followers who don't sell anything and the reason is, they don't have a sales process that is what you're looking for
So the question then leads to how many conversations can you create in order to do so you need to start creating really good content now I haven't seen your content so I don't know what kind of content you're making but the better content you can create the better conversations you can start the more conversations will come
I've seen a lot of artists spend so much time on their websites but not be able to get any traffic to it, so website development is a secondary thing to traffic, and there are two ways to get traffic. One is to pay for it, and the other is to create it organically.
So you can see that your question is not so specific as what button do I push but there's a range of things that you need to be doing
I teach all of this in my program The Art of Selling Art.
However, if you walk away with nothing else, you need to create more eyeballs on your art so that you can gather more data so you can properly measure your performance