Yes, fellow artists, I’m back with another “how to sell your art” guide today!

If you’re new here, please feel free to check out some previous guides that I’ve already shared, like:

• The #1 Rule to Sell Your Art
• How to Take Your Art to Fairs & Festivals
• 6 Tips to Make Money Off Your Art
• 7 Tips to Sell Art Online
• 8 Tips to Sell Art In-Person

Let me also quickly introduce myself here: Hey! I’m Kari Lynn M., an independent (and proud) artist and art educator. I love to share my work with customers through my Etsy shop online, take my work to in-person fairs, festivals, and galleries, and I’m here to help you learn to do the same.

Here, I want to share some of my best tips (7 of ’em!) for selling custom-made artwork. This can include everything from custom portraits to simple art pieces with custom engraving on them. And it can be confusing when you start offering custom orders, but I’m here to help you in this process.

Check out the video for the tips, or scroll down to read a quick summery.

VIDEO: How to Sell Your Custom Artwork

1. Hone your art skills

My very first tip for any artist looking into taking custom requests is this: make sure your art skills are super well-rounded first and foremost.

Whether you’re a sketch artist, a painter, or work with a different medium, you have to have a good base of skills to work on when taking custom requests. Custom portraits, for example, are really difficult, and you need to know what you’re doing when you open things up to take custom portraits so that you can create them efficiently and effectively. You want to be able to provide customers with a valuable product in a timely manner, and this, basically, comes from having experience in creating portraits.

So, make sure you’re ready to start taking custom orders by keeping your skills as high quality as possible. Just practice for a few minutes every day, and you’ll be surprised by how much you can improve your art techniques!

2. Figure out how you’ll take requests

One of the more “tech-y” things you need to figure out before you take custom orders is how you will physically take those orders. Are you going to take orders in-person, online, or both? If it’s online, you need to figure out how to setup an easy-to-use form where buyers can enter their order information.

This is often a step that gets overlooked, but it’s important to provide potential customers with an easy way to directly communicate with you—otherwise, they might just turn away!

You can watch the video above for more tips on how to do this, but I usually do this through my Etsy listings or a contact form on my website (which is here if you’d like to see an example). I also like to include clear instructions on how to attach a photo, if necessary, for custom paintings.

3. Give customers an order completion timeline

It’s difficult to know how long an order will take you to complete at first, but it’s a good idea to give your buyers an estimate of when they will expect to see their order. Think of how long it usually takes you to complete a regular (non-custom) painting (or other piece of art), and then take that time times two to get a safe estimate of time for customers.

Custom orders typically take more time than “regular” orders just because you’ll have to give consideration to special requests. For example, a customer may want to see a proof before you call an order complete, and then they may want to have something altered, thus taking extra time.

If you’re shipping orders to customers, also take into account how long the item will take to be delivered.

4. Take payments up front

Alright, this isn’t a tip that you absolutely have to follow—but I highly recommend you do. Take payment (or partial payment) upfront, that way customers are more likely to follow-through with sticking to their orders.

I only accept full payment before I even start a custom order just because, at least on Etsy, that’s how things must work for an “order” to officially be established. You can do this too, or you can take half of an order total upfront as a bit of a safeguard against fall-through requests.

5. Remember every order is different

Every buyer is going to want something different from you, so you should expect every custom order to be completely different than the last. This, again, requires you to be very on top of your art skills so that you can handle anything that gets thrown at you!

This is just another reason to factor in extra work time, too, because every time you do something new or different, it’s inevitably going to take more time from you. Just keep your focus on, though, and give it your all, even when it seems tricky.

6. Don’t stress in the process

One of the most important things to remember when taking custom orders is to not stress the process. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed when you know a customer is counting on you for a specific item, so you need to take time to tell yourself that you got this!

And, as important as it is to give buyers a clear timeline of when they can expect to see their custom item, you should also know that it’s perfectly acceptable to ask for more time when needed. Most customers will honor that and understand that art takes time to become perfect.

7. Try to deal with negative feedback

Now, some customers who want custom requests… well, they can be difficult to work with. However, you’ve got to stick up for yourself when you know your art skills are perfectly good enough to create beautiful pieces!

If you offer proofs, you may encounter negative comments about how your work looks, or you may run into total order cancellations. Understand that every customer, again, is different—and some buyers might just not like your art style. And that’s fine!

If you run into negativity once a buyer receives an item, then you will need to step up and use your customer service skills. Try to hear what the buyer has to say, and then offer solutions to the possible problem. Maybe a partial refund will fix things, or maybe just having them send the item back will. But always remember that this will not be the case from every buyer.

And, just like that, we’ve got a whole list of ways you can take and process custom orders as an artist. Feel free to leave your comments below, or questions you may have, and I’ll be here to help!

–Kari