Small is good - offer bite-sized versions of your artwork

I was recently promoting Sparkio at the Montreal en Arts Festival and noticed that many artists are quite successful at selling bite-sized portions of their art to visitors. Many offered postcards, smaller-size canvasses or even magnets with their work printed on them. (other examples range from bookmarks to bathroom tiles)

It's just so easy to buy!
Everybody wins at this proposition: those who are wary of buying a full piece of art (for whatever reason, usually monetary) can make an easy purchase of a pint-sized piece that is compelling to them, while the artist gets to enlarge his/her clientele.

Not only that, but the clients now own a small reminder of the artist's work... Until they are ready to purchase a full piece.

These "accessories" also attract a larger clientele than only selling your art as single canvasses, photographs or sculptures.

Magnets and the snowball effect
You can make quite a bit of profit from these little gems. If you notice that one particular item of your portfolio is quite popular, print it onto magnets and sell each one for a couple of dollars. First of all, this will save you the work of creating a new piece every time. Secondly, all the friends that your client invites over will notice your mini-artwork on the fridge and will surely make it a conversation piece - just what you want: more interested potential clients! And thirdly, they'll talk about it to their friends about you, and so on...

And you don't even have to work or pay for this kind of promotion - they do it for you! (Just make sure you add your name, website address and contact info on the item so that these new potential clients can check out some more of your stuff)

Check out www.magnecote.com, they make magnet-like paper that you can use for this.