Art Course Review: The Fast Start Art Marketing Primer

If you're just starting to think about selling your art or maybe you've already tried but not getting the results you hoped for then The Fast Start Art Marketing Primer Course by Owen Garrett of Marketing Tools For Artists could be the foundation course you need.

I came across this ten part video tutorial course through a Facebook advertisement and, at just shy of US$12.00, I figured it was worth a look. Particularly because it had a unique selling hook that I hadn't come across before... claiming that 90% of everything I'd heard about selling art was either outdated or just plain wrong. It also asked the question "What's the Number One Most Important Thing about Selling Art and Being an Artist?!"

As you go through the process of purchasing this course you'll be asked if you want to also purchase the much more comprehensive and expensive course, The Ultimate Guide to Profitable Art Shows, which you can, of course, get at a special price if you buy it as well.  Since the special price was  close to the US$200.00 mark, that's not an amount I'm prepared to spend on a whim. Plus I have no desire, ever, to do art shows - don't care how profitable and necessary Owen thinks they are.

However, should you want to know more about art shows, if the quality of information in the Fast Start Art Marketing Primer is anything to go by, I'd be relatively confident in saying you're probably going to get good information on Art Shows if you decide to make the additional purchase.

For this review my focus is on the Fast Start Artist Marketing Primer Course. To begin with, it definitely is what it says it is. You can breeze through the entire course in just over an hour. Along the way you'll get information from setting up your business, creating systems to streamline you business and workflow, where most artists go wrong selling their art, how to use (or not use) social media, selling online and more.

There's plenty here that I haven't heard covered in art marketing courses before and the whole thing comes across as a no nonsense, tell it like it is approach to teaching.

In terms of course materials, you get 10 videos, 10 audio files of just the narration from the videos and a PDF file transcript of all the audio.

Personally I felt the ten videos add nothing to the course. They are easily very watchable but you're basically watching the narration being written out on the screen - much like the promotional videos used to sell the course. There is nothing visual in them that enhances the narration other than to reinforce the spoken word. I will never watch these things again.

(As someone who makes animated explainer videos for a living, the course videos look like they're made with Easy Sketch Pro and are a great advertisement for how basic and uninteresting explainer videos can be. Much more effort has been put into the visuals for the videos used in the pre sale. The post sale tutorial videos almost look like an after thought).

The audio however is a different story. It's great that each of the 10 lessons are supplied as an MP3 file. Owen's has a great presentational style that is very easy and friendly to listen to. I would recommend downloading all the lessons onto your favorite MP3 player to listen to whenever you need a refresher or just as a way of going through the course again without being tied to your computer.

The PDF transcript is also handy to have but at 59 pages I'm probably never going to read through it all, ever. However I may refer to it if I was specifically looking for some information from the course.

Overall, I feel this course delivers good information that could be applied to any kind of product based business, not just selling art. It's a solid foundation to build from with quite a few practical ideas not covered in any other course I've purchased.

If you're already successfully selling art then this isn't for you but for anyone struggling to make sales or just getting started it's probably the best $12.00 you'll spend. To have all this information, organized and in one place, rather than having to discover and piece it altogether yourself over years of trial and error, is a really good thing.


Disclaimer: This is an honest review based on my experience of having bought the product. I am in no way an affiliate of the seller. All links are direct links to the course free of any affiliate id or affiliate tracking.