I love it when I’m wrong: Kollecto for Art Sellers

What I’ve built thus far is pretty cool…A network of people motivated to buy their first or second piece of art.

Each has told me about the kind of art they like. And with this information, I think I can create a pretty powerful advertising mechanism for artists (think AdWords for Art)

So this week, I launched Kollecto for Galleries

I got the word out by emailing a handful of affordable galleries & posting galleries.artkollecto.com on Product Hunt

I immediately realized I had mispositioned the service.  Shout out to the artists who figured out they could use the service as well.

There will be lots more leanings as I iteratively experiment with this side of my business.

But learning #1 is that Kollecto for Galleries should actually be Kollecto for Artists or Kollecto for Art Sellers. Which is fine with me. The friction in the art world is that so many artists are bad at marketing, but only a handful of them can get representation from a gallery who’ll do the marketing for them. Thus, the market of independent artists who’ll pay for a cool marketing solution is much bigger than the market of galleries who’ll do so. I love it when I’m wrong because I stumble into cool learnings like this.

But how much will people pay?

I’m currently offering Kollecto to art-sellers for free, but here’s what people said when I asked them how much they would pay given what they knew about Kollecto from reading the website:

• The average answer was $30 per month
• Answers ranged from $0 to $100 per month

• The average answer from Artists was $15 per month
• The average answer from galleries was $61 per month
• Only one person expressed concern about paying monthly for access to the client list vs. commission-based model that’s typical in the industry

So here’s what I know so far.

1. This is a potential way to monetize Kollecto (currently the Advisory fees are going straight to Kollecto advisors so I need to monetize elsewhere)
2. I need a tiered pricing model for art-sellers with an option for student/emerging artists & another for professional artists/galleries

Thing’s I’m excited to start exploring

1. Does ‘sponsored art’ help or burden my Advisors?
2. What percent of art submitted by art-sellers do we have to reject b/c Advisors think its not a good fit for the client?
3. Can drive sales for artists & keep them engaged on a monthly basis?
4. Should the tiered pricing model pivot on # of pieces art-sellers can submit?
5. Can we do all this and maintain our 70% success rate of getting clients to buy art?

I’ll keep you posted.