At a recent show, a fellow artist left her booth for over an hour – unattended. While I didn’t feel it my place to question the wisdom of doing that, I couldn’t help but question what she had done. After all, when was the last time you walked into a store that was empty of salespeople?

If you want to do festivals, either part time or as a way of paying your bills, you must treat it as a professional business. As such you need to:

• Control your expenses
• Have a product that your customers want
• Know what your competitors are offering and their pricing
• Offer a quality product
• Have an attractive, inviting “store”
• Pray for good weather and lots of customers

When I first started contemplating “opening my store”, I worried about quantity. But, after talking with fellow artists, I decided to scale back my quantity and focus on only what I consider my best work and offer the finest quality. And, as my inventory changes and new pieces are added, others that either don’t sell well or I want to phase out of my inventory, go into sale racks. And, after all, everyone loves a sale.

So, did the disappearing artist sell anything? No. Did she lose any potential sales by not being in her booth? Maybe so. While she may not have learned anything from her absence, after watching people go through her empty booth, I certainly did.

After visiting other art festivals, I set my expectations realistically. While I don’t depend on my sales to pay the mortgage, I do hope to gain exposure. Whether it’s invitations to join other artist groups, mentions of other upcoming festivals looking for artists or newspaper coverage – any or all is certainly welcome.

As a matter of fact, my mantra at my first festival was “I don’t expect to sell anything, I’m just looking for the experience.” Yes, I did make some sales, I did get the experience and I did get invited to another festival.

At the next festival, sales were better, I gained more experience and made contact with another artists group. And I was featured in an article on the upcoming festival in a major newspaper.

If I had expected to start out making a killing, I would have been disappointed and discouraged. I have known other photographers who have had those expectations and, when they weren’t fulfilled, gave up.

With the economy such that it is, we can only hold our breath and wait to see what the upcoming season may bring.

Perhaps we should have a starving artists bailout?