Promoting Your Art in a Tough Economy

With the economy still struggling and budgets tight, the market for art of any kind is very tough. So you need to find the 'angles' to get buyers to choose your work over some cheap stock art or a mass-produced poster. There's an upside to the downturn: people are looking to build community, looking locally and making greener, more ethical choices, as well as economizing. Here's five ideas to consider when promoting your work:

1. As a work-from-home freelancer, low overheads make you a more economical choice than a big city firm.
2. Your buyer will be supporting a local artist - the local economy - as well as getting a first-class piece of work.
3. Your unique style will set the project apart from those using generic, mass-produced work.
4. You are adaptable and can find ways to work efficiently within tight budgets, and can value-add with current technologies such as scalable digital graphics, print products and so on.
5. A large piece of real art compliments a contemporary, uncluttered home!

Can you think of some other ways to find a positive angle among the negatives? (And yes, I did start writing silver lining... economic cloud. Gotta love those cliches... or not...)

Oh and just as I wrote this, a twitter friend tweeted an excellent collection of articles on Promotion 101 For Artists at Illustration undo, with lots of useful ideas.