What Do You Count As First Sale?

As long as the check doesn't bounce or it gets returned - its a sale.

I am glad your parents support you as an artist. As long you get the sale and being paid even to a relative still it is a sale
by the way, they are customers not costumers

I agree with Edward. If you get paid for your work, it's a sale. The fact that it was kind of an inside job, is a whole different debate. I personally have never asked friends or family to buy my work. If, they were to buy my stuff without being prompted, that would be ok, but that hasn't happened and I'm not holding my breath. Because they know me, they would rather get it for free if they can. I've probably lost potential sales that way, but I feel a little better about the other sales I've gotten where I know they were unbiased.

Depends on what you want to measure your success by. Personally, I don't view sales to family to be success. Sales to strangers who fall in love with my work enough to part with their hard earned cash for it is what I measure my success by.

In the end, its up to you how you want to measure your success. Truthfully, since you are asking the question, I think the sale feels less fulfilling because its your parents and you have your answer already, but really only your opinion matters.

I've never charged family and friends full price so I don't count those as sales!

Squeezing $$ from friends and family would be too much hard work. I find it much easier to sell to strangers. Plus there are more strangers out there.

I've sold to family, friends, and strangers - they're all sales to me, and I appreciate them all.

Thank you for the correction, Alfred, I always confuse that spelling, custom, costume, customers...lol.

My parents were the ones encouraging me to do this and since they are across the Atlantic it's an easy way for them to get some greeting cards with photos I took. If they would like a print or something more expensive I would get it to them for free, but with the greeting cards I think it's not a bad deal... (I have a pretty low up charge on them for myself). Plus they've been asking me and encouraging me about buying my art especially as greeting cards so I didn't twist their arm. ;-) I don't think it's wrong to support friends and family with a purchase, I would do that too in return.

Things are looking up, I sold a print today as well... not to family! So I can count that as my first sale for sure. A good start. I'm happy.

Gonna buy five copies for my mother.

A sale is a sale but in my mind I would only count the first sale as one that goes to a stranger.

After all, the only way your business is going to work is if you can sell to strangers.

Friends and family can help you get off the ground but they are highly unlikely to sustain your business.

Congrats on your sale BTW!

I would also count my first sale as going to a stranger.

a sale is the thing you make money on. it still took your parents 3 weeks, so its a sale. though if they are your only customers, well i'm not sure what you would call that. selling to relatives is harder than a stranger btw.

---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

It depends a lot. In my case, even though if I rank all my sales in levels, where level 5 would be one sale where the unknown buyer who lives far away from me search for an image through tags, found many, chose mine, paid, and has not returned the product and the sales level 1 would be the sale for my mother (who thinks my work is beautiful! :), all my sales would be considered a great sale, that is, level 5. This is because 99% of my known friends and relatives live in the same country as me and they would be crazy on buying anything from here before this terrible financial exchange which we live today. Incidentally, if a friend or relative of mine buy something in my gallery, this would be the sale 2x!

All kidding aside, you will certainly be worthy of any sale, so I would take them all into account.

For me, it would be a sale to a stranger that would count. Family and friends may buy to support you, which is good, but doesn't really justify your work. Selling to a stranger though, who has no connection to you and is therefore buying based on the work alone, tells you more about whether your work is saleable or not.

Come to think of it not one of my relatives have ever bought my work. Some friends have though. After so long I may just double my prices for relatives, the unsupportive bunch of... :)

At this point I am more interested in my next sale.

I have to admit that I haven't actually sold to my family. I understand that when you sell to family, you always have a question in side your self on whether or not they bought because they are trying to help. It won't be for years until you see where it is hung in their houses that will communicate how they value your art. I hope you are pleasantly surprised. My first sale was to a friend when I did a portrait on a whim. The wife saw it, and had to buy it. I didn't actually start promoting myself until 2 years later. I have sold a few more but I have to say, the ones that I don't want to let go of tend to count more.

If your target market is family members, here is hoping you come from big extended family with large houses that need decorating.

I don't market to my friends and family. And I don't offer discounts to anyone either. If a friend or family member asks for a discount, I would, but believe it or not, they never do. I've sold originals to family and friends as well as prints. I didn't ask them to......They just did. Once my Mom bought an original for one of her co-workers who was retiring. She had it shipped to the co-worker's address and the payment info was not available to me. I had no idea she bought it until about 3 months later when I went for Thanksgiving. She paid full price and didn't even tell me upfront. That's a sale in my book! It's all good. At the end of the day, count it anyway you want. :)

I've sold exactly two things so far, both to relatives. Neither one was marketed to them directly. The first was someone who talks to me on FB a lot so she saw it when I shared there. The second was to my sister, who was helping a co-worker to find a phone case. I got a text from her asking for the link to my artist website. The co-worker didn't buy any of mine, but my sister did. And neither asked for a discount. I count those as sales. Plus the co-worker liked my work and she now has a link to my site.

Robert Buss, I just had to post so I could respond to yours. "Gonna see my smiling face..." Thanks for the laugh.

If your parents are "across the ocean", then congrats! You have made an international sale. Here is what artists (some? all?) do when they are getting started: you promote yourself by saying your artwork is in private collections across the country, or for you, now, internationally. You don't say that it is family and friends who are the collectors. Eventually it will be more than family and friends. Keep promoting yourself, keep going, getting better and better and you will get there!

That being said, it DOES matter to me if the sale is to strangers or family or friends. It always feels more validating when strangers buy my artwork. But some of my biggest "collectors" have been family members, sisters-in-laws, etc. as well as friends. In the end, 50 or 100 years from now, it won't matter that the initial collector was a family member. It will just be about your artwork.

I never sold to friends or family.
But one of my first was the 'most international': being from Europe I sold a print showing a landscape from South America to Australia !

When You did not give a 100% discount, than the first sale was the one to Your parents. Congrats !

My first sale was to a complete stranger. I will never quite know who. I am from CT, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was to a hair salon in Patterson, CA.
I sold my Mona Lisa, and the name of the buyer's salon might have been The Mona Lisa Salon. Love the notion of that.

My sales otherwise have mainly been to family. Love them for the support, but I need success as defined as volume by profit margin. My family has never asked
for a discount. But I have run out of family members that will buy.

Pixels includes every sale that is not to the artist him or herself. A sale is a sale.

Dave

Greetings,

My first sale also came at about 3 weeks after putting the first 25 images of my Mom's paintings on the site. And, the buyer was my cousin☺. This didn't surprise me; but, I was excited to get this first sale anyway! I have almost 200 more images to upload, but I'd like to make enough sales to cover the membership fee, first. At $30 for membership, it seems like low reinvestment goal, to meet.

My cousin purchased Red Bungalow (the oil painting ) , in the form of a pillow. She said she was going to see how good the product was, after she receives it, and then she'll purchase another pillow, of Red Bungalow (the watercolor ). The interesting thing is I found the watercolor version tucked away in a box only a month ago.. Meanwhile, the oil painting, of the same scene at a different angle, is an image that my cousin and I have spoken about many times, over the years, as we both like it alot.

For those who are curious to compare, I'm including links to both images, at the bottom of this post. All these paintings were made before Jeri turned age 25, and in New England, in the 1930s and 1940s. -Jeri's daughter

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/red-bungalow-2-jeri-borst.html

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/red-bungalow-1-jeri-borst.html

Jeri,

Your mother's work is beautiful.

Dave

Dave,

Thank you. I have always thought so; and as my mother's youngest child, I was always her biggest fan. Jeri Borst lived to be age 90; in the last 10 years of her life, I used the images of her paintings, hung on the walls of hospital rooms and nursing homes, to combat her growing dementia and help to remind her, who she was. In recent years I supplemented that with audio saved to my phone, of her jazz recordings, from the later period in her life when she attempted to launch a career as a jazz and ballad singer.

I am glad to have found this platform, to finally give Jeri Borst the recognition I believe she deserves, for her visual art... I did this in tribute, about a year after her passing. It's intended to be all about her, so I'm avoiding mentioning my own name (other than in the copyright statement I put on each image.) Sorry for going off-topic; but, Thank You.
-Jeri's daughter

Jeri great painting of Motif #1!

Thank you, Toby!

Check out the watercolor of Motif #2 also.. The original of that one is a HUGE painting comparatively.. Nearly 4 feet high and more than 2 feet across.. And shows the building that USED to be on the pier behind Motif #1, before a hurricane hit in the mid-1970s! These paintings provide Art and History, combined...

Rgds,

Jeri's daughter

Jeri,

My grandmother in her mid 90s got senile dementia as well. She took up painting. She painted flowers in vases, where the flowers seemed
to rise up at times outside of the vase as if floating. She died at age 98, we were close.

Dave

Dave,

I think we would be curious, to see your Grandmother's paintings. They sound interesting! 😊
I'm encouraging you to create a tribute page, like I did for Jeri Borst. Just use the artist's name, not your own, when you create the page for her paintings.

-Jeri's daughter

I count a sale of over 20 cents to a complete stranger as my first sale.

I recently made a sale to myself, as an experiment/quality control inspection, ... so that does not count in my book.

I do think that family sales hold less weight. Friends on the other hand, often want stuff for free, so if they pay, it should count as a sale. And when a stranger wants your work, you can stand tall knowing that it was purchased because it is appreciated.