We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Natalia Karpman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Natalia, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I first picked up a brush as an adult, when I had just moved to another country after getting married. I had a lot of time on my hands and didn’t have a lot of life going on, and I really enjoyed painting, and it consumed me completely. The idea to start selling my paintings didn’t actually come to me first, it was my husband’s idea – until then I believed I didn’t have an entrepreneurial gene in me. I had no idea what was possible and what I was capable of! I also had very little faith that someone would actually pay me for my art.
But the first sale happened so quickly, and I remember that feeling vividly – like I’d just discovered a superpower in me! That’s when I knew I wanted to become a full-time artist. I also had no idea it was going to be a lot harder than it seemed at the moment, but the button was already pushed and I kept going :)

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Before taking up painting as a hobby, I had a career in the industry of education abroad & student exchanges. I am still very passionate about it, and can talk about that for hours! Working in sales & marketing for many years has taught me to be in constant competition with myself – I was good at my job and had lots of internal motivation to do better. At some point, I went ahead and got a master’s degree in marketing – with the intention to continue the career. But life offered me something else instead – to drop everything, marry an Italian guy and move to Italy! Which I did. Sometime after the move, when I still didn’t speak the language and didn’t have a job or social life, I started painting as a hobby. I had all this time to learn and practice. It helped me through the mental health problems that I was having at the time, and I painted every time I had a chance because those were the moments I’d feel true joy. I got pretty confident with my skills, and my marketing & sales background kicked in too. My husband gave me the idea to try and sell my art online, so I went ahead and set up a shop, announced it on Facebook, and the first sale happened right then.
I jumped headfirst into the business. I studied and researched how to sell art online, what platforms are the best, how to do Instagram, and how to build a website, I did all of that myself. I painted more and more. 3 years later, I was a full-time artist, with a solid social media following, selling my oil paintings all over the world. I didn’t make crazy money, but it did pay my bills and I could confidently say I had figured it out. I also got bored. I felt like the routine was already easy enough, and I missed working with people, and I felt like there was more I could do with my skills now. So I went into teaching oil painting to beginners. During 2021 I launched a few online workshops and tried myself as an art teacher. It didn’t feel right and was very confusing to me. I wanted to help other creatives but teaching painting was not joyful at all, I just felt like I took the wrong road and it was leading me nowhere.
That’s when a big crisis hit me, and I was super close to just dumping everything and going back to a corporate job. I was no longer inspired to paint or sell art. Doing the job that I didn’t like – teaching painting – has nearly destroyed my passion for art altogether. That was a bit over a year ago – at the beginning of 2022.
My decision to start teaching marketing to fellow artists was born then. I took several content creation courses, met people from various industries that were doing consulting business online, and it just hit me, that I had a very unique niche. I thought – okay, I have all this marketing knowledge and experience, I’ve sold my own art, I know what that’s like, there’s crazy demand for marketing education out there, I could really do this! And that’s when I started offering 1:1 marketing & business coaching sessions, it went well, then I launched a first group training on selling art on Instagram, and it went even better than I thought, and I finally felt like I was on the right path. I committed fully, registered a new business, created a new Instagram account, made peace with putting my own art aside for as long as it’s needed, and I’ve been on this journey since.
Now it’s been one year since I started helping fellow artists grow their businesses on Instagram, and I’m proud of my students like I’ve never been of myself. Even though the journey is long, and for most artists a year is not enough to build an audience and sustainable sales, there are already several super successful cases – like Anika Simeth, for example, that recommended me for this interview :)
Today I offer two major online trainings for artists – one is focused on content making (Reels & organic growth on Instagram), and another is a general course on how to build an art business online, using Instagram. I offer 1:1 sessions as well, and in May I launched a subscription-based membership that provides the necessary help for artists to stay consistent with their social media presence & marketing. I work with a lot of self-taught artists like myself, but I have to say, in today’s realities even art schools still don’t provide enough marketing knowledge for artists, so I’ve had art school graduates on my courses too. A lot of creatives dream of having a full-time income from online sales, and that’s what I’m helping them to accomplish. I do not dangle the carrot of “overnight success” in front of them – having gone through the process myself, I know it takes time, commitment, and an enormous amount of persistence and I share all the knowledge that I possess to help them get where they want. I think that’s what makes me different from countless Instagram couches out there – I am very realistic with my promises, and, as my followers say, I have a no-bullshit approach :) Which is why people keep coming. I’ve had over 150 students in my courses so far. I’m very proud of that.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Yes, there is. One of my goals is to build a community of artists and creatives where they’d connect, help each other, motivate each other, and support each other. Being an artist, a one-person business is a lonely journey. We paint, closed in our studios, and we constantly are drowning in our own thoughts. Usually, we are surrounded by people who have no idea what we’re doing, and what it’s like for us – and this is where all these unsolicited suggestions and irrelevant advice come from. Even other one-person-business owners, makers, don’t always understand what it means to sell the product of your mindset, your art is often very personal, and marketing it is not the same as marketing handmade purses. Artists need a lot of support and they’re not getting it from other people.
I want to change that. I believe we are not all competitors, and there’s a collector for every painting out there. What I want to do is to build a space that would help artists exchange experiences, ideas, and suggestions. It’s like putting seeds into fertile soil and watering them just enough to help them grow and flourish. I want to build an online environment where artists would just talk to each other and get real perspectives on things, instead of just looking at each other’s Instagram accounts, getting frustrated, jealous, confused, demotivated, and disappointed. Artists need to network with each other, see success cases and behind the scene work that went into that, they need a real support system. And I alone can only do so much – but together, we can unite our knowledge and experiences to really accelerate the growth for everyone who’s involved.
This has already started – in every course, I create a space where my students can get to know each other and help each other. I have two students from the same town in Netherlands, that became friends in real life and now they’re best business buddies, they paint together, have coffee together, and support each other, and this is what I want for everyone. Currently, I am building Yes!ArtClub – the online space – but I’d love for it to spread into the offline world where artists would meet in real life. Give me a year now, you’ll see how amazing it’ll be! :)

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

There’s a lot of superficial, poor-quality advice about social media out there. What upsets me the most, is that people that come to me for help, often come already discouraged and disappointed, because the information they find out there makes them set the wrong expectations. Instagram seems self-explanatory and easy, right? Posting pictures and videos of your art doesn’t seem like rocket science.
But somehow it’s not working, and people lose faith in the app, and it makes it difficult for them to trust my advice even when I point out what’s been done wrong and how to fix it – my explanation is that the myths surrounding art sales on Instagram are so strong, people keep expecting it to magically happen. They want quick growth, and easy sales, and they think if they keep posting consistently it would just happen. It’s hard for me to break those beliefs because they are just so tempting.

I don’t sell the idea of a giant following, overnight success, or easy sales on Instagram – no, it’s all hard work and it takes time. I myself have been growing my new account from scratch since a year ago, and I know exactly what I’m doing, I’m only getting to 5k followers now, but my conversation rate is super high. I do not expect viral growth, because it’s more of an exception that the rule now, not everyone grows quickly and it’s not even very good. Big following doesn’t mean big money. It’s the quality of the following that matters, even small audience will pay you if you attract the right people (that’s always been my case, with the art account and with the marketing one), and for that you need a strategy.

Consistency, persistence, and quality content targeted at the right audience are everything. Most of the time, artists miss at least one of these components.
My advice to those who are starting out would be – to use all the tips you find online but don’t expect them to do magic for you. Building a community around your art takes more than posting every day at certain times and using hooks in reels. You should know your audience and have a strategy for your content to target that audience, showing your art will never be enough to build sustainable sales on social media – you need to connect with people in order to sell anything. Instagram is not Amazon, people don’t go there to spend money, they want interesting stories, quality visuals, and human connection, entertainment – give them that, don’t just silently show your art. I guess my toughest advice would be – don’t expect social media to work, if all you intend to do there is just show your work. It’s just not enough. Be ready to do more, be ready to learn more, let go of the idea that art should sell itself, because on social media it’s not like that. But also, don’t get misguided by the idea that Instagram is somehow limiting your creative freedom – it’s not like that at all. Yes, if you want to build consistent sales on Instagram, you need to find a way to express your creativity in the formats supported by the platform, but it doesn’t mean having to lose your originality or blindly copying what other artists do. You will only stand out if you stay yourself – as original and unique as you are!

Contact Info:

• Website: nataliakarpman.com
• Instagram: yes.artmarketing

Image Credits
Photos are made by Irene Brusa (Italy)