Where To Sell Art Online

Where do you sell art online?

This is a huge question. It’s one of the cornerstones of this blog. Later on, I’ll get into detail about specific sites, but for now I want to set the stage and tell you about the two main kinds of sites that allow you to sell your art over the Internet.

Direct Sale Sites

The first kind are what I call direct sale sites. On these sites, you create some sort of entry describing an individual piece of art along with at least one image. The site will have some mechanism that will display your entry to potential customers. Visitors seeing your work on these sites can then purchase your art through the site. The site might accept payment on your behalf or it may leave it up to you handle. Either way, when someone chooses to purchase your art, the site notifies you that you have made a sale. It then leaves it up to you to complete the transaction. If the site didn’t handle the payment, you’ll need to do that first, then you will need to ship your artwork to the buyer.

Direct sales sites, can require a lot of work on your part, but if you are selling originals, it’s pretty much what you’ll have to do. Some examples include eBay, Craigslist, and Etsy.

Now here is the thing about direct sales sites: I don’t generally recommend them. Selling art on these sites is nearly impossible unless you have a well known name. Besides, people go eBay and Craigslist looking for bargains, and you probably don’t want to sell your art at bargain prices. The one exception is Etsy which is dedicated to selling arts and crafts; though, reports I get from other artists are that crafts and sculpture do well there, but 2D art (photos, drawings, paintings, prints, etc.) does not.

So if direct sales sites are no good for selling your original art, what is? Well, we’ll get to that in a minute…

Print on Demand

Running With Buffalo — This is perhaps one of my best works. Because I have it on a print-on-demand site, I have sold numerous prints of all sizes of it to people all around the world.

The next type of site is the print on demand site, hereafter referred to a POD site. With a POD site, you create an account to which you upload digital images of your artwork. Usually, you need to provide some details about you work such as the title, description, pricing details, etc. The site then publishes your work to their galleries (or, in some cases, creates a personalized gallery for you). Visitors to the site can browse through the galleries an buy prints of whatever they like. If they buy one of yours, you get a cut.

What’s great about this model, is that after you upload your art, you don’t have to do anything else regarding that sale. The POD site handles the processing of the payment, makes the print, ships, handles the customer service. Most will even handle returns.

Previously, I mentioned that I don’t recommend direct sales sites for selling original art. That is because many of the POD sites allow you to sell originals as well. So, for an individual piece, visitors will have the option of buying the original, but can also buy a print. They see both, and after seeing a high price for the original, a lower priced print will seem like a bargain, making them more likely to buy at least the print from you (this is known as the “Anchoring Effect” in marketing). So, if you have original to sell, skip the eBays of the world and use POD sites that offer selling of originals instead.

There is one problem with POD sites however: the print series are, by nature, unlimited. This can give collectors a sense that your prints will have trouble increasing in value, and while your art may make for great decor, it makes for a poor investment. If you are really concerned about this, there are ways to overcome this, such as giving an expiration date to your postings, but I’ve found that they are mostly not worth the effort.

Other Types of Art Business Sites

There may be a few other types of sites out there. For instance, I use a service that lets people rent my art for a period of three months with the option to purchase a print at the end. There is also something called microstocks, which allow businesses and individuals to license your work for use in commercial endeavors. I don’t have much experience with microstocks, but, if you don’t mind giving up control of your work, if may be worth your time to look into them.

I hope this article wasn’t too long, but it is a necessary foundation for future articles. So enjoy,

Daniel

October 31, 2014January 21, 2015

The Biggest Mistake Artists Make

Marooned — If you don’t market your art, you are figuratively marooning your art career on a island. Don’t isolate your art from the rest of the world. Get it out there.

What makes an artist successful?

For some, the satisfaction of having created a piece art is enough. These are the people who make art to relieve stress, to spend time creating their own worlds, to exercise their imagination, or just to pass the time. For them, it does not matter if someone else sees their art. Their art was successful to them simply because they made it and liked it. If this is all you need from art, more power to you; this article is not for you. You are already a success and need read no further.

Many artists, however, want more than the simple self satisfaction of creating art. They may want sales, or they may want to make a statement. They might want to influence minds, inspire others, or simply make people happy. For these people, success as an artist means RECOGNITION.

So what is the number one mistake these artists make?

The biggest mistake artists make in trying to achieve success is this: They spend too much of their “art” time making art and not enough getting people to look at it. The key to success as an artist is to find your audience and to get them to see your art. For an artist, the blanket term for this is Marketing.

So how much time should I spend marketing?

Well, it depends a bit on how good your are at marketing and the various channels you use as well as how fast you can produce art, but on average you should be spending about fifty percent of your dedicated art time to marketing. Yes, I said that. Roughly, HALF your time dedicated to art should be spent getting your art out there to be seen.

Why so much?

You need to spend that much time marketing because the art market is huge. A lot of people want to be artists, and there is a flood of art out there. People are not likely to find your art by accident. You have to bring them to it, and doing so requires effort.

So how do I market art?

The good news is that countless ways exist to get your art out there. For a creative person willing to find new ways to market, the sky’s the limit. And, guess what? You’re in luck; you’re an artist. That makes you a creative person.

Just to help you out though, at least for marketing online, you have this blog as a resource. In coming articles, I intend to share with you some of the methods that I have found for successfully marketing my own art, and perhaps they can work for you as well.

Regards,
Daniel

P.S.

Don’t forget to check out this week’s sponsor, Dick Blick Art Materials (since I offer this site for free, I have to fund it somehow 😉 )

October 21, 2014January 21, 2015

Be The Artist

Customers will not buy from an artist who looks like this.

Okay, so you’ll see a picture of me in the first article posted on this blog as well as in the About page. It’s part of my introduction, but it is also my first piece of advice: try not to be too anonymous. Art is not a typical product. Unlike toasters, televisions, or sofas, when people buy art, the person who made it can be as important to them as the art itself, if not more so.

I’ve created numerous online galleries using names that hide my identity. Weather it was a company name, or a snappy online ID, my sales where always slow. Once I started using my real identity though, the art sales started coming in much more often. Art buyers just seem reluctant to buy from someone like SuperArtist1973.

Now you could create a believable psuedonym, that is, a first and last name that could be that of a real person, but I believe that there’s more to to using your real identity though. I think that it has something to do with that once you attach you real self to your art, you are much more concerned about putting your best foot forward. Your art suddenly becomes a matter of pride, not just profit.

So use your real name for your online presence. Also, let people see you. Use real pictures of yourself for your online profiles on sites where you sell your art (but not necessarily where you market it – I’ll discuss that in a future post). Let your customers see that you are an actual human being.

In the spirit of this site, you don’t need to meet you customers face to face, but you do need to let them at least see yours.