Making art a source of income as a professional artist requires more than just creating beautiful art. It involves understanding how to build an audience, how to price art products, and the unique requirements of shipping art. It means thinking like an entrepreneur.
Finding an Idea
Before the rise of e-commerce platforms, artists relied on agents and retailers to distribute their work. Modern creation tools allow independent artists to own their distribution streams, creating and selling their work online – on their own terms.
Choose Your Business Model
Decide what you want to sell: original art or reproductions. Take a photo and scan your work. Find a printer to print your art. Build your brand as an artist. Set retail prices for your products. Create an e-commerce store to sell your art online. Discover more channels to sell art. Sell your art in person. Work with galleries to sell your art. License your art. Market your art brand. Package and ship your art. Understand plagiarism and copyright for artists.
Choose Your Business Model: Sell Your Own Art or the Works of Other Artists
There are two ways to sell art online: creation or curation. Cat has built her career in both ways, by creating and selling her own work and representing the works of others in her store. Which one is right for you? Creating and Selling Your Own Art
As an artist, you are the creator, producing original art, or reproductions of original works, or digital art, and selling it directly to your customers or indirectly through a gallery, business partner, or agent.
It has become easier for artists to sell their products directly, with emerging creation tools appearing almost daily.
Artist Maria Qamar runs her own online store, where she sells art prints and merchandise, reducing the trade intermediary and keeping her costs low. But she also relies on relationships with experienced galleries to showcase and sell original artwork.
If you are learning how to sell paintings online, note that galleries can showcase your work to new audiences. They may also have access to resources and professionals to help market, display, and handle and ship artwork.
Curation of Other Artists’ Works
If you are not a personal artist but have a good eye and a love for the art world, you can still enter the art selling game as a curator.
Some artists may not be interested in marketing or knowing the best way to sell art online and instead rely on gallery agents, curators, and retail partners to handle that side of the business. As a partner for artists, you can earn a percentage of the sale price for your knowledge and services in the business.
There are many ways to work with artists to sell their work online – whether selling originals or prints, licensing works for print on merchandise or use in publishing. “Most galleries offer a standard industry split of 50% for original artwork,” says gallery owner Ken Harmon. “The artist provides the artwork, and we do our best to sell it.”
Decide What You Want to Sell: Original Art vs. Reproductions
The best way to sell your art online will depend on the nature of your art and the chosen medium. You may choose to sell only your original art, for example, while digital art, which can be reproduced without quality loss, can be used for printing and commerce. However, most art created in two-dimensional media has multiple options for generating unlimited sales on a single piece.
Consider
The following formats:
- Original art: paintings, drawings, and sketches (Note: You can sell original art and prints of the same work as well)
- Limited or open editions: framed or unframed, or prints on canvas
- Digital art or digital downloads: desktop backgrounds, templates, and printable art for home, etc.
- Custom art: made to order by the client or commissioned by the business
- Merchandise: print your art on hats, iPhone cases, mugs, shirts, enamel pins, greeting cards, stationery, etc.
- Repeated prints: on fabrics, wrapping paper, or wallpaper
- Licensing: “renting” your work to other brands or publications (ideal for painters and photographers)
- Collaboration with brands: limited collection sold through the partner brand’s store
Shooting and Scanning Your Work
Clearly and accurately photographing and representing your products is essential for any small online business. Without the ability to experience the product, potential customers need to get the best idea of what they are purchasing through clear, detailed images.
If you have a poor image of your work or it does not accurately represent the piece, you will have a harder time selling it. You may also find yourself dealing with unhappy customers and processing returns. Photographing art for sale
Product photography for art requires some different tricks than for other products, and basic lighting setup can cause glare or color inconsistencies. You should consider hiring a professional photographer for large pieces or art with three-dimensional or shiny elements.
Lifestyle photos that show your products or art in a space or scene can help inspire your customers and showcase the scale. If you are selling other goods that feature your art, the general rules of product photography apply. Capture clear photos from multiple angles and close-up shots to show texture and detail. Lifestyle images (the product in a scene) are great for the homepage and social media and help show scale.
Print-on-demand services often provide mockup images that you can use on your product pages instead of photographs.
Scanning art for sale
For two-dimensional works, Ken recommends scanning as a cost-effective and efficient alternative to photography. “The most cost-efficient way to do this is to get a desktop scanner and scan the work in parts and stitch them together digitally,” he says. “If you have a piece with gloss paint or resin, that’s a bit trickier, but for most works on canvas or paper, it’s very easy.” In cases of more challenging scans, galleries and other printing services can help.
In either case, you want the final product to represent your work as closely as possible so you can use it in your portfolio or sell the work as prints or digital art.
Finding a Printer to Print Your Art
Understanding how to sell prints of your artwork relies on collaborating with a printer, whether that’s a home printer or a company that takes on the job for you. There are multiple options, from doing it yourself to delegating the task to a specialized company. These options can help you sell art prints and other merchandise to your audience. Printing it yourself
It is possible to start selling your artwork by creating high-quality prints yourself using high-quality paper, ink, and a desktop printer at home. As a new artist, this approach can keep costs low, but it may not be sustainable over time as your volume increases.
Maria says: “At first, I printed, packaged, and delivered every print that was ordered myself. At one point, the volume became so large that I couldn’t keep up. I was spending all my days delivering and running around.”
Typically
This method is not limited to selling art prints on paper, but some specialized home printers may allow printing on fabric paper or textiles designed specifically for this purpose.
Using a Printing Company
A local or online printing company can produce your work in bulk and may even offer wholesale discounts if you are printing many of the same pieces. This can be the best way to sell art online if you have a small catalog and high sales volume for these pieces.
In this way, you will still be responsible for packaging and shipping the prints you sell online. These companies can produce high-quality prints thanks to advanced printers.
Cat Seto, the artist and shop owner, says she often prints large batches for collection releases. While she uses print-on-demand services, the prints come to her studio first, instead of shipping directly to the customer. “It’s important to be the last one to check, pack, and ship the product for our clients,” she says.
Print on Demand
Print on demand is the easiest and most flexible option and the simplest way to sell art online – especially if you plan to sell your printed work on goods like t-shirts or hats.
Print-on-demand services usually integrate with your online store. When an order is placed, the integration triggers to print the piece and ship it directly to the customer. This is a great option for selling art on a budget, as there is no need to invest in equipment or inventory.
When the number of orders surpassed her ability to print and ship the work herself, Maria upgraded to using a print-on-demand company. “All I have to do is upload the work and let the company do the work on my behalf,” she says. “Now I can focus on creating art and connecting with people.”
Print-on-demand products don’t stop at printing on paper alone. Your art can be printed on many items for sale, from phone cases to stickers.
Building Your Brand as an Artist
As an artist learning how to sell your artwork, your brand may develop as a natural extension of your art. The style and medium you choose for yourself as an artist will naturally attract fans and buyers based on that alone. However, there are many decisions you will need to consciously make as you begin to think of yourself as a business in addition to being an artist.
Since art is personal and sometimes emotional work, your brand story as an artist can be a factor that influences a person’s decision to purchase the work. Other business assets such as packaging and website design should match or complement the visual aesthetic of the work itself.
Your branding exercises should answer the following questions:
- Are you creating and selling art under your own name, a pseudonym, or a brand name?
- How will you tell your brand story?
- How much of your personal story will you share?
- Do you have a mission, values, or cause you wish to communicate through your brand?
- Aside from the art itself, what are the visual trends of your brand identity?
- What is your communication tone?
- What business assets do you need?
Answering these questions will help you build a set of branding guidelines that will form the foundation of your website design, marketing materials, and so on. If you ultimately expand your business, these guidelines will help maintain brand consistency when delegating tasks to employees or other partners.
Your brand story can appear in various places, including your social media content, your packaging inserts, and on the “About” page of your website, like this example from Australian artist Sarah Magliaco.
Build
Many artists build fan bases based on their online personas or personal brands associated with their art. Tatiana Cardona, also known as Female Alchemy, has chosen to place her face at the core of her social media strategy.
For Cat, the issues she cares about are a fundamental part of her brand. The brand values of Cat influence the types of projects she works on with brands and clients. “When collaborating, I think it’s important not only to stay true to your brand,” she says, “but also to be able to listen and be active towards anyone you collaborate with.”
You can create a logo using a logo maker and implement your branding design using free and simple tools even if you don’t have design skills or a budget to hire a graphic designer.
Determining Retail Prices for Your Products
When determining the retail price for art, you should consider more controlled aspects such as value, demand, and the popularity of the art or artist. How can you sell art online and make money from it? Managing any business sustainably in the long term requires being profitable at some point. To achieve this, you will need to set your art price accordingly. If you’re still experimenting with how to sell your art and do not have a widely known name, you can start with a simple formula to determine the price of your original art:
Your cost to sell and market the work + Material costs + Other expenses + Your profit = Retail price
For this method, it is helpful to consider the time you spent creating the work. It is customary for the
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/211990409-how-to-sell-art-online
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