Want to Sell Art Do I Need a Business Debit Card?
When I graduated from fine art school, I had mastered color theory and brush techniques and composition—but didn't know the first thing near business. How can I sell fine art and paintings online? How would I market myself? What steps did I need to take to sell my art? How should I price my work, and what would I accuse for shipping? At the time, the creator tools and channels to amplify and sell your ain art online were practically nonexistent.
In my very commencement week every bit a working artist, I learned a hard lesson: to succeed in art, y'all must too succeed in business.
For gallerists and curators, the shift in how we buy and sell in the concluding two decades has allowed these businesses to represent more artists and expand into selling affordable art prints online to achieve larger audiences worldwide.
How to sell fine art online
Whether you lot're a creator or a curator looking to make money selling art online, this how to sell artwork online and in person guide is for you lot. We consulted experts and successful artists for their advice on everything yous need to know to sell your fine art, from marketing to pricing to shipping. You lot can besides utilise this guide to acquire how to sell your photos online as art.
Meet the art experts
We reached out to experts in the fine art earth—two artists and a gallerist—actively making their living by selling art online and asked, "how do yous sell art online?" amongst other things. In this guide to selling your own artwork, their anecdotes will be woven into practical and actionable advice for any artistic entrepreneur.
True cat Seto, owner and artist, Ferme à Papier
Cat Seto is an artist and author, and the founder of Ferme à Papier, a San Francisco–based studio and boutique representing unique goods from independent Westward Coast designers. Her jotter has appeared in multiple publications and landed her partnerships with brands similar Anthropologie and Gap. Prior to the pandemic, True cat closed the retail arm of her business to refocus and find a new location. The recent hate crimes targeting the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) customs accept influenced her need for change. "I have decided that I am at a fourth dimension and place in my business concern in which my collections demand to represent themes which thing to me and those around me," she says.
Maria Qamar, creative person, Hatecopy
Take note of our next adept especially if you lot want to know the best way to sell paintings online. Most famously known by her artist moniker, Hatecopy, Maria Qamar quit her advertising career to focus on art when her pop art paintings began to catch fire on Instagram. The success didn't happen overnight. "I did contract work here and at that place," says Maria. "When you're starting out, you lot're earning zero dollars." Her total-time chore, notwithstanding, taught her business organization skills that were disquisitional to selling her own artwork, getting off the footing, and marketing herself as an creative person. Now she works full time on her art, selling her own artwork in multiple formats, from art prints to printed merch. She as well published a volume, Trust No Aunty, in 2017.
Ken Harman, curator and gallerist
Ken Harman is the man backside the art empire that includes Spoke Art, Hashimoto Contemporary, and publishing visitor Paragon Books. Together, these businesses represent many global artists through physical galleries, online shops, and pop-up exhibitions. Different Maria, Ken didn't accept a hazard to transition slowly at the offset. When he was unable to secure a temporary pop-up location for a curated testify, he signed a two-twelvemonth lease on a infinite. "I actually didn't take any other options," he says. "I just pulled the trigger."
What's correct for you lot: selling your own art or selling works by other artists?
In that location are two ways for how to sell your art: create or curate. Cat built her career on both by creating and selling her own work and representing the work of others in her bazaar. Which one is correct for you? Let'due south explore the ii avenues in this guide to how to sell artwork online.
As an creative person, y'all are the creator, producing original art and/or reproductions of originals and selling straight to your customers or indirectly through a gallery, retail partner, or agent. Information technology's never been easier for artists to sell straight, with emerging creator tools popping up seemingly every day. Depending on your style and medium, cull a sales channel where your desired audience hangs out. This is arguably the easiest way to sell fine art online for many.
Maria runs her ain online shop, where she sells prints and merchandise, eliminating the middleman and keeping her costs low. But she likewise leans on relationships with experienced galleries for exhibiting and selling own artwork. If you're learning how to sell your art, note that galleries can expose your work to new audiences. They may also have admission to resource and professionals to help promote, exhibit, handle, and send artwork.
Curate
If you lot're non personally an artist but you have a great eye and a beloved of the fine art world, you tin can yet get into the game of selling art as a curator. Some artists may be disinterested in marketing or figuring out the best way to sell art online and instead rely on gallerists, curators, and retail partners to handle this aspect of the business. As a partner to artists, you make a pct of the selling price in substitution for your business knowledge and service.
In that location are several ways to piece of work with artists to effigy out the best way to sell fine art online for you lot—be it selling originals or prints to licensing works to exist printed on merchandise or used in publication. "Most galleries offering an industry standard 50% consignment split for original art," says Ken. "The artist provides the artwork, we practice our best to sell it." Spoke also operates its own impress store, selling limited-run prints of works by the artists it represents—offering a wide range of cost points for their fans.
What art to sell: originals or reproductions?
Equally an artist, you may choose to sell your fine art, reproductions of that work, or both. The best manner to sell art online volition depend on the nature of your art and your called medium. Fine artists using classic mediums and selling at loftier price points may cull to only sell originals, for example, while digital art, which can exist reproduced without loss of quality, is great for prints and merch. However, about art created in 2nd mediums accept multiple options for generating unlimited sales on a single work.
🎨 Consider the following options when determining the best way to sell your art online:
- Original fine art such as paintings, drawings, illustrations (Notation: you can sell both the original art also every bit prints of the same work.)
- Express- or open-edition prints (framed, unframed, or prints on canvas)
- Digital downloads (desktop wallpaper, templates, print-at-home art, etc.)
- Custom art made to order from a customer request or commissioned by a business (Note: Generally, this art would be one of a kind and not sold again as a reproduction.)
- Merchandise (your art printed on hats, mugs, t-shirts, enamel pins, greeting cards, jotter, etc.)
- Repeat prints on material, wrapping paper, or wallpaper
- Licensing work to other brands or publications (great for illustrators and photographers)
- Collaborations with brands (limited drove sold through the partner brand's store)
Some mediums, like sculpture, are more difficult to reproduce or employ for trade applications—you may consider a dissimilar road if you're interested in the easiest way to sell art online. Simply for those incommunicable to scan and print, there are still ways to generate boosted income from a single design. For case, dirt works may utilize the same mold to generate similar pieces, and 3D designs can be created over and over with a 3D printer.
Reproductions of art: open or express edition?
Reproducing art on t-shirts, mugs, or art prints means that a single work can bear fruit indefinitely. If you're looking for how to sell artwork like paintings equally prints, in that location are pros and cons. You can choose to sell an unlimited number of products (otherwise known every bit open up edition). Nonetheless, some galleries, like Spoke, opt for a limited edition model when you lot sell your art (in that location are merely a sure number of prints produced) on many of the works they stand for.
The effect is much like that of a express time offer—creating a sense of scarcity and urgency is an excellent marketing strategy. For Ken, nonetheless, the conclusion to limit impress runs goes deeper. "We work really difficult to find things that are very special to sell. Things that are special should exist treated like they're special," he says. While Spoke may be able to make more money selling prints as an open edition, the pick to limit them adds to the value of the fine art.
Limited edition has its drawbacks, however. "A lot of the things that we sell have secondary market values," says Ken, meaning that limited edition pieces may sell for inflated prices on the resale marketplace (call up limited-edition sneakers) because the demand is loftier. To help minimize reselling, Spoke will limit quantities of sure prints per client. It's as well congenital a blacklist of known resellers. "Making sure that the existent fans are really the ones who are able to get the things that we sell is ever a priority," Ken says.
How do you impress fine art and choose printers?
Understanding how to sell your artwork comes downwardly to getting very friendly with a printer, whether that's your at-domicile inkjet or a company that handles the task for you lot. In that location are multiple options, from DIY to completely hands off, to help y'all sell fine art prints and other merch to your audience.
DIY printing
Information technology'southward possible to outset selling your ain artwork past creating quality prints yourself with the high-quality paper, ink, and home office printer. As a new artist, this method tin continue costs low, but it's not the fashion to go if you desire to know how to sell your art sustainably and so you can calibration over time. "In the beginning, I would print, package, and deliver by hand every single poster that was ordered," says Maria. "At some point the book became so much that I couldn't make time to draw. I was spending all of my days delivering and in transit." This method is usually limited to selling fine art prints on paper, but some specialty printers may let you to print on canvass paper or material designed specifically for this purpose.
Using a printing company
A local or online press visitor can reproduce your work en masse and tin even offer bulk discounts if you lot are printing many of the same piece. This tin be the best way to sell fine art online if you have a pocket-size catalog of simply a few works that y'all sell consistently and have a budget to buy inventory upfront. With this method of how to sell artwork online, you will still exist responsible for your own packaging and aircraft.
Information technology's of import that we are the last sets of optics inspecting, packaging, and shipping the product to our customers.
Cat Seto, Ferme à Papier
While a print-on-need model for custom clients and orders is the all-time way to sell your art online for Cat, she ofttimes prints large batches for collection releases. In either example, the prints arrive at her studio showtime, rather than shipping directly to the customer. "It's important that we are the last sets of eyes inspecting, packaging, and shipping the production to our customers," she says.
Print on demand
Print on demand is the most hands-off and versatile of options and possibly the easiest way to sell fine art online, specially if you plan to sell your work printed on merch similar t-shirts or caps. Print-on-demand companies mostly integrate with your online store and allow you to upload your designs, which are then printed and shipped straight to each client when you receive an order. This is a groovy option if you want to know how to sell artwork on a budget, as there is fiddling upfront investment with no need to purchase equipment or inventory.
When the number of orders exceeded her capacity to print and ship work herself, Maria upgraded to using a print-on-need company. "All I accept to do is upload and let it exercise the work for me," she says. "Now I tin can focus on actually creating the artwork and connecting with people."
💡 Tip: Before you start selling your own artwork this mode, request samples from the printer and then you tin inspect the colors and quality of the print. This is especially important if printed items volition be sent directly to your customers.
How practice you photograph and scan art?
Photographing and representing your products clearly and accurately is of import for whatever online business. Without the ability to experience a product, customers need to get the all-time sense of what they're ownership through clear and detailed images. Selling fine art online is no exception.
"If you accept a bad epitome of your piece of work or the image doesn't represent the work accurately, you're going to have a harder time selling information technology," says Ken. Or, yous'll be stuck dealing with unhappy customers and processing returns.
Product photography when yous sell your art is a picayune trickier than other products, and a basic light setup may still cause glare or color irregularities. Consider hiring a professional to shoot larger works or art with whatsoever three-dimensional or glossy elements.
If you have a bad prototype of your work or the epitome doesn't represent the work accurately, you're going to have a harder fourth dimension selling information technology.
Ken Harman, Spoke Art
For 2D works, even so, Ken recommends scanning as an affordable and effective culling to photography. Though his facility has a photography setup for shooting art, many artists submit their works to Spoke as scans considering they need the digital file for their own archives anyhow. "The almost price effective way to do that is to get a desktop scanner and browse the work in parts and stitch it together digitally," he says. "If you've got a piece with a high-gloss coating or a resin, that's a little tricker, but for the majority of works on canvass or paper, it's pretty piece of cake."
If you're selling merch or other products that feature your art, the full general rules of product photography use. Take clear shots from multiple angles as well as zoomed-in shots to prove texture and particular. Lifestyle photos (your product in a scene) are great for your dwelling house page and social media and assistance to evidence scale. Impress-on-need companies often provide mockup images you can apply on your production pages in lieu of or in improver to photography.
📚 Read more:
- Product Photography: DIY Guide for People on a Budget
How do yous build your brand equally an artist or art curator?
Equally an artist learning how to sell your artwork, your brand may evolve as a natural extension of your art. Your chosen manner and medium will define yous every bit an artist and you lot will naturally attract fans and buyers based on this alone. Withal, at that place are many decisions you will need to consciously make when you start to think of yourself as a business likewise as an creative person.
Because art is a personal and sometimes emotional purchase, your story as an creative person could be a cistron in someone'due south decision to purchase. And other concern avails like packaging and site design should mirror or complement the visual artful of the work itself.
🎨 Ask yourself the post-obit if y'all're interested in selling your own artwork:
- Do you create and sell fine art under your own proper name, a pseudonym, or a brand name?
- What'south your make story? How much of your personal story will y'all tell?
- Practise y'all take a mission, values, or a cause that y'all want to communicate through your brand?
- Outside of the art itself, what is the visual direction of the brand? What'south the tone of your communication?
- What branding avails practise you demand? Even without graphic blueprint skills, you can generate a logo with free tools.
The reply to these questions will assist you lot build a gear up of brand guidelines that volition dictate many of your decisions going forrad: branding, website design, marketing materials, etc. If you somewhen calibration your concern, these guidelines will help you maintain make consistency as you delegate tasks to staff or other partners.
In collaborating, I think it'south of import to not only stay true to your brand, but to be able to listen and be proactive to whomever you are collaborating with.
Cat Seto, Ferme à Papier
For Cat, the causes closest to her middle are primal to her brand. While she is currently refocusing to piece of work on themes that support the AAPI community, this isn't the first time she's made a statement with her work. Ferme à Papier launched a Saving Faces drove highlighting the stories of women and underrepresented groups.
Cat's brand values influence the types of projects she takes on with brands and clients. "In collaborating, I think it's important to not only stay true to your brand," she says, "only to be able to heed and be proactive to whomever yous are collaborating with."
📚 Read more:
- How to Start Your Own Make From Scratch in 7 Steps
- A Guide to Brand Storytelling [Free Worksheet]
How practise you set prices for your art?
How exercise you sell art online—and make money doing it? Making a living as a working artist is possible if you know how to value and price your work. Pricing art is challenging considering it doesn't necessarily fit neatly into typical pricing strategies.
Pricing original fine art
The best style to sell art online and in person is to be profitable—and yous have to price your art appropriately. If y'all're just beginning to experiment with how to sell your art and don't have a widely known proper noun in the art world, you tin start with a simple formula to cost your original art: your time and labour costs + material costs and other expenses + your markup (profit). For this method, y'all volition need to assign yourself an hourly wage. Information technology is typical for artists to undervalue their fourth dimension and work, especially at the starting time.
Knowing what your products represent and what y'all aren't willing to compromise are primal components in driving decisions about pricing.
Cat Seto, Ferme à Papier
Where the formula above fails is that the value of art is subjective and not necessarily dependent on concrete details like material toll or labour hours. Famous artists can fetch exponentially more for a piece that has roughly the same cosmos costs equally that of a new artist. Check the market to compare your pricing to similar artists at similar levels and conform appropriately.
Retrieve that if you are selling through a gallery, that business will normally have half of the final selling cost. You lot tin unremarkably work with gallerists, who are experts at valuing and pricing art, to ready a price that makes sense for you, the gallery, and the market.
Pricing art prints
Selling art prints or other types of reproduction can follow a more than simple pricing formula: the cost of press + your cost to sell and market the print + your markup. Your markup may be on a scale depending on whether y'all sell open- or limited-edition prints.
"Knowing what your products stand up for and what you aren't willing to compromise are key components in driving decisions nearly pricing," says Cat. For her, printing on sustainable newspaper was a must-have, fifty-fifty though information technology would drive upwards material costs and ultimately the retail toll. Communicating these decisions to the customer is important, especially if your prices are college than average.
📚 Read more than:
- How to Cost Your Product: What You Demand to Know About Pricing Before You Launch
- The Toll Is Right: xiii Strategies for Finding the Ideal Price for Your Products
- Product Pricing: 5 Steps to Set up Prices For Wholesale and Retail
How do you lot sell fine art online with your own ecommerce store?
The best way to sell your art online is through your ain ecommerce shop. Beginning, take a few minutes to create your store. At this point, you can set it up as a trial and tinker with it for two weeks before committing. You've already done a lot of the work if you lot've established brand guidelines, pricing, and business model (originals, prints, or merch)—this part is simply assembly.
Go started selling art online and try Shopify costless for 14 days
Shop pattern and themes
When setting up your online art store, choose a Shopify theme that lets your art breathe–large images and lots of white/negative space. Themes are like templates that you build upon, layering in your ain images and copy, and tweaking colors and layout to adapt your business organization.
🎨 Some of our theme picks for selling art online:
- Narrative (free) is a theme for storytellers, allowing your artist persona to alive front and heart.
- Editions ($) is an airy theme that gives bold artwork the breathing room it deserves.
- California ($$) is a clean theme that lets your art be the star. Information technology's swell for large collections.
- Highlight ($$) is a bold theme with slideshow and parallax scrolling features that are slap-up for visual storytellers.
- Artisan ($$) is an ideal theme for artists who sell custom work and commissions.
Shopify is the easiest way to sell fine art online. Information technology's designed and then anyone can set upwards a custom online store with no coding or design skills necessary. However, if you're interested in customizing your theme even farther to suit your business, consider hiring a Shopify Expert to help y'all with design or evolution work.
📚 Read more:
- All-time Ecommerce Website Designs: 27 Exceptional Sites
Apps for fine art stores
The Shopify App Store is packed with apps that plug direct into your online store to solve specific pain points, add together unique features, and help you run your store more effortlessly—allowing y'all to focus on the creative aspects of the concern.
🎨 App suggestions to help sell your art online:
- Impress-on-demand apps. If you sell your artwork via prints and merch, apps like Creativehub, Printful, or Printify can sync with your store, taking the burden of shipping and fulfillment out of the equation.
- Gallery apps. An app similar POWR Epitome Gallery can feature past or out-of-stock works, serving as a portfolio or full catalog of your piece of work for galleries or brands looking to partner with you.
- Social marketing apps. As a creator, y'all may lean toward visual social media platforms similar Instagram to aid market your products and build an audition. Proceed site content fresh with an app like Instafeed that pulls Instagram images into a gallery on your site.
- Production page apps. If you lot're offering a specific piece of artwork with overlapping options (size, frame or no frame, paper type, etc.), use an app like Bold Product Options to layer detail variants.
📚 Read more:
- The 27 Best Free Shopify Apps for Your Store
Where can you sell your art online?
What'due south the best place to sell art online? Bated from your ain online store, it's the place where your platonic customer is already hanging out. If you have amassed a following on a item social aqueduct, for example, that might be a keen place to kickoff.
Where to sell your art online:
- Online marketplaces like Etsy or eBay tin can plug direct into your online store, allowing you to sync sales and reach wider audiences.
- Social selling channels allow yous sell directly to fans who are already following y'all on their preferred platforms. Create customizable storefronts on Facebook and Instagram that integrate with your Shopify store.
- Wholesale to other online boutiques and galleries. Yous tin browse wholesale markets similar Handshake to notice compatible retailers that want to sell your art.
Cat now sells her work through multiple channels, simply she cautions to showtime tiresome if yous're merely learning how to sell artwork. "Having multiple avenues came as an evolution to what offset began as a wholesale business organisation," she says. While her retail channel is on intermission for the moment, she now sells direct to client and works on custom projects for clients and brands in addition to her wholesale concern. "If I had tried to balance all of these from the onset," she says. "I believe I would have been overwhelmed."
Gallery exhibitions, pop-ups, and offline events for selling art
How to sell your artwork isn't limited to online—you can sell via concrete retail besides. Because Maria works frequently in traditional mediums, much of the impact of the texture and scale of her piece of work gets lost digitally. "It's bodily physical work, and then when we do exhibits, you tin can walk into a gallery and see that I'm a real person that has technical skills that tin can do paintings and large scale installations," she says. Artists can besides connect with fans and notice new audiences by taking work offline. Y'all can employ in-person experiences to drive people dorsum to your online shop.
🎨 Consider the following when selling your own artwork:
- Partner with a gallery to exhibit work.
- Look into local art markets and events, and prepare a one-fourth dimension or semi-permanent booth.
- Export or wholesale with fine art, souvenir, or lifestyle retail stores, or ready a small pop-up within an existing store.
- Open your studio to the public when yous launch your website, or go on consequent weekly open-studio hours to invite fans into your process.
- Run a pop-up shop (partner with other artists to reduce costs).
- "Lend" or export work for décor to emerging retail businesses like cafés in substitution for the exposure.
Earlier Ken opened his permanent gallery, he dabbled in popular-ups as a means to build his reputation every bit a gallerist and validate the business idea, but has never let go of the physical part of the business. For those selling original works, some element of in-person experience is critical, says Ken. "It's very rare to notice a successful fine art gallery that functions entirely online."
Still, advances in technology like 3D and AR for online stores and the acceleration in digital experiences brought on by the pandemic may mark large changes for the art world in the future. It's important to follow consumer trends while you acquire how to sell your art and grow your business.
Tin you work with galleries to sell your art?
Yes, you can work with galleries to sell your art on your behalf. If you're non interested in how to sell your artwork yourself and instead prefer having your art represented past a gallery—or even in addition to selling prints on your own site—in that location are a few dos and don'ts:
✅ DO check out the gallery'due south social media accounts. "If y'all have more than followers than that gallery does or that gallery doesn't have a lot of followers, that may give you pause," says Ken. A gallery should be able to requite y'all a wider exposure than you tin can get yourself.
❌ DON'T arroyo a gallery via social media. "You'd be amazed at how many people try to submit to u.s.a. via Facebook Messenger or tag united states of america in a post on Instagram and ask us to expect at their piece of work," says Ken. "While social media is a major focus for us, that's just not a very professional way to come up across if you're an artist."
✅ Exercise your enquiry and contact only those galleries who represent work in line with your own way. "You tin't sell street art to somebody who collects impressionism," says Ken.
❌ DON'T sacrifice quality for quantity. "Information technology's frustrating when an creative person who's hoping to catch our attention tags us and 20 other galleries all in the same post." Select the top few galleries that you want to work with most and send individual outreach to each.
✅ Practise your homework. "Detect the name of the director or the curator for the gallery," says Ken. "Being able to personalize an email is a great commencement step in that procedure."
How exercise you market your art shop?
Many artists like Maria started on social media as the all-time way to sell art online, growing a following first before launching a shop and monetizing their piece of work. The channel where you lot've gained the nearly traction in the beginning is a natural place to spend your energy and marketing dollars offset.
🎨 More ideas to become traffic to your site—and make sales:
- Run paid ad campaigns on platforms like Google or Facebook.
- Invest in organic social by producing consequent content and engaging with fans and art communities ofttimes.
- Run contests or offer sectional discounts to social followers (bonus: apply these to help build your email list).
- Reach out to influencers and printing when you launch your site or a new collection. Every bit you scale, you lot may opt to outsource to a PR house.
- Utilize content marketing to drive organic traffic. Use your expertise to create content around art, how-tos, behind the scenes, etc., either through a blog, vlog, or podcast.
- Learn about SEO to assistance improve your store'due south discoverability.
- Drive exposure with offline marketing. Participate in fine art shows and markets or piece of work with a gallery to expand your reach to new, larger audiences.
📚 Read more:
- Increase Website Traffic: twenty Low-Cost Ideas
- SEO Checklist: How to Rank a New Website
- Authenticity Sells: A Beginner's Guide to Marketing on TikTok
- Press Kits: How to Create A Hype Media Kit
How exercise yous package and send art?
As fine art is visual, y'all should pay attending to the smallest details, down to how your art is packaged and shipped. Fine art that arrives undamaged is the bare minimum—give your customers an experience that matches the quality and care you put into your work. As art can be fragile, follow these guidelines for ensuring your piece of work arrives safe and audio.
DIY shipping art
If y'all are shipping original art, or elect to transport prints and canvases yourself, rather than through a impress and fulfillment visitor, have extra precaution with your packing. Larger prints and posters are best shipped in paper-thin mailing tubes, and smaller prints in rigid cardboard mailing envelopes. Apply glassine (a water and grease-resistant paper) or articulate cellophane sleeves to protect prints inside the packaging. Call back: the best mode to sell your art online is to make sure it arrives in mint condition as a blank minimum.
Shipping expensive and oversized original artwork
Framed works and canvases require additional precautions—they're certainly not the "easiest" way to sell fine art online in terms of shipping. Packaging supply shops offer packing and shipping materials like paper-thin corners and specialty box sizes designed specifically for art.
If you're shipping original work to a gallery or art collector, there are ways to cut costs. "The price to ship an oversized painting that's stretched on a canvas tin be pretty substantial," says Ken. "Sometimes what nosotros exercise is unstretch a canvas, curlicue it in a tube, and ship it that way, which dramatically lowers the freight costs. And so we can have the canvas stretched locally."
Shipping art direct with print on need
The easiest way to manage shipping is to not manage it at all. If you lot opt to sell prints or merch only, your printing, gild fulfillment, and aircraft can all be managed past your impress-on-demand partner. They are able to access great aircraft rates due to book and partnerships with carriers.
Aircraft insurance for fine fine art
Insurance is important when shipping original works, as a lost or damaged parcel tin can't be replaced. Many standard carriers offering fairly basic insurance on well-nigh packages, and if you sell your art you should look into the specific extra coverage costs and limitations of each carrier's insurance offerings.
If you're selling your own artwork at high toll points, Ken takes additional measures to ensure the safety of the piece of work. "Shipping anything worth more a thousand dollars is definitely tricky," he says, and suggests that artists wait into using a private freight company or a carrier that specializes in art handling, despite the college costs.
📚 Read more:
- Shipping & Fulfillment 101: A Step-Past-Pace Guide for Getting Your Products to Your Customers
Plagiarism issues and copyright protection when selling fine art
Artist Tuesday Bassen waged war on copycats—large chain stores who ripped off her original designs—by hiring a lawyer and taking her story to the media. However, both Maria and Ken say copycats and plagiarism are just an unfortunate reality of doing concern. Maria took legal activeness only once, before shifting her perspective. "At the end of the mean solar day, it took me my whole life to learn how to do this," she says. "If somebody is copying me, they're going to take to sit down and eventually learn for themselves, because sooner or subsequently they're going to run out of ideas."
Information technology'south a sign that I'chiliad inspiring others and that what I'one thousand doing is right considering they wouldn't copy me otherwise.
Maria Qamar, Hatecopy
Maria takes Hatecopy's copycats as an indication that she'south on to something."It's a sign that I'm inspiring others and that what I'm doing is right considering they wouldn't copy me otherwise," she says, "I'm not offended or bothered by it anymore."
For galleries that represent multiple artists and sell art online, copycat websites are a consistent problem. "We practice take an event with various online sites merely bootlegging what we do," says Ken. "Information technology's part of the mode the globe works, unfortunately. We do our best, only it happens."
While copycats may be a reality, artists and businesses have legal recourse and should seek the advice of a copyright lawyer to assistance protect intellectual property before infringement happens.
The artist equally an entrepreneur
For many entrepreneurs, the best way to sell fine art online is from whatever space y'all already have—not some expansive warehouse or inviting storefront. Cat started her art business from a spare bedroom. Whether it'south a basement or a kitchen tabular array or a invitee room, it can work equally your launching pad. In this stage of your business, yous'll wearable all the hats: creator, marketer, packer, shipper, web designer, and customer service rep.
Cat describes this time in her own journey as lean and humbling. "It gave me balls of knowing every aspect of my business inside and out," she says, "including its strengths and weaknesses."
You could know everything nigh business concern and you could know everything most art, simply it'due south the combination of both that really makes a successful brand.
Maria Qamar, Hatecopy
Thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur right from the start will be crucial to your success. You lot may stumble as a creative to acquire the business concern aspects, but they will ultimately help you lot abound and calibration. Eventually, y'all can delegate and automate, allowing y'all to focus on what you practice best: making cute things.
"You could know everything virtually business concern and you could know everything about art, but information technology's the combination of both that actually makes a successful make," says Maria. "I am obsessed with creating that harmony."
Feature illustration past Pete Ryan
Selling art online FAQ
What is the best fashion to sell art online?
The best way to sell art online is by building your own branded ecommerce site with a platform like Shopify. You lot tin also sell your piece of work on a crafts and art marketplace like Etsy or on social media platforms similar Instagram and Facebook Shops. Understand where your target customers like to shop to detect out the best identify to sell your fine art online.
Is selling art online profitable?
Yes, selling art online can be profitable if you're intentional about your pricing and marketing strategies. Selling fine art online has become more accessible with platforms similar Etsy and Facebook, which enable ecommerce. Notation: When you sell on your own online shop built with a platform like Shopify, you don't accept to pay marketplace fees.
How can I sell my original art online?
Selling original art online is still possible through your ain branded website. Cost point for original fine art will be much higher, so it'due south important that you build a strong, loyal audience for your work. Diversifying your sales channels, like too working with a gallery, will aid you broaden your exposure as an creative person.
What art sells the most?
This is a tricky question because art is very wide and subjective. Selling prints of your work can be very profitable because you tin can continue to generate income from a single piece. Lower price points (versus original art) mean you probable tin can sell more than book. Curators should follow trends in art and design to help empathise what art collectors and potential customers are buying, so work with artists that accept high success potential. As a creator, you should lean into the style that yous practise best and build a post-obit from there.
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Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/211990409-how-to-sell-art-online