The Perfect Guide to Sell Art Online

Are you ready to begin online sales of your art? There are several methods to get started and it isn’t that overwhelming that you might imagine! Two lists have been compiled to simplify the sale of the paintings online for you. The first one is a list of our favourite online art markets and the second is a list of our own top artist websites at Payday Deals. You can also examine the available materials on the many printable-on-demand solutions available to artists as your artistic business develops.

What type of art are you going to sell?

If you’re reading this, you’re interested in selling art online. But what type of art are we talking about? There are three basic options: selling your own art, selling reproduction prints, and selling digital downloads.

When you sell your own art online, you can charge more for your original work. The disadvantage is that it may be difficult to acquire an audience at first; nevertheless, there are simple strategies to begin promoting your website and overcome this challenge.

You will sell art like a curator instead of an artist if you sell reproductions. Basically, you will function as an intermediary, sell art to others on the internet and pay a fixed commission to the artist. This is popular with consumers, but it is also more competitive!

The greatest approach to reduce shipping expenses is to sell digital downloads of paintings online. Digital downloads might range from print scans, background scans, and stock photographs. You can sell your own art or prints for digital downloading.

What business model do you want to use?

It’s time to think about how to sell your work now that you’ve decided what kind of art you want to sell. Selling through an online store – whether your own or a pre-existing marketplace – or selling through a supplier are the two most prevalent ways. However, regardless of how you sell art online, you’ll need a website where clients can contact you, learn more about your work, and buy it. That’s why, regardless of which business model you choose, you’ll need to establish a website – and don’t worry, we’ll go over how to accomplish it later!

Selling with an online store

It means that you own your own business even after the point of sale if you sell your work through an internet store. In other words, you are the one who manages your artwork’s actual packaging and shipment. You get more control over the entire process with the use of an online store.

Selling through a supplier

You may wish to work with a supplier instead of hosting the show yourself if you’d prefer a more low-risk strategy to sell art online. This means that you use a print-on-demand service or drop shipper to personalize your own printed material or linen and sell it per order. You can establish a dropshipping business in any field, but selling art usually necessitates partnering with a print-on-demand provider.

The actual sales will be made on your website, but your supplier will handle everything else – from printing to shipping. These services are fantastic for testing the waters because you won’t have to pay for any products until after they’ve been sold – but you’ll pay more per item.

Choosing Where to Sell Your Art

It can be overwhelming to select the ideal platform for your start selling, which is why we have reduced it to the top four ways of selling art online:

1. Website builders
2. Word Press powered by Blue host
3. Online marketplaces and galleries
4. Social media platforms

Recall that you don’t have to pick one before we start! Most of these solutions work together so that your art can reach as large an audience as possible. For instance, both WordPress and website developers offer apps that can be quickly integrated with sites such as Facebook and Amazon by clicking on a button!

1. Selling with website builders

Consider your website to be your own online gallery. Website builders allow you to create and edit your gallery without having to know how to code. The layout, colour scheme, fonts, pricing, and information are all under your control. This is because they include drag-and-drop editors.

These aren’t the only advantages of using an online store builder to sell paintings. In addition, unlike an online marketplace or gallery, you will not be competing with the work of other artists. You won’t be hit with excessive commission costs, which can range from 30% to 40% in galleries. Transaction costs may apply (depending on which builder/plan you choose), however they are normally around 2%.

Payday Deals put several builders to the test to find the best. Squarespace is one of the platforms we recommend for selling art online. The following is a summary of why:

Squarespace stands out as the best contestant for online selling your art since it achieves top design characteristics. All templates are well-designed, but still provide you plenty of flexibility and freedom to adapt to your brand. They are perfect for you. The end result is a website specially designed to showcase and allow you to focus on your works of art.

It’s not simply a nice face, however. Squarespace has been built to develop your business as one of the top platforms for functionality. Your inventory system will allow you to easily monitor your products.

2. Selling with WordPress, powered by Bluehost

WordPress.Org is an advanced and scalable content management system. The compromise is that if you want to sell art online with WordPress, you will need a little bit more technical knowledge – but it is worth the extra effort.

WordPress has a WooCommerce plugin that allows you to sell online. WooCommerce covers about a third of all online retailers at the moment! To get the most out of this platform, you’ll need to know some programming, but if you don’t mind, the creative flexibility offered is unrivalled – you won’t have to fit your design dreams into pre-existing templates, and you’ll be able to enhance your artwork however you please.

Installing WooCommerce is free, but you’ll have to pay for your own web hosting. Because a web hosting company is in control of the server where all of your website’s data is housed, it’s critical to pick the one you can trust! Bluehost is our top-rated hosting provider, and its WooCommerce-specific plans provide a slew of built-in e-commerce tools.

3. Selling with online marketplaces

Etsy, Artsy or Saatchi Art are great locations to start because they have millions of visitors eager to buy things. Online marketplaces and galleries are popular. Just as simple as visiting the online markets and finding what you want is for customers, posting things and start making money are just as easy to sellers (like yourself).

Simply put: Create an account, list your products, establish a delivery method, and receive paid contributions, all you have to do to sell art using an online market. You do not need to spend time constructing a website or thinking about the design, as opposed to website designers and WordPress.

Online venues are certainly appealing to their easy usage, rapid installation and pre-existing client base. However, the popularity is high – in 2019, Etsy alone had over 2.5 million active sellers, so you’re going to have to compete hard to grab buyer attention and stand out. In this connection, a website developer or WordPress could be better to use and then promote your own website for visitors.