Selling art in person is always preferable. But if you’re an artist who is looking for a way to take your business online and scale your efforts by reaching a much wider marketplace 24/7/365, opening up your own online shop is a great move. The question is, how do you actually make some sales?
Try These 5 Tips
Selling art online isn’t rocket science. It does, however, require some strategy and effort. Here are several tips to make this task a bit easier.
1. Choose Your Platforms
The first step is to choose where you want to sell your art. There are a couple of different directions you can go here.
The first option is to sell your art on your own by creating your own standalone website/ecommerce shop. This allows you to retain total control over your shop, but also means you’re responsible for 100 percent of your traffic.
The second option is to leverage existing ecommerce platforms by selling your inventory there.
Popular options include Etsy, FineArtAmerica, Saatchi Art, and UGallery. The benefit of using one of these platforms is that they already get thousands of impressions and visitors per day. The downside is that they’ll take a cut of your proceeds.
2. Take High Quality Photos
When someone visits your art gallery, they have the benefit of seeing the art in person. They can walk around and look at it from different angles. They can observe how the light reflects off it. They can also get a feel for the exact dimensions and how it’ll fit in their space. When someone looks at art online, they have no such luxury.
While you’re at a disadvantage selling art online, you can overcome some of it by taking high quality photos. If you don’t have experience taking good listing photos, hire a photographer who can. This will make or break your success.
3. Invest in Paid Traffic
If you could put a $1 bill into a machine and a $5 bill would come out, how often would you do this? Unless you’re crazy, you’d spend all day putting $1 bills into the machine. And you wouldn’t care how much you spent. In fact, the more money you put in, the better!
Many inexperienced online entrepreneurs are wary of paid advertising. They’re obsessed with finding free traffic sources. And while there’s nothing wrong with a free traffic source, the fact of the matter is that paid traffic often generates a much higher ROI. It’s like the $1 bill example above. Whether it’s a 2x, 5x, or 10x return, a good ad strategy makes you money.
The best thing you can do is learn how to
create high-converting pay-per-click ads. These ads run on platforms like Google and Facebook. And unlike display ads, which charge every time they’re displayed, PPC ads only cost you when someone clicks.
4. Ladder Your Prices
Not everyone is going to order a $5,000 painting or $2,000 sculpture. If you’re looking to generate a broad base of customers, it’s important that you offer products at different price points. This is called laddering your prices.
If your top-end products are $2,000 to $3,000, you should have mid-range products at $400 to $800 and low-tier products below $100. You might even have a selection of products below $30. The idea is that anyone who likes your artwork can find a product that fits their budget.
5. Offer Print-on-Demand
Some artists might consider it sacrilegious, but print-on-demand is one of the best ways to tap into the online market. This is how you fill up that lower rung of the pricing ladder.
As Dark Yellow Dot explains, “Print on demand websites are also becoming increasingly popular platforms for artists and designers to profit from their art. Once you’ve uploaded a high-quality image of your artwork, it can be printed on just about anything. The best part is, after you’ve submitted your work, the website takes care of the rest.”
In addition to making photo prints, you can also print art on mugs, t-shirts, hats, etc. This gives you the opportunity to offset some of your other costs while you wait for bigger purchases (like original artwork).
Iterate to Great
If you don’t succeed, keep trying. Selling anything online – let alone expensive art – requires patience and hard work. If you don’t start selling art on day one, don’t fret. Keep it up, study what’s working, pivot from what’s not, and iterate to great!
