Selling artwork online via Print On Demand or POD sites like Fine Art America, Pixels, Red Bubble or Society 6 is on one hand easy, but on the other very difficult.
It’s rather easy to get set up because there are little to no costs, you don’t have to print and frame the artwork. You don’t need to have a merchant account to process credit cards. You don’t need to fill your garage with the inventory. You don’t need to hire a web developer to design a website.
In economics 101 they would call this very little “barrier to entry” – just about anyone can join into online artwork marketplace.
The hard part is finding customers and getting noticed among the millions of other artists and photographers who have had the same idea. “Barrier to Entry” works both ways – easy to join in but more competition. It’s not like you have to spend millions building a steel mill.
Here are five steps towards successfully selling artwork online.
Create Marketable Artwork
Print on demand sites caters to the casual art buyer looking for something to decorate their living room or office. It’s not really the place for high-end “investment” or museum artwork. We’re talking about reproduction prints here. High-quality prints for sure but they are unsigned, unnumbered, unlimited prints. Offer artwork that appeals to the general public rather than obscure, high-concept, esoteric art school artwork.
Fill Out All the Keywords and Descriptions
As you upload your images take the time needed to fill out every descriptive text block from Artist Bio to keywords and image description. Potential buyers and search engines need text to find your images. People and search bots use text to browse for potential artwork to purchase, give your artwork a chance to be found by including relevant keywords and a good description of the piece.
Develop A Cohesive Portfolio
Rather than uploading a scattershot portfolio of random images, approach your fledgling portfolio as if you were preparing images for a show or book. This way once a potential buyer is interested in your work, they can browse though images with a similar look, style or feeling. Artists are know for their
Explore a Niche
Competition, in general, is overwhelming in the online art market. Narrow your focus and find buyers by exploring a niche.
A niche is a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. If you cater to an undeserved niche, you’ll find success. Be it Polo fans, ferret fans or those who collect images of mythical creatures, niches allow one to narrow in on a segment of the market the might have less competition.
Market to a Target Market
You can’t sit back and wait for a large online art site to promote your work. They are busy pushing the artists who have proven to be successful in the past. Think of it as a store front. Art sites will display the artists who have sold in the past in the front window. It’s all done by algorithms because for all they know, what sold in the past is most likely to sell in the future.
To work your way up to the top, you will have to do the marketing of yourself as an artist and the marketing of your pieces all by yourself.
Having a niche will help you identify your ideal target market and then you’ll need to explore every avenue available to market to that target market of potential buyers.
Social media, blogging, and even press releases to the local papers. Explore every opportunity to expand your visibility and to make your artwork aware. Awareness, views, eyeballs – the more people who see your work, the greater the chance of making sales.