If you are reading this article I suspect you have the desire to sell over 100 prints and products every month on Fine Art America and Pixels.com as I do.
Can you? Definitely maybe!
On paper selling 100 or more fine art prints and cool products like cards and tote bags are easy. All you need to do is find buyers for your offerings three to four times a day. The math is easy — 3.3 sold pieces a day times 30 days.
Pixels and its sister site Fine Art America offers thousands of products to purchase including:
- Museum-quality framed artwork
- Canvas prints
- Metal prints
- Acrylic prints
- Paper prints rolled in a tube
- Tote bags
- Greeting cards
- Beach towels
- Throw pillows
And more!
And they offer millions of images from hundreds of thousands of artists from around the world. Thousands upon thousands of art buyers flock to these sites everyday to decorate their homes, offices, vacation places or just to pick up a cool cell phone case.
The challenge isn’t in finding an easy-to-use marketplace where thousands of buyers are looking for artwork. The challenge is getting these art buyers to view and choose your particular offerings.
The keys to success on Fine Art America and Pixels is easy. Although most people fail to do even the most basic steps toward success.
No doubt many people have already left this blog post in search of some magic incantation that will sell their artwork and photography for them.
Success simply requires having the will and skill to produce unique artwork that buyers actually want to purchase and to get these buyers to see it.
This takes time, effort and a lot of work. All ingredients that cause the would be competition to fail.
Most will find excuses for their lack of success. They don’t have the time. They don’t have the right equipment. It’s too hard to learn how selling works. Other people are getting all the breaks, etc. etc.
No doubt you have seen this before. For some, their lack of success is simply because the world is conspiring against them rather than their own lack of motivation.
And success doesn’t come overnight. Success is created by consistent hard work over a long period of time. It takes years to build up a great portfolio of sellable fine art photographs or artwork and it also takes years to build up an online presence so that buyers can find your work.
If art buyers can’t find your work, they can’t buy it no matter how good it is.
Before I impart the basic steps needed for success on Fine Art America and Pixels or even some of the other print on demand sites like Society 6 and Red Bubble, let me address the nagging question you might have – Why would a successful artist on Fine Art America give advice to their potential competition?
Well, the honest truth is, I don’t expect more than 1% of those reading this to actually put in the effort it takes to be a competitor. Most people give up on business ideas before they see success.
My first photography sale on Fine Art America didn’t come for three months and I saw a Harvard Business Report that said most new businesses fail in the first three months, before they see any profits.
People get excited about making lots of money. They see successful artist making sales and figure, shucks I can do that too. But most fail to realize the work involved, the time commitment and the need to stay motivated in order to create a thriving online art business.
Most simply give up after not seeing any success in a few weeks or months and move on to the next get-rich-quick scheme.
Overnight success takes a long time!
By the way, keep your expectations of a monetary reward in the art world in check. For every high-profile fine art photographer like Art Wolfe or Ansel Adams or millionaire painter Damien Hirst, there are millions of artists who barely pay the rent with their art. Art more of a vocation as they say. If money is your sole objective, take up computer programing or become a doctor.
Selling via online sites such as Fine Art America is a good way to support your passions, pay for gas, a new lens or new paint brushes, but don’t expect to buy house on the beach with the proceeds.
I started out selling one print after three months. And then maybe two prints in three months. Than a print a month. Perhaps ten prints around Christmas and so on. All the while honing my craft, looking for more sellable images, creating and building my portfolio and marketing myself. The path to success takes one step at a time, building and expanding your market.
You start out with no one knowing you and your work and build from there. In the beginning you family becomes aware of your pursuit of the arts. Then your friends and co-workers. Then people on the forums – other sellers, and eventually the larger world of would be customers.
At first, you might not have a clue what to photograph or paint. Then look around and find out that everyone in the world who purchased a camera seems to have the same idea – take photographs (usually bad) of garden flowers.
So you fill your portfolio with colorful photographs of garden flowers taken from above and find out no one wants these boring photos of someone else’s garden flowers because their cell phones are full of the same photos.
And then you take the next step, you join a photo club and stand in a group all photographing the same dull scenes. Or travel and stand next to a busload of tourists all taking the same photograph that is taken thousands of times a day.
Your mother puts your work on the refrigerator and all your friends say “Wow, that’s great, you should sell these”.
And then you find out that your work isn’t that amazing or special as it stacks up against professional photographers and artists with training and art backgrounds in composition, art theory and has a historical reference for what makes good art.
You find that photographs straight out of the camera can’t compete with finely crafted post-processed images tweaked to the artist’s vision. Or that your paintings copied from screen saver photographs don’t get the same attention as original ideas from well-trained artists.
Hopefully at some point you grow from a hobbyist to an artist – exploring your unique personal vision. Creating images that expire to be fine art rather than snapshots.
Now you are ready to sell your work, stand out from the crowd and make connections with your potential customers because people generally don’t fork over hard earned cash for work that looks like it took no effort but they are willing to pay for an artist’s unique creation – something the buyer can not create.
Drumroll please….The Secrets of Success
The secrets to success selling art on print on demand sites such as Fine Art America are not too much different than the secrets of selling art in general.
Although keep in mind you are not creating investment quality artwork but rather decorative artwork for people’s homes and offices.
Create compelling, unique and affordable art that people want to hang in their living rooms and office and get people to see it.
That’s really the main secret. People who are shopping on a print-on-demand site are not shopping for high-end art. They are looking to decorate a living room, bedroom or home office. They want affordable art that they love and won’t get bored of – or if they do, it can be easily replaced with some new affordable print on demand artwork.
Create artwork that speaks to the buyer (and a lot of it!)
Success in art sales comes from making an emotional connection to the buyer. Tug at their heartstrings, remind them of their favorite vacation, appeal to their hometown pride. Sell them a sense of place rather than a landscape. – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/places-vs-landscapes-selling-your-artwork/
And don’t think a handful of pieces will get noticed. You need to make a splash with a large portfolio of quality images. Give buyers some options.
Get noticed!
You can’t just upload some artwork and expect it to be seen on a site where thousands of new pieces of artwork are uploaded every single day. You have to have a strategy to be found by the search engines and stand out from crowd.
- Work the local angle – get press in your local paper, spread the work among Facebook groups, use local hashtags
- Do everything you can to add context to your images – People search for words, not images. https://www.dogfordstudios.com/selling-art-search-engine-optimization-seo/
- Explore a niche – great artists burrow in and explore an idea broadly rather than produce a scattershot of many subjects – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/great-artists-explore-a-narrow-vision-broadly/
- Use free social media to promote yourself and your portfolio – blog, Tweet, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest etc – get yourself out there on a consistent basis. Every link back to your work is another potential sale. Learn how to use each of these free social media accounts to maximize your exposure.
Resources:
Selling places not landscapes – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/places-vs-landscapes-selling-your-artwork/
Selling on Fine Art America – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/how-to-successfully-get-started-selling-your-art-on-fine-art-america/
Getting paid from Fine Art America – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/questions-about-getting-paid-from-fine-art-america/
Why people fail at selling art and photography – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/why-people-fail-at-selling-their-art-or-photography/
Selling artwork – Marketing is easy! https://www.dogfordstudios.com/selling-art-marketing-is-the-easy-part/
So you thought it would be easy to sell your artwork – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/selling-artwork-thought-easy/
Most people fail on Fine Art America – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/selling-art-artists-succeed-fine-art-america-dont/
The Challenges of selling online vs. in person https://www.dogfordstudios.com/challenges-selling-art-online-vs-person/