How to Sell Artwork Online

As artists our motivations and intentions in our art may differ. Some produce art for its therapeutic value. Others cannot help but pursue art as it is a passion. For others, producing and selling their artwork is the ultimate pursuit in establishing their career.

If you want to share your artwork with others, and make a living through your passion, it is important to understand the many factors that will help you to understand how to sell your artwork.

One of the easiest and most affordable methods is to sell artwork online. Taking your artwork online can mean greater exposure of your work, and lower commission fees, if any. It is a much easier process to get your artwork online, than it is to get your artwork into galleries. When you begin to sell artwork online, you remain in complete control of how your artwork is presented and the prices the pieces sell for.

There are a number of approaches you can take to sell artwork online. There are already established auction and sales sites like eBay and etsy. You may even come across local websites set up to promote and sell the work of local artists. Alternatively, you could set up your own artist website to solely promote and sell your artwork.

As a brief overview, here are a few ideas to consider on how to sell artwork online:

• If you are a new artist, seek out local artists or other artists online who have has success selling artwork online.
• Check out local galleries and exhibitions to see the types of artworks on display. This will give you some insight into the types of art that art popular and selling currently.
• A viable method of promoting your online artwork sales site is to present your work locally with obvious reference to your sales site. Popular local places to display works include coffee houses and wine shops.
• If you are setting up your own website to sell artwork online, it is important to pay close attention to keywords related to your site. Also note how your website is ranked in search engine results for your chosen keywords.
• In order to maximize the functionality and accessibility of your artist website, it may be viable to engage a website designer. Have them set up a template to which you can easily add in your images and descriptions. Some designers may also be able to put in place a checkout method to make it easier to sell artwork online.
• Promote your artist website online. Some of the best methods for promoting your art is though social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, Here you can keep people up to date with what you are working on and when new artworks are available for sale.

In order to ensure success in your pursuit to sell artwork online, it is important that you educate yourself by learning as much as you can about the methods of selling online. You will not necessarily need to have any technical knowledge in order to establish and run your own artist website. Website maintenance can be as simple as using word processing software!

To find out more on how you can sell artwork online to support your artist career check out http://sell-artwork-online.com

Selling Art Online - How to Sell Abstract Art

Making a living as an artist can be extremely rewarding, however, not everyone possesses the inherent abilities to make it as a self-employed artist. Selling art online can be a very profitable and achievable method for artists to earn a living through their art. As well as knowing how to make beautiful art, you also need to know how to get your work in front of potential buyers. It has been noted that this can be particularly difficult for emerging abstract artists.

For the majority of artists, there is nothing more rewarding than creating your art and sharing those creations with buyers and collectors. But how can you, as an artist, make a living selling art online?

Abstract art is a modernist movement and carries with it many major modern artist names like Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. For many artists, enthusiasts, collectors and critics abstract art is just as often hated, as it is loved.

Emerging contemporary artists basing their work in the pure abstract style, may quite often find themselves trying to justify their work to potential buyers. Selling art online will, however, give you the best opportunities to concisely describe and discuss your abstract works with potential buyers and collectors.

What many may fail to realize about abstract art is the emotional and subconscious premise of the art. To quote the grandfather of the movement, Wassily Kandinsky, “abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes.”

Based on this, truly effective abstract art should invoke an emotional response aiming to convey to viewers another point of view. In this sense, it is also important to note that selling art online can present additional hurdles for the abstract artists. As the visual aspect of abstract art is central it is very important to ensure your works are presented as clearly and closely as possible to their real-life appearance.

In order to successfully be selling art online, you also need to be aware of how potential buyers browse the Internet. The biggest influence here are the keywords you have related to your site where you will be selling art online. Naturally “Abstract Art” would be a very important keyword, however, it will also help to consider other keywords that will help to set your website apart.

These additional keywords could include things like your nationality, the mediums and techniques you use in your art as well as colours. For success selling art online your keywords could include, “Australian Artist”, “Acrylic” “Original Art”, “Canvas Art” and so on. The next part to ensure you start selling art online is to embed these keywords into your website. This can be easily done by adding them to the meta tags of your websites html code.

However, in order to ensure your webpage comes up when potential buyers use search engines, is to use these keywords in the content of your pages as well. This is an extremely important point for selling art online. Art sales websites are largely image laiden, which means you need to include your particular keywords as alt text for your images. In order to increase your ranking, it will also help to use your targeted keywords in the descriptions of your artworks.

Optimising your artist website and Internet sales page to appeal to potential buyers is the best way to guarantee your success in selling art online. As an independent emerging artist utilising the Internet and creating your own website is one of the easiest and most effective ways to start out as a self-employed artist.

For more information and resources for selling art online a great place to start is http://sellingartonline.info

More resources:

Tips for Taking the Independent Route Selling Art Online

http://ezinearticles.com/?Selling-Art-Online---Tips-for-Taking-the-Independent-Route&id=5594115

Selling Art Online With Your Artist Website

http://ezinearticles.com/?Selling-Art-Online-With-Your-Artist-Website&id=5441845

What Every Independent Artist Must to Do to Sell Artwork Online

Many independent artists already successfully sell artwork online. You don’t need to sign up with an art gallery if you are simply looking for a way to sell your art. This way when you sell artwork online, you get to keep 100% of the profits, no more profit sharing with sales people. You do 100% of the work, and receive 100% of the rewards!

So what do you need to do in order to successfully sell artwork online and join the ranks of the many other artists who are already established in the online sales world?

Ensure your art is unique and remarkable art!

Integrity by Kyla Art (2010)

If there is one way to ensure your art website links will spread like wildfire is by ensuring your art will be noticed and shared among the online community. People will likely not talk about your work if your art is not uniquely remarkable making it more difficult to sell artwork online.

You will know if your work is unique enough to be noticed and marketed successfully online. If you are already receiving comments saying how wonderful and unique your work is then go ahead and start marketing to sell your artwork online! Find your ultimate sales point, whether it is your technique or subject, and maximize on it online.

Follow a well thought out and detailed online marketing plan

You need a road map to ensure you reach your targeted destination. In terms of being able to sell artwork online, you need to have a marketing plan to follow to ensure you reach your destination—to sell artwork online. There is an almost limitless amount of information available to help you market and sell artwork online. I

If you’re serious about learning to sell artwork online, you also need to be committed to learning the methods of marketing online. There are a number of free tools available to you including social media marketing through sites like twitter and facebook. A successful online marketing plan will also include blogging sites as well as search engine optimisation (SEO).

Develop your own art website

This doesn’t need to be done immediately as you can also use auction or third party sites like eBay and etsy to sell artwork online. However, it can be a very powerful tool to help you successfully sell artwork online and establish a more dominant online presence.

They key to a successful art website is a simple easy to navigate template. It can be very tempting to use distracting and unnecessary designs like bright colors and animations on your website, but will detract from your artwork and the professionalism of the site. When design your art website make sure you stick to sleek professional designs and also avoid flash sites as these usually aren’t very compatible with SEO techniques.

Generate an email list of your website visitors

One of the most valuable techniques of internet marketing to sell artwork online is by generating an email list from your website visitors. This way you will be able to stay in direct contact with your customers and fans and encourage repeat patronage to your art website.

There are a number of ways you can generate an email list from your art website. The most common and often most successful is having people sign up for a regular newsletter which can be sent out as frequently or infrequently as you prefer. The email list can then be used to promote any new items you’ve added to your gallery or any promotions you may be running to sell artwork online quickly. This is a great tool to help you control when you make more sales and to drive more traffic to your website at specific times.

So as you can see there are a number of methods and techniques you can implement to ensure you are able to sell artwork online how and when you’d like. These points are just basic overviews to give you a brief insight into what you need to do to successfully sell artwork online and how you can do it time and again.

For more information, tips and strategies to sell artwork online check out this online resource put together especially for independent artists http://sell-artwork-online.com

Why Sell Artwork Online – Is It Worthwhile in This Economy?

For some reason we all assume that as money gets tighter people are less likely to splurge on discretionary items like art – so why would you waste your time trying to sell artwork online? People will always buy art and it is exactly this kind of thinking that stops most artists from successfully selling their art.

Lotus Hands by Kyla Art (2009)

In general people like to have their creature comforts, granted when money is limited we do try to make do with less. This means that for many artists there is still a very reasonable opportunity to sell artwork online, that is if you’re looking to sell your art at the lower end of the market.

So what is it that sets artist apart in their ability to sell artwork online? When researching artists’ websites and art sales sites it can become quite obvious. Artists who continuously pursue sales online will undoubtedly be more successful than those who set up a one-page portfolio site with images and prices and sit back and wait for the sales. You should treat your artworks online presence much like you would if you were working on your own gallery space.

When you set out to sell artwork online, here are a few key things to consider:

• Are you making it as easy as possible for customers to purchase your work? Providing a shopping cart checkout method or a simple one-click purchase option can significantly increase your selling potential online.
• Is your site easy to find online? It’s hard to attract customers to a website that’s virtually invisible online. Make sure that you use a good amount of text describing your artwork and keywords that relate to your work to make your site more visible in search engines.
• How are you promoting your site? Social media pages like twitter, facebook and myspace can be very powerful tools to help promote your site online.
• How are you keeping in touch with your customers and fans? The best way to ensure you make repeat sales online and develop avid collectors is by staying in touch with the people who like your work. Regular newsletters or email sign ups is a great way to keep people coming back to your site.

So the answer to the initial question is that it can be very worthwhile to try and sell artwork online. No matter what state the economy may be in, you can successfully sell artwork online. As long as you stick to some good solid marketing techniques, you’re able to promote maintain your art website to a high standard – keeping it fresh and interesting – and regularly communicate with your customers there’s no reason you won’t be able to sell artwork online.

Choosing to sell artwork online will enable you to reach an almost unlimited number of potential buyers with minimal costs. For many artists, the choice sell artwork online has enabled them to establish a consistent and meaningful artist career, one that may not have been possible working solely in the ‘bricks and mortar’ world.

To find out more on how to sell artwork online and for more tips and artist advice go to http://sell-artwork-online.com

Selling Art Online With Your Artist Website

Mermaid by Kyla Art (2010)

As the internet has advanced to be as it is now, an integral resource for consumers of all kinds, more and more artists are recognizing the value of having an artist website to start selling art online. However, the process is a lot more complicated than simply putting up a website with your pictures, pricing and your contact details in the hope that it will immediately start selling art online.

In order for your website to be successful in selling art online you need to understand the key components that will ensure internet browsers will find your site, stay to learn more about you and your art and keep coming back to visit your artist website. A lot of it is about good simple website design and well written information taking into consideration things like keywords, meta tags and search engine optimization.

Now if you’re an artist you most likely won’t be interested in learning all about HTML code, search engine optimization and keywords. I understand that what you’re really interested in is how you can be selling art online in the quickest and easiest way. This is why I’ve written this article, to help fellow artists with setting up their own website and optimize for selling art online.

Keep the design and layout of your site simple

There’s nothing worse than going to a site that isn’t immediately clear how to best navigate the information contained. For selling art online it is ideal to have the following pages:

• About the artist – with artist statement and influences behind your work
• Full portfolio – containing all current and previous work that are relevant to the work you’re selling
• Upcoming/Work in progress – buyers interested in your work like to see what work you have in the pipeline and the processes with which you create your work.
• Gallery/Sales – where people can easily purchase your work
• Contact – with your contact details or an inquiry form for people to get in touch

These 5 pages are the optimal number to keep your visitors interested as well as to keep your site popular with search engines. The best ways in which you can help your viewers to navigate your site is by having a simple menu below your sites main header with simple labels like:

• Home
• Portfolio
• Upcoming Work
• Gallery
• About [artist]
• Contact

Use your own domain name

While it is tempting to use free site domains like blogger or wordpress, having your own domain name for your site will give it more credibility with search engines which will increase the traffic sent to your site. Your own domain name will also give you more credibility with viewers and will help with selling art online.

Incorporate keywords into your text

Another key aspect of websites that artists need to understand in order to be successful selling art online is the need to include keywords and good amounts text. Search engines do not recognize images, only text. What this means is that when people search for artist sites in a search engine they are likely to search for terms like “abstract art for sale”, “original art in Australia” or “oil paintings”.

In order for your site to come up as a result for these searches the search engine needs to be able to relate these keywords to your site. You can do this by including descriptions of each of your pieces that include keywords you would like to have related to your site. Another option is to include “alt text” with your images, which will relate each image with the keyword. When you upload an image, you will be given the option of adding an alt tag or alt text to the image.

Just getting these three aspects of your website up and running can be a time consuming and challenging project, however, will be very useful in selling art online through your new site. This is just an overview of a few ideas to optimize your site for selling art online, there are a lot more intricate details and tools you can use to ensure further success for your site.

For more tips and ideas for selling art online through your own artist website check out http://sellingartonline.info