Sell your art

Quite simply, if you have an ounce of creativity within you, make the most of it and sell your work. I’m talking about painting, drawing, sculpture, design, photography, or anything else you have in mind which you think could be lucrative. Craft fairs, markets, car boot sales and of course the internet are all great places to sell and get known. The art market will always exist, and on a global scale you can more or less name your price as there’s always someone prepared to pay it. Creating something of global appeal is a good idea if you plan to advertise to the whole world through the ‘net. For example, a piece of quirky abstract art might actually sell better than a flawless landscape of the town you live in as certain subject matter just happens to cross the international aesthetic barrier.

We’ve all heard of eBay, but what about specialist sites where the traffic exists specifically in the interest of buying art? ImageKind sells prints, canvases, greeting cards and does much on your behalf, such as printing and production as well as taking care of shipping costs. All you have to do is upload your digital files. This is perfect if you have created a 2D piece of art and have photographed/scanned it, as it is the equivalent of doing the work once and being paid many times over.

Another site is ETSY, which specializes more in crafts and 3D objects – great for anyone with a cottage industry inclination but all in £USD at the moment. Currency conversion is coming soon.

eBay is the obvious choice but worth a mention nonetheless. Browsing through the art and design categories reveals hundreds of pieces of art selling at high prices. The only downside is the limited payment options and that the responsibility falls to you for reproduction (unless selling an original) and shipping.

One thing to note is that most “shop” style sites will have a commission structure in place and will always take their cut. If you’re especially confident in selling by yourself you can always set up your own site and a shopping cart system but you'll need to be prepared to submit the URL to search engines as well as optomizing your HTML tags. For this reason, I would first recommend taking the "ready made" shop approach as there already exists a community of artists and the traffic for the site is already established.

Setting up Myspace and Facebook accounts to drive viral traffic to your artist profile(s) is a good idea. You can reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers by displaying water marked samples and photographs of your work on a social networking page with a link to wherever your art can be purchased.

Get creative and get your work online. It won’t cost you anything to set up these art profiles, and even if no one buys anything, nothing’s been lost.

Useful links:

ImageKind - caters for prints, canvases, custom framing and greeting cards. Just upload your images at the desired size.

ETSY - caters for crafts, ornaments, objects etc. Shipping and packaging is your responsibility however.

eBay - You may be pleasantly surprised with bid wars over a piece of artwork, especially if its an original.