You never know what sort of bargains you will find online.

1. Just because a site is free, if no one sees or buys your work, it’s pretty much useless. Just as in a “brick and mortar” art gallery, you need to attract interested buyers. Just because a site has lots of traffic doesn’t mean they’re visiting your particular gallery. Do some searching on the site. How hard is it to find, say “Pink flowers in a field” or “kids blowing bubbles”?  If a site has a good search built in, and uses lots of categories for browsing, it will increase the chances that your work won’t get lost in the digital crowd.
2. If you post your work to a site and then sit back, waiting for the money to start rolling in, you’ll most likely be disappointed. You need to help people find you. So, along with traffic numbers, this comparison lists any marketing tools offered to help you get the word out.
3. To help you compare apples to apples, we list the base price charge for common print sizes. Your profit is whatever you charge above the base price.
4. There are some important considerations that are harder to quantify, such as print quality, customer service, and turnaround time. To get a handle on these, it’s a good idea to check out a site’s user community forum before committing yourself. If the users are complaining and angry, you may want to look elsewhere.
5. If you plan to sell work from your own website, you’ll need to consider shopping carts and that sort of thing. Some sites allow you to customize a gallery page on their site so that it looks just like your site. This way, customers don’t know they left your site to buy, which is a good thing. Other sites give you shopping cart code to add to your site.

With all this in mind, here’s our list of sites currently offering exhibition space and POD (print on demand) services, with some information on each to help you decide. If we’ve missed any, please add them in the comments sections.

Back in 2008, when we reviewed Deviant Art, the site had over 7 million members and was hosting nearly 60 million images. It doesn’t look like they post those numbers anymore, but we must assume that the numbers have only gotten even more amazing in the last two years. Deviant Art is ten years old this August, so it’s looking like they’re going to be around for awhile. It takes a lot of effort, community involvement, not to mention talent, to get noticed on Deviant Art. It’s free to join, and everything that gets submitted is accepted (unless it breaks the rules, of course). This means there is just a ton of work, and the number just grows every minute. In the Alexa list of top websites, DA is currently number 115, and Compete.com says they had 4,565,415 unique visitors in May 2010. There’s a lot of traffic here, no question, but there’s a lot to see, too. Fortunately, there’s a deeply categorized browsing system, which is helpful for finding particular types of work. There’s also a search function, but strangely it doesn’t find member names, only image titles (”deviations”). Your ranking within a category is determined by the number of Favorites (votes) your image has received from other members. Deviant Art charges $79.99 for a 16×20 gallery wrap canvas print, so you’ll need to charge more than that to make a profit. Through the paid option ($29.95 a year), you get a Portfolio, which is showcase website, better pricing options, as well as other perks.

Imagekind was purchased a few years back by Cafe Press. They are known as a high-quality, top-notch publisher. Their current Alexa rank is 16,137. In May 2010, there were 193,862 unique visitors. You can upload an unlimited number of images for free on Imagekind. A paid premium account ($94.99 per year) comes with a customizable website, called a Storefront, including shopping cart and credit card handling. This will help build your professional image. You can make your Storefront match your existing website, if you have one. Base Pricing: Pro Matte Canvas, gallery wrapped, 16×24, is $95.99. You set your markup above this to turn a profit.

Since we first wrote about them in 2008, Zazzle’s reputation within the digital art community has grown. Zazzle’s Alexa rank is 1174, and during May 2010 they saw 3,704,331 unique visitors. There’s no rule saying you can only choose one of these sites to work with, of course, especially since they each service different markets, to a point. Zazzle and Cafe Press sell posters, which retail for $15 or less. This is much lower price point than the framed giclee prints on Imagekind, or wrapped canvases on Deviant Art. Zazzle’s a good place for popular fantasy and sci-fi art, which is the type of work that wouldn’t necessarily do well under glass anyway. There is no charge to join Zazzle, and no paid premium option. You can completely customize your store page so that it looks like a page on your website. Marketing tools include storefronts for MySpace and Facebook. There are over 350 products just waiting to be printed with your artwork, everything from ties to tees. Just keep in mind that your work will be part of a huge crowd of BILLIONS of customize products and posters.

Cafe Press and Zazzle are quite similar, in that they are all about printing on products, especially t-shirts. Cafe Press, however, charges $59.95 per year for a customized store front to match your website (and to lose the Cafe Press branding, as well). Another difference is that Cafe Press does framed prints in addition to posters (though I couldn’t find information on base prices). The Alexa rank for Cafe Press is 1372, and 4,149,532 unique visitors stopped by in May 2010.

FineArtAmerica.com has both fine artists selling originals and digital artists and photographers who need POD services. FAA charges $30 per year to join the premium program, which includes POD printing and framing. The base pricing is explained at length, but at first glance it’s quite confusing. I think a 16×20″ stretched canvas would be around $50-60, but don’t quote me. FAA, as we mentioned in this review, offers a bunch of options at the free level which other sites don’t offer at any level. The list includes email marketing, event promotion, a shopping cart you can embed into your existing website, customized sales page on the FAA site (and a full website with premium membership), a blog, and others options. FAA’s Alexa rank is 8880, and in May 2010 there were 637,213 unique visitors. When visitors look up artists, they’ll find the artists who live near them listed first, which is quite unique. The site’s own data (as of September 2009) shows that there are 25,000 members.

If you’re living across the Pond, Artybuzz may be for you. Shipping charges for your European customers will no doubt be less than the other, American sites listed here. Prices are listed in British Pounds, but the base price list does show that a 16×24″ canvas print (not sure if it’s wrapped, stretched, etc.) is $105.52USD, quite a bit more than any of the other sites. There are no fees for joining or using Artybuzz. You decide how much mark up to add to their base prices. Artybuzz’s Alexa rank is 912,309, and had 167 unique visitors in May 2010. To be fair, though, the site has been up for less than a year.

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This week we look at some portfolio sites: places you can show off your work, often for free, and still look like a million bucks.

In a previous post from a year ago, we took a look at places to show off your work. I’ve recently found a few new (to me, at least) portfolio hosting sites, so it seemed time to revisit this topic. Herewith are some of the best places to create an impressive, professional-looking portfolio.

Viewbook

Viewbook is a classy-looking site, producing some very nice-looking portfolios. I was looking for a way to allow visitors to see zoomed-in high-resolution version of photos, but it doesn’t look like Viewbook has such an animal. Clicking on a photo in the portfolio just advances the slide, which I found counter-intuitive. The pricing options run from $48-$228 per year. Within that, there are albums, portfolio pages, and custom websites, though what these categories indicate remains a mystery. Like many of the sites listed here, explanations and good hard information is usually lacking. With some combination of price and portfolio-type-thing, you can allow users to download images, but how that’s done isn’t explained until (I guess) you sign up. There is no way to monetize your gallery. You can show work, but you can’t sell it here. If you’re interested in selling images, check out this post.

Coroflot

This free site is all about connecting freelance designers with employers. There are job postings, and member galleries (portfolios) are grouped by a variety of categories, such as Art Direction, Architecture, or Illustration. There’s no limit on the number of images you can store. Coroflot pays its bills by running ads (not many) and by charging employers for job postings. If you don’t mind having the Coroflot logo at the top of your portfolio pages, this site might just right for you.

Krop

Krop is sort of like Viewbook, but it offers a 10-image-limit free version, and it has a job board. The paid option, at $9.99 a month, allows domain name mapping, RSS feeds, embedded videos, and a range of templates. The free version, however, ain’t bad looking at all. The only help available here is a very nice intro video. As with Viewbook, there is no FAQ or Help link. I hope this isn’t a new trend. Deciding among all these different sites is hard enough without having all the facts available. By the way, Krop is well-named: it has a built-in thumbnail cropping tool that will save you lots of time. It also includes a nifty resume builder that does a nice job. For professional designers, Krop is pretty darn cool.

deviantArt Portfolio

A few months ago, the folks at deviantArt began to offer gallery space in the form of a portfolio builder. It builds a very basic portfolio, with only a couple of options to choose from. I can only assume deviantArt has plans to develop this thing further, because right now it’s only real advantage is that it’s free (though there is a paid option). Once again, there isn’t any Help information, just a sexy video to get you to sign up. There’s no way to browse through existing portfolios, even to view some examples. No one is going to happen upon your portfolio, so you’ll need to promote its URL elsewhere. I’d like to see deviantArt develop this into a “professional-level” side of their site, but we’ll have to wait and see what they come up with.

FFolio

Ever wish you could create a professional-looking portfolio using Flickr? Soon you’ll be able to, using FFolio. The idea here is to store your photos on Flickr, and then display them using FFolio. That’s about all they’re saying at this point, but if you’re interested, sign up and they’ll email you when they go live.

Carbonmade

Carbonmade, like Coroflot and Krop, is aimed at professionals seeking work. Galleries are called projects. Portfolios are grouped by categories, and within those categories, the most recently updated portfolios appear first. This sounds, at least at first, like a fair system. There is a free version (5 projects/35 images limit) and a paid version, at $12 per month. And thankfully, there is a Help page.

Behance

Of the sites listed here, Behance is probably the one chosen by most top professionals. Here you can find work, and then share files as you develop a project. There are a lot of big names here. You’ll need to fill out a request for an invitation before you can get started.

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With a strikingly fresh style, Art Paws creates dog and cat portraits unlike anyone else.

Back in 1998, the Internet was still brand new. The “Y2K problem” was still two years away. A brand-new search engine named Google was born. Windows 98 (First Edition) was released. And down in Dallas, Texas, digital artist Rebecca Collins began selling digital portraits of dogs and cats. She called her home-based business “Art Paw.” Eleven years later, Art Paw is going strong, and it’s easy to see why. It’s not just that the portraits are outstanding; Art Paw gets Internet marketing right. Digital artists–and any small business owner–can learn a lot from Art Paw.

According to the website, Art Paw “… was the very first of its kind on the web and continues to offer the largest contemporary Art Gallery for hip and cool urban animals.” The vast majority of me-too digital pet portrait firms use a cookie-cutter approach involving one or two Photoshop filters. Art Paw has always been about creating unique, hand-painted works on canvas, executed in a bold and exciting style. Today, Art Paw is run by two humans (Rebecca and Dan Collins), assisted by their three Scotties (Ajax, Big Tommy, and Pixel).

Ordering a portrait online couldn’t be easier. As Rebecca advises those just starting out, “Before you launch a huge marketing campaign, make it easy to order on-line.” The website is easy to navigate and organized logically. There are just three main portrait types, which makes it easy for prospective buyers to decide what to get. The types are Painterly (an example of which is seen at left), Warhol, and Master Paw. The studio was the first to offer the now-ubiquitous Warhol-style for cat and dog owners. The Master Paw series puts your pooch or kitty into a famous work of art. Ten years ago, according to Rebecca, “It seemed like magic to have your pet in Mona’s lap.” There are several masterworks to choose from. You can also suggest a different painting, as long as it’s in the public domain. These paintings really show off the sense of humor and whimsy of the artists at Art Paw.

Mona and friend

In addition to offering custom portraits, Art Paw also sells dog and cat artwork through Cafe Press. The studio retains the copyright to all paintings, and offers a huge range of images on everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs, calendars, and magnets, as well as framed art. (Portrait customers can request to keep their work private, if so desired.) The Cafe Press pages look just like the Art Paw website, so that users are presented with a seamless buying experience. This is a very smart business model, since it allows Art Paw to make income repeatedly from past portrait jobs. The products go out into the world, helping to spread the word further. Art Paw also offers products through Etsy.com.

The Art Paw shop on Etsy.com

Art Paw makes use of two other web tools: Twitter and blogging. The Art Dog Blog is frequently updated, showing off new work as it is produced. One blog entry in particular, ” Pet Portrait Marketing Guide” is highly recommended. Another web technology important to their success is SEO (Search Engine Optimization): do a search for “pet portraits” and Art Paw will be on the first or second page of results. That takes a lot of effort, but it pays off.

Print and other traditional advertising are also part of the Art Paw recipe for success. Click on the Press Room link and you’ll see a long list of magazine articles featuring Art Paw. You can even watch a clip from The Today Show featuring an Art Paw print. Rebecca has the following advice for getting the word out to the media:

If you want to garner some PR you have to create a media kit and also figure out how to tell your story. Ask yourself “what about your work makes it newsworthy”? I have been fortunate and have had many journalists stumble into my work via the web. I also have been coached by a good friend that is a publicist. Hiring a professional publicist is the best advertising dollar you can spend. If you do have a writer interested in your story you must jump on that opportunity fast. I never hesitate to overnight image cds when they are needed.

It’s worth noting that this web-savvy business credits its early success to print ads. “For the first 6 or 7 years I spent a few thousand dollars a year on magazine ads and this was a great way to build my brand,” says Rebecca. “I have been pulling back some on print advertising lately because the word of mouth and repeat business has been so high. I find that I don’t have to place ads to continue to keep my calendar full. In the beginning I also did a lot of outdoor doggy charity events to find my clients. That is another marketing arena I have pulled back from due to time constraints.” Being too busy with paying jobs is a nice problem to have!

Art Paw customers come from everywhere. 95% of their sales comes in from the website. Working from amateur photographs can be tough. Rebecca told me “It is always a challenge to get good photos to work with, no matter what style we are doing. People have no clue really about proper resolution and I have had to get really good at my craft in order to compensate for low resolution images, glow eye and out of focus shots. High resolution, well shot images are always a joy to work with however you are going to learn ten times as much from having to work with a lower quality image. Sometimes I send people back to look for better photos and yet often we are dealing with a pet that has passed away and picture choices are limited so I just have to make them work.”

Art Paw sells through pet shops, too, giving the shop a commission for orders it takes. This is one of the advantages of a well-defined niche: your market is clear (dog and cat owners), and your strategy is to get your work in front of that market wherever it is, be a pet shop, a dog show, or online surfing. Art Paw is thriving, even in this difficult economy, which shows that digital artists can indeed make a living from their art. Just don’t expect overnight riches. “It takes about 5 years to really find your groove and start making a real income,” says Rebecca.

I guess you could say a successful business isn’t born overnight!

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This week I’m taking a bit of vacation, so instead of writing an article, I’m just going to post a link to a very good article by someone else. (Don’t you wish you could do this at work? Just link to other people’s work and pass it off as your own!) The article is titled “Selling Painted Portraits, Fact or Fiction: is anyone really selling Painter portraits?” The previous link downloads a PDF file from Painter workshop instructor Karen Sperling’s site. Sperling has been involved with Painter since version one, and continues to hold workshops for photographers looking to learn how to use Painter. As an artist offering Painter services through my studio (A Work of Art), I found this article very interesting–and encouraging! There’s lots of good information here regarding pricing and marketing, so I urge you to check it out, especially if you’re a photographer thinking about adding Painter to your product line. And if you’re looking to learn Painter, be sure to check out Sperling’s classes and her new book, at her site Artistrymag.com. Have a good week!

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Setting prices doesn't have to be a horror story. A look at the science of pricing.

In an earlier post, I talked about the need for portrait photographers to separate themselves from the rising tide of amateurs entering the field, due to the low cost of entry. Good, professional-level cameras are affordable and ubiquitous, making it possible for anyone to try their hand at running a portrait photography business. Add to this the increasing number of photography franchises in malls, plus Walmart, and you’ll quickly see that competing for the bottom end of the market makes no sense. How can you compete with someone whose entire overhead is a single digital SLR? And why would you even think of competing with Walmart?

In a sluggish economy, it may seem that the smart thing to do is to offer lower prices. That may have been possible in the pre-digital days, for photographers. For artists of all kinds, the Web has lowered the cost of entry so drastically that competition for the low end is simply staggering. Anyone can have a website. Since it costs nothing to start a business, every field is being flooded with rank amateurs posing as professionals. As Seth Godin says in his bestseller The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick),

The problem with infinity is that there’s too much of it. And in just about every market, the number of choices is approaching infinity. Faced with infinity, people panic. Sometimes they don’t buy anything. Sometimes they buy the cheapest one of whatever they’re shopping for.

Godin’s suggested solution: “Be the best in the world”. By that, he means be the best in your niche. And that means, of course, that you need to get your business out of the race to the bottom and find your niche. If you’re a portrait photographer, that could mean becoming a boutique or high-end studio. If you’re a digital artist, it could mean creating stunning, unique works that go viral on the Web, helping you to rise above the crowd and make a name for yourself.

The good news, I think, is that you are no longer a high-volume business working around the clock just to stay afloat. Instead, you can focus on your core talents, the unique skill set you alone have, and polish it up until it shines so brightly people can’t help but talk about you to their friends. When people just have to have your product or service, they will be willing to pay a premium for it. And you will be paid well to do what you love to do.

Sounds great, you may be saying, but how do I get started? I’ve gathered a few articles within this post to help you do just that. For photographers, a good place to start is this article on the Professional Photographer Magazine site, which tells the story of how Tim and Beverly Walden found their niche and built a high-end studio.

They needed to define a photographic niche with a style distinctly their own. Unlike high school senior portraits and wedding photography—things everyone needs and anticipates having to pay for— they settled on a style of portraiture that aroused the customer’s desire to own something original, personal, unique. Dubbed “relationship portraiture,” the Waldens’ distinctive brand of intimate black-and-white portraiture didn’t come together overnight. But having defined a niche and committed to refining their photographic style, the Waldens laid the foundation for a new and profitable business model, based not on pricing or customer need or a season of the year, but on the perceived value of their work.

A recent post on the Photofocus blog, “What Photographers Can Learn From Apple,” is directed towards photographers, but the lesson applies to anyone trying to create a successful business: even in this economy, you can prosper if you offer products or services that are unique and high quality. As one blogger put it:

If you price for profit and give your clients the best quality and service you possibly can, you will survive this time. Matter of fact, if you’re like Apple, you might be better off than ever before. Apple just had one of its best non-holiday quarters ever, in one of the worst economies ever.

People still have money. They are still spending their money. Stay steady and you will ride out this storm.

For help on pricing your work, photographers will find this blog post helpful. Note that the author points out that your highest-priced package should never actually sell: it’s there to make all your other prices seem more reasonable in comparison. A similar practice is used in retail when selling big-ticket items, according to Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture:

How many of us, for example, have ever paid full price for a mattress? There’s an object, you know, it’s always, quote, unquote, on sale. Well, it’s really not on a sale. That’s the real price of the mattress. The other mattresses in that department store have higher prices, but the merchant doesn’t really expect to sell those mattresses. He rotates all his mattresses into the sale pile, and he expects to sell them at that sale price, which is actually the full price.

I like to pass that story along to my photography studio clients when they ask how much to charge for a photo painting I’ve done for them. I point out that they need to charge a premium for the painting, but that it shouldn’t be the most expensive item on their price list, or it won’t sell. You may want to keep that in mind as you set up your prices.

Price communicates an item’s value to the customer. Don’t think in terms of “what’s the most I can ask for this without scaring people away?” Instead, when pricing high-end goods and services, consider that a low price might actually be seen as a negative. Remember that it’s the high price of Apple products that help build their cachet. If you’re offering something no one else has, or that no one else does as well, you can name your price.

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When looking for an digital painter to work with, it's important to share the same taste in art. Joan Stewart and I share a love for the work of artist Steve Hanks, whose watercolor is shown here.

In Part One, we took a look at the long tradition of photographers (such as Wallace Nutting) hiring artists to turn plain photographs into cherished works of art. We saw how Nutting capitalized on the desire of middle-class homeowners to own and display fine art on their walls, despite limited budgets. In Part Two, we’re going to see one example of how this tradition continues in the current day. Savvy portrait studios are turning to digital painters, just as Nutting once turned to his small army of hand-colorists. In Nuttting’s day, his colorists were all local workers, employed at his factory-like facility. Today, photographers can hire digital artists anywhere in the world, thanks to the Internet and email. For example, since my studio, A Work of Art, began back in 2004, I have worked with nearly 70 different photographers spread across 18 states.

One of my first jobs was for photographer Joan E. Stewart, in Cranberry Township, PA. Joan’s studio is about 45 minutes away, so we do almost all of our collaborating by email and over the phone.

Photograph copyright JE Stewart Photography.

“This portrait of two children was commissioned by their mother as a key element in a room design,” Joan says. “She wanted it to have the feel of a painting, with an impressionistic, pastel look, with the children involved in a simple activity. It was not important to her that the children’s faces be completely visible, she was truly hoping for an art piece featuring children which happened to be her own. She is thrilled with this piece.”

Joan got a strong sense, from her client, what sort of painting was desired. She took photos of the room where the painting was to hang, so I could see the color scheme and decor. Since the bouquet of lilacs in the photo was blurred, she sent along another in which it was sharp. Joan and I made sure we were on the same page, artistically, before I got started.

“Bob was able to understand the vision for this painting,” Joan says. “When we originally met about collaborating, it was clear that we had similar tastes in art, and in fact, both had a strong liking for the art of Steve Hanks. When I mentioned to him that my client liked what she had seen in a Steve Hanks book, he knew just how to proceed.”

To begin with, I swapped in the sharp-focus bouquet, and cloned out distractions such as the sapling and iron fencing. Since we had the freedom to step away from the “real” backyard setting, I thought a small pond in the corner might look nice. At Joan’s suggestion, I added a lot of flowers to the background, using colors to match the client’s decor. I also desaturated everything but the two main figures, which helps them to pop, and gave the pastel look Joan wanted.

Completed painting by A Work of Art Studio. Copyright JE Stewart Photography.

Joan says, “Bob has been able to add another dimension to the services I can offer to my clients—something that I would love to do myself but just do not have the time. One of the most important elements of collaboration of this nature is good communication between photographer, artist, and client. Bob really listens to what I am asking for, and is very accommodating when it comes to making changes. This give-and-take is so important to the creative process!” Keep this in mind when looking for a digital artist to work with. It’s critical that your aesthetic tastes match.

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A typical hand-colored black and white photographic print sold by Wallace Nutting's Art Studio in the early 20th century.

The Hand-painted Look Has A Long History

Hand-painted photographs were tremendously popular in the early twentieth century, before the advent of color film. The most successful marketer in this area was the photographer Wallace Nutting. Nutting employed nearly 200 “colorists” (all women, by the way) who filled a large factory-like building in Massachusetts. He claimed to have sold over 10 million pictures. By 1925, nearly every middle class parlor and sitting room in America displayed placid, pastoral landscapes and florals produced by the small army of painters in Nutting’s employ. The secret of Nutting’s success is that he recognized that every homeowner longed to have a work of art gracing their walls, yet few could afford it. This is still true today, yet there are few photographers offering to fill this need.

Wallace Nutting was a brilliantly successful businessman, and he was very realistic about his abilities. “I am under no illusions as to my pictures,” he said. “I am not an artist, and it is most disagreeable to me to be called one. I am a clergyman with a love of the beautiful.” Once his painted photographs began to sell, Nutting hired colorists to help with the time-consuming work of hand-coloring. Today, we might say he “outsourced” the work. Ironically, though, today’s photographers, by and large, have not made a similar decision: they try to do the hand-painting (with Corel Painter, of course) themselves. Nutting’s success was due to his pragmatism. In today’s faltering economy, it makes sense more than ever for photographers to “hire a colorist” to create works of art which command high prices.

Nutting's Art Studio was large, employing 200 artists.

As the owner of a digital painting studio offering such services to photographers, I’m obviously a bit biased. But since I’m not a photographer, I think I have a bit of a unique perspective on the business of portrait photography. To me, an artist with over 35 years’ experience, it seems odd that suddenly photographers feel they need to do something (painting) that is not in their skill set. I know it took me many years to learn how to paint. And I know it has taken these photographers many years to learn the art of portrait photography. So it makes little sense to me that photographers think that Corel Painter is something they should be able to master easily. I think the culprit is Photoshop.

You see, before Photoshop, darkroom skills were just as important as taking the actual pictures. When digital came along, photographers needed to learn Photoshop, and spent many hours doing so. On the surface, I suppose, Corel Painter looks a lot like Photoshop, so maybe that’s why photographers think it’s in the same category. But it’s NOT. Photoshop is today’s equivalent of the darkroom. Painter is today’s equivalent of the hand-colorist, and of oil painters. Unfortunately, Corel and several workshop instructors would have you believe that ANYONE can use Painter. Sadly, this is not the case.

There are a number of photographers who are also talented painters, but they are the exception, in my opinion.

A few of the colorists who worked for Wallace Nutting, ca. 1912.

In today’s market, photography studios need a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) more than ever. You can offer works that look like $10,000 oil paintings that your clients can afford, and will gladly pay a premium for. You can offer Painter and stand out from your competition, even if you “can’t draw a straight line.” (I use a ruler, myself, but that’s neither here nor there.) You can add thousands to your bottom line without increasing your workload. How? By hiring a digital artist to do the work for you.

You may be wondering why photo painters don’t just sell directly to the public. My own experience has been that the public is not aware of what can be done nowadays with a digital tablet. Photo painting is a totally alien concept to them. This lack of familiarity remains a barrier to sales. Photography studios, on the other hand, have a much easier time selling the idea. People are used to having studios do artful and creative things with their portraits. When they see how much their portrait can look like an oil painting or watercolor, for a fraction of the cost, the idea becomes compelling.

Next time, you’ll see an example of the photographer-painter relationship in action. Thanks for reading! See you in Part 2.

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The Iceberg, a painting by Scott Listfield.

1. Sell originals through one or more galleries
2. Work as a commercial artist (graphic designer, fashion design, illustrator, paste-up artist, etc.)
3. License images to “limited edition” publishers (prints and posters, sold mostly through frame shops)
4. Teach art classes

And that was pretty much it. In order to make a living by your brush, you had to be extraordinarily lucky.

With the rise of the Internet in general, and Print On Demand (POD) technology in particular, the game has completely changed. As the tired cliche says, the playing field has been leveled. As an artist, you no longer need to be “discovered” by a gallery owner, or lucky enough to be one of the handful of artists a publisher prints each year. Nor do you need to “sell out,” painting schlock in order to sell. You can follow your bliss, paint what you must paint, stay true to your vision, and there will be a market for your work. Guaranteed. Why? Numbers. Sheer numbers. There are millions of people online, looking at–and buying–artwork, every day. If you are passionate about your work, there are going to be people who are moved by it, and need to have it on their walls, or on their computer desktops, or on their t-shirts. These people will find you, if you get your work online.

A case in point is Scott Listfield, a painter from the Boston area. Until recently, Listfield sold his work exclusively through galleries. Then, about a year ago, Listfield began selling prints of his work through the POD service at Fine Art America (profiled here). As you’ll read in the interview below, POD sales and displaying work online have become an important part of Listfield’s overall marketing strategy.

The common thread in most of Listfield’s is a NASA 60’s-era astronaut, fully suited up, lending the work a sense of surrealism that is, at the same time, humorous. As Listfield explains, “I paint astronauts and, sometimes, dinosaurs. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968, before I was born, so I don’t know if people really believed we’d be living in space in the future. In many ways, the year 2001 failed to live up to expectations. And yet the world today, filled with mini vans, Starbucks, iMacs, and Hip Hop videos, is strange in ways unimagined back when 2001 was still the future. The astronaut in my paintings is simply here to explore the present.”

At the Laundromat with Boba Fett, by Scott Listfield

We asked Scott Listfield about what his experience selling online has been like.

Q: What made you decide to begin selling prints of your work using Print-On-Demand, and specifically Fine Art America?

A: I had actually been looking for a way I could sell prints without dealing with inventory and the hassles of shipping for a while. When I found Fine Art America, it was exactly the type of service I had been thinking of. Actually, it was easier and cheaper than I had thought it would be.

Q: Are you satisfied with the sales you are receiving from FAA?

A: Definitely. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with my own marketing (or dumb luck). Over the past year I’ve had my work published in a few national magazines, and I’ve been picked up by a bunch of popular blogs. It seems each time that I get a significant bump in traffic to my personal website, from whatever source, I also get a few print sales at Fine Art America. I have no idea how much of those sales comes from people who happen on my work directly on the Fine Art America site, although I do get emails and comments on my work from people who’ve found me by that route. But regardless of how it’s happening, I’ve sold more prints this past year than I ever guessed I would, and all that in a bad economy.

Q: Do you feel that print sales helps or hurts sales of your originals? (Some artists may feel that prints of their work competes with the originals for buyers.)

A: I’ve heard this question a lot, and I’ve definitely spoken with artists, collectors, and gallerists who have different ideas about it. My opinion is that I think it’s kind of a ridiculous argument. The audience for a $75 print is completely different than that for a $5,000 original painting. The vast majority of my audience can’t afford an original at those prices – I mean, I know I can’t. And it seems stupid to ignore the chance to A) make some more money, obviously, but just as importantly B) Get your work out there to those who appreciate it most. The same people who buy an inexpensive print might very well one day soon be able to afford a painting – or multiple paintings. I don’t really understand the attitude that this will somehow bring down the demand or cost of original paintings. If I were a collector, I would feel pretty darn good knowing I own a piece that I knew was selling prints like hot cakes. Now, I have had one collector ask me not to release prints of a painting she bought, and I have honored her wish. But I have had a few collectors of my work, completely unprompted by me, OFFER to loan me back my work so I could scan it and sell it as a print.

Q: Looking back, do you think you made the right choice, getting into print-on-demand?

A: Yes, I’ve made a decent amount of money, made fans of my work (without sizable amounts of disposable income) fairly happy, and hopefully my work is hanging on people’s walls around the world.

Q: Any words of advice for our readers?

A: Get your work out there. It’s not the fun part, but marketing yourself is the difference between getting a show and hanging your work in your basement.

Chewbacca in Cloud City with Art, by Scott Listfield

Further Reading

Scott Listfield’s website

Scott Listfield’s work on Fine Art America

Scott Listfield in Wired Magazine

Pixelsurgeon’s interview with Scott Listfield

Seven Places to Sell Your Work Online

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Fine Art America offers an amazing list of free services for artists, including an e-commerce solution for your website.

In recent years, Print On Demand (POD) technology has made it much easier to get reproductions of artwork into the hands of collectors. POD means just that: a print is made on demand, when the purchase is made. POD means that artists no longer have to invest heavily in print runs, warehouse their prints, and hope to sell enough prints to make back the cost of the printing. The risk and expense are mostly gone, but marketing is just as important as ever. In pre-POD days, the rule of thumb was: “whatever your printing costs, plan to spend that same amount on marketing, or those prints will take up permanent residence under your bed…or in your garage.” Which shows how important marketing was, and still is.

POD works like this: you create an account on a website such as ImageKind or Redbubble, upload your images, set your prices, and sit back, waiting for the checks to roll in. The website will do all the promotion for you, right? Wrong. Just because a site has thousands of visitors a day doesn’t mean they’ll be seeing your work. All successful artists participate in their success. They schmooze. They network. They get out and meet people. They write press releases. They write articles and blogs. They do whatever it takes to get their work noticed. So a website that helps you with marketing and promotion is bound to be more valuable than one that simply prints and ships your work out. I’ve found such a site, and it is called Fine Art America.

Fine Art America has much the same offerings as the other sites we’ve profiled in the past, but it offers some services none of them have. For instance, you may have heard of the email mailing service Constant Contact, which allows you to create customized HTML emails and send them out to thousands of email subscribers. This is quite a specialized service, and it is all that Constant Contact does. I used them for several years to send out a monthly newsletter, at a cost of $50 a month (I had a small list). Fine Art America offers this service FREE to all members. In fact, every thing about FAA is free, except for the optional $30 per year fee to use their POD service. As we’ve seen before, some sites are charging that much per month.

Another service from FAA none of its competitors offer is a shopping cart that you can use on your website. I really can’t emphasize how important that is. With all the other sites, you have to drive your customers to their site to buy your artwork. FAA gives you a shopping cart (for free, no less) that you can imbed right into your OWN website, allowing you to sell your work directly to your visitors. How neat is that? Imagine how impressed potential buyers will be.

FAA has a unique feature in that it shows online browsers the work of local artists. If you live in San Diego, it shows you work by FAA members in San Diego. This is really helpful for traditional artists building a clientele for original works. It’s also a way to find artists in your neighborhood. FAA uses this same technology to send out tailored weekly newsletters to subscribers. For example, you can post an art opening on FAA’s online calendar of upcoming events. The next time a newsletter goes out, all of the readers in your location will read about your opening.

The community aspects of FAA go way beyond what any similar site offers. In addition to the usual forum, there is a blogging section, there are groups moderated by other artists (or you can start one yourself), and an online chat area. You can discover what’s going on with other artists by checking the unique Graphs area, which shows hourly activity for comments, recommendations, visitors, and favorites. There’s also a Jobs posting area. Recent print sales are displayed here, so you can see what’s been selling.

Of course, FAA also provides you with gallery space and custom page-building tools, as well as image hosting. They have a unique zoom function that allows shoppers to see exactly what a portion of your image looks like at full resolution. Zazzle has this functionality, but it’s not as nice as this. The zoom function will help to assure potential buyers that the final image is of high quality. If you choose to use the POD capability, you’ll find that the framing and matting seems very reasonably priced (which means they’re not price-gauging there to make profits). There is a solid search facility, as well as grouping by tags, media, color, and subject.

At this point, you might be asking yourself, “Gosh, if they’re so great, how come no one’s ever heard of them?” That’s what I’m wondering. And it does make me leery, to see so much being offered for next to nothing. Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age, but I’ve always believed the saying “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.” On the other hand, their traffic numbers show they are about to overtake both Imagekind and Redbubble. They have 12,000 members. Maybe they are just what they seem to be. So I’d like to ask our readers for input. Have you had any experience with Fine Art America? If so, please leave a comment and let us know. Thanks!

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Several years ago, back before the current economic meltdown, marketing guru Seth Godin proclaimed the end of business as usual. From his wonderful bestseller “Purple Cow”: “The traditional [marketing] approaches are now obsolete. One hundred years of marketing thought are gone. Alternative approaches aren’t a novelty–they are all we’ve got left.” That may have seemed a bit extreme in 2007, but not today. Especially for portrait photographers, business as usual just won’t cut it.

MWACs and NWANs

In the pre-digital age, the key to being a successful photographer was looking and acting like every other photographer. But your competition is no longer other professionals, playing by the same rule book; you compete now with amateurs toting professional-quality equipment picked up at Best Buy. Take a look at the online photography forums, and you’ll find this group has its own acronym: MWACs (Moms With a Camera), or sometimes (less offensively) NWANs (Neighbors With a Nikon). Right or wrong, consumers believe that, with a digital camera, now anyone can take a great picture. In the old days, people owned Brownies, and they used them to take snapshots. Now they own 21st century computerized cameras that take incredible pictures. So the public no longer sees the need for a specialist (you) to document the important milestones in their lives. For a growing number of people, photography studios just don’t serve the purpose they once did.

With the economy in a tailspin, people have less disposable income than ever. People are looking to cut costs wherever they can. You won’t be able to compete with the MWACs on price, since they don’t have the overhead you do. (They don’t own a studio or professional equipment, just the camera.) To keep people coming in the door, you need to offer something the MWACs don’t have. As Seth Godin puts it, you need to offer something that is remarkable. You need to offer products and services that get people talking. Create images that they just can’t get anywhere else.

For this image, the background was created from other sources, composited, and then hand-painted in Corel Painter by A Work of Art Studio. Copyright The Portrait Parlor, Norton, VA. Reproduced with permission.

The Problem is its Own Solution

The good news is that digital photography gives us the very options we need to offer those remarkable images. For example, with Corel Painter we can turn photographs into images rivaling traditional oil paintings. With Photoshop, we can create exciting photo montages that appeal to seniors. And with both Photoshop and Painter, we can create imaginary backgrounds and sets, eliminating the need for expensive (and space-hogging) props.

Portrait photography is entering a new era, but only the studios willing to move away from “business as usual” will survive in this new era. I invite you to browse the articles available here on Digital Image Magazine, to help you get started on your way to creating truly remarkable images. If you are looking to outsource your digital painting, I hope you’ll give my studio, A Work of Art, a call. Check the About page for more info.

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