Marketing: 7 Places to Sell Your Work Online

November 10th, 2008 | Published in Featured, Marketing | 15 Comments

What if Van Gogh had been able to show his work online?

Before the Internet, artists had very few outlets to sell their work. The main choices were galleries (which took 50% of the selling price) and art fairs. Today there are a whole host of online art retailers, making it much easier to get your work in front of the public. These sites enable you to find buyers for original works, or to offer prints of your work, created when the order is placed. With millions of potential art buyers online, chances are better than ever that you’ll find a market for your work. No longer do artists need to be limited to a few small galleries, dependent on foot traffic. Your potential audience is now the entire online world. Today we focus on seven of the best places online for selling your work.

Determining the “best” sites for selling art is subjective, of course, but I tried to list the best in terms of audience size (traffic), cost, and quality of service. Based on those criteria, Imagekind is certainly one of the best places to sell prints of your work. According to www.compete.com, Imagekind had 113,000 visitors in October, making it one of the most-visited sites in the list. Imagekind allows you to offer your work as fine art prints, prints on canvas, and greeting cards. Buyers have framing and matting options to choose from. Imagekind offers a free account (allows up 24 works for sale at one time), and two paid options, at $7.99 per month and $11.99 per month. These paid options allow you to sell 50 or unlimited works, respectively, and add to the number of keywords and categories you can use. Imagekind has a solid reputation for print quality, and their future seems assured since being acquired by CafePress.

While Imagekind sticks to artwork printed on paper, canvas, and greeting cards, Redbubble is a place for “framed prints, mounted prints, greeting cards, posters, designer T-Shirts and more.” The number of visitors is similar to Imagekind, with 163,500 stopping by in October. RedBubble has an online community, which seems to be one of its primary attractions. There is no cost to join or use RedBubble. Both Imagekind and Redbubble charge a “base price” for products, and their profit comes from that base price. Your profit comes from whatever you decide to charge in addition to the base price. Shoppers may find RedBubble’s lack of categories make it hard to find what they’re looking for. Redbubble uses “groups”, such as “Men Appreciation” and “Elderly.” Perhaps not the best way to find an audience for your work.

Etsy calls itself “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade.” Etsy seems to be doing very well. In fact, over 2.5 million people visited Etsy in October, up 150% from a year ago. It’s mostly a place to sell crafts, but a fair number of original paintings and framed prints sell here. Etsy does not do the printing, as Imagekind and RedBubble do. Here you are selling finished products, whether that be an oil on canvas or a framed print. You handle the shipping, too. Etsy makes their money from listings (20 cents per item listed) and a 3.5% commission on sales. Due to the huge number of visitors, Etsy makes the list, though its arts and crafts focus may not work for you.

If fine art prints aren’t your thing, or if you’ve got a great design for a mug or t-shirt, then head on over to CafePress or Zazzle. These two are so similar, I’ll address them both together. Though these sites do produce art prints, they are primarily known for printing on surfaces other than paper. We’re talking coffee mugs, calendars, mousepads, aprons, fridge magnets, posters, bumper stickers, and ball caps, just for starters. Both sites offer a free option, but CafePress offers a paid option as well, which will let you create a customized “storefront.” You can create a CafePress website that looks just like your blog or website, so that visitors don’t even realize they’ve left your site. Another difference is traffic: CafePress had nearly 5 million visitors in October, while Zazzle had “only” 2 million. These are both huge numbers, however you slice it.

BoundlessGallery is a site for buying and selling fine art originals and prints. You need to do your own printing, framing, and shipping. There is no free option here, though there is a free 7-day trial. Paid options run from $60 to $240 per year. Traffic here is low compared to the other sites we’ve looked at: 21,000 during October.

DeviantArt, which we profiled a while back, is a free online community which offers a print-on-demand service, much like Imagekind or RedBubble. While uploading an image to your gallery, you can choose to make the image available for sale as a print. This is a free option. The paid option, which costs $24.95 per year, allows you to set the sales price above the set base price, and gives you a higher percentage of the sale amount. DeviantArt offers printing on mugs, calendars, mousepads, magnets, and other items, in addition to greeting cards and fine art prints. Traffic on DeviantArt was 3.2 million in October, but no doubt almost all of that is due to artist members and not customers. If you establish a following on DeviantArt, it could result in some serious sales numbers.

Responses

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Martin Hosking says:

November 11th, 2008 at 12:28 am (#)

Thank you for putting this list together. And upfront, I am a co-founder of RedBubble and am pleased to be on this list. There are some really good sites here. One of the things we have found is that making sales is both a matter of having a good platform (the website you choose) and then also being active with your own promotion. We find that our very active community helps with this as they provide advice and help not only to help our members to develop as artists but to sell more.
Bob Nolin says:

November 11th, 2008 at 12:20 pm (#)

Martin -

Thanks for stopping by - I appreciate your comments. No argument here — an online community such as RedBubble’s can be very valuable to an artist. But the focus at RedBubble seems to be more about that community than about selling to the public. A shopper coming to RB for the first time will find it very hard to find a nice intaglio print for the hallway, for example. Why? No categories or tags. It’s hard to promote yourself when the public can’t find you!

Bob
Debra Linker says:

November 12th, 2008 at 11:57 am (#)

Thank you for putting this list together. I am pleased you mentioned Etsy - and yes, it does have a large “craft” contingency. But I would like to point out that there is a great deal of fine art on Etsy, at high price points, digital and otherwise, that does sell - - and the artist community is the very best on the internet. There are even “teams” dedicated to promoting and supporting high end, higher cost ($300 USD and over) art on Etsy.

Thanks, again.

Debra Linker
debralinker.etsy.com
Linda says:

November 12th, 2008 at 12:08 pm (#)

I have been selling original watercolors and prints on Etsy for 4 months. I find new visual artists setting up shop every day so it looks like the mix of artists to artisans is changing. The site is very seller-friendly!

Linda
Hammelmanart.etsy.com
Bob Nolin says:

November 12th, 2008 at 12:19 pm (#)

@Debra and Linda - Thanks for your comments about Etsy. My review was based on my own limited experience on Etsy (same for RedBubble, btw), so it’s helpful to hear from others. My main purpose was to present the best outlets, and try to characterize each site for readers, to help them find the best fit.
Terry says:

November 12th, 2008 at 12:22 pm (#)

I am going to echo what a couple of others have said. I am a pastel artist and have been doing quite well on Etsy, both selling oriinals and prints. There is a lot of artwork on Etsy and I think it’s a great place to shop for it.
I do have work at a couple of the other sites mentioned here as well, and they are great places, but I have not had as much success at them yet. I think it’s a good thing to not have all your eggs in one basket. Each place has it’s own feel.
Jenny says:

November 12th, 2008 at 1:09 pm (#)

Thanks for this article which you should know I only found on the etsy forum board.
I’ve been selling on cafepress for some time now, also etsy.
I never heard of redbubble until reading this… just joined them too. Never hurts to have your eggs in more than one basket.

I only wish more of these sites would buy TV add space. There are lots of people I know who never get on their computer unless they have a destination in mind. ALL of them have heard of ebay. None of the others though.

But more articles like this one can only help right?

Thanks again
Jenny
http://ArtmakersWorlds.com
Debra Linker says:

November 12th, 2008 at 1:37 pm (#)

Bob,
Just for the record…I actually APPRECIATE your comments on Etsy. It is my hope Etsy owners will see this as an example of the impression the wider art community has of Etsy, and perhaps give the art that is so prevalent on that site much needed administrative attention.

Thanks, again.

Debra Linker
William Holt says:

November 12th, 2008 at 3:27 pm (#)

I have been on Etsy for awhile now, and find that traditional printmaking pieces don’t seem to sell very well. I think Etsy has a certain “look” they like to promote, as evidenced by the treasuries that make it to the front page. Too bad the many fine artists (painters, printmakers, etc.) on the site seem to be ignored.

williamholt.etsy.com
Sarah says:

November 12th, 2008 at 5:37 pm (#)

Another Etsy seller here If a person couldn’t find an artwork to buy on Etsy, it wouldn’t be for lack of choices- over 1250 paintings listed today already! That does not include other types of artwork either. Selling online is a great resource for an artist, but we have to remember to promote our work if we want to be successful. Just having your work online doesn’t mean it will automatically be seen.

-Sarah
http://sarahthole.etsy.com
Bob Nolin says:

November 14th, 2008 at 4:34 pm (#)

@Sarah -

I agree, that just having your work online doesn’t mean it will be seen. This is the big challenge facing all of these gallery sites. They need to find a way to help buyers easily navigate to the type of work they are interested in. Tagging and categories are absolutely essential. A website with a good front end interface is key, if you want people to find your work.
CJ says:

November 21st, 2008 at 8:00 am (#)

I agree with your comment about the community on redbubble, they are great, and friendly.

Redbubble does not promote the site or the art at all,a dn anyone looking for a particular piece of work, will find it hard to find it, as the search engine, is in a word “rubbish”.

Secondly they do nothing to assist promotion for the artist, but solely rely on the members of redbubble to do that for them. That is just not good enough, given they high cost price they charge for their products.

Now they are increasing prices by 25% in a recessionary climate. that is totally crazy and suicidal for a business perspective, for everyone including Redbubble.

They (Redbubble) may find that many will transfer to Imagekind.com. Although I must say artists from the USA maybe put off, that they have to provide a social security number in addition to their credit/bank or paypal details.
val says:

November 28th, 2008 at 4:00 pm (#)

Se você esta procurando marketing digital visite http://www.btoweb.com.br
Sand Times says:

December 21st, 2008 at 12:46 am (#)

You might want to add the New York Art Exchange to your list. They launched about three weeks ago. I read that they will offer print on demand items soon, like coffee cups and shirts. They already have print on demand prints. It is a sister site of the social networking site http://www.myartspace.com. Here is the link, http://www.nyaxe.com/
Bob Nolin says:

December 21st, 2008 at 5:55 pm (#)

@Sand Times

Thanks for the links! Another brand-new site to consider is My Folio.

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