Your Go-To Guide For Selling Artwork Online

Jul 28

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Artwork sales don’t just start happening overnight. Whether you’re selling in-person at an art fair or online through your website or social media, there’s often a bit of a lag between setting up shop and raking in the sales.

Selling art online requires skills, savvy, and perseverance – attributes that you already possess because, well… you're an artist, aren’t you?!

Finding your stride selling art online also requires adaptability. During the global pandemic, art fairs (and artists, and galleries!) faced a moment of reckoning: adapt, or shut down.

We were pleased to be able to offer the opportunity for artists to sell their work digitally via our E-fair. By creating an accessible online marketplace that allows collectors to interact with exhibitors and their work from the comfort and safety of their own homes, Superfine presented more opportunities than ever for artists and collectors to connect.

What does that mean for you? Well, more online selling opportunities equals greater access to collectors, worldwide.

There are innumerable platforms and services available online to artists where selling your artwork is easy and intuitive.

With so many options, figuring out where to start is the hardest part. We’ll make things easy for you – here’s how to start selling art online!

Where Can You Sell Art Online?

Just as there are numerous options in real life for selling work to different audiences and collector opportunities, the internet is rich with avenues on which to sell your work. There are sites like Etsy, Shopify, UncommonGoods and BigCartel, which are e-commerce marketplaces that host your creations on your own seller page, which you build yourself.

This might be ideal for artists who plan to only offer one-off or limited quantities of their work, and can generally sell for higher price points. Additionally marketplace sites like the ones listed above do apply fees to online sales, typically in the single-digit percentages.

For graphic artists and illustrators, sites like Minted, Spoonflower, Society6 and Redbubble provide opportunities for artists to upload their designs directly. Production is taken care of by the selling platform, which means that you don’t have to do as much heavy lifting – but in turn, revenue is limited to a comparatively small percent – typically between 10-20% of the sale revenue goes to the artist.

Main takeaway: These options are great for artists that work digitally and are looking for opportunities to make passive income.

What’s The Best Way To Sell Art Online?

Artists who have sold work at craft fairs, events and art fairs for independent artists are already familiar with what it takes to sell work in-person. Now, it’s time to take those skills and move them online!

Having an understanding of the more nuanced aspects of online sales – like backend organization, asset quality, price margins and incentivizing customers– is the backbone for successfully selling your art online.

There’s more to the process of selling art online than simply uploading an image and marking it “for sale”. In fact, the effort that goes into successfully putting your artwork online and getting sales in return is an art form itself, and there are many factors about your work and process that should be considered before choosing a platform on which to sell your art!

The hardest part of any new venture is getting started – particularly when it feels like uncharted territory. We’ve made things a little bit easier for you with this list of everything you need to know about selling artwork online.

Your Go-To Guide For Selling Artwork Online

The Where, When, How, and Why Of Online Art Sales

For many artists this might already be obvious, but not everything you make or do will be suitable to sell on the internet as it currently exists.

For example, if you focus primarily on creating large-scale works, fulfilling orders may be difficult and the price point may be more than someone who has never experienced your work in-person is willing to spend.

You may want to consider sizing down the works you are creating for online sales so that packing and shipping is both easier and less expensive, and your work will be at a more accessible price point.

Think Outside The Box!

Is your work craft-focused, like knitting or weaving? One way many artists can bring in supplemental income is by creating DIY kits that patrons can purchase. This way, they can create their own version of what you do.

This presents a great opportunity to keep followers, patrons and collectors involved with your work in a tactile way for a lower cost of entry.

For example, artist Colleen Elizabeth (@colleenelizabethart) who has built a large following on Instagram creates paint-by-number kits based off her original painting designs that she makes available in limited quantities on her website. Since she has a strong online following and an engaged community, her kits often sell out within hours of announcing availability.

Consider starting a patron program.

You may be a performance artist or make process-based work, in which case the pleasure collectors take from your creations is more difficult to access when you’re social distancing.

Consider looking into platforms that provide gated content services like Patreon, where patrons and collectors can pay monthly membership fees for different levels of access to your work. This is a great way not only to continue making money for your work, but builds clientele as well.

Catalogue your work!

One thing we love to talk about here on the Tips for Artists Blog is the importance of cataloguing your work. Having an up-to-date inventory list means that you’ll always know exactly what work you have available for purchase.

These are the details you’ll need when cataloguing your work:

Title
Materials
Dimensions
Pricing
A small tile image
Year completed
Status (sold, available, or not for sale)
Any notes on the artwork, for example if it is part of series, if it is inspired by anything in particular, etc.

For artists who are creating one-of-a-kind pieces and originals, having a careful inventory of what you have available is an excellent tool to reference when listing work online for sale. However, artists who create prints or editions of work will want to keep an inventory as well so that you always know how much product you have available.

Don’t forget to update the inventory when something sells! The nice thing about online sales platforms is that they typically have their own built-in inventory systems, which will help you keep track of sales and availability.

Update your photographs.

Think about it – you don’t really want to buy something online if the photos don’t do it justice. It’s particularly important for visual artists to have top-notch photographs of their work in order to make sales.

It’s always best practice when taking photos of your work to capture the image in high resolution: no less than 300dpi with pixel dimensions in the thousands.

These settings can be found on your DSLR camera or, if using a photographer, they’ll know what to do – just tell them you need high-res photos for digital production.

You may be able to get a great photo simply by using your smartphone – though typically, people can tell when an image is taken on a mobile device versus a DSLR camera.

Practice makes perfect… give it a shot! Just make sure the lighting is nice and bright and that the image isn’t pixelated, and if it’s not up to snuff, contact your favorite local photographer to come help you out.

Think about production, shipping, and fulfillment.

The last important thing you want to consider when selling your work online is: just how involved do you want to be in the production, packing and fulfillment of your products?

For all handmade items, you may want to consider creating each order as it’s commissioned, in which case you’ll want to have an image of the final product online with the disclaimer that all pieces are made to order and as handmade items, they will have inconsistencies.

Others may want to only offer limited runs of certain pieces, and list them all for sale at once. Really, this comes down to your work ethic and production style. Try things out and see what works best!

For packing and shipping, some people may want to handle things from start to finish with custom wrapping, handwritten notes, and by arranging weekly or bi-weekly shipping dates.

Not sounding like your jam? There are sites as mentioned early in this post that take care of all of that for you, which will cut into your profit but take a lot of work off your plate.

There are many ways to sell artwork online, and figuring out which road to take is as much trial and error as it is part of your creative process.

Our advice? Do some research into the online sales platforms available and figure out what works best for you.