Why you should start selling your art online
If you’ve ever considered selling your art online, but haven’t started yet, here’s something you need to hear: why not? With today’s digital tools, you can start selling your art online, and potentially make your first sale, within a day. You don’t need to jump all the way into a new career, but there is potential for one to flourish from the first steps into selling your artwork via the internet. All you need is some art, a smartphone with a camera, and you’re good to go. If you have a laptop, even better, but the tools of today have made it remarkably easy to earn from your creative work.
1) It is easier than you think
If you have’t started selling your artwork because you think it is too difficult, or that you need to find gallery space, or that it’s too much of a technical problem to sell online; good news is that you’re wrong. It is very easy to get a basic online art store started, and you don’t need a gallery because you can list and market your own art. Really, all you need is a smartphone with a camera and your art. And a cell connection, or free wifi. You just have to use a service like Etsy, Squarespace, Shopify, etc. to begin (and they’ve done most of the work for you).
2) You don’t have to commit a lot of time
You can start and stop, create as much work as you like. You are setting the deadlines and can sell as much, or as little, as you want. The creation of your store and initial listings can take you as long as you want. Do it over the course of a year—it doesn’t matter, as long as you start your shop. Once your store is created, it’s your own space to do with what you will. List your back catalog of work for fun, or paint one painting a year. It’s your shop.
3) Shipping is simple
Gone are the days of going to a physical store to figure out how much shipping costs, then packing something up with overpriced materials. Most to all platforms to sell art on have robust shipping features built into their service. A platform like Etsy lets you save shipping profiles for your art, and automatically print a discounted label whenever you get a sale. Print the label at home, and drop your art off to ship at the nearest post office or USPS dropbox. You can even schedule for a mail carrier to pick your art up from your house or studio.
Start selling today
4) Selling online grows your market exponentially
Not only does selling your artwork online open your sales potential to a global market, but marketing your work on social media can help you gain traction and sales that you might never of had you only sold your wares offline. You can still be local and sell online, all you have to do is target marketing to your surrounding area, and focus your efforts there. Selling online means that anyone who enjoys art (many people), who may want to buy creative work (a lot of people), who are actively looking to buy artwork (more people than you think) is potentially a client for your creative practice. This doesn’t mean that everyone is going to buy your work, just that you have the potential to reach a wide range of people.
5) You can automate the process
If your artwork is digital, then you can even automate your sales process. All you have to do is create your listings, upload your work, and automatically send the file of your work to your customer automatically via email. If you are a graphic designer and want to sell clothes, prints, etc. with your work printed on them, there are services like Printful are integrated into Squarespace that will automatically print-on-demand and ship your art to an end customer, without you needing to do anything. You can even automate advertising for your listings on most platforms.
