Are you an artist wanting to sell art online to make some extra income? You’ve come to the right place!
Selling your art online is an easy and low cost way to start your art business today. Below you will find out how to get started broken down into 5 easy steps.
How to Sell Your Art Online in 5 Steps
1. Build your portfolio.
In order to start selling your art online, you should have a decent sized portfolio for potential customers to choose from. Aim for 10-25 artworks.
You can either make a bunch of new artwork, or dig up some old pieces that could work digitally or physically to sell and repurpose them.
2: Decide where to sell your art
Next, you’ll have to decide where to sell your art and that will depend on your medium, style, and goals as an artist.
Identify your audience and how you want to sell your art.
- Are you going to sell primarily prints? (many avenues)
- Are you going to sell physical work, such as paintings? (Etsy, or Fine Art America)
- Do you create sculptures, jewelry or something else tangible? (Etsy)
- Are you interested in designing t-shirts and/or home decor products? (Society6, Zazzle or Redbubble)
Check out my blog post about Where to Sell Your Art Online to help you decide.
I have also written some more in depth posts about the different platforms.
- Selling your art on POD websites – Zazzle vs Society6
- Selling your Art on POD Websites – Redbubble vs. Society6
- Selling your Art on POD Websites – TeePublic Edition
- How to Sell your Art on Spoonflower
3. Optimize your art for sale
You’ll have to optimize your art digitally, or take a nice photo of it in order to sell it online.
- Scan or photograph your artwork in high resolution.
- Try to get sharp lines and true colors by using a tripod and good lighting.
- Post process in a program like Photoshop to fix colors, or clean up scans.
4: Upload and enable as many products as possible
Upload your art to your chosen platform.
If you are going the Print On Demand route, only add to products that look good and work with the design. You may need to customize the design for different products, like having a version with a transparent background for stickers and t-shirts.
5: Market your products
This is where a lot of artists struggle because we’re not necessarily business or marketing professionals!
- Share your products and artwork on social media. Create an Instagram, Twitter, and/or Facebook page dedicated to your art. Ideally, choose one you use frequently so it’s not a burden to learn or use daily. Check out my post on 25+ Instagram Post Ideas for Artists for some inspiration.
- You may also consider building a website, which can be a hub if you sell on multiple platforms. It could be a blog or just a portfolio of your work.
- Learn basic marketing skills. To dive deeper into marketing, watch tutorials on YouTube or Skillshare to hone your business skills or even artistic skills as your business grows.
There is a lot to learn on the business side, but don’t neglect your art!
Consistently create new designs so you can figure out what works and what doesn’t, then make more of what resonates with your audience.
Consistency is key!
You may also be interested in these posts:
- How to Sell Your Art Online – The Definitive Guide
- Social Media Marketing Tips For Artists
- Blogging for Your Art Business
- How to Increase Your Sales on Print on Demand Websites
I hope you’ve found this guide to selling your art online useful. Feel free to leave any additional tips or questions for me in the comments below!
Cheers,
cool thanks!!!!!for the great job
I’m glad you found it helpful :)
Great post Julie! Very clear outline of how to get started selling online. I might add just one more detail under social network – Pinterest. I use mostly Instagram and Pinterest because they are based on visual posts rather than text. Thanks again!
That’s a great point, Pinterest can be a great tool for promotion. Thanks for reading!
I always enjoy your posts! I have some of my items on Pinterest, where the visitor can click back to either my Zazzle store or my blog. Every now and then I see where someone was referred over from there. I followed you on Pinterest awhile back, by the way!??
Thanks for your comment, I am trying to step up my Pinterest game! I found your account and followed you back :)
Cool! Thanks for following back ?
After reading this, I’m actually quite happy that I’m not doing a horrible job at winging what I’m doing right now with my drawings.
Hey no worries, we are all winging it XD
Haha. True but then you always get that feeling of whether you gotta keep doing it coz you’re uncertain if you’re headed the right direction, yknow?
Very true! My advice is just keep doing what you’re doing, and then after a while (like a year) look back and see what worked and what didn’t. Then keep doing what’s working :)