Along with promoting yourself on-line, you will probably want to sell your art on-line. These days, selling your art on-line is one of the easiest ways to make money off of your art. There is virtually no overhead and it’s very easy to promote your on-line store through Facebook, email, twitter, newsletters, business cards, etc.
There are MANY ways you can sell your art on-line, and I will cover a few here.
First would be of course to sell your art on your website and Facebook pages. Those pretty much speak for themselves. Even if you have another on-line store, it wouldn’t make sense not to also use your website and Facebook pages to sell your art.
That being said, also having your art in an on-line store with other artists and stores is an easy way to get traffic to your store, without you having to do all the work. When you just have your own website, you’re generally doing all the work to drive traffic to it.
I reviewed a few different on-line stores that you can use to sell art and here’s what I found:
The first one I tried was www.etsy.com. Etsy is like Ebay, but for handmade items mostly (or vintage items). I purchase a ton of stuff on Etsy, so why not make my own store? Etsy is easy to set up and customize, but I didn’t like the fact that you have to pay for each post, even if the item doesn’t sell. I tried it out with one item, and it didn’t sell. So I was out $1. Not a big deal, but I didn’t really want to spend a bunch of money putting up items for sale, only to have them not sell.
So I tried out www.storenvy.com. This is very similar to Etsy, but totally FREE (one of my favorite words)! So I had a winner. Another very cool thing about Storenvy, is that you can link it up to your Facebook page, so that people can access it directly through your Facebook page. Very cool. Here’s how my Storenvy store looks, so you can get an idea: http://meartist.storenvy.com/
I am currently trying out www.fineartamerica.com, which I heard about through another artist recently. They will print and ship your art for you. I’m not sure about the quality of the prints yet, but I’m trying it out to see how it works and I’ll leave more of a review once I’ve tried it out for a couple months. You can see my Fine Art America store here: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/marcy-eiben.html
There are also MANY websites specifically for showing and selling your art, where artists can set up a free (usually) on-line store for their art. I personally did not go this route because I didn’t feel that many people would see my art when there were 100s of artists to look at, but it many be a good option for you. Here’s a list of several of the more popular of these sites (from what I can tell, these are all free – if I missed any good ones let me know!): www.deviantart.com, www.redbubble.com, and www.foundmyself.com
One more I wanted to mention, because as of May 1st 2011 they have a set your own price policy, whereas previously they were charging $45 a month, is www.foliotwist.com. This is a very high traffic site, so if you can swing a few dollars a month, I would check them out. They give you a 10 day free trial, and after that you set your own price; meaning if you can only afford $10 a month, that’s what you pay.
I also wanted to forward a link I found about selling your art on-line, which has some very good tips: http://artandinfluence.blogspot.com/2010/01/art-galleries-if-youre-in-business-to.html