Most effective way to sell Art, created by me?
Most effective way to sell Art, created by me?
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Discussion

wax lyrical

Original Poster:

993 posts

257 months

Monday 31st January 2022
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Hi all, I'd appreciate some advice. I'm planning to do abstract (and impressionist) charcoal drawings, frame them and then sell to the Public.

I assume the best way to advertise/ market would be on Instagram? Then a direct link to a Shopify account? Or something else?

Or would I need my own website too, with payment and delivery options? Instagram would then create and direct traffic to my website?

smile

J8 SVG

1,470 posts

146 months

Monday 31st January 2022
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Etsy is the place I go for unique pieces and I believe they are pretty fair with their pricing. Instagram would be a good place to market but takes a fair bit of work with reels, stories and feed content to stay at the top of people's timelines. TikTok is another place where a video of you creating something could blow up but it also might not

SGirl

7,922 posts

277 months

Monday 31st January 2022
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The Art Gallery website is good. I don't know what percentage they charge for selling creations, though - I just buy from there.

ozzuk

1,331 posts

143 months

Monday 31st January 2022
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As above, Etsy is likely easiest route to widest market, but low barrier to entry means thousands of people are already doing it (doesn't mean you won't sell).

You could try local galleries if they will display your stuff, especially if it is similar to any themes they run (one by me does mostly black/white pencil art).

There are of course online galleries/shippers/printers if you're high end - I recently bought a canvas print from fineartamerica.com, ironically from a swiss artist that was recommended on here!.

bigandclever

14,066 posts

254 months

Monday 31st January 2022
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SGirl said:
The Art Gallery website is good. I don't know what percentage they charge for selling creations, though - I just buy from there.
Commission is 35% of whatever you set your price to be. The free membership allows you to have 3 artworks for sale at a time, the paid (£30 annually) is 150 artworks at a time. You're responsible for delivery (and returns) and any discounts they offer to purchasers come out of your cut.

They do have a bit of reach, though.

Edited by bigandclever on Monday 31st January 13:41

wax lyrical

Original Poster:

993 posts

257 months

Monday 31st January 2022
quotequote all
Thanks for all the input and advice so far. Much appreciated! wink

jjlynn27

7,935 posts

125 months

Wednesday 2nd February 2022
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Etsy.

toon10

6,773 posts

173 months

Wednesday 2nd February 2022
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I'm not an expert by any means but I bought some art last week so can share my experience.

The artist has her own website to order direct but it's the marketing and getting your work seen bit that's hard. What she did was she managed to get a stand at an art and crafts section at Fenwick's department store in Newcastle near Christmas. The footfall is great and her work got seen, Mrs Toon being one of the ones to see. I suspect she made some good sales at the event.

I was dropped a hint at the time for the picture in question which I pretended went in one ear and out the other but I took a photo of the picture she liked and grabbed one of her business cards. It's coming this week for Valentines.

I've added her site just to show you how it looks and how it's setup, etc. I don't know her or have any affiliation but just letting you know how she gets known or at least how I discovered her.

https://www.emilywardart.com/

As others have said, there are good options along the Etsy route so you don't have to develop your own site but again, you'll still be better off doing some events and getting known. Stands at festivals for example.

24valve

97 posts

226 months

Thursday 3rd February 2022
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I'm not a particular expert on the subject either, nor an Artist - however my better half is particularly talented and educated in most things Art related.

However, just a heads up and a bit of a warning. Whilst she is extremely good with most media, one of her outstanding pieces was (and is continuing to be) Lino prints. We primarily sold her prints through our own high street coffee shop and art workshop, but about a year ago someone suggested we should have the prints put onto hoodies and t-shirts, which we did.

They were fairly popular especially given the only place you could buy them at the time was through our shop, and I suggested (although I didnt know much about how to) was to put them on Etsy. She didnt do this, but posted a message on a facebook group that specialised in Art with a nautical theme (I'm not going to reveal what that was). Nothing wrong with that or the group, and it was met with amazing enthusiasm, and we subsequently received a massive amount of orders and stuff flew out (this literally happened this last weekend just gone). It was brilliant.

My better half was on a massive high - everyone loved the stuff and its great.

....Until, someone asked where they could buy the gear from and an unscrupulous facebook account appeared (not vetted by the group admin) and tagged in a website to buy them from based in the US. It turns out someone had found one of the images on facebook, cut, cropped and pasted it onto a mock-up hoodie on line and then presented this, along with mugs, jogging bottoms, and all sorts of other crap for sale with her print on it.

Needless to say, the facebook accounts were just duffers, the website in question do all sorts so queue a phone call to the websites support in the US late last night and a follow up email to their legal team has resulted in them taking it down (although as of this morning its still available, so I'm in the process of sending them a barrage of abuse about it).

The Tears have just about stopped with the missus now - it was a long night trying to get it sorted, but ultimately its resulted in her taking down any picture she's taken from a mobile phone of her work and posted it on FB and now we're looking at watermarking literally everything.

It goes without saying that we should have been doing this already, but Artists quite rightly get very excited and proud of their work and want to show it to everyone. It just takes a minute or two to think about how your posting it, and using an app on your phone to splash the design with a watermark. We didnt realise you could do this - I know you can do it easily on a PC, but my missus - like the rest of the world seem to be intent on only using the phone to do literally everything, so on this one occasion one of her prints was overlooked and blatantly copied.

I've not much more to add, other than good luck OP and be vigilant...there are some prize pr*cks out there who will do anything to p!ss on your chips.

To cap it off, the group shes been on have been extreemly understanding and supportive - fingers crossed no one has had their fingers burnt by purchasing a non-genuine article.


akirk

5,775 posts

130 months

Thursday 3rd February 2022
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A lot depends on your target Market...

if very young then TikTok might be a better outlet
if middle-aged then Facebook is still the place
Instagram supports either

back it up with your own website with eCommerce (shopify is easy to build) as any other route will take a large commission from you...
if you use any other platform then work hard to push people to repeat buy but directly from you

Bacon Is Proof

5,740 posts

247 months

Thursday 3rd February 2022
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Last bit of art I bought was being exhibited in a local pub. Pretty much everything sold.
I don't have Instagram.
I do have Facebook.

bigandclever

14,066 posts

254 months

Thursday 3rd February 2022
quotequote all
24valve said:
A sadly familiar tale of woe.
I hope she gets over it quickly and her success continues to build smile

Unfortunately there is still nothing stopping anyone (and by that I mean any ahole) scanning a real image and using that instead. It being online in the first place just makes it one step easier to do. Might seem a defeatist attitude but you can't stop the tide.