TOP 12 SITES TO SELL Your ARTWORKS ONLINE - How to Begin Your Art Business from home?
Starting an art business and selling artworks have become easier than ever. You do not have to pay huge fees to get your artwork displayed in an art exhibition nor do you have to waste your time being on the waitlist of those arts exhibition listings. In the technology-driven world of today, begin your online art business from home without much investment and start selling your art online either for free or by paying minimal fees. Here is a list of twelve art marketplaces where you can sell your artwork online. It's time for you to upskill your hobby of art to a full-time career as an artist-entrepreneur.
Begin your online art business using these twelve sites for selling your artworks online.
Art dawns from a heart and impresses millions of hearts. It is the language deciphered by heart, providing food for our thoughts and emotions.
2020 has been one of the worst times giving us so many terrible experiences. Lifestyles changed, routine disturbed and all our plans were cancelled.
But if we look through a different perspective, something good has also happened. The best thing is that we had enough leisure time to stay at home and re-ignite our passion.
The lockdown period brought the creative side out for many. I witnessed my friends trying their hands at art and craft. Be it watercolour painting, canvas painting, oil painting, mandala art, Mehandi designs or doodle arts; I could find all forms of art on the social media posts of my friends. And the artworks were so enthralling that I couldn’t take my eyes off them. (You can check out a few of those artworks at the end of this blogpost)
Though they created admirable pieces of art, they just sold them only on social media.
Secondly, we know that most of the activities are happening online these days right from education to office meetings to friends and family get-togethers owing to the pandemic. The same is with art. Offline art exhibitions are not so possible, and hence people are looking out for online sites where they could not only showcase their art; but also sell them. For the newbies, this is a great opportunity because a beginner would feel a little hesitant to showcase their artworks in an offline art exhibition amongst the artworks of all other experienced artists.
But when you can do it online without spending even a single penny and also get to explore the diverse art market, it sounds to be a great opportunity. Isn’t it?
But where on the Internet will you upload your artworks so that it reaches multitudes of public or rather I tell multitudes of interested customers?
Are Facebook and Instagram enough? Or are you looking for more art marketplaces to sell your art online?
Here, I list down a few websites or art marketplaces where you can showcase and sell your art and craft at good prices. Whether you’re an amateur or an established artist, anyone can try their hands on these online art portals and upgrade your side hustle to a full-time profession.
Ok, so let me start with the platform that most of the artists have explored, and are doing good on it - Instagram.
1. INSTAGRAM
Every business/brand these days are trying to expand their reach with the help of social media because people of all age groups are becoming more and more active on social media platforms.
One of the leading and most used among these platforms is Instagram. Anyone can sign up on Instagram and start using it. You can showcase your art gallery to the entire world and also make sales without even spending a penny unless you choose to promote your products through Instagram ads.
Just open your art page on Instagram, choose a username that clearly indicates the content you’ll be uploading on your page and write a creative bio describing what would people get if they visit your page.
For an Instagram page, username and bio are the foremost things noticed by people, and hence you cannot afford to neglect them. In the bio, you also get an option to add your website link but the issue is that you can add only one link.
Initially, you may feel, "It's fine! One link is enough for me."
But consider a scenario where you have listed your artworks on Amazon and Etsy or any other platform and your own website as well.
If a visitor is interested in your artwork and wishes to find more details about it or purchase it, they would click on the link provided in your bio. And you might have included the link of your Etsy shop in it but the visitor might be interested in buying the product on Amazon.
Assuming that your product is listed only on Etsy, the visitor might leave. It’s quite rare that the person would DM you asking for the Amazon listing of your artwork.
In that case, you may lose a potential customer.
In another scenario, you may also want to inform the visitors about the art class that you may be conducting or redirect them to your blog as well. But you can only add one link in the Instagram bio and with this one-link in bio feature, you ought to compromise on which link to add and which to neglect.
To help people get around with this one link-in-bio issue many third-party applications like Linktree, Link in Profile, Contact in Bio, etc. are available in the market. These tools allow you to add multiple links to your Instagram bio.
These bio-link applications help you to design good landing pages and integrate multiple links into a custom link that can be added to your bio. Now, when someone clicks on the link in your bio, they are redirected to a landing page where all the other links that you added are available.
But wait! When you opt for these applications, there may be a downside too.
If you could remember there was a time in 2018 when Instagram banned these links, assuming them to be spammy. All of a sudden, the custom links that people added using these link-in-bio tools had stopped working.
So, when a visitor or a potential buyer clicked on the link, they received a notification that the link does not work.
The disappointed visitors return and you lose a potential conversion.
Additionally, when you add a third party link in your bio, you are actually directing the traffic to their website rather than your own. If you create your website, all this traffic might come to you boosting your website rank. Hence create your personal website or a single webpage that hosts multiple links. Add the link of this website to your bio thus integrating multiple links to your bio without using third-party tools.
Moving on, the next thing visible on your page would be the highlights. Make sure you showcase your best works in the highlights. Highlights give an overview of your page.
Apart from Highlights, the Instagram guides feature lets you pin the best Instagram posts on your profile under the "Guides" tab. Using Instagram guides, you can make a collection of similar niche artworks that helps visitors get a better picture of your works.
Finally start uploading high-quality images of your artwork with a good and detailed caption including the details of the stationery you used in making the art piece. Instagram gives you the liberty to add 30 hashtags per post, so make sure that you use this feature wisely. Figure out the best hashtags of your niche and include them along with a few local hashtags, for instance, if you’re based in Delhi, use a local hashtag like (hashtag)ArtistsofDelhi or (hashtag)Delhiartgallery and something more location-specific so that you get the benefit of attracting local buyers’ attention.
Switch to a creator account to access more analytics tools and other features. You can also collaborate or participate in the events of various art pages to expand your reach and make your art visible to a wider group.
There are many more ways to grow your art business on Instagram, and for that, you have to initiate, experiment and figure out what works the best for you.
2. PINTEREST
Pinterest is one of the fast-growing platforms having millions of users on board. People are using Pinterest as a search engine indeed! I could find these days that when people are in search of some furniture design or Mehandi design or any type of visual search, they do it on Pinterest application rather than searching it on google. There are numerous pins available from people all across the globe.
When it has become such a popular search engine, you ought to upload the images of your artwork on this platform.