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How To Sell Your Art Online
by Fiona R Ogilvie
http://www.froart.com
Imagine a marketplace that has no boundaries or limits, one
that doesn't require you to cart canvases and sculptures to
showings in other towns. Imagine a gallery with hundreds of
thousands of visitors a month, where you can arrange and
rearrange your art endlessly on the walls. Imagine an
enormous fair with no table fees, a venue where you only pay
if your artwork sells. Imagine the largest sidewalk art sale
in the world, open 24/7, 365 days a year - with no worries
about the weather.
Sound like an impossible dream? It's not - it's a digital
world, and you'll find all of those on the internet. If
you're an artist dabbling in any media, there are a number
of different ways to sell your art online. The three most
popular are your own web site, a gallery web site, or an
auction site. Your own preferences and skills should be the
key determining factor in which style of selling you choose
to sell your art online.
Auction Sites Auction sites allow people to post items that
they have for sale, usually with pictures. They provide a
way for others to post bids on the sale items. At the end of
a specified period of time, the auction is closed, and the
seller makes arrangements with the winning bidder for
payment and shipment.
You can post each of your works of art for sale separatelya
and accept bids on them. You can also choose to set a flat
"Buy It Now' price for each piece of art you're selling, and
bypass the auction. Accepting payments is easy. eBay is
affiliated with PayPal, the original pay by email service.
It allows you to accept credit card and EFT payments without
a commercial merchants' account.
Display Your Art in An Online Gallery There are a number of
different models for online galleries the most common of
which resemble an auction site with the focus on art. They
range from amateur gallery sites for artists to exchange
critique and compliments, to highly polished, professional
sites where the intent is to provide an upscale market for
quality artwork.
You need: Quality digital scans of your art, enough
technical knowhow to be able to upload scans to their
gallery pages.
Pros: Specialization - people come to look at and buy art;
Often have artists communities for trading tips; gallery
handles payment details Cons: Commission on sales; competing
with many artists; may require art submitted in particular
format or style.
A third popular choice for selling your work online is your
own web site. When you choose to build your own web site,
you have total creative control over the look, feel and
behavior of your site. You can choose how to display your
art, what sort of payments you'll accept, and how often
you'll update your offerings.
You need: your own payment method or merchant account,
quality scans of your work, web site design skills, a web
site hosting account.
The bottom line is that the internet can provide a new
market for your art, whether you sculpt, paint, craft, sew
quilt or create digital art. It's the largest market ever,
and it's just waiting for you.
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