Ultimate Beginner Guide to Selling Your Art Online

if you're an artist who is wanting to start selling the artwork but have no idea where to start or how to do it then this video is for you over the last few years I have gone from selling zero pieces of artwork to now having sold over £10,000 worth which if you would have told me that a few years ago I would have been like get out of here that is not going to happen but I foret to say it was not all smooth sailing as artists we start out just wanting to make pretty pieces of artwork and know nothing of the pitfalls to selling our artwork so unlike other videos where they just talk about what hashtags to use and all lot nonsense I'm actually going to give you everything everything you could possibly need to know to start selling your artwork from what selling platform you should choose to the legalities of it all I can promise you that by the end of this video you will have all the knowledge that you need to start selling your artwork but anyway on to the main stuff selling platform there are so many different selling platforms that you could go with but I'm just going to focus on the four that I have had the most experience with because I don't want to be giving you dodgy secondhand information I would like to start off with Instagram and I know opinions on Instagram are quite mixed at the moment because of the new algorithm changes but I don't want to discount it just yet because it is where I got my first few sales the great thing about social media when it comes to selling your artwork is that it allows you to build a community of people who genuinely care about you and your art people are far more likely to invest in your artwork if they know unlik you part of selling your art is selling yourself as the artist the main thing about Instagram to consider is that it often does need time to grow before you can start to sell for example I was posting on and off on Instagram for about 2 years before I got my very first commission that wasn't from family and friends and that was a pet portrait for like £65 I think and I was only around the 300 follower Mark so that shows that you really don't need a huge following to sell art on Instagram which I feel like is a big misconception and to this day I still make most of my sales through Instagram either through commissions or directing people to another site to purchase my original artwork so here is my best advice if you want to sell through Instagram make sure people actually know your art or your commission services are for sale like it sounds silly right but the amount of times that I hear artists like I'm really struggling to sell my artwork on Instagram and I'm like huh let me check out their account I can't see anywhere that that their stuff is for sale do not make your buyers go digging for information you want to make that barrier to purchase as little as possible direct people in your bio to where you sell the artwork let people know your commissions are open make constant stories make a highlight post it comment it you just need to make it obvious that you have stuff for sale please if right now you're thinking oh I think I do go fix it go right now fix it and you're going to hate me for this next one but you need to be consistent and I'm not talking you have to post every single day no it's okay I managed to grow my account to just under 60k Post in like every 3 to 5 days and it's fine if you miss some periods where you don't post for ages like I've just come up a period where I didn't get anything posted for months it's okay I'm still here the account's still there yeah I lost like a few thousand followers who cares who cares it's fine you just want to stay in the Forefront of people's minds now we're going to move on to the next platforms which are eBay and Etsy one of these platforms sucks they're both similar in the fact that they drive their own traffic which means that you don't need a following anywhere else you don't need to have a social media or anything like that because they will find you buyers despite Etsy be marketed as this place for crafty people with handmade Goods I had a real trouble selling there my listings on Etsy would get way less views than they would on eBay with eBay you could expect to sell stuff within a few days to a few weeks months but a lot of stuff on Etsy it took years to sell which I find so ironic because Etsy is marketed as this place where you can sell you know original handmade artwork compared to eBay where you know someone's flogging the Nan's old sofa and a dodgy broken laptop strange and maybe I was a little bit harsh saying that Etsy sucks but it sucked what I was trying to do which was mostly sell original paintings but I did go through a phase where I sold these little paintings on pieces of wood they were more like gifts and they sold really well the profit margin wasn't great so I ended up not continuing those but this is what I mean when I say who's your target audience and your goals from a platform because if you're selling gift items cards prints I think Etsy could be a benefit to you but for me personally I could sell way higher value paintings on eBay than I ever could on Etsy if you want the overall figures I made about £22,000 on eBay compared to only a few hundred on Etsy tips for selling on eBay make sure you have great product photos you are only going to have 1 second to capture a buyer's attention when they're scrolling through hundreds of paintings just like yours I would also recommend including staging images this is where people get see the painting in a scene like a living room so they can really see what it will look like in their own home and don't worry if you don't have anywhere aesthetic in your house to take these pictures you can use preset staging sets I don't know what to call them staging images which I have a load of so if you would like to access those to make your own then the link will be down in the description what I do is I use procreate and you can also use Photoshop to move one of your artworks into the scene to show people what it looks like you just got to make sure with this that it's staying around the same size cuz people are gathering size of your artwork from these images as well another tip is I would also say have a look at other people selling similar artwork to you and make a note of the keywords that they use in their title and description because like Google eBay is a search engine so you need to put those keywords in your titles so that the algorithm can pick that up and show your painting to the correct buyers whilst eBay is great for starting out you may want to upgrade at some point you will struggle to increase your pricing over time on a place like eBay because no one really knows who you are even with a spectacular painting a buyer who has only just found your artwork will likely be reluctant to pay the ,000 price tag because they hardly know who you are which leads me to my next platform owning your own website having your own site is really great it adds to your credibility and it gives you the freedom to be able to customize it however you like however there are two things that I would consider before making the decision are the fees that I'm being charged by another platform exceeding the cost that it would take to run my own site for example a standard website on Squarespace costs around £250 annually plus a 3% fee every time someone buys your work sorry I got to I got to read from this one cuz I need to make sure my figures are right so if I'm selling £3,000 wor an art on eBay annually with eBay taking a fee of 12. 8% then using eBay is costing me £384 annually compared to Squarespace where if I sold the same amount it would cost me £340 annually at this point it is more cost effective to own your own site the second thing is can I drive my own traffic to this website ideally you want the answer to one of these questions to be yes before you get your own site of course you can get your own site at any time you like don't let me tell you when you need to get it when's the best time I just wanted to let you know of like the cost benefit of it all so that you can make an informed decision woo that is selling platforms done so that is by far the chunkiest section of this whole video so sorry for that huge information dump that is it now you can chill until we get to legalities I still struggle with legalities to this day but it's okay I'll walk you through it all okay next is pricing now pricing is really personal to each and every artist but I'd say there's four things that you will need to factor into your pricing level of experience confidence and ability credibility and demand it's about trying to strike a balance between getting paid enough for your time and your skills while also making sure you're actually getting work it will be a good idea to put some prices in place that you feel comfortable with and then seeing how people react to them you know it's okay to change your pricing sometimes you do just need to put yourself out there and see how the market reacts if after a few months you're not getting any hits and you're not getting any new clients it could be an indication to possibly put your pricing down conversely though if you're doing amazing and you're getting loads of clients that could be a sign to put the pricing up because as your demand goes up your pricing should also go up but there are also methods to pricing if you want to keep your prices consistent as you go up through the sizes the one that I personally use is the price per square inch this is calculated by doing length time width time your price per square inch it's up to you what you want to set this price per square inch at I personally have mine at 1. 25 at the moment so as an example if I'm still on a painting which is 20 by 24 in then I will do 20 * 24 * 1.

25 to get my price £600 now it's not to say you can't still mess with these prices that's kind of it gives me something to work from obviously if painting took a lot longer maybe the price will be higher if I used gold leaf you know that's really expensive material so I will increase the price so now you know where you're selling what your pricing structure is now it's time to know how to take payments super simple on sites like eBay and Etsy it's all automated so all you have to do is link your bank account and the money will go straight in but if you're taking commissions or you're selling your paintings through say Instagram you need to know how to make invoices I personally use payal and they take a 2. 99% fee I think out of every payment when sending invoices you will need to include a terms and conditions section and for me at the start this was really daunting I had no idea what to include and I could really find any resources online on telling me what to write so to make it easier for you I have just made some templates on how to lay out your terms and conditions so you can access them in the ebook down in the description for Commissions in particular you absolutely must take a deposit before you start painting I take a 20% deposit but anywhere between 20 to 50% is pretty standard this is so important because you need to cover yourself if there is a circumstance where your client doesn't pay you and then at at least you've had a deposit from them which is non-refundable so that you've not completely wasted your time you do hear horror stories of artists online where they didn't take a deposit and the client has just ghosted them save yourself from that happening you know it's the most we can do to protect ourselves as artists now we're going to move on to packaging you know when I mentioned at the start about things not exactly going smooth sailing well this is one of the many mistakes that I made along the way this is a picture of a packaged painting with a hole through it it was a picture from the client showing how the painting arrived them and I was devastated but let this be a story to warn you about how important packaging really is it's safe to say that I am more than meticulous with my packaging now and if you're wondering what happened with the story the clients were lovely about it and I was able to get fully refunded for the painting because I had insurance on it and I just made them a new one your first layer of packaging should be acidfree tissue paper or something like this which is safe to have on the surface of the painting and is just that first layer of protection you're then going to follow this by at least two layers of bubble wrap I wrap one one way and then I flip the pain in and I wrap it again the other way always make sure the bubbles are facing up so the flat side of the bubble wrap is to the canvas because if you are sending something like canvas you don't want those bubbles to be pressing into the surface I then with extra cut off strips of bubble wrap I kind of fold the them a few times and then wrap them around the corners you can also use something like foam corner protectors just make sure those Corners are really well covered cuz they are one of the weak points they are something that could get bashed and dented now I make sure I have loads of layers of cardboard cuz that is what I messed up in the past you want to use BC cardboard this is a type of corrugator cardboard where there is two layers it's like double decked cardboard right so it's nice and thick it doesn't really Bend and it should protect your painting now I actually make my own box es because it's really difficult to find boxes that are the right sizes it's way easier just to make your own I actually have this one that I made earlier so this is empty there's no painting in this yet but this is an example of one of my boxes has my branding on it which is a nice little touch if you would like to learn how to make these boxes it's super simple and I've included a full set of instructions to it down in the ebook I also want to cover packaging add-ons so these are the extra little bits and Bobs you put in and on the packaging which are just quite a nice touch I think so the first thing is a certificate of authenticity a lots of collectors will expect this as part of the painting I didn't use to include it like don't worry if you sent paintings out and you haven't included a certificate of authenticity it's basically just a document to show that the work has been produced by you it acts like a sales receipt you know if the painting is ever sold on sometimes a certificate of authenticity is necessary to prove that the painting is what it says it is on the certificate you need to include the title of the painting date it was created the materials you used to make it the artist signature and if you made prints then the number of prints that you made of it there are loads of templates for certificates like this on places like canva which are free online which is where I got mine from as well it's also great to include a business card if you have one a handwritten thank you note is a really lovely addition as well as well as care instructions a lot of people may not know how to look after a painting so it could be a really lovely touch if you tell people about the ways to protect the painting to make it last much longer these may seem like small insignificant things but when your collector sees how much extra time and energy you've put into it it shows that you really care about the artwork and you care about the collector it could be the difference between just a happy customer who received what they ordered to a repeat customer who has been so impressed with the service that they go ahead and buy another painting from you in the future and last thing fragile stickers or just some fragile tape anything that says fragile if you don't have any if you don't have the money write it on the box that's what I used to do I grab a sharpy Fragile on the box cuz let's face it this is the average postal experience the main thing to think about when choosing a postal service to use is whether or not they offer insurance and how high the liability of insurance they offer not all companies will offer it for paintings because they know they can be particularly valuable and easily damaged Others May offer insurance but only up to a certain cost in my experience Royal Mail if you are UK based DHL and FedEx all offer higher liability insurance for artwork I personally go with FedEx because they give discounts to businesses who create accounts with them and post often and they also do insurance up to £1,000 when shipping artwork that costs higher than £1,000 you will need to start looking into art shipping Services it's really difficult to find postal companies like regular couriers who will cover paintings that are that higher cost when buying your postage there should be an option to declare the price of the artwork as well as being able to purchase a higher liability insurance always purchase the insurance always even if you're so confident in your packaging and you don't want to have to spend extra money on the insurance always buy it you do not know what could happen all righty now for the super fun part legalities besides the terms and conditions which I did Cover earlier most of the things you need to know about legalities is in terms of shipping abroad I'm sure you can imagine my shock when I sold my first order abroad and had to fill out a load of paperwork I was not expecting that you know call call me stupid but I had never sent anything abroad I didn't expect my painting would need to go through loads of checks I actually got away with doing a lot of stuff wrong and I never really realized until I started selling higher value artwork I think once the value starts to increase more customers they tend to pay more attention to you I got told things that was like oh you can't really be doing that or like you need this kind of number and I was like uh I've I've never needed one before and they were like well you need one so make sure that you know the Tariff code of the item that you are selling a tariff code is basically just an internationally recognized code which is used to identify an item you are selling original paintings have a tari code of 9701 91 0000 I would write that number down because I am always forgetting it or always misplacing it and I have to go and research it all over again if it isn't original paintings that you're selling then you may need to look up the Tariff code yourself I have included the link to the gov.