Are you an artist trying to understand how to make money doing what you love? You are not alone. And whether you are a self-taught artist or a schooled artist, the challenges are the same.
Although there are many opportunities to sell your work at local and national art shows, there are many, many more opportunities to get your work seen by prospective buyers and art collectors. The internet has opened up so many new venues enabling artists to get their work seen by buyers internationally. In fact, the number of opportunities is almost overwhelming. The challenge is to find the best use of your time and choose wisely.
One of the first steps you need to take, as an artist, is to initiate getting a website or blog. Ideally, the site you create to house your artwork will be one that contains a function of showing your work in a gallery of images. You needn’t spend a lot of money doing this either. There are a ton of wordpress themes to choose from and a wordpress site is very user-friendly as far as adding new images and writings. You will want to make sure that your site showcases linking icons to your Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Ah, yes … social media. In this day and age, using social media is a must to survive. Although there are a number of social media options, such as using twitter, tumblr, facebook, instagram etc. … some lend themselves better to showcasing art than others. And if you have been keeping up with facebook recently, they are constantly changing their algorithims which determines how many people actually will see what you posted on your personal or business page. It is important to have a presence on facebook but the payoff is not as great as the early days. We are getting more and more feedback that the place to be, for an artist, is Instagram. Apparently there are art collectors that cull the Instagram feeds every day. In case you aren’t familiar with instagram, this is an app that you normally use from one of your devices, such as an iphone, ipad, nook etc.
Also, you will want to take advantage of online art galleries that will showcase and feature your artwork. Most of these art sites will take a percentage of any sale and they often pay for the shipping or the buyer does. Check out the details before signing up of course. Some of the best, and most reputable art sites, you will want to check out are: Saatchi Art, Art Finder and Ugallery.