So you want to know how to actually make money off your art. Well this page is going to tell you everything that you need to know about how to sell your art online. Many people have found great success selling their art online and make significant money from online sales. But if you’re despairing of ever earning money from your art, I’ve got you covered. Artists can earn anyway from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands depending on a number of factors. The most influential one (and the one you can influence the easiest!) is your marketing strategy.
And that is the focus of this post. How to market yourself and your art so that you can sell more. That way you can focus more on your art and less about selling it.
1. Create a Brand
The easiest way to make yourself memorable and professional to customers to create a cohesive brand. In the lightning paced world of digital marketing, you need to be instantly recognizable across a variety of platforms. There’s a number of elements to a brand that you need to make sure are the same across your digital presence.
- brand voice
- formality
- colors
- logo
- fonts
- styling
- images
Before you put too much effort into attracting customers to you, make sure that once they find you, you’ll be so memorable they’ll just HAVE to come back. And that’s an easy way to sell your art online.
(If you’d like more of a guideline on how to actually create a brand, check my post on just that out here: How to Create a Successful Brand for Your Art Business in 7 Easy Steps)
2. Optimize Your Website
Every artist trying to sell online should have a website. Not only does it give a place for you to display your portfolio, but it gives you a chance to really sell your customers on you and your art. Without a website, you’ll constantly be asking “how do I sell my art online?”. Because you won’t have the tools you need to succeed.
I know, I know, you’re thinking you don’t want to be a sneaky salesman with your pages full of “BUY MY STUFF”. But the good news is that you don’t have to. There are more subtle ways to encourage customers to buy once they land on your page. Here’s a few:
Everything on your website should have a purpose.
- The headlines of blog posts and titles of pages should draw visitors to click on them and look at them more. The images you display should attract them to visit your gallery, etc.
- As long as you think “Why am I putting this here?” whenever you add something to your website, you’ll be in good shape.
Ensure that the epic brand you’ve just created is applied across your website.
- Keep your voice and styling choices consistent across your website. That way you’ll come across as more than just “one more” artist.
Use alternative text for images.
- As an artist, you have so many images on your website and if you haven’t put alt text on them, you’re missing out on a huge chance to get your site to show up higher in search results!
Choose your keywords carefully.
- On the note of getting your website higher in search results (this means more visitors and more sales!), making sure that you weave keywords throughout your text will help you in your art marketing.
- You should think about what your ideal customer would search, and try to focus on those topics. That way your customers are more likely to find you!
Implement basic copywriting techniques.
- Copywriting is the art of writing words that sell.
- And you don’t need to be an amazing writer to implement the most basic of them: emphasize benefits, not features.
- Instead of emphasizing what your art is, emphasize what your art can do for your customer. Maybe your art brings in a fun playful mood or really sets the tone for an upscale space. Whatever it is, lean into it!
- I guarantee you that customers would rather read that than the dull list of features most artists use.
3. Market on Social Media
I’m sure you’ve heard it before. Social media is a marketing game changer and it should be part of your strategy for any business.
And it should be! Especially for art. And especially for selling your art online.
Social media is powerful in that it has the ability to reach a broader audience and enable you to connect directly with your customers. If you’ve managed to create a distinct, cohesive brand, translating it to social media should be no trouble at all. (See how it’s all coming together?)
Many tips will tell you to get accounts on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, X, TikTok, etc, and master them all.
Instead, when just starting off, pick one or two and get really good at it.
I mean get really, really, good at it. Get so good at it that communicating on that platform is natural and then expand.
Because some platforms will be better for different businesses. As an artist, I would recommend starting with Instagram and Pinterest, because those are the platforms that can maximize your gorgeous images the best for your art marketing campaign. A good secondary pick would be Facebook because it’s known to have the highest level of social-to-website conversion, which is good if you’re wanting to sell your art there!
4. Direct People to Your Website
I bet that you as an artist have chances to interact with other art-inclined people. Maybe you have an art show, or an art club, or even just friends and family.
I’m here to tell you to direct them all to your website.
Tell those friends. Tell your family. Shoot out a text to everyone you know. Put it on all of your social media, make flyers, business cards, whatever it takes. Because getting a steady flow of traffic to your website (especially if it’s new) will help you exponentially.
Direct people to your website from in person events and you’ll see your website traffic increase. As you get more visitors and more people interested, you’ll get ranked higher in search ratings, increasing the ability of your business to attract customers.
In Conclusion:
You don’t have to be stressed and anxious. You don’t have to give up on selling art online just because you aren’t seeing results right now. Lots of the tips on this page will help you to increase traffic now AND over time. These are just the beginner tips, as you increase your ability to market your art, you’ll learn even more from experience about how to sell your art online.
(And you’ll start making that very important money!)
As artists, never forget the importance of being willing to market yourself. That’s how you’ll get to selling more art online.
It’s not rocket science. It’s just good strategy.
