Deciding how to sell your art

Hey there,

So if you are new to selling art online you might be wondering exactly what you could be selling...so here are some ideas to help develop your collection ideas.

1. Originals - As your most prized asset, the original piece will be able to command a large ticket price, however attaining sales can be harder as people need to commit a larger amount and often need to really feel strongly about you piece. If you are going to focus solely on original pieces, make sure to get them scanned by a professional printer anyway so you can retain a copy for your records. Even if you don't want to use the files yet, you may in future. I recommend scanning them before varnishing and before signing as you could turn the piece into future products.

2. Prints - The most obvious second product is prints. You can choose a wide range of print qualities and personally I have found Giclee to be the best. Please see my other blog posts on the details of Giclee and what it means. You absolutely can produce cheaper home prints or non Giclee but pro printed items, just ensure you are using high quality ink and paper. I personally love Fotospeed paper as I think it looks great for colour vibrancy. Prints are a great way to continually earn from an image even after the original has sold.

3. Greeting cards- This is my third choice as I think they are a fantastic way of allowing your customer a low cost 'entry point' this is where they buy something small and low cost to get a feel for your art and whether they like it. Most of the customers who go on to buy my originals bought cards and prints first. These also act like business cards as they get displayed in peoples homes with your details on the back. Cards have also enabled me to easily break into wholesale as again they are a small and low cost way of accessing my work.

4. Homewares - Getting your art printed on cushions, coasters, throws and lampshades is a fab way of integrating your designs into the home and is more suitable for people buying gifts for others. You can get these printed yourself via someone like Wraptious or find a print on demand provider such as Printify, Printful or Contrado where you will make less profit but they do alot more of the work for you in terms of shipping and fulfilment.

5. Licensing - This is where a company buys or rents your design for use on large quantities of cards, homewares or clothing. If you go to any large scale garden centre you will see this in abundance...usually there will be an artists range of napkins, coasters, cards, dinner plates...all with one or two of the artists designs repeated across a range. This requires you approaching licensing companies to pitch your design to them. If they agree, you can negotiate a percentage of each piece sold or a one off fee for your design. It can take around 12 months to see your range created and money to come in so this is a long game, but it is well suited to those who are more into repeating patterns or surface pattern design.

If you can it is a great idea to mix and match these ideas, and also allow customers to have a choice of items. Usually when presented with a choice of 3 items people will go for the middle option. So originals could be grouped as small, medium and large canvases. Prints could be in A5, A4 and A3. Try to stick to 3 options for each category as giving too many buying options can be overwhelming for customers shopping and lead to less conversion.

Hope that all helps!

If you need more help head over to my Patreon membership here :D