How To Choose A Platform For Selling Your Art

The good news is, there are more options than ever for selling your art online. The bad news is, not all options are created equally! Now more than ever, the choice of which platform you sell your art on will have a huge impact on your product, your sales, and your experience as an artist merchant. It’s important to make this choice carefully, because it will determine what kind of work you can sell, what costs you’ll incur, the quality of your prints, and how much you’ll get paid.

In general, there are two major categories of platforms where you can sell your art:

BYO Inventory Sites

These are marketplaces like Etsy, Ebay, Artpal, Artrepreneur, or others where you list inventory you have. While these can be great options if you’re selling original pieces, they come with their own set of challenges. Often, you may need to pay for a membership. Also, you need to keep your inventory on hand. This might not be a big deal if you only have a few pieces, but as your collection grows, it can take up a lot of space!

Another downside of these kinds of marketplaces is that you are responsible for packaging, shipping, and fulfillment of all orders. These tasks take up valuable time and can become frustrating when they get in the way of doing what you really want to do: making more art.

That said, if you’re looking to sell original pieces, BYO inventory sites are a great bet. Etsy.com is one of the best known options for artists who want to sell their original work.

Print On Demand Marketplaces

Print On Demand marketplaces let you sell prints of your work, eliminating the need for you to carry inventory. In general, all you need to do is upload high-resolution images of your art and they handle printing for you when an order is placed.

That said, not all print on demand marketplaces are created equal. Because you won’t actually ever handle the artwork being sent to your customer, it’s important to choose a vendor you trust. Make sure you choose a printer that will use high quality materials, pay you promptly, and showcase your work in the best way possible.

You should consider what kinds of products you’d like to sell. Some print on demand marketplaces sell products like T-Shirts or iPhone cases. These can be great options if your art lends itself to those applications. If you want to sell art prints, though, you’ll want to choose a platform that is dedicated to high-quality art prints. Buyers can be skeptical of buying art prints from platforms that also sell knicknacks and tchotchkes.

VSUAL is a marketplace dedicated to art prints. We use archival-grade ink for every print, which ensures rich, deep, beautiful colors that won’t fade. We also offer buyers three grades of museum-quality paper stock: Hahnemühle Photo Rag, Canson Baryata, and Epson Semi Gloss. It’s important to us that every print look its absolute best: because our artists make amazing art, we want to guarantee them amazing prints.

Another difference between VSUAL and other print-on-demand platforms is that we offer both framed an unframed prints. We have a sleek, modern metal frame option as well as a more traditional natural wood frame. Either way, every frame is custom made to fit the artwork.

Getting Paid

Regardless of what kind of marketplace you choose, you’ll also want to understand how much you’ll pay and how much you’ll get paid. It’s free to list your work on VSUAL, and you set the markup. You can see how much you’ll make with different markups using our markup previewer. And because we believe it’s important to pay artists quickly, we pay out artists every week. No more 30 day lockup periods!

Once you’ve chosen a marketplace, the next step is to open a shop and list your work! In our next post, we’ll walk you through how you can list your prints and begin making money from your art.