Get Your Art Online – Three Main Ways

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The Internet is a powerful marketing tool for artists. A well-constructed website can reap thousands of viewers per day from all over the globe, all of whom can become potential collectors of your work.

To set up a website to display your art, you have several choices: you can do it yourself, you can hire a web designer to do it for you, or you can post your art onto an online artist gallery. Each of these three choices comes with its own pros and cons. Read through these descriptions to decide with route is best for you:

1.) Build your own website: If you are computer savvy, you can create your own website by registering a domain name, selecting a web host, and then building your site using a program such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage. This is the most time-consuming option, because if you don’t already know how to use these programs then you will have to learn them from scratch. These programs can be quite costly, but there are also some free WSYIWYG editors available, such as KompoZer. On the plus side, building your own website allows you complete control of how your work will be presented to the public.

2.) Hire a website designer: If you are pressed for time but you have a big enough budget, you can considering hiring a professional to design your website. Hiring a website designer will usually cost several hundred dollars, depending on the size and complexity of your website. Many designers charge per page. The benefits of hiring a website designer is that the site we will be built a lot more quickly than if you had to learn HTML, CSS and any other necessary computer languages from scratch. A good website designer will know how to present your artwork in the best way possible, using a clean and professional layout. This is something you might struggle with if you try to create a website on your own. Lastly, any decent website designer will also be well-versed in SEO (which we will cover in a future blog post), which is invaluable in generating traffic to your site.

3.) Post your work on an online artist gallery: An online artist gallery is an extensive website that artists can join (either for free or for a fee) to create a profile upload photos of their art. Examples of online artist galleries include ArtMajeur, ArtSpan, and d’Art. These sites tend to have free and paid versions, with extra perks for paying members. This is by far the least favorable of the three available options, because it means that your work will essentially be lost amongst all the other 10s of 1000s of artworks. If you want any degree of web traffic from these types of sites, you will need to become a paying member.

In conclusion, if you want to gain a wider audience for your art through the Internet, then your best bet is to either build your own website or hire a website designer to build one for you.
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The Main Ingredients to Creating an Effective Artist Website

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In previous blog posts, we provided an overview of art marketing in the digital world and followed that with three main ways for artists to display their art online. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the most important elements that are needed to make sure your artist’s website delivers the results that you want.

Virtual Gallery – As an artist, the main goal of your website should be to display your work. Put your best foot forward: make sure to take good pictures of your artwork using a high-quality digital camera (or hire someone to take professional photos), then arrange them on your website in a well-presented gallery format. Your virtual gallery should be easy to navigate, so that viewers can conveniently browse your body of work.

Biography – When people view your website, they will want to know the person behind the paintbrush. When they can form a human connection with the person who makes the art, they will feel more comfortable with contacting you. Your biography can include basic information like: your birthday, your place of birth as well as your present location, if and where you attended art school, etc. You should also include more personal anecdotes, such as what inspires your art and what you are trying to achieve with your artwork. Some artists post their CVs that detail their exhibition history and gallery affiliations.

Contact – The contact page is one of the most important aspects of an artist’s website. Whether you are seeking gallery representation, direct sales or licensing opportunities, you want people who like your work to be able to contact you to get the ball rolling. Your contact information needs to be easily accessible – don’t make your site visitors dig for it, or they may give up and click away. People surfing the web generally have short attention spans. (Tip: it is best to have a page that includes a form people can fill out to submit comments or queries, rather than to post your email address online.)

Those are the three main ingredients that an artist’s website must have. If you are a self-representing artist, you might also want to include a sales page that explains what people can expect if they buy directly from you online (such as payment info, shipping info, etc).

Another option is to connect a blog to your website, so that people can get an even more behind-the-scenes peek into your life. In a future blog post, we’ll discuss what you’ll need to know to make your art blog interesting and insightful, so that readers come back for more!