People with artistic talents often dream of the day when they can sell their goods and support themselves based solely off of their artwork. The truth is, the Internet has made it more possible then ever for artists to find a market for their goods, thereby helping to pay the bills.
However, not everyone is knowledgeable about how to set up and design a website.
Of course, these people could pay someone a large amount of money to set them up with a store, but when it costs $600-2,000 plus to get a site off the ground, this is beyond the financial capabilities of many starving artists.
Of course there are other options like Yahoo Stores, or even e-Bay but these options have their drawbacks, too. For example, a Yahoo store costs . and you will still have to build and manage it on your own. As for e-Bay, the fees are somewhat high and the typical customers are usually looking to get a great deal, not the typical audience for highly artistic products.
For those that fork out the money and get the site built, the job still isn’t over. You will still have to learn how to market it on your own and establish a customer base that will support your business. The good thing about having a website is it makes this job much easier to accomplish this task because your customers have a place to find you, see examples of your work, and read interesting stories about your life, the design process and more.
If you truly have beautiful art that inspires people, your website is a vital link between you and potentially repeat customers. Whether, your medium, people need portrait from photo to be able to find you. If you are out at festivals showing your goods and don’t have a website, you are not taking full advantage of your customers. You can think of a weekend festival as an opportunity to sell some stuff, or you can look at it as an opportunity to sell some staff and establish a regular customer base that will shop with you repeatedly. If you aren’t available on the web, how will this ever happen for you? It won’t! A simple website option for artists.