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Today’s episode is sponsored by ArtStoreFronts.com. Maximize your Art Sales, By Having a Website that is Built to Do So. Build a website today, and you'll compete on a new level tomorrow.

Main Segment

If you’re going to sell your art online, you need to be at least passing familiar with how things work online, both technically and culturally.

Doing research is important because you’ll understand how other artists are already selling their art.

I’m not talking about researching what art to make. You should make whatever inspires you.

You can start with a simple Google search for the kind of art you make. For example:
pet portrait painting
plein air ocean
bug art
Make a note of the top websites that you find in these searches

What do you like about their websites? What do you dislike?
What is their pricing?
Do they talk about successful sales?
From a collector’s point of view, is all of the relevant information there? Size, price, shipping, descriptions, etc
There are some neat tools that will allow you to figure out a little more about how successful an artist’s website is.


The Moz toolbar shows you domain, page authority, backlinks, and social shares of that page.


From there you can look at the artist’s social media activity.
Do they interact with their fans? Which social media accounts are the most active?
Do they have any social media promotions? Common hashtags? Who do they follow?


Take a look at Instagram. Use the search tool to look for art in your niche. Click on the hashtags that they use.


Other tools:
similarweb.com
Facebook graph search for pages liked by your friends, pages liked by people who like your page, groups your friends have joined
look at the blogs of artists you like, who is on their blog roll or who do they talk about?