| By :
Joelle Rene Hughes
Do you remember what it was like when you first started painting? If you are like the majority of beginner artists, my guess is that you were disappointed with the outcome; you envisioned a masterpiece and ended up with... well, something completely different. Does this sound familiar to you? It's an experience most artists can relate to and the bottom line is that there are no secrets to instantaneous success in painting - for the most part, you just have to paint your way there. Learning to successfully sell your art online is a lot like painting - it doesn't happen overnight. Just as most of us are not born Rembrandts, Picassos or Van Goghs, we also did not come into this life with inherent skills for internet marketing and online sales. It's a process - an art form in itself - and for the majority of us it is a learned skill. Your first painting was most likely not a 20 foot by 40 foot mural and your initial foray into online marketing should follow suit. Start small - get your artwork out there - and then nurture and enrich your online art business until it blossoms. By now you've probably heard lots of instant success stories - and I'm sure they do happen occasionally. But typically art marketing success is a process of evolution - not revolution. Just as your paintings have evolved over time, so will your marketing expertise. Once you have a body of artwork ready for the internet world you will need to have a custom website developed to showcase your work, right? Well, unless you are an artist/web designer, you might want to rethink this. I'm not saying that you can't have that custom website down the road, but for now you may want to hold off before you start spending all your hard-earned money on your own website. It can get pretty lonely out there all by yourself! An easier and less expensive option would be to start with a popular art hosting site. Most of these sites allow you to upload your artwork images instantly, watermark them if desired, add some descriptions, titles and tags, set your price and shipping options and in a single day you are ready to start selling your art. If you would rather sell prints of your original artwork, consider using a Print-On-Demand (POD) site and let them handle the shipping and sales for you. After you upload high resolution images of your art and set up your profile and art specific information, they handle the rest. Art hosting sites not only provide you with a low-cost or free solution to selling your artwork online, they also have the benefit of being ranked high in the search engines which will provide more targeted traffic to your art sales. For starters, check out Imagekind, Etsy, EBSQart, Mesart and Art.com for art hosting solutions. Some of these are Print-On-Demand sites while others allow you to sell your original art. As an added bonus, some sites allow you to apply your images to a variety of products that they produce at little or no cost to you. Think about it. In just a few minutes you can have your artwork sold on calendars, coffee mugs, clothing, mouse pads, and a huge variety of other merchandise. You simply join the site, step through some simple set up screens and almost instantly your art merchandise is ready to sell. Zazzle and CafePress are two of the more popular sites for merchandise creation. So start checking out some of the popular art hosting and merchandise creations sites and find ones that best suit your art marketing needs. It's time to share your creations with the world!
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