Selling Art Online: The Creative Guide to Turning Your Artistic Work into Cash - Second Edition
by: Dave Conrey (0)
Your Art Deserves to Be Seen!
If youâre like most visual artists, at some point in your life, you were told you couldnât make a living from your workâvery few people get rich as photographers, illustrators or designersâGet a real job instead.
Many others of you were told there are only a handful of ways to become a successful artist; that galleries were hard to break into, and if you werenât in those trendy spaces, you werenât a real artist.
All due respect to the family and friends who may have given you that advice, but it is complete B.S., and I wrote this book for you. Selling Art Online shows you several ways you can take your art, make money, be happy, and beat back all the doubt and criticism.
This could be the most eye-opening book you read about being a creative entrepreneur. Whether youâre an illustrator, artist, designer, photographer or any variety of visual creator, this book could change your point of view on how you sell your work.
Is this a get rich quick book? No, not at all. Everything here is simple, but nothing is easy. You will work your butt off, especially at first, but as they say in gambling, âthe juice is worth the squeeze.â It will be hard, and you will love it.
This book gives you freedom. Freedom from the confines of old structures, freedom from the gatekeepers who keep you held back, and freedom from the oppressive comments of others intended to keep you from getting disillusioned, but youâre smarter, tougher, and more resourceful than they know.
Although you may not find overnight success within these pages, it will liberate you and give you tools to do more with the work you have, providing you new opportunity for more revenue and exposure.
The Reviews
First of all, I like books that are well organized and get to the point, and Selling Art Online is one of those books.Basically, depending on the type of art you create, there are different websites to sell your art from that have very different clientele. Obviously, the hard part is to find the right site to sell your art that will reach the right person who will like your art enough to buy it. The author helps you assess your website choices and motivates you to pick one and try it out. In fact, this book is like speed dating with 20 websites.Seriously, if this book doesn't give you the kick in the proverbial pants to post your art online, nothing will. The author genuinely wants you to get your art on the Internet and he feels it is his job to talk you into it by the end of the book. And again, to push you over the edge, he gives you 20 sites to choose from, which are grouped into five categories, and the pros and cons of each site--no excuses! If you're a control freak, there are sites for you. If you're more hands-off, then let these other sites do the work for you.By the way, he says if you don't think you're ready to put yourself out there or your art piece isn't perfect, you're wrong. Get your art on the Internet and don't be afraid to fail because nobody will care. Don't let fear paralyze you. And if you do fail, then maybe the site you picked wasn't the right fit and just try again with another site in the same or different category. As Tennyson once said, "'Tis better to have posted your art online and failed, then to have never posted at all." (That quote wasn't in the book.)The author also shares some of his tricks, like the "3T" method of posting, to promote your art-for-sale on social media websites. He even offers some ideas on how to create lots of interesting content for your online followers or blog readers.
Good for a beginner. The book is no-fluff and very informative and I am happy that I purchased it.The book is written as a presentation of all the different options available, with some opinion of what the author recommends, but in general the reader is prompted to make his/her own decisions. This is a style that many will appreciate.Honestly, I was looking more for a cookbook approach / step by step guide from beginning to end.I was hoping for guidance on how to photograph artwork and what resolutions are needed for the sites. The author leaves the homework to the reader. I am OK with that, and indeed there is much material on the internet all about photographing artwork and uploading to art websites. I was just hoping that it all would have been in the book. I would have liked more chronological advice:i.e. the author shows how you can have your work on many different sites. OK, but I would like to know where to start and how/when to expand, for example "start out with a general portfolio on site X, including your work that has already been sold, then add your artwork to a Direct Print Site so that you can also sell original artwork that has already been sold (if you are in to that kind of thing), Then ..."I recommend the book, but you will probably need to supplement more books or do more research on the net.
Even though this book is only 80 pages, these 80 pages could change your life. The only reason I didn't give the book five stars is because there are some typos and grammatical errors. (Nothing that a good editor or proofreader couldn't fix.) But on the positive side, 'Selling Art Online' is chock full of information about places and ways to sell your art online, the histories of those venues, and the differences between them.The author readily acknowledges that there is no 'one size fits all' solution and that the online landscape is always evolving. However, he pushes the artist to TAKE ACTION -- citing a quote from Steve Jobs: "Real artists ship" -- and encourages the reader to use this book to begin building your knowledge base while continuing to search out and evaluate new opportunities for sharing your art. I consumed this book in one sitting, on a Saturday evening (no social life?!?!), but the info at the end of the book about building your e-mail list and platform, sales funnels, and how to create new content from your art, and ways to sell that content, are worth many, many times the cost of this book.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wishes to actually make money from his/her art. This is not a highflautin "how to build your career and get into all the best galleries and museums." Conrey's book is filled with real, practical ideas of how to sell your art and where to go to sell it. It is full of all the promise of the Internet with reviews of the best (and not so good) sites to pedal your wares.We all love to create art but, frankly, you can't just keep piling it in the corner of the studio. Covey gives actual places to sell your art, what each website does, how to contact, and some of the hitches of each website. Of course, no book can cover it all but this one surely covers most.If you are a working artist who is disappointed in sales, try reading this book. It is a small price to pay for a BIG payoff.
