The Complete Beginner’s Guide: How To Sell Art Online On PrintShop By Designhill?

Last updated on January 19th, 2023

Artists are generally not the market savvy people. But in today’s highly competitive art business, even they can’t ignore the realm of marketing. Fortunately, PrintShop takes care of their marketing woes and help them to sell art at the right prices. So, while pondering how to sell art online, just open your store at PrintShop and start selling your art in just a few steps. How? Here’s the quick guide to exploring this platform at your best advantage.

The selling of artworks is challenging even for experienced artists. The artists and designers who have successfully built a customer base also formulate a new marketing strategy to stand out.

After all, hundreds of online platforms are like a home to thousands of artists. Where they have lined up their unique artworks for sale. And, some around, they all are your competitors.

In today’s art market, catching the attention of prospective buyers is becoming increasingly difficult. They can always switch to other sites to shop for art.

Therefore, your portfolio must be unique and impressive to stand out in the competition. Experienced artists know how to create great portfolios and drive customers to the site and make them buy artworks.

Note that while the competition is increasing, there is no dearth of art buyers. They buy art in abundant quantities across the world in every category. With the income levels rising, even the developing world is experiencing a boom in art sales.

According to Statista Report:

– the worldwide online art sales have skyrocketed from 1.57 billion USD in 2013 to 4.64 billion USD in 2018 and it is expected to shoot up to 9.32 billion USD by 2024. These statistics should encourage frustrated artists to come out with new strategies for how to sell art online.

Most importantly, the artists today have access to online sites like PrintShop, (which is an art selling and printing shop owned by the leading creative marketplace Designhill) that helps artists and designers to sell their artworks online.

At this shop, you can confidently showcase a variety of artworks in multiple categories. What is more, you enjoy the massive customer database and huge customer traffic of Designhill also is readily available to your shop at PrintShop to sell artworks.

However, as an artist or designer, you need to make additional efforts from your end as well. That is the way to take advantage of this platform in selling more art pieces and to give a boost to your earnings.

Here Are Some Basics To Explore PrintShop To Sell Art Online

01. Consider Your Passion

The very first decision you need to take is to open your shop at PrintShop is to think – What’s your passion? And, here, passion means the category – niche you want to choose for selling. It is a quick and straightforward process. All you need to do is to sign in to the platform to access your shop to sell art online.

But which artworks you should create and sell more? A precise answer to that question is the basis of your marketing and sales strategy. It is also the question of building your career as a freelance artist.

We advise you to focus on the art and its style that you are passionate about. Then start creating more art pieces around it when thinking – how to sell art.

For example, you have your heart more in creating illustrations. You get inspirations from observing master illustrators’ works and dream of becoming one amongst them. That shows your passion.

Or, hand-lettering art may be your core interest. It triggers new ideas all the time in your head. Similarly, photography could be the art that fascinates you. So, your passion is basic to sell art as a designer.

A reason why passion matters the most is that it helps in focusing on creative work. You can tirelessly work for hours as you are emotionally charged all the time. That is how you will consistently produce creative artistic works that customers want to buy.

02. Research Your Target Customers

Have you pinpointed who’s your ideal customer? Does that person come from an affluent background or average middle class? What could be the educational, social, and cultural backgrounds of the potential buyer of your art? You should do some market research to find precise answers to such questions.

For a fresher, finding out the target audience is surely a difficult job. At the same time, if you try to sell your art pieces to people and friends, you can find who are those interested bunch of people. Also, show your online art gallery to some experienced artists and discuss who could be your prospective buyer of art.

With experience, you realize that you cannot please every buyer with your creative work. Therefore, target only a smaller section of the art buying audience once you identify them as an approach to selling your art.

03. Display Your Best Work In The Profile Page

Your profile page on PrintShop holds the key to sell art online successfully. This is the page where buyers will visit to know about your varieties of artworks and styles. If they are impressed, they become your potential buyers.

Therefore, make sure that you display your best work in the portfolio page. Do not repeat the mistake that many fresher artists and graphic designers often make. They crowd the page with their entire gamut of art pieces.

They just cannot resist displaying their inferior works in the portfolio to make it look full. But, it creates a bad first impression on the visitors. Instead, showcase your best work to make a lasting impression when you think of how to sell art online.

04. Sell At The Right Price

Most buyers lose interest in artwork if its prices are too expensive. They will buy art at very high prices only if the artist is a brand name. So, if you are a fresher artist who just started a shop at PrintShop, keep the prices to the bare minimum. That is your way to entice customers and compete in your niche market.

However, do not sell your precious works at throwaway prices. The best prices are the ones that entice the customers and you earn profit as well. While planning about how to sell art and make money, calculate the right prices first knowing your cost of producing the art.

You must have invested money in buying colors, etc material and gave your time as well. That cost should be the starting price. Then add the profit that you wish to earn on selling the art piece. The resultant sum will be your ideal low but the profitable price to sell the art.

Note, also that you should test prices as well. Just increase the price a bit and see if the customers show their interest or not. Do not be adamant about keeping the higher prices. Instead, consistently adjust the prices until you find the right level.

Once you have made a name for yourself in your niche art market, you become a brand and authority. Then, buyers will not mind paying you higher prices as well. You can then set the prices higher to earn more profit. But that will take time, for sure.

05. Give Descriptions Of Your Artwork

When a visitor comes to your shop and does not find any description of your artwork, you are putting off the interest of prospective buyers.

Often, people want to know more about the product before buying it. It gives customers the much-needed confidence in buying a product. Similarly, a proper description of artwork helps customers make the buying decision.

Write a line or two to describe what that piece of art is all about. Give a hint of how the art is going to help a business owner help. You can mention the inspiration that goes into creating that art.

The precise and relevant information will convince buyers over the usefulness of art for them. That is a crucial tip when thinking about how to sell art online wisely.

But make sure that you insert some keywords of your art business in the description so that your portfolio site ranks higher on the online search results.

Therefore, do some keyword research as well to find out what words customers type in the search boxes to locate the type of art you create and sell.

The words are called as Keywords and the process is called as Searching Keywords. Make sure that you do not miss this vital tip to sell art on PrintShop.

06. Project Yourself As An Expert Artist

Remember that people don’t buy products. They buy people. They buy brands. They buy you! This is because brands assure them of quality, durability, etc. values that are worth their money. The same rule applies to the selling of art.

When you ponder on how to sell your art online, make efforts to project yourself as an expert in your field of art. That measure will help build your image as an expert and confident artist who knows the job well.

To carefully build your image of being an authority over the art style you are passionate about, you can do a lot of things. For instance, start a blog that discusses various aspects of art and its market. Your blog should resolve the issues many artists combat in creating and selling artworks.

Give them tips to master the techniques to create art, educate them on the new trends, or tell them about how to sell art online. You can also start your YouTube channel to tutor budding artists on different ways of creating unique art pieces.

Similarly, think of guest blogging. Write blogs for the other sites of great reputation. These sites have a massive fan following. By writing a guest post for them, you use their huge traffic to your advantage.

Use the right keywords in the guest blog and give the link to your art shop on PrintShop. If you aren’t good at writing, you can hire freelancers for the same at very cheap cost.

07. Market And Promote On Social Media Platforms

Social media has proved its worth in promoting various types of businesses. So, take advantage of the massive reach of social platforms amongst millions of people. Today, your potential buyers of artworks use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other channels to search for information about artistic works.

Put impressive pictures of your artworks on Instagram with description and the right use of hashtags. Target your art community with the hashtags so that your art reaches out to them.

When using Facebook, write a somewhat lengthy description with your artwork images. Similarly, Twitter allows you to briefly describe the art along with its picture.

Make sure that you post text and visual content regularly on different social media channels. This is an important strategy to build an art buyers’ community.

Therefore, make sure that you use most of the social channels to your advantage for promoting your artworks and skills. You should post content, both visual and text, regularly on these platforms regarding your specific interest in art.

Make efforts that you come out as an expert in your field on social channels. If you can explore, then there is no better strategy then this to drive thousands of prospective art buyers to your shop on PrintShop.

You should also explore different forums where artists and art buyers post their questions to find the right answers from experts. Contribute your bit in answering those questions. This will help you project you as an authority in your field of art.

Read More: How to leverage social media as a designer.

Now that you know how to explore PrintShop to sell art online, you are ready to open a shop on this platform.

Here’s The Step By Step Guide – How To Sell Online On Printshop

Step – 1. Go To PrintShop

Login to Designhill website to access the main Designhill’s Dashboard, which owns PrintShop. You may also be already on the site.

Here you can locate PrintShop button on the Home Page after scrolling down the page a bit. Or, you can click https://www.designhill.com/shop/ to directly open the PrintShop homepage.

Step – 2. Sign Up

At the PrintShop page, click on the Log in or Start Selling buttons at the top right corner. Click on the Start Selling button and find the box – Are you registered on Designhill?

Here, if you are not registered, then first get registered by providing your email address and your design specialization in the boxes. You may already have signed up for Designhill with your email address. If so, then just provide the same email and password at the PrintShop to get started.

Step – 3. Upload Your Artwork

Once you have signed in on the PrintShop, you are lead to the Upload Artwork page. Here, you can upload your choice of artwork to your shop at this platform. Make sure that your file must be either in JPEG or PNG format. You can file size before uploading the images as well.

Step – 4. Go To Design Gallery

At the design gallery page, you access to a plethora of graphic design ideas and inspirations. You can use them to enrich your designs further to make it attractive, useful, and salable for customers.

Step – 5. View Your Uploaded Artwork

After uploading your artwork and refining it with new ideas, if any, the next step is to see the uploaded artwork.

Step – 6. Choose Artwork Products

Now you can see variety of products where your uploaded artwork would  be printed. At this page you are given a variety of products in men’s and women’s wear, phone cases, posters, home & living, and accessories. Tick which products should have a print of your artwork.

Step – 7. Choose A Print Area

After you have selected the products that will display and print your artwork, you can now mark the right place where the artwork should appear on the product.

So, if you selected a T-shirt, the software allows you to mark a precise place such a middle of the chest, or at frontside, or backside where the artwork should be printed. You can do that on this page on various products.

Step – 8. Choose Colors

While on the same page where you selected the print area, you can pick the right print colors as well. Select a primary color and a secondary backup color for the print area. Deactivate all those colors that you do not want to be included in the printed artwork.

Step – 9. Describe Your Artwork

Once you are finished with picking the right print area and color for artwork, and apply the changes, you move to the next page. Here you are asked to write a description of your artwork. Then, click on the Apply Changes button.

Step – 10. Set Artwork Price

Then, you are directed to the artwork price page. This is the most important page it will help you to understand how to set price of your products.

Here, first set your commission in percentage terms from 5 slabs. Or you can enter your own commission percentage. The retail price will be displayed for the commission you choose or enter. This will give you an idea about the right commision slab for you to sell a particular artwork.

After you have compared your options and picked the right commission and retail price, click on the Create button and go to the next page.

Step – 11. Wait For The Review

After you click on the Create Button, a page asking you to wait for review of the artwork and prices appears.

Step – 12. See Your Artwork

The site soon displays the approved artwork on your shop along with description and the prices you chose.

These are the key steps you take to showcase your artworks to sell them online on your shop at PrintShop. Remember that each time you upload a new artwork, go through these steps to sell it.

Pay attention to these tips will surely guide you toward making your art shop on PrintShop a hub for customers.

Wrapping Up

While thinking about how to sell art online, consider PrintShop as your trusted platform to open a shop for your art. At this shop, showcase your best works with description, know your target customer of artworks, and set the price just right for prospective buyers considering your skill and experience. You should also use social media to promote your art shop and project yourself as an authority in your field of art.

Sell Your Art Online