As an artist, creation is only half the battle. Getting the due appreciation means a lot. If you are a painter, a sculptor, a writer, a performer or belong to any form of art, without promotion and publicity on the right marketing channels specially internet, you simply can’t achieve your goals.

Creativity has no price and there are plenty of them out there who appreciate this. It is extremely important that you mark some budget for marketing – how much it is up to you. Some might even find it unnerving or a roadblock they can’t get passed. There are cost effective ways to establish your online presence. Let me share the opportunities available for marketing the artwork online.

Why it is good idea to present the Artwork online?

Everyone appreciates the effectiveness of marketing in increasing the sales. I know a lot of artists do the promotion of their work through personal meetings, traditional galleries and showcases, the exhibition at the known art galleries – booking a slot, presenting your work to the invited guests and booking the orders and paying the art gallery for the reserved time slot. All this is good and you should continue doing that. But there is a whole new opportunity up there in the world of internet where billions of dollars worth transactions made every day. You can achieve more sales with lesser investments and efforts.

Thanks to the Internet that the way it has been adapted to integrate more seamlessly into our lives. Artistically it is no different. Endless numbers of art websites meant to help artists market themselves have been created, with literally millions of people from all over the world visiting art websites every day. This includes artists, art enthusiasts and even buyers or potential clients.

What are the opportunities in terms of technology options to to get more viewership.

You need to be creative in a true sense to increase the viewership of your artwork online. By creative means finding something free on internet that doesn’t increase expenses of your marketing but increasing the awareness and viewership. There are many ways in which you can promote yourself and your art business for free on internet.

There are very clear benefits of going online for any business but talking about artwork, it has unlimited benefits that can be achieved in a very short time. We have enlisted few of the major benefits of going online as an artist

• Your artwork is visible to millions of visitors 24/7 days a week.
• Easy and inexpensive to set up an online artwork gallery.
• Shopping for artwork becomes simple, as potential buyers can search for paintings or sculptures based on their needs and wants
• Artwork can be displayed for longer periods of time, increasing the potential earnings opportunities from each of your artwork.
• Vast majority of consumer purchases start with an online search
• Global Reach without geographical boundaries.

How to present Online?

By now you should be convinced that going online is fruitful for you so there are two ways to get started.

1) Free art galleries to submit your Artwork

The first way to promote your work online is to join a free art gallery and promote your artwork accordingly. You can find a lot of online art galleries on internet for your particular category.

The benefits and advantages of using an online art gallery are numerous for new and emerging artists who would like to promote their art to a wider worldwide audience. The audience that these galleries targets is an audience that buys art, sells art and markets artist’s works on a professional level. The benefits to an artist to expose their art work and artistic talents through our online art gallery are the following;

• Readymade site that you can start publishing
• special exhibitions
• A handsome number of visitors already
• Free to join
• Artists gain valuable art competition experience, marketing their artwork and building their resumes in a very low cost way, when they take part in one the gallery’s online art competitions.
• The artist’s artwork is retained on the gallery website for additional and ongoing exposure.
• The artist’s website is linked to gallery’s website for future promotion and ongoing exposure.

There are also some disadvantages of using these free online art galleries, few of them are as follows

• You have to pay for membership for a Pro account to enjoy full featured gallery otherwise you can just use few services as a free member.
• In case of sales, you have to pay the transaction fee or the profits to the gallery that sometimes hurts you or the buyer, so deal can be cancelled on that very issue.
• If you plan to move to some other arts space you are kind of stuck.
• You can customize few of the options of the gallery and you can’t make it fully functional as you desire.
• You have to follow the rules and regulations of that gallery that are sometimes not very acceptable for artists.

List of Top Notch Free Online Websites to Promote Art

Redbubble

Redbubble is a great place for artists to feature their artworks and get feedback. They have lots of groups where one can network with other artists from all walks of life, and post images there for all to see. Through the site, artists can use create framed prints, canvases, posters, calendars, stickers, t-shirts, and cards from artworks. Artists can set any price, and still hold the copyright.If you prefer to not sell artwork here, Redbubble is still a great place to network with other artists.

Etsy

At Etsy, artists can list and sell artworks and converse with art buyers and sellers. Each member gets their own page, to display and sell art right from the site.Etsy has a thriving community of artists and craftspeople, and has forums, online labs, teams, and events.

Imagekind

Imagekind is great for networking and building contacts too, with a forum and lots of groups. They allow artists to sell high quality giclee prints of artworks, even including framing, and members can set any percentage mark-up they wish. With over 50,000 members already, Imagekind is certainly a worthy community to expose your artwork.

DeviantArt

Members can post artworks, comment on other profiles, and post links to your art website or blog. Prints and other items based on your creations can be sold on the site. DeviantArt boasts over 19 million members, it is the largest artist social network.

Artwanted

At Artwanted, artists have the option of uploading artworks to their own personal online gallery. Other members can leave feedback on individual pieces. Members can even sell art directly on the site, but Artwanted takes a 15% commission.

Artpickle

Artpickle is a very good community for artists! Members get their own website with domain name, blog, along with a space to post photos of art. Artists can keep up to date with art shows and festivals, openings, etc., and can even advertise their own. Although art cannot be sold directly on the site, Artpickle is highly recommended just for the contacts you will receive!

Artmajeur

After joining Artmajeur, one receives an online art gallery of their own, where they can upload photos. Images can be modified and sold on the site. or through contact with buyers. It has over 51,700 members onboard!

Fine Art America

At Fine Art America, they handle the sales, promotion, design of your online gallery, and ordering from art buyers. Images can be converted to framed canvas prints, greeting cards, and more, and set to sell at one’s own prices. The profile page has space for photos, biography, events, blog, contact info., and more. They have a very active community with lots of groups. Fine Art America has over 84,000 artists and is well worth joining!

Zhibit

Have your artworks on Zhibit, and promote and sell them through the site. Artists can choose to participate in community events and art competitions. Zhibit galleries are very easy to setup, and free – without ads or banners! They also have automatic watermarking, and lots of storage for your images. Members can use their own domain name through services such as Godaddy.

d’Art

d’Art is a place for artists and art dealers to meet. They have a huge forum and directory, in which members can participate. Members can post their art, set a price, and sell it though the online shopping cart. All these sites are very worthy sites of joining in your art promotion regime, if only to interact with other artists and buyers, and to attract visitors to your artist profile, blog, or website.

2) Establishing your own arts space online.

If you are not comfortable to publish your artwork on free art galleries, you can create your own art space online. There are many issues of using online art galleries that sometimes bothers the privacy of artists. More and more websites are coming online to give artists the ability to unleash their creativity in new and innovative ways by creating their own art space.  From fine arts to pure arts, artists now can click and draw their way into original works of art, and we have provided a list of famous tools that gives you a place to begin with.

Initially, here are few advantages of using an open source tool for your artwork.

• Free tool – meaning you don’t pay for it
• The code is open, if you want your tools to do something different you are welcome to change it.
• Solid community of users and developers to contact when in need
• You can upgrade your software as many times you want
• Peace of mind for any copyright infringement or licenses / legal trouble with the tools you are using
• Easy to use for any computer skill level

There are also few disadvantages of using an open source tool to generate your own art space, some of them are listed below

• If you want to incorporate advanced user interaction in your project, they don’t offer it for free or they don’t have that features integrated.
• You don’t own the website after a lot of hard work on establishing it.
• Your creativity will not help you in case of using ready made tools or websites.

Open source tools for artists

The following open source art programs are used by professionals and amateurs alike. And just because they’re free, that doesn’t mean they’re lesser quality—they can do just as much as the expensive art software they’re replacing.

Piwigo open source photo gallery software for the web
GIMP Instead of Photoshop (photo and graphics editing)
Blender Instead of Maya or 3ds Max (3D rendering and animation)
Inkscape Instead of Illustrator (logos and vector artwork)
Monkey Jam Instead of Lunchbox DV (pencil animation)
Jahshaka Instead of After Effects or Final Cut Pro (video editing)
Dream Studio Dream Studio contains all the apps you need to create stunning graphics, captivating videos, inspiring music, and professional websites. Available as a free download, Dream Studio can be run directly from DVD, installed to your hard-drive, or even installed onto a USB Flash drive, for the ultimate in portability!

Way Forward

As an artist, your time is as precious as your art is. You definitely need to focus on your artistic creativity for your masterpieces instead of wasting time on establishing website and promoting it online. Establishing your online presence opens the doors of opportunities for you but you have no time to manage it all.

Then there are specialists who can serve you building and updating your arts space online. They work with online tools every day and stay up to date on the latest information, which they continually update in their skill set. If you prefer to save even more time and money, you can hire a developer from virtual teams that will work for you as a dedicated employee. You can communicate all of the needs and requirements for your art space and ask him to customize accordingly.

If you already has a website and you are not satisfied with the performance of your website because it’s not attracting visitors, it’s difficult to update, or it does not have the features you need (easy to update photo gallery, a blog, ability to sell online, search engine optimization, etc), .VizTeams has a huge portfolio and a rich inventory of skilled developers to find the solution for such clients as well. Feel free to contact us anytime to establish your own art space and market it online for sales leads.

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