Selling Original Art Online

Thank you for responding! I didn't get anywhere with deviantart.com (signed up in 2004 and gave it about a year). I have a bravenet site, a myspace page and a blog . . . and I've tried selling on ebay (some sales, but not much) and etsy (no sales at all). I wonder if there's more to this in the way of promotion, though. I write articles about art projects in hopes to drive traffic, but the page views rarely convert to sales. Thanks for the encouragement! This is something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time!

What kind of work are you doing? Myself I am a photographer, so its a little different than being an "artist". I use my website for 90% of my business, which at the moment is portrait work, but Im trying to get away from that and back to fine art photography. Maybe you could work more on reciprocal links for your bravenet site or search engine optimization to get your name out there a little better. Also you might want to give DA another go, from what Ive seen its changed a LOT in the last couple years. Im not a member myself but Ive been an avid DA lurker, and I have a few friends making some good money over there for their work.

Thank you for responding again! (Sorry I didn't notice - I'm still flittering around trying to get the hang of things over here.) Anyway, people call what I do outsider art and examples of it can be seen here: http://www.myspace.com/art_explorations I have a few things listed on http://www.artist_writer.butterflygrace.net as well. I'm trying to create a name for myself somehow and it's been a frustrating experience so far. I have a handful of followers, which is nice, but I've been told by other *successful* artists that you have to have a considerable fan base in order to see significant sales.

I could not see any of your work. Where are you on ebay?

Most people consider what I do outsider art - I work on (and try to sell) mixed media paintings, handmade books, altered books, art journals that have been filled, ACEOs, and altered boxes. I keep links to where I sell and other examples of my work on http://www.myspace.com/art_explorations and http://www.artist_writer.bravenet.com - I also write about mixed media arts on suite101.com as a way to draw traffic to what I'm trying to sell.

Okay, I'll definatly give DA another shot. I wasn't sure because I was a member at one point (in 2004), but there wasn't much going on there at all - I was selling some things on livejournal.com communities and myspace.com, so I thought there would be much more success there. I guess I need to give it another shot. I have a personal website and, at one time, it was current with everything I do on there. It's in need of an update now. The hits decreased dramatically, so I thought I was just doing things all wrong.