How difficult is it to make money online from art?

[snowelephant]

I know a few people who sell through etsy - from what I can see, they get a decent amount of free traffic from etsy, but only if they are active on the site - I'm not sure how that works, that's just how they've told me it works. The big problem is that a lot of art or crafts are very labor intensive - the one person I know who sells stuff on etsy full time has the production process down to a science, selling to a very targeted set of keyword (since selling paintings or photos etc is very over saturated).

I know some craftsman who have offline businesses - handmade furniture, stained glass, or selling lumber to cabinetmakers. In some cases, it seems like a huge piece of the value of what they sell is the customer service aspect. One the other hand, most of the people I know are terrible at sales and marketing, and want nothing to do with it, so if you find people who are able to sell their work offline, you probably can sell their work online (provided it is something that can be shipped, i.e. my stained glass example is a tough one there)

[FlyingMouse]

Have any good tips about watermarking? How do you do it? From a long time ago, I remember a graphics program that did it, but I currently don't seem to have any progs that have that capacity.

I was not aware of the option of adding prices to Pinterest; thanks for that tip. On Facebook, you can use Payvment, to sell. There is also Jessy.com.

[JimWaller]

I haven't had much time to weigh in on this thread lately, but I've wanted to for a while. There are definitely a lot of possibilities but the hardest part is breaking into the art "scene" with galleries and buyers and such. With all of the social media and other sites out there, it is getting easier to work outside of the "scene".

I like that there are a lot of options for artists to sell printed versions of their work that just used to be impossible previously. These options have muddied the waters so to speak when it comes to pricing art which is subjective in and of itself.

I've done a bit of research and what seems to be the most fair way for a beginning artist to price their work is to base prices on square inches. A starting rate of about $1 per square inch works out to be pretty fair. (Note: I apologize for using inches and dollars, it's what I'm familiar with. I think it works out to be about 24 pence per square cm.) This is at least a good starting point. I actually found a lot of good advice on emptyeasle.com ( specifically http://emptyeasel.com/art-business-a...ng-art-online/)

I hope to have more of my work up soon and to turn on my storefront. I found a plugin for WP I really like that was designed for artists. It's called artpal and it was originally written with artists in mind. It integrates with PayPal and automatically removes an item from inventory when it sells so there is not duplicate sales. It also allows for custom messages around a piece not being available anymore or contacting the artist for a price if none is listed. It's also pretty small so it is fast loading. I like it a lot.

As for watermarking, FastStone is a pretty versatile free program capable of adding watermarks. ( As well as a number of other functions) It might be helpful if you're looking to add a watermark. I haven't used it personally, but it seems to be a pretty popular option from what I know. (I originally found out about it on giveaway.com in a review of a similar product.) I have other paid software that can do watermarks, so I haven't had the need for this. It seems worth investigating.

Hopefully I'll be able to offer more information from firsthand experience in the near future.

Jim

[Clinton]

Google posted about an artist making a living from ... er, Adsense!

[Kay]

That's an amazing story. I'd never have thought of using AS to make money as an artist.

But... there seems to be more to this than meets the eye. He's not in a particularly lucrative niche, so how is he driving the volume of traffic which would be required to generate an AS income you could live off? I know it's just a little clip to tell us how great and how versatile AS is, but it doesn't inspire me to use it more, because we've not been given any clue about how he achieved success with it.

[JimWaller]

My take on watching the video is that he already had built up traffic from his clip art prior to implementing adsense, so when he added it to his site, he already had a good reputation and was able to leverage that. The problem with his story is it was 2008, which was a very different internet than it is today. Many sites made specifically to exploit adsense still worked back then. I'm not saying his site is like that, just that the "rules" were different.

[kharrison]

He is ranking for 'free clip art', has a large audience of visitors under 18...little clickers are making this artist some cash.

[Kay]

Does anyone know of any studies to show which people are more likely than others to click on AS?