Charm FX

Archive for the ‘Studio Arts’ Category

There’s an exploding number of sites and services aimed at making it easier for creative people to sell objects they produce to those interested in their work.

Sites like http://etsy.com & http://artfire.com are built around a large creative community offering higher volume of traffic and potential to attract more patrons to your work.

Other sites offer more traditional online selling like http://ebay.com or dedicated shop sites like http://bigcartel.com/ which is focused on Arts or the more recent & general http://shoply.com/.

These inexpensive or free sites and services promise easy to use ways to provide a point of sale mechanism to collectors or patrons of your work.

While my feeling is more options are always good, it’s not necessarily the most effective to choose an option based on it being an easy option.

If you’re investing in your work you need to invest in your own online presence, specifically, your own domain. The single biggest hurdle to any online business is developing their site, a following and traffic to their site. If you’re funneling traffic to community sites like Etsy or Artfire, or a ‘shop’ page where all you’re doing is offering items for sale, you’re not really engaging with your community. These sites are great as far as they go, but my advice is to use them for what they can do for your main domain.

In the case of Etsy or Artfire, perhaps offer 1-5 “entry level” items that may make a first impression on anyone who finds your work via these communities. If you absolutely must use a “shop” site for your transactions, don’t spend your time funneling interested persons directly to the “shop”, but give them background on pieces and other work on your site and if they decide to purchase then send them to the appropriate item on the “shop” site. Offering a more integrated payment method from within your own domain is more preferred since it doesn’t have the potential of breaking up the purchase experience. It also gives you other options for building a relationship with your customers that you may not have on other platforms.

Please add your own thoughts below.

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• The Handmade Artists’ Forum and Shop (beadinggem.com)
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Arts & culture magazines around the U.S. from regional publishers…Local & niche content as well as national and regional coverage. Hardcore Arts.

Please add links in comments to others you may know and think worthwhile. Thanks.

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