5 Ways to Sell Your Art Online While Social Distancing

Art careers are temporarily changing due to COVID-19.

But, just because we are no longer able to have art gatherings in person, doesn’t mean that you hole up and wait for this all to blow over.

With the inability to carry out group activities, people are looking for connection and stimulation. You can use this time to bring your art to the world online and make up for missed in-person sales.

In a recent Artwork Archive survey of artists on how they are adapting their art business to COVID-19 restrictions, over two-thirds of respondents said they have used this time to focus on bringing their work online.

Despite these unexpected challenges and setbacks of the coronavirus, Artwork Archive can help keep your art business running.

Here are a few strategies to market and sell your art on Artwork Archive during this time.

Use the Artwork Public Profile to Gain Visibility.

Are you looking to increase your web presence?

Do you want to reach new viewers?

Interested in driving people to your social media accounts?

Above all, do you want to do it all with ease?

Enter Artwork Archive’s public profile on the Discovery Platform.

An Artwork Archive Public Profile gives you an SEO boost, creates a new audience of viewers, and allows you to present yourself and your work professionally in one place.

SEO, search engine optimization, means the process of increasing website traffic and name recognition and visibility. By having an Artwork Archive Public Profile, you are boosting your SEO, creating more traffic to your website and social media accounts, and providing a way for potential clients to contact you.

Additionally, when you have a Public Profile on Artwork Archive’s Discovery platform, you are automatically searchable to a network of art collectors and professionals around the world. The Discovery platform sits as a unique intersection of artists, collectors, and arts organizations—connecting you to new buyers.

“I love Artwork Archive because it allows me to access other artists and exhibit possibilities,” said fiber artist Susan B Merrill.

Hand-in-hand with having a strong public profile is knowing how to use it to market that profile. Check out these marketing tips for marketing your art with the Artwork Archive public profile.

Learn more about the Public Profile and then see how easy it is to set up with this tutorial.

Sell Work Through Your Public Profile.

You can use your public profile to do more than just display your work—you can actively sell work from your Artwork Archive profile. Adding one more way to sell your art and reach your clients is always a good idea. The best part? Artwork Archive encourages direct communication between the collector and artist, so you keep 100% of the sale.

Once you’ve set up your Public Profile, you are able to sell works. Interested buyers can easily ask about a specific piece through the “Inquire About Piece” button. Buyers can even start to set up a sale by sending you a "Purchase Request" for an artwork.

Once you have a buyer for a work, you can process the sale. Artwork Archive has the option for you to be paid directly for your sale with the PayPal integration on Artwork Archives invoices. You can create and send an invoice and be paid directly through that invoice!

“I started with Artwork Archive earlier this year and have continued almost daily,” artist Sherri Silverman told us. “Having the public profile gives me another online opportunity to reach potential appreciators, collectors, curators, and galleries. Having all the links back to my new Shop on my website so the work can be purchased has the additional benefit of improving my website's SEO. Artwork Archive is giving me a vision of my career and impetus to move forward.”

Want to get started now? Check out this tutorial on setting up sales links.

Use Private Rooms to Increase Sales.

Broad marketing is great to get new viewers and create future leads. But, targeted and specific marketing often yields the highest and most immediate results.

Private Rooms is an Artwork Archive feature for you to easily prepare online viewing rooms to share your collection exclusively with your contacts. If you have clients who are interested in a specific collection, price range, or type of art, Private Rooms are a great way for you to create a unique and personalized presentation of your works for sale.

Painter and illustrator Mojca Fo. is using this time to send Private Rooms to more potential collectors. “I’m making rooms for different people and communicating via my page more,” she said.

With our intuitive interface, you easily select your artworks and curate a collection. Then, you invite your viewers to a private online gallery of your works.

Private Rooms allow you to share selected artworks, create custom collections, and allow viewers to start the conversation about works they are interested in purchasing.

You can add descriptions of your Private Room and even personalized notes to show up in the text of the room display. For added security, you can password protect a private room.

When you are ready to share your Private Room you will be given the ability to directly add your contacts from Artwork Archive or email addresses to send them a URL to your curated room.

To learn more about Private Rooms, you can read more here and get a tutorial here.

Make Online Exhibits with Collections.

Since in-person art openings and exhibitions are on pause, for the time being, you can use Artwork Archive to create an online exhibition or virtual gallery.

“I have redirected completely my efforts to my online presence,” said artist and designer J. Masson. The exhibition I was curating had been canceled so I quickly recreated it online and doubled my efforts to promote the event on social media. More than ever, we rely on our offline and online communities to help us in these difficult times.”

Collections on Artwork Archive allow you to group works together to highlight on your Artwork Archive public profile and embed it onto your other websites.

To create a collection of works, you simply and easily group works together and provide a commonality. An exhibit can be represented by creating a collection from your inventory of works.

Artwork Archive individual collections can also be installed on virtually any website using the embed code for that collection.

You can get started with collections here.

Use Portfolio Pages + Invoicing for a Seamless Sale.

Creating a portfolio of work to share and then invoicing your clients is essential to your online art business. You can easily show a potential client the works you have available and then send them a clean invoice for a sold work. Making sales from start to finish just got easier.

Portfolio pages help you present a professional portfolio of selected works to potential buyers and galleries. You can create a portfolio page of a single work as well as a portfolio of many works to share.

Get started: learn more about creating portfolio pages.

When you’ve made a sale and marked an artwork as sold, you can create an invoice for that work and send it to your client right from Artwork Archive.

Grow your business no matter where you are or what is happening in the world.

Even when it feels like there are many things out of our control, know that you are still able to dictate some aspects of your life. Despite challenges, you can still continue to present, market, and sell your art.

You can use Artwork Archive to expand your art’s reach and to make sales. Market your art and gain new viewers through our Public Profile. Increase sales and share works with curated Private Rooms. Give in-person exhibits new life and connect with your client base by creating and sharing digital exhibitions.