How to sell your art

2 great ways you can sell your art

If you paint, throw pottery, sculpt, blow glass, make jewelry, or anything else and want to sell it and make money – here is our guide to 2 great ways to succeed.

  1. Sell your art online on the webshop and Instagram.
  2. Exhibit and sell your art in a gallery or shop.

Sell your art online on webshop and Instagram

You can build an online store yourself using platforms like Woocommerce or Shopify if you have some technical skills. This way, you get to keep all the profits when you sell your artwork.

Selling art in your own online shop is also the most ambitious and challenging way to sell your artworks, and it requires first spending a lot of time building a large following on Instagram and Facebook so you can drive traffic to your online shop.

If you want to sell your artwork through your own webshop, it requires you to establish a company, build the webshop, handle shipments yourself, provide excellent customer service, manage accounting, focus on SEO (visibility on Google), allocate resources to online marketing, and maintain your webshop.

All of the above tasks are often time-consuming and a full-time job in themselves. So consider if it’s worth it when you also need to be creative and spend time on your art. If you eventually need help with the above, such as building the webshop or marketing, it can become a very expensive pleasure.

You can also try selling your art on Instagram. However, it can be challenging because Instagram was not originally designed to handle the sale of physical products, and it is not officially allowed to use an Instagram profile solely for selling physical products. Furthermore, it can be quite cumbersome, so most people still choose to build an online shop or use a completely different solution.

Benefits of Selling in Your Own Webshop

  • Exhibit and sell your art in a gallery or shop
  • You are master of your own store and create your own narrative as an artist.

Disadvantages of selling in your own webshop

  • You must create a company.
  • You must build the webshop.
  • You must have a redemption agreement (receive card payment online).
  • You must have a large following (e.g. on Instagram).
  • You need to spend money on marketing.
  • You have to compete with other webshops on Google (SEO).
  • You must package and ship your art.
  • You must provide good customer service 24/7.
  • You must maintain your webshop regularly.

Exhibit and sell your art in a gallery or shop

The easiest way to sell your art is to exhibit and sell it in a store or a gallery. The principle in a gallery and store is the same. You bring the art and they exhibit and sell it to their customers.

A store takes a larger or smaller part of the selling price. It’s called a commission. That’s the biggest drawback of selling your artwork in a store. In some stores, they might prefer to buy your art right away and then sell it. But that’s rare because there will always be uncertainty, and art can be sold, especially if it’s unique.

On the other hand, there are also many advantages to selling in a physical store. You save a lot of time on managing your online shop and business. You can focus on creating new art – which was likely what you wanted in the first place. Additionally, the store provides excellent marketing for you and your art – depending on the “quality” of the store, of course. When customers visit the store and see your art in beautiful surroundings, it creates a “wow effect” and visitors will become curious about you.

Many stores today also have an online shop that promotes their art, not only in Denmark but worldwide, and it is a good way to “kick the door in” to a larger market and establish a name for yourself.

Overall, it actually makes sense and can be more cost-effective for you to sell in a store, as you will be able to sell more art and have more time to create new pieces.

It is often the dream scenario to sell and exhibit in a beautiful store with a good name. Therefore, it is not always easy to “get a foot in the door” and start a collaboration.

Kræss is a popular design and art store in Copenhagen with a large online shop. If you want to sell your art at Kræss, you can apply online here.

Advantages of selling in a store

  • You can exhibit your art in beautiful surroundings at good addresses.
  • You build a larger following through visitors.
  • You can achieve sales abroad through their webshop.
  • You can spend your time creating new art and dedicating yourself to what you are passionate about.
  • You do not have to handle shipments and customer service.
  • You do not have to operate and maintain your webshop.
  • You don’t have to spend time on marketing and SEO.

Disadvantages of selling in a store

  • You for a smaller profit (unless you sell more).
  • It is not always easy to enter and sell in the good shops.

I hope you found our guide helpful in gaining a proper understanding of how artists can best sell their art. No matter how you choose to do it 👩‍🎨

The guide is written by Jonatan from Kræss. Jonatan has built many webshops for artists selling art. He has also built the entire Kræss webshop.

Kræss showcases and sells art in our store in Copenhagen and online shop for over 170 artists.