Are you passionate about digital art? Have you been thinking about making it a full-time business? Then you probably already have some great digital art business ideas, but still you might wonder, ‘How do I start my own digital art business?’ If that’s the case, this is the right post for you! You’ll get a 10-step guide to help you go ahead with your digital art business plan, plus valuable tips on how to make money with digital art. On top of that, you can download your FREE art business startup checklist to make sure you got everything set to successfully start a digital art business!
Starting your own digital art business takes a lot of work and effort, but in the end it’s absolutely worth it!
If you’re passionate about making digital art and you’ve already gathered some experience, then you can start a digital art business—turning your passion into profit.
Digital art is a very broad field, and there are plenty of digital art business ideas waiting for you to be realized.
Simply put, digital art is every artwork that’s created using a computer. This can include lots of different things.
For example, you can take a photograph and then further edit it in Photoshop. You can also take multiple photos and combine them all into an entirely new creation, a so-called photo manipulation. This is what I love to do in my Surreal Stories.
Likewise, you can use a 3D model and render it in applications like Blender or AutoDesk Maya. Another way is to create a traditional illustration and then color it in Corel Painter or AutoDesk SketchBook. In short: the possibilities are endless!
Grab your FREE Art Business Startup Checklist
Is selling digital art profitable?
The best thing about a digital art business is that you create artwork as a digital file on your computer. That means you can re-use that file as often as you wish, and you can also use it to create numerous different items for sale.
Since the original file always remains with you, you can sell it dozens, hundreds, or even thousand of times!
This is what sets digital art apart from traditional art and makes selling digital art so much more profitable.
How to make money with digital art?
Digital art offers a lot of potential for growth.
The first advantage is that you can sell an unlimited number of items of your digital art—for as many times as you desire.
Moreover, digital art tools have been developing a lot in recent years, and they are still getting better and better.
At the same time, digital art has been increasing in popularity, and the various ways of creating different kinds of digital artwork have long not been exhausted.
As a result, there are countless opportunities to make an income as a digital artist.
To help you get some ideas for your business, here are ten tips on how to make money with digital art!
10 tips on how to make money with digital art
1. Sell prints of your digital art
Selling fine art prints is something every artist can do. For a digital artist, it’s even easier to create prints than for a traditional artist. Traditional work needs to be scanned or photographed first, before you can save it as a printable file.
Digital art already sits on your computer, so the only thing you need to do is convert it into a file format that’s adequate for printing.
Make sure to use high-quality materials for your prints. Archival printing paper is the best and lasts the longest. Check out the best paper for printing digital art to know what choices you have.
Last but not least, it’s also a good idea to offer various sizes of prints, from large-format to postcard-size prints. People have different tastes and offering a variety of prints increases your chances to make sales. Plus, this also allows all of your fans to purchase an item from you—regardless of their wallet size!
Further reading: The Best Size For Art Prints That Sells The Most
Here are some sites where you can create, sell and ship art prints all in one place:
Read more about the best sites to upload art here.
2. License virtual images of your digital art
Another way to make money with digital art is by licensing image files. An image license allows people to use the virtual image for certain purposes within closely defined conditions.
You set these conditions in your digital image license agreement, and you decide whether you want to release your images for commercial use or for personal use only.
This is probably the easiest way to sell digital art because it requires the least involvement on your side. Once you upload an image and make it available as a licensed download, everything pretty much goes its way. This is a great method to make a passive income as an artist.
3. Drop-ship your digital art prints
If you don’t have the equipment to print and ship your digital art yourself, then you can use a drop-shipping company.
This is a very easy and convenient way to deliver art prints to your customers. Once a customer buys a print of your digital art, the order goes to the drop-shipper. The drop-shipper handles everything for you—from printing, to packaging, to shipping. Even internationally.
Many drop-shipping services can be linked directly to the ecommerce platform where you sell your prints. This can be your own artist website, or any other platform, such as Etsy or Shopify.
Here are some drop-shipping companies that specialize in high-quality art prints:
- Printful: This is a popular drop-shipping company for fine art prints. You can link Printful to pretty much any ecommerce platform and they also fulfill international orders.
- Printify: Another popular drop-shipper for art prints of all kinds. Their pricing is very competitive and they have a large selection of ready-made products to sell your art on.
- Finerworks: This company specializes in fine art and canvas prints. They are great for giclée prints and also offer other print-on-demand products. You can easily link them with your ecommerce store.
4. Sell your digital art on print-on-demand products
Apart from selling prints, you can sell your digital art on other items as well. Such print-on-demand products are very popular. Many people love to get items with a custom design of their favorite artist.
All you need to do is upload your digital art images to a print-on-demand platform and choose the products you want to offer. You can sell your art on mugs, t-shirts, phone and laptop cases, bags, clocks, postcards, etc. Other options include stationery, such as notebooks and calendars.
Once a customer buys an item, the PoD provider will take care of printing and shipping, and you will receive a share of the sales price.
The best sites to sell print-on-demand products are:
- RedBubble: A print-on-demand platform that’s very popular among artists. It’s free to open an account and offer a certain number of products for sale. RedBubble handles the orders for you, while you earn between 10%-30% of the sales price.
- Society6: Society6 is a similar PoD platform with a huge audience of artists and customers interested in art. Creating an account is free, and you can offer your digital art on as many products as you wish. You can set your own prices, but your sales margin will only be around 10% on average.
- Printify: A PoD service provider that you can link to different ecommerce platforms and also your own website. Printify lets you set your own prices and you can make a greater profit than on other PoD platforms.
- Printful: Printful is similar to Printify in that you can set your own prices and decide how much you want to earn per sale. Printful is easy to integrate with any ecommerce platform, such as Etsy, Shopify, or Squarespace.
5. Sell printables of your digital art
Printables are files that people can download and print out themselves. Some ideas of printables include wall art, calendars, planner templates, and worksheets.
Learn more: The Best Selling Digital Printables (& Where To Sell Them!)
As an example, you can design a graphic and combine it with a famous saying or an inspirational artist quote. Your customers can purchase the virtual file and are in charge of printing it out themselves.
Just like with selling licensed images or drop-shipping prints, you don’t need to worry about packaging and shipping.
There are free fonts available, but many of them are not licensed for commercial use. By purchasing premium fonts, you will get the proper licensing and can use the fonts to create printables for sale. Great places to get original fonts for commercial use are Creative Market and Creative Fabrica.
If you are interested in creating printables that include fonts and graphics, some great software for you to use is Photoshop or PicMonkey. Canva is a free online design platform that allows you to combine graphics and fonts as well.
6. Sell custom or limited prints of your digital art
Some things you can do to raise the price of art prints include offering custom prints and limited editions. Prints that are not signed and not numbered generally sell at the lowest prices.
To create more value for your customers, you can offer prints that are signed and/or numbered. As an example, you can offer a limited edition of just 20 copies.
Other options include selling hand-embellished prints of your digital art. Depending on the type of digital art you make, you can re-paint certain elements in the print with traditional paint (e.g. acrylic paint) or embellish certain parts with silver or golden pigment.
The most expensive prints are unique custom prints, of which you would sell one copy only. This can be a large-format giclée print that you hand-embellish and that’s only available once. Or, you can accept custom requests from clients who wish to have a unique work of yours in their homes.
Learn more: What Is Giclee Printing And Where To Get It?
7. Offer digital art commissions
Offering commissions is another way to start making money with digital art.
Where can you offer digital art commissions?
Your own website is the best place to advertise your services. But you can also get commissions from art sharing platforms, such as Behance, DeviantArt and ArtStation. There are many professional companies scouting for talent on these sites. If you have a portfolio that stands out, you can land some great freelance gigs.
But you don’t necessarily need to have advanced skills to accept commissions. Even as a beginner, you can make money offering your services on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork.
How much should you charge for a digital art commission?
That mainly depends on the type of project. If the commission is pretty complex and will take you a long time to complete, you can charge more.
Other factors are your experience and reputation as an artist. If you are already well-known in the art world, you can ask more money for your services than when you’re just starting out.
More about pricing commissions: TOP 6 Tips On How Much To Charge For Digital Art Commissions
8. Offer digital art designs on online platforms
Another way to make money with your art is by selling templates and other design products.
Some examples are website templates, illustrations, icons, and mock-ups. People can download these products and adapt them to their personal needs.
Wall mock-ups, for example, are great to show people what an artwork looks like when hung up on a wall. You would create an empty frame in a room setting. Other artists can download it and digitally fill the frame with their own piece of art.
This is another convenient way to make money with digital art, because you don’t need to worry about handling and shipping.
Two great platforms for selling such design products are Creative Market and Etsy.
These two platforms already have a large community in place. Lots of artists are selling custom products, and even more buyers are on the lookout for such original items.
9. Teach other people how to make digital art
There are plenty of new artists who want to learn the ins and outs of making digital art.
Teaching other people how to use digital art software will help you get more exposure and increase the chances of you selling your own works.
For example, if you create art using Photoshop, you can offer Photoshop tutorials and show newbies how to use the program.
There are several online platforms where you can teach other people how to make digital art:
- SkillShare: This is a platform where people who have a ‘skill’ can ‘share’ it with others. SkillShare is one of the few platforms that let you upload your course for free. There is already a huge community of users, which makes it easier for you to find students for your course. You can sign up with SkillShare as an instructor for free here.
- Udemy: An online learning platform with over 40 million students worldwide. With such a large audience in place, you don’t have to worry too much about marketing your course. Another good thing is that you don’t need any teaching experience to publish a course on Udemy. Become an instructor on Udemy for free here.
- Thinkific: This e-learning platform gives you full control over the design, content, and pricing of your course. Thinkific has over 16 million students in more than 160 countries, and it’s also one of the platforms where uploading courses is free. Join Thinkific for free here.
10. Find a local venue to showcase your art
Local venues are an excellent place to showcase & sell your art and get involved in your community.
There are lots of venues in your local area that you might not even have considered for showcasing artwork. But you don’t necessarily need a gallery or exhibition room—you can also display your works in local restaurants, wine bars, hotels, community centers, or trendy clubs.
Check out the venue first to find out whether your type of digital art fits the location. If you think it’s a good showroom for your work, don’t be shy getting in touch with them.
Chances are they will be more than happy to exhibit your art because it will help them attract customers as well.
Another way to get your art out there is by participating in local events, such as art fairs and street shows. Such events will give you the opportunity to meet other artists, art enthusiasts, gallery owners and collectors.
No matter what kind of venue you eventually choose, don’t forget to bring your business cards and other marketing materials that represent you as an artist. Make it easy for people to contact you by including a link to your website, your email, and phone number!
Further reading: How To Make Money As An Artist *OFFLINE* [7 Real World Examples]
How much does it cost to start a digital art business?
Starting a digital art business is probably one of the most rewarding things you can do when you are passionate about art.
You will get to create art every day, live your passion, and make money with it in the process. Starting a digital art business doesn’t nearly cost as much as opening other types of businesses.
But it’s important to invest into the right tools of the trade that every digital artist needs in order to be successful in the long run.
Must-have Tools of the trade for digital artists
1. Drawing tablet
The one tool that every digital artist must have is a drawing tablet. If you’re serious about creating digital art, you cannot draw on your laptop with just your mouse or your trackpad.
Only a drawing tablet will let you access all the functions that your digital art software has to offer. The tablet can recognize pressure and tilt when you are moving the pen over the surface. The more pressure you apply, the thicker the line will get and vice versa. That’s not possible if you use your mouse or trackpad.
FREE Guide on how to use a graphic tablet with Photoshop
There are many different types of drawing tablets that you can choose from – with screen and without screen.
Drawing tablets without screen tend to be cheaper than display tablets, but they also come with a steeper learning curve. Since you are drawing on the tablet, while looking up at your computer monitor, it takes some time to master that hand-eye-coordination.
Which drawing tablet should you get?
Wacom are known to manufacture the best drawing tablets in the industry. You cannot go wrong with choosing a tablet from the industry leader! A good pick for beginners and advanced artists is Wacom’s Intuos Pro Medium drawing tablet without screen.
To learn more about drawing tablets, check out the Best Wacom Tablets for Beginners.
Working on a tablet with screen is easier and more intuitive, because you can look down at your hand as you are drawing on the display. Getting a display tablet doesn’t have to burn a big hole in your pocket. There are many screen tablets that are also affordable for beginners—even from industry leader Wacom.
To find a great and affordable device for your needs, have a look at the Best Drawing Tablet with Screen Below $1000.
2. Digital art software
To create digital art, you obviously need adequate digital art software—and a computer.
The software you need depends on the type of art you want to create. The most powerful programs come with a corresponding price tag, but you will get great value for your money. There are also less expensive alternatives that are affordable for beginners as well.
You can start out with a completely free editing app. But in the long run, I suggest you make the investment in some good digital art software because this will ultimately make it easier for you to create better art, more quickly.
Here are some of the most recommended programs that are worthwhile the investment when you start a digital art business:
• Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the top all-round performer in the market. It’s very powerful and comes with a wide array of features for digital artists in various fields. You can start a Free 7-Day Photoshop Trial here to see if you like it. If you’re a student or teacher, you can get a 60% discount on all Adobe products here.
• Corel Painter
Corel Painter is professional software that was specifically developed for digital painting. Many manga and anime artists use Corel Painter, but also artists who work in other art styles like illustration and concept art. To see if Corel Painter is right for you, you can start a Free 30-Day Trial here.
• Clip Studio Paint Pro Clip
Clip Studio Paint Pro is aimed at comic book creators and manga artists. It offers many workflow boosters that make it easy to create comic, manga, and anime art. You can get Clip Studio Paint in two versions: the PRO (standard) version and the fully featured EX (expert) version. You can try either version with a Free 30-Day Trial here.
• Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is the market-leading vector software. It’s optimal for all kinds of vector designs, including icons, logos and other illustrations. Every vector graphic you create with Illustrator is infinitely scalable, meaning you can make it smaller and bigger without any quality loss. You can start a Free 7-Day Illustrator Trial here.
• Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is one of the best alternatives to Photoshop. It’s extremely budget-friendly but almost as powerful as the industry leader. Affinity Photo is equally flexible, and you can use it for photo retouching, digital painting and drawing, image compositing, and much more. Click here to try Affinity Photo for Free.
Learn more: Is Affinity Photo As Good As Photoshop?
• Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer is one of the alternatives to Adobe Illustrator. It’s more affordable and provides great value for money. You can create all types of scalable vector graphics, but the program works for raster graphics, too. Click here to try Affinity Photo for Free.
3. Training
Practice makes perfect, and that holds true for digital art as well! You don’t need to go to art school to become a successful artist. Many artists, like myself, are one hundred percent self-taught—and that’s absolutely okay.
But one thing you can’t do without is training. This includes practicing your type of art, and it also includes learning the ins and outs of the software program you are using. That’s even more important if you are working with a powerful program with lots of advanced features, such as Photoshop.
You can sift through free tutorials that are available online for almost every graphics program. Or, you can check out free video tutorials on YouTube for a start. But to really get the gist of your preferred software, I highly recommend taking one of the e-courses that are available on learning platforms like:
Many of these courses are led by professional instructors. If you’re interested in Adobe products, you will also find Adobe-certified trainers that lead you through the course. The initial investment that you make in the course pays off in the long run, because you will get a better understanding of your digital art software, more quickly.
10 Steps to your Digital Art Business Plan
While there are multiple ways to start a digital art business, and artists may come up with different digital art business ideas, there are some basic steps we all can follow in order to make our business successful.
The following 10 steps should be part of every digital art business plan because they include the best options to grow your art business.
Here's what shouldn’t be missing on your plan when you start a digital art business:
STEP 1: Build your artist website
This is the absolutely most important step when you start a digital art business: you need to build your artist website.
Now, you might wonder why that’s actually necessary, as there are so many social media platforms and art sharing websites around where you can post your work.
But you need to keep in mind that only your artist website belongs to you. With your own artist website, you are in charge of what you post, how you showcase your work, and how you present yourself as the artist.
Social media channels are fantastic to share and promote your art, and connect with like-minded people. But they may change their algorithms any time, modify their community rules, and remove posts that they don’t deem appropriate. We’ve already seen that networks may become outdated—just think of MySpace and Snapchat.
If you rely on social media to start a digital art business, you put yourself at the odds of that platform. If anything happens to the network, all your efforts to grow your art business were in vain. That’s why social media should never replace your own artist website.
Related: The Social Art Dilemma: Is Instagram Still Worth It For Artists?
People interested in your art will be searching for your artist website.
Nowadays, when people are interested in someone or something, they will be searching the internet. This is also true for your art and yourself as the artist. Every time a potential buyer, fan, curator, or collector wants to learn more about you and your art, they will be looking for your website.
Your own artist website can boost your exposure like nothing else, and it’s also a great platform to sell your work without the need of a middleman.
You can set your own prices and you don’t need to share your profit. You are in full control.
The good news is that you don’t need any coding skills to build a beautiful artist website. There are lots of easy-to-use website builders that make creating a portfolio website a piece of cake and that also allow you to add an online store to your artist website.
Let’s see what choices you have:
1. WordPress
WordPress.org is the most popular content management system worldwide. Currently, 62% of websites are powered by WordPress, which is an incredible number of 455 million sites. There’s a good reason for that: WordPress is not only completely free, it also gives you complete control over your website. Since WordPress is open-source, you will also be the ‘sole owner’ of your website.
WordPress takes some time getting used to. But once you’ve learned how to use it, you will be rewarded with an infinitely scalable website that lives up to all requirements you can possibly have. (By the way, this website is built with the OceanWP theme.)
You can make your site look like anything—from a simple blog to a professional digital art business website. An equally infinite number of plugins let you include just about anything in your WordPress page: image galleries, online stores, user ratings, membership sites, social media feeds, etc.
You can download WordPress FOR FREE here.
As WordPress is not an all-in-one website builder like the ones we’re going to talk about below, you will also need to purchase hosting and a domain name.
These are some of the top hosting providers for WordPress sites:
- BlueHost (endorsed by WordPress itself)
- Hostinger (I’m a happy customer myself)
- SiteGround (endorsed by WordPress itself)
2. Squarespace
Squarespace is the best website builder for artists who are looking for a one-stop solution. When you sign up for Squarespace, you will get everything you need for your artist website: web hosting, domain name, storage space, and lots of beautiful ready-made templates.
Squarespace is focused on visual creatives and many of their templates were specifically designed for portfolio websites of photographers, illustrators, designers, and other artists.
Once you’ve chosen a template, all you need to do is fill it with your own images and text. Squarespace comes with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. You just need to drag your content and drop it into the template where you would like to have it.
You can try Squarespace FOR FREE here or check out the full Squarespace Review for Visual Creatives to learn more.
3. Wix
Wix is another top choice for artists because it’s also easy to use and highly customizable. Wix offers you the highest design flexibility you can expect from a website builder. That means you can position elements almost anywhere on your template.
Wix has lots of premade templates for creatives; they are all purpose-built and visually appealing.
On top of that, Wix offers some of the most affordable plans, and there’s even a free plan if you don’t need a custom domain name.
If you like to enjoy lots of creative freedom building your artist website, you shouldn’t miss to try out Wix FOR FREE here.
4. Pixpa
Pixpa is a website builder specifically for artists. You can create a portfolio website along with a blogging and e-commerce platform.
Pixpa’s templates are professional-looking and provide you with everything an artist needs. You will get lots of extra features, such as client proofing tools, automatic image compression, and the option to add metadata to your images to protect your art online.
Pixpa is very scalable. As your site grows, you can upgrade to a higher plan without any problem. You can try Pixpa FOR FREE here to see if you like it.
5. Jimdo
Jimdo is another great option for artists. Jimdo is super-easy to use, even for beginners, and makes building beautiful portfolio and gallery websites a breeze.
Jimdo offers a wide range of ready-to-use templates for photography, illustration, graphic design, fashion, etc. All templates are mobile-responsive, so your artist website looks amazing on large, high-resolution screens and mobile phones as well.
You can start building your website without paying any money; there’s a free plan for you to get started.
If you like Jimdo and want to stick with it, you can choose one of its subscription plans. With these plans, you will get hosting for your artist website, your own domain name, and tools that help you with search engine optimization and marketing your work.
If that sounds good to you, you can try Jimdo FOR FREE here.
6. Weebly
Weebly is one of the best website builders for artists who want to run a blog on their website. Blogging is an excellent way to make your site rank in search engines like Google, Bing, etc. At the same time, you can keep your readers up-to-date on new work, art exhibitions, and art sales.
Just like any other website builder, Weebly allows you to choose a template and customize it to your liking. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to build a beautiful artist website in no time.
Weebly is pretty affordable. You can start with the free plan and then upgrade to the Starter plan for a couple of dollars a month, if you want to have your own domain name. This is probably the best option to start a digital art business on Weebly, because you will get unlimited storage space and no distracting Weebly ads.
To see if that’s a fit for you, you can try Weebly FOR FREE here.
STEP 2: Create a portfolio gallery
The portfolio gallery is the heart of your artist website. Of course, you want to show your artwork in the best possible way and upload clear, high-quality images.
Make sure your portfolio gallery is easy to navigate, has a zoom feature and social sharing options.
A good portfolio gallery should allow for easy and functional navigation. Your viewers should be able to scroll through the gallery images, return to the previous image or move on to the next one. They should also be able to zoom in to take a closer look at pieces they are interested in.
Apart from that, you also want to have social sharing buttons that allow your fans to share your works on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest. This will help you get the word out about your art and in return drive more traffic to your website.
Many website builders offer these features as a standard. Just make sure to check that your selected website builder and template have that functionality before you commit.
WordPress offers a great number of plugins that allow you to design appealing and functional portfolio galleries.
If you chose to build your artist website with WordPress, you will have a great selection of themes that allow you to create an impressive portfolio and also embed other media, like videos, sound files, scrolling images, and so on.
There are plenty of stunning WordPress themes and many of them are even completely free. This website, for example, was built with OceanWP—one of the most powerful and functional themes available.
Filling your preferred WordPress theme with content is super-easy. WordPress comes with its native editor that offers basic features. But you also have the option to upgrade to a more powerful drag-and-drop editor of your choice.
Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress editors worldwide, and was also used to build this site. Elementor Pro offers lots of advanced features to design professional-looking web pages. It’s also a great tool for artists because it allows you to create portfolio galleries, masonry galleries and tiled galleries to beautifully present your artwork.
To see how powerful yet how easy Elementor is to use, check out the Elementor Tutorial for Beginners and the Elementor Review for Photographers and Artists.
A user-friendly portfolio is key when you start a digital art business.
To have a user-friendly portfolio gallery, there are a few more things to consider.
First of all, you want to be sure that your gallery images load quickly. If web pages take too long to load, people might get annoyed and leave before they even looked at a single image of yours.
While most of us already have access to high-speed internet, there are still many places in the world without fast web connections.
To make sure everyone has a pleasant user experience viewing your art, it’s a good idea to choose a gallery widget with the lazy load feature. This feature ensures that your portfolio images load gradually as the user scrolls down the page.
The Elementor Pro gallery widget for WordPress, for example, has this feature as a standard. But also artist-focused website builders like Squarespace and Pixpa come with lazy loading functionality.
Organize your artwork into groups to enhance user-friendliness.
Another way to enhance the user-friendliness of your portfolio gallery is by organizing your works into different categories. If you display all of your pieces on the same page, things may quickly get overwhelming.
Just imagine visiting a museum. You would walk from room to room, and in each room you would see similar works grouped together. This is what you should do in your online gallery, too.
By creating different categories for your art, you let your visitors choose what they want to view first.
To get an idea of how to organize your artwork, take a look at some online artist websites or check out how I grouped my works into different collections (Surreal Stories, Lip Service, Headshots, Monochrome, Nature & Macro).
STEP 3: Open an online store
If you want to start a digital art business, then having an online store on your artist website is a must.
Online market platforms always take a certain commission from their users for every sale. But with your own online store, you can set your own prices and keep the entire sales price to yourself!
When showcasing your artwork in your online store, keep in mind that customers like to see a variety of shots from different angles and close-ups. They also like to get an idea of what an art print looks like in their homes.
That’s why it’s a good idea to show people what a piece looks like when hung up on a wall. To do so, you can take a photo of the artwork in your room. An easier way, however, is to use a mock-up that allows you to digitally include your artwork in a frame. You can find a great selection of mock-ups on CreativeMarket.
Just make sure to let people know that the item is not being sold with a frame in case you show framed samples of your art.
Open an online store with WordPress
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to showcase and sell tangible and digital products.
Using WooCommerce is the cheapest and most powerful way to start a digital art business with an online store. Despite being completely free, WooCommerce offers plenty of advanced features, including payment gateways, shipping zones, tax rates, coupons, cross-sells and up-sells, stock management, and much more.
When choosing a WordPress theme, make sure that the theme features WooCommerce functionality. Don’t worry—WordPress lets you change themes without any problem and whenever you wish. So even if you’ve been using a basic theme, you can easily upgrade to a theme with e-commerce functionality at any time.
Some of the best WordPress themes with WooCommerce functionality are:
Open an online store with a website builder
1. Shopify
Shopify is the best ecommerce platform for artists who are planning to sell their art on a larger scale.
Shopify is specifically built for creating online stores and will provide you with all the functionality to take your art business to the next level. You even have the option to add gallery pages—something particularly useful for artists.
Another great thing about Shopify is that you can easily connect print-on-demand platforms like Printful and Printify. That means drop-shipping prints and other products of your digital art will be absolutely hassle-free.
Shopify works like any other website builder. The drag-and-drop system makes it easy set up product and content pages. There’s also a huge selection of plugins and third-party apps to add more functionality. These also include apps for social media marketing to help you drive traffic to your shop.
The Basic Shopify plan is the most affordable and offers all the ecommerce functionality you need to start a digital art business.
2. Squarespace
Have you thought of Squarespace as a place to just showcase your art? That’s only half of the story, because Squarespace also comes with excellent ecommerce features!
You will find everything you need to start selling your art online—from shopping cart, to payment gateways, to product galleries, to upsells and discount coupons.
Setting up your web store with Squarespace is as easy as building your online portfolio. If you ever get stuck on a problem, there’s a huge number of how-to articles and even some video tutorials to get you up and running quickly. Plus, Squarespace’s customer support is always contactable via chat or email.
To launch your online store on Squarespace, you’ll need at least the Business Plan that gives you ecommerce functionality.
3. Wix
Wix is a great platform to open an online store. The Wix Art Store is free to install and completely commission-free to use.
Selling your art on Wix is super-easy. All you need to do is choose an ecommerce template and fill it with your offerings. You also have the option to integrate print-on-demand platforms like Printful and Printify, if you’d like to drop-ship art prints and other items.
What’s more, Wix has its own print-on-demand service, which is part of the Wix Art Store. You can choose to sell a wide range of products, including framed and unframed prints as well as digital images with license agreements.
Once a customer buys something from you, the Wix Art Store takes care of everything. You don’t need to worry about payment, packaging, and shipping. Every time an order has been placed, the free Wix eCommerce app will send a notification to your phone. All you need to do is relax and create art…
4. Pixpa
Pixpa is also an ideal choice for artists who want to start a digital art business selling products online.
Pixpa offers powerful ecommerce functionality with everything you need for your artist store. You can sell both tangible items and downloadable files, such as art prints and virtual images.
All your products can have variants, upsells, cross-sells, discounts, and much more. If you already have an existing Shopify store, you can easily link it to your Pixpa site.
That means you can enjoy all the advanced Shopify ecommerce features along with all the artist-specific tools that you will get with Pixpa!
5. Jimdo
Jimdo makes it easy for every artist to add an online shop to their art website.
Once you signed up for a free account and answered a few questions about your store, Jimdo will help you set everything up quickly. All you need to do is pick the design and the colors you want and import your photos.
You can choose to offer different variants of products, customize promotions and discount codes, and much more.
Jimdo also makes it easy to start an art business on Instagram or Facebook. With Facebook for Business, all products in your Jimdo store will automatically sync to Instagram and Facebook. That means your followers can start shopping on the social media platforms right away.
Jimdo does not charge transaction fees; you’ll only have the fees charged by your payment gateway.
Jimdo’s online store pricing depends on the number of products you want to sell. There are three different plans you can choose from. For an unlimited number of products, there’s the Jimdo VIP plan.
6. Weebly
Weebly lets you easily create an online store for selling your products worldwide. You can choose your store design and then customize it the way you want.
You will also get customizable email templates to send welcome emails to your customers or notify them about an abandoned shopping cart. If you’ve already created a website for your art, Weebly’s free ecommerce widget lets you seamlessly integrate your new online store with your current website.
Weebly comes with quite some powerful ecommerce features. You can add shoppable links to your Facebook and Instagram profiles and sell through marketplaces like Walmart and Amazon. There’s also an automatic tax and shipping rate calculator for both domestic and international orders, inventory management, coupons and gift cards, customer reviews, and more.
For more shop functionality, there’s a range of third-party plugins that you can download from Weebly’s app center.
STEP 4: Use Social Media To Leverage Your Digital Art Business
While social media shouldn’t replace your own artist website, it can help you promote your digital art business.
Many social media platforms already allow you to sell products directly in the newsfeed. That also makes it easier to start an art business on Instagram or Pinterest.
You can promote your digital art business on your social media profiles by linking back to your online store—either in your bio, like on Instagram, or directly from the post as you can on Pinterest or Twitter.
Visual-driven platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are especially great for artists. They help you get a lot of eyeballs on your artwork, and ultimately make more sales.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can use social media to leverage your digital art business, check out the posts below:
STEP 5: Brand your digital art business
Brand design helps create the look and feel for your digital art business.
Create a logo for your digital art business.
Like any professional brand, you should have your own artist logo. Your logo should show in the header section of your website—and on any other materials relating to your business (like invoices, image licenses, PDFs, e-books, etc.).
Why is branding important when you start a digital art business?
A consistent brand makes it easy for people to recognize your work and better connect with you. Branding also includes how you want people to feel about your art and what message you want to convey. Generally speaking, how do you want to present yourself as an artist?
As an artist, it shouldn’t be too hard for you to create your own logo. You can use your name, your initials, or a typical theme of yours. A logo can be easily associated with a brand—just have a look at the many logos that companies use.
But branding does not only include the logo on your website. It’s also about how people find your website. That means the domain name of your website should also be in line with your branding. It should either be your artist name, or if not possible, at least include your artist name.
Your artist name and a unique logo will enable you to create your personal brand and stand out among other artists. Once you got your branding on point, people will be able to remember you more easily and associate you with your unique brand.
Use a consistent color scheme.
Besides conveying your personal artist brand, your website should have a consistent color scheme.
As a matter of fact, artists have more creative freedom using color than other industries. People kind of expect an artist to have a more colorful website than, let’s say, a lawyer.
However, you should make sure to not go overboard with color. Using between 2 to 4 different colors on your site is a good rule of thumb.
One thing you should pay special attention to is hyperlink color. It’s important that people immediately know what is a link—without having to click on it first. This is a key factor for a positive user experience.
If you are not sure what link color to use, read more about the best link color for your artist website here.
STEP 6: Get to know your audience
When you start a digital art business and are committed to make it successful, it’s vital to identify your target audience.
To get a clearer idea of your target audience, you can start with basic considerations:
For example, what’s the average age of the people interested in your work? Are most of them teenagers or adults? If they are adults, are they in their twenties, thirties, forties, …?
What gender are they? Are they mostly men or women?
Where do your customers come from? Do they live in the United States? Are they from Europe? Do you have lots of Asian fans?
What does your audience have in common? Are there any particular interests or hobbies that are typical of your customers?
It’s also important to find out where your target customers spend their freetime – both online and offline.
Which social media platform do your customers use most of the time? Do they like Facebook or Instagram? Or are they rather on Twitter and LinkedIn?
Once you know which social network your audience prefers, you can focus your efforts on that particular platform to get in touch with the people most interested in your art.
But it’s also possible that your patrons are mainly on art sharing websites. This may be especially true if your clients are professional companies. Many businesses are scouting for talent on art-specific sites like Behance, ArtStation, or LinkedIn.
Further reading: How To Identify Your Target Market As An Artist In 4 Steps
If there are art galleries in your neighborhood, then seize the opportunity to attend exhibitions and mingle with potential buyers and art lovers.
More offline income ideas: How To Make Money As An Artist *OFFLINE* [7 Real World Examples]
Lastly, you’ll also need to get an idea of how much your clientele is willing to spend for your art. Take a look at similar works of other artists to find out what prices they sell for.
Once you know what your target audience likes and how much they are willing to pay for it, it will be much easier for you to market your digital art to them!
More marketing tips: Online Marketing For Artists: Use The Rule Of Seven To Your Advantage!
STEP 7: Start an art blog
Once you’ve set up your portfolio gallery and your online store, you will need a way to drive traffic to your website.
Starting an art blog is a powerful content marketing strategy that will help you rank your website in Google and other search engines.
You can blog about everything that is related to your art. For example, you can write about the creation process of your artwork and show WiP shots. You can keep your visitors up to date on upcoming exhibitions and new pieces you are working on.
Other blogging ideas include tutorials, sources of inspiration, and your favorite tools of the trade.
Publishing content regularly is one ranking criterion for search engines. The more art-related content you have on your website, the higher your site will rank in the search results. Ergo, the more traffic and sales you’ll be able to drive.
If you are using WordPress to build your artist website, you will have everything you need to integrate a solid blogging platform.
But also the website builders will let you create blog posts without any problem. Weebly provides advanced blogging features, and Squarespace, Wix, Pixpa and Jimdo have responsive layouts, too, that make your blog pages look good on all devices.
STEP 8: Optimize your website for SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is incredibly important when you start a digital art business. When you optimize your website for SEO, you are making it more visible in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Blogging is a great way to boost SEO quality. By providing relevant answers to people’s questions in your blog posts, you will increase your chances to rank your website in search engines and attract visitors.
The title of your blog posts is especially important because it’s the first thing a user will see when they come across your article. The title decides whether or not a user feels enticed to click on your post. How-to tutorials, questions, and other catchy titles are known to pique the user’s interest.
But what’s even more important is the actual content of your blog post. When you answer the user’s question and provide comprehensive and accurate content, then you will contribute to a positive reader experience.
Other factors include formatting and page speed. A clear formatting improves readability. If your content is organized using headings and subheadings, the reader can easily scan the text and quickly find the information they are looking for.
Finally, multimedia elements like images and videos have an effect on page speed—and page speed again influences your website’s ranking in Google and other search engines.
To make sure that your pages load quickly, keep image file sizes low (ideally less than 300 KB) and don’t embed more than one video on a single page, if not absolutely necessary.
Use keywords strategically throughout your blog post.
An essential ranking criterion is the use of keywords throughout your blog post.
When you write a post, you want it to be found by users who are looking for a specific search phrase. If your blog post is optimized for that particular search phrase, then Google and other search engines will show it high on their search engine results page (SERP).
In return, more people will click on your post, visit your website, and your chances to make your digital art business successful will increase immensely.
Optimizing a page for a certain search phrase means you include the relevant keywords in your post title, URL, meta description and also throughout the post itself in a sufficient number.
There are specific search engine optimization tools that will help you get the SEO of your pages on point. We are going to talk about them in just a minute in this post.
Add a meta description to your blog posts.
Adding a meta description to your blog posts is an important SEO factor.
The meta description is read by search engines and users and should include the relevant keywords. On the search engine results page, the meta description is the two or three lines of text that appear below the clickable website link.
As users tend to read both title and description to find out whether a post will be helpful to their search query, you should make sure that your meta description is captivating, too.
The meta description shouldn’t be too short, and it mustn’t be too long either because everything longer than 156 characters will be cut off on the SERP.
Use search engine optimization tools.
There are many tools available that will help you get your page SEO going. If you’re using WordPress, there are a couple of free plugins.
One of the best WordPress SEO tools is YoastSEO. Yoast checks a number of factors that impact the ranking of your website in Google and other search engines. These include keyphrase density, title width, alternative image text, etc. You can preview what your post looks like in the SERPs, and you can modify the meta description.
If there’s anything that’s needs improvement, Yoast SEO will let you know what to do to make your page more likely to get ranked.
Another WordPress tool that does the same job is RankMath. The major difference between YoastSEO and RankMath is that RankMath checks for so-called power words in your post titles, which are known to trigger an emotional response and make users more likely to click on your posts.
All website builders come with their own SEO tools.
All of the website builders mentioned in this post come with their own SEO tools that are not less powerful than the WordPress plugins.
Squarespace offers SEO-friendly features with any of their plans. When you sign up with Squarespace, you will automatically get search keywords analytics for your website, search engine and page descriptions, meta tags, and much more.
The same is true for Weebly. All Weebly plans will give you decent SEO functionality. For more SEO performance, you can download one of Weebly’s apps available in the app store.
Pixpa’s SEO Manager lacks in no way behind, providing you with everything you need to optimize both page and images to get ranked in search engines.
Jimdo is optimized for search engines out of the box. There are lots of SEO tools you will get access to, and you can also optimize your images for search engines.
All Weebly sites are SEO-friendly. They have sitemaps, SEO-optimized HTML formatting, meta descriptions, responsive design, and even more advanced features.
And even Wix’ s affordable plans will provide you with SEO performance. You’ll be able to use keyword tools, set meta descriptions, redirects, and so on.
STEP 9: Build an email list
Once you’ve set up your art blog, the next step is to build an email list.
Having followers on social media and art sharing websites is fantastic, but it should never replace your personal email list. Why?
Just like your artist website is the only place that fully belongs to you, your email list is the safest way to keep in touch with your fans in the long run.
You’ve surely noticed that people leave social media platforms every day. As we said above, a social media network may decrease in popularity or disappear. Then your contacts are lost forever.
People delete their email addresses way less often than their social media profiles. When someone gives you their email address, they have a genuine interest in your art and you as the artist. That means your chances are so much greater to build a close and long-term relationship with your fans and customers.
That’s why email marketing is such an effective tool when you start a digital art business! You should make sure to have an email opt-in on your website where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
AWeber is a great platform for getting started with building an email list on your WordPress site. It’s really easy to use and completely free when you have less than 1,000 subscribers. Other recommended WordPress solutions that you can use free up to a certain number of subscribers are MailerLite and ConvertKit.
If you are using one of the website builders, you don’t need to worry about an extra newsletter plugin. You will get dedicated opt-in tools out of the box once you sign up!
STEP 10: Track your website traffic
Tracking your website traffic helps you to get to know your audience.
Traffic tracking tools allow you to understand where your visitors come from and what they do on your website. Knowing such data is incredibly helpful when you start a digital art business. Why?
Because you will get a better understanding how to retain visitors, how to convert them into sales and repeat visitors. Eventually, this information will help you grow your digital art business.
There are several ways that you can track traffic and analyze visitor behavior on your website. The easiest and most comprehensive tool available is Google Analytics. And it’s also free!
Google Analytics lets you learn more about your audience.
Google Analytics shows in-depth data about your visitors and sources of website traffic. You will know where your visitors come from, which search engines they used to find your website, and which keywords they typed in.
The visitor flow visualization will provide you insight into what your visitor did when they landed on your website. What pages did they visit and when did they leave?
This data can help you determine which pages need to be improved and which are converting well.
You can integrate Google Analytics with every WordPress site with just a couple of clicks.
And all of the website builders mentioned in this post allow you to link Google Analytics to your site as well! The website builders also have their own analytics system in place that you will get to use for free when you sign up for any of their plans.
Nevertheless, you will also be able to follow up with Google Analytics when you have your website built with Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Pixpa or Jimdo!
Grab your FREE Art Business Startup Checklist
This post was incredibly informative for anyone considering a career in art. Your realistic advice and insights into the challenges and rewards of being a professional artist were very eye-opening. I feel more prepared for what lies ahead!
Hi Isabella, glad to hear that you found the post helpful. I wish you all the best for starting your own art business! ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ