You’ve been creating art for a while and now you are wondering how you can start selling your art? You are in the right place, my friend! In this post, I’ve put together a full guide to selling art online for beginners. You’ll learn all the easy ways to make money with your art that you can use, even if you don’t have any previous experience in art sales. In all cases, you can conveniently sell your art from home. How does that work? Read on to find out!
If you are passionate about creating art, you will likely consider making money with your passion, at one point in time. That’s definitely a good idea, because why not turn your passion into profit?
Selling your art online and making money is absolutely possible, even if you are a total beginner—without a degree in business management. (>ᴗ<)
I am a self-taught artist and I’m selling my artwork online. In that way, I’m also a self-taught entrepreneur, if you will. ´\_(ツ)_/`
In this post, I’m providing you with a full guide to selling art online for beginners. I show you the best options to start selling your art for money, listing the most popular platforms and the easiest ways to sell your art—without you even needing to leave your home!
Sounds good? Let’s get into it:
Full Guide To Selling Art Online For Beginners
How can a beginner sell art?
If you don’t have any experience in selling your art and just want to get started—worry not. I got you covered.
Even as a complete beginner, you can sell your art on the web. It’s no rocket science and you don’t even need to make a huge upfront investment. In fact, starting to sell your art online is completely free!
When you have created some beautiful pieces of art—be it digital or traditional—and you feel ready to monetize your work, you can get started.
Of course, it’s an advantage if people already know your work and yourself as the artist. The more art lovers you’ve connected with, the easier it will be for you to sell your art.
In order to create exposure for your work, I suggest uploading your art to online platforms like social media and art sharing sites.
Here are some guides to help you get your artwork noticed:
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What is the easiest art to sell?
The easiest—and most common—way for artists to sell their work is in the form of prints.
Besides originals, art prints are popular tokens for art lovers to buy.
Art prints are so popular for a number of reasons:
First of all, prints are usually more affordable than original works. In other words, there’s a print for every budget.
Secondly, you can get prints in different sizes—it’s not like you need to have a huge empty wall to hang a big painting. You can simply get a smaller size print that fits your space.
Lastly, art prints are very versatile and you can basically choose what you want your print to look like.
Do you want to frame the print with glass? Then you might want to pick a matte printing paper. If you want to leave the art print unframed, then a glossy paper may be a better choice.
Prints on canvas, on the other hand, do not require framing behind glass and are ready to hang.
As you see, there’s a whole range of papers and finishes to sell your prints. One thing you should always make sure is to pick an archival photographic paper that is acid-free to prevent deterioration and discoloration.
To find out what choices you have and what’s important to pay attention to, check out my Full Art Printing Paper Guide.
Just to let you know: the absolutely best printing paper available in the market is giclée. Giclée printing produces high-quality fine art prints with extra-fine image resolution and a high degree of detail. The ink used in giclee printing is archival, meaning it resists fading and yellowing. That’s why giclee prints have such longevity.
Some of the best printing services for giclée are Printify, Giclée Today, and The Stackhouse. Here’s more information about giclee prints and further printing services to choose from:
Giclee prints also sell at the highest prices. That means when you start selling your art on giclee prints, you’ll have the highest profit margin. ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
Apart from the printing paper, there are a couple more things you can do to raise the sales price. Here are some suggestions (from lowest to highest price):
- Prints that are signed and not numbered.
- Prints that are signed and numbered.
- Original art prints less than 20 copies, signed and numbered.
- Large prints with even fewer copies, signed and numbered.
- Hand-embellished prints.
- Unique prints, one copy only.
How to start selling your art prints online and make money
1. Save your art in a file format adequate for printing
Before you can start selling your art prints online, you’ll need to save your art in a file format adequate for printing. This is the same for both traditional and digital artists. Only for digital artists it’s a bit easier to save their work for printing, because they already have a digital copy.
Traditional artists have to scan or photograph their original artwork first before they can start selling prints.
In any case, the best file formats for printing your art are TIFF, Adobe PDF, and JPG. For more information and the differences between the various formats, read my post on the Best File Format For Printing Digital Art (Prints From Print Shop & Home).
2. Display your art prints for sale
Once you have saved your art for printing, it’s time to display your print offer in an appealing manner.
Why is visual presentation so important? Well, after all, you want your print portfolio to look professional and leave the best impression possible, right?
When you display art prints for sale, it’s essential to show your viewers what the final print looks like when hung on a wall—in different settings and from different perspectives.
We all live in different environments and want décor for different rooms. Keeping that in mind, you should make sure to display your art prints in a variety of settings, like a living room, bedroom, office, modern apartment, or rustic country house.
Because the more you help your customer imagine what the print looks like in their home, the more likely they are to make a purchase!
Now, I can already hear you say: but, Angie, how can I possibly print out all my works, find so many different rooms to hang them, and photograph every single piece—from multiple angles?
Don’t worry. You don’t have to do any of that. In fact, you don’t even need to leave your house to get great displays of your art prints in different settings. (>ᴗ<)
Ready-made mockups allow you to show your prints in different rooms and from different angles at just a couple of clicks with the mouse.
Most mock-ups come as PSD files that are editable in Photoshop or any other app capable of handling PSD files (→ TOP 4 FREE Alternatives To Photoshop). To put your own artwork into the premade scene, all you need to do is double-click on the Smart Object layer, paste your own image, hit save—and there you are!
When you use a mockup to showcase your art prints, make sure that the mockup is allowed for commercial use. Two great places where you can find very affordable mockup bundles for commercial use are Creative Market and Etsy.
Here’s an example of a beautiful Frame & Wall Mockup Bundle by Yuri-U on CreativeMarket. The bundle includes altogether 20 PSD files with mockups of different rooms (bedrooms, living rooms, office rooms) that allow you to display your art prints from different angles and in a number of standard printing sizes.
You can find more information about conveniently selling your art prints from home, plus a greater selection of mockup bundles here:
3. Make your art prints available for sale
With some beautiful displays of your art prints set up, it’s time to make your offer available for sale.
That being said, this post wouldn’t be a full guide to selling art online for beginners if I didn’t tell you where you can start selling your prints. (◔_◔)
In my mind, the absolutely best place to offer your art prints for sale is your own website.
Your own artist website gives you full control over how you present your print offer, what you sell, how you sell it, and at what prices you sell.
Plus, you won’t have to pay any sales fees to a third-party platform and can keep your entire profit!
If you make an artist website with WordPress, the only thing you’ll have to pay for is web hosting, which you can get for a couple of dollars per month.
Other website builders—that are a bit easier to use than WordPress, but cost a monthly subscription fee—are Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly.
You can learn more about these website builders and others here:
Other online marketplaces that are ideal for offering art prints for sale are:
The selection includes both print-on-demand providers that will handle all aspects of the order for you (including print production, packaging, and delivery to the buyer) and other platforms where you have to take care of order fulfillment yourself.
You choose what works best for you. To figure out the best options for you, check out the below post:
That was it for selling art prints. But prints are not the only way to make money from your creative work. There are more options to sell art online for beginners. So, let’s look into those as well!
Other ways to sell your artwork online
1. Downloads of Your Art
Digital art downloads are another easy way to sell your art online as a beginner.
Downloads are practically the virtual equivalent to physical prints. Instead of shipping the print to a customer, you let them download a digital file of your artwork that they can then print out themselves or display on an electronic device, e.g. as a desktop wallpaper.
(Check out the wallpaper offer in my store to get some inspiration.)
Don’t worry, you don’t give away your copyright when you sell your art as digital downloads. You, as the artist and thus as the copyright holder, lay down the conditions of what the buyer is allowed to do with your work—and what not.
For that purpose, you’ll need to write a digital image license agreement that defines the scope of usage. Basically speaking, there are two major types of license agreements: one that allows the buyer to use the file for commercial purposes and another one that permits personal use only.
Those two types are usually so-called royalty-free and extended royalty-free license agreements.
To get some help setting up your license agreements, there are free premade templates in the Freebie Library that you can customize to your personal needs.
- Grab Your FREE Digital Image License Agreement Templates
Here’s more about how and where to sell art downloads:
2. Printables of Your Art
Printables are another easy way of selling art online for beginners. It works pretty much like selling downloads.
Instead of shipping a physical product, you provide your customers with a digital file optimized for printing. The customer can either print it at home or give it to a print shop of their choice.
As opposed to downloads of your art, printables may include some extras, such as text or other design elements. For example, you can choose an inspirational quote of a famous artist and create a beautiful printable with an artwork of yours.
Or, you can create special printable cards for your fellow artist friends to help them stay positive and inspired, like I’ve done it with my two printable card sets available in my art store:
If you want to sell printables that include text, it’s important to use fonts that are allowed for commercial use. There are free fonts available, but many of them may not be used for commercial purposes.
Make sure to get fonts with proper licensing when you create printables for sale. I recommend checking out Creative Market and Creative Fabrica; they have beautiful original fonts for commercial use.
A graphic program isn’t a must to create printables, but it can definitely be a bonus if you want to make more intricate designs including fonts and graphics. Powerful tools that will do a great job are Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
Other, more affordable, options for creating printables of your art are:
- Canva is a free tool to create all types of visuals. They offer a paid version that is still affordable but the free version already takes you a long way.
- PicMonkey for US$8 a month is a software similar to Canva.
- Affinity Designer is also a one-time purchase software (around US$50 for desktop, US$20 for iPad) that is a more affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator.
- Inkscape is a free alternative to Adobe Illustrator.
You can find more ideas for creating printables that sell here:
Now, what are the best online platforms for selling printables of your art?
Well, you guessed it: your own artist website is the go-to place as usual. Printables and downloads are very popular with customers, so if you already have a website of your own, make sure to include a section for those items!
Other places that are perfect for selling printables are:
To learn more about how and where to sell printables of your art, check out the below post:
3. Art Commissions
This guide to selling art online for beginners wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t talk about art commissions.
Selling commissions is another easy way for artists to monetize their work, along with selling downloads and printables. Commissions are works that an artist creates for a client. That can be any type of creative work, such as a portrait, painting, photo manipulation, concept art, and so on.
The commission is based on an agreement between you and the client. Basically, you can use the same license agreements as for selling digital files of your art—the ones we already talked about above.
Many people who commission an artwork want it for personal use. They want to use it to decorate their home or gift it to a friend. But there are also companies that order commissions from artists. In most of those cases, the company intends to publish the finished work and use it for commercial purposes.
Commissions are a win-win. The client gets a beautiful, personalized artwork. You, as the artist, earn some money and at the same time you can build your portfolio.
When a commission is completed, you will usually send the digital file over the web. Of course, you can email it to the client (if it is not too big). However, if you are planning to do commissions on a professional level, I suggest getting clued up on the 3 best ways to deliver digital art to clients.
The best place to offer art commissions? You already know it: your own website is absolutely crackerjack for selling all the art you create.
Where else can you offer art commissions? Here are some choices:
- Etsy
- Behance
- DeviantArt
- Instagram and Facebook
- ArtStation (for digital art)
- Fiverr
- Upwork
Here’s a post with more details to help you figure out the best options for you and get more tips on how to start selling commissions:
How much you can charge for art commissions depends on the particular project, how long it takes to complete, the required level of skill, and your recognition in the art community. Usually, it’s better to charge a fixed price, instead of an hourly rate.
I have a detailed guide for you on how to price your commissions here:
- Binge more posts about selling art online for beginners:
