Do artists need a website? With all the social media platforms around, you might be tempted to think that you can promote and sell your art without a website. But, mind you, relying solely on social media can kill your art career! In this post, I tell you why artists need a website and what are the best websites for artists to use. Spoiler alert: it’s not hard to create an artist website!
Many artists dream of having a huge following on social media and attracting lots of buyers on the platform. They spend hours to capture their artwork from the best perspective, cut together stories and reels that hopefully go viral, research the most popular hashtags for their art, and try to play the social media game best they can…
...until the algorithm changes once more and significantly restricts their reach in favor of paid ads.
I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. We have all been there, haven’t we? I have written a couple of posts on how to post art on Instagram and how to grow your artist Facebook page. All the tips in there will help you grow your following if used consistently, but you won’t be able to ignore that the content you post on social media is generally short-lived.
A post has a lifespan of a few days at best, an Instagram Story only lasts for 24 hours. After that, you will have to come up with something new, if you want to keep your followers engaged and gain new ones. Worst of all, social media posts are not searchable. That means, even if you use the right hashtags, your content won’t be found anymore after a couple of days.
(One exception is Pinterest, which is not only a social media platform but also a visual search engine and therefore highly recommended for artists. Here are 15 must-know tips for artists using Pinterest.)
On the other hand, when you post a work to your own artist website, people can still find it years later on search engines like Google or by coming to your website directly. Your art continues to be relevant for much longer than a few days or 24 hours of exposure that you might get on social media.
So, do artists need a website? Well, I think the short shelf-life of social media posts is already reason enough to answer that question with: yes, artists do need a website!
But there are even more reasons why artists shouldn’t solely rely on social media and get their own website rather sooner than later…
Here's why social media can kill your art career
I have titled this post 'Artists do need a website cuz social media can kill your art career' for several reasons:
ART CAREER KILLER 1: Once you stop posting consistently, you will simply get lost in the sauce of content posted by the minute.
Social media platforms don’t care how good your art is and how much work you put into creating your content. All they care about is how often you post—the more, the better.
The algorithms social media platforms use automatically promote those accounts that post frequently. But posting frequency is not the only thing the algorithm is looking for. It also tracks how often you interact with others, how much you Like and comment on other posts, how many stories you watch, and so on.
In other words, the algorithm even takes into consideration how much time you spend on the platform—and promotes or demotes your content accordingly. But, as artists, we want to spend our time in the studio creating art and not on social media consuming content, right?
From a business point of view, ask yourself: are you getting a return on the time you spent on social media? If you feel that social media just depletes your time and energy, it’s probably about time to explore new ways to promote your art with a better return on investment…
ART CAREER KILLER 2: Social media platforms always prioritze their respectively new features.
Social media platforms systematically favor content creators who make use of their latest additions to the platform. For example, when Instagram introduced their Story feature, users that posted Stories were favored by the algorithm. When Instagram Reels came up, they were given priority to regular image posts and story posts. Now, there is IG TV, broadcast channels, … and the list will go on.
There will always be the next new feature that you will have to use (and put in your time and effort), if you want to keep growing on social media. If you don’t want to turn your artworks into videos or go live… well, bad luck for you!
ART CAREER KILLER 3: Social media platforms decide what content they want to show you ...and to whom your content is shown.
Social media bots preselect the content that you are being shown in your feed. For instance, you have surely noticed that you are only seeing the posts of pretty much the same people in your Facebook feed, right?
Even if you have more than 1000+ Facebook friends, you will only get to see the content of around the same 10 friends you recently interacted with. While Instagram used to show posts chronologically until recently, they now also select what they want you to see and in what order they want you to see it.
In turn, you can be sure that your posts will only appear in the feed of a fraction of your friends and followers as well. That’s pretty much the case on all social platforms, be it Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and so on.
ART CAREER KILLER 4: Social media platforms favor paid ads over organic content.
Just like all entrepreneurs, social media networks are mainly interested in their own profit. You are surely familiar with the saying: If it’s free, you are the product. Social media platforms do not only collect your data, but they also make money by showing you advertisements companies and other users pay for.
Of course, such paid ads are favored over the ‘organic’ content people don’t pay to promote. In short: if you don’t pay the platform to boost your post, it will not be shown to as many users as paid content.
That strategy is not hard to spot. When you scroll down your Insta feed, for example, you will see something like two posts from the people you follow—and after that two advertisements. Same in the Stories: two stories from your followees, two paid stories. And just think of how many times you are encouraged to boost your own posts…
Social media platforms clearly favor paid ads over the organic content users don’t pay for. Instagram, for example, asks you to boost your posts all the time—with and without ad credit, in your feed, in your stories,…
From left to right: BLΔCK DIΔMOND, Dearstand, Dearhunt, and Dearness—the last three pieces obviously being the reason why Instagram shadow-banned my account…
ART CAREER KILLER 5: Social media platforms might be cutting off your reach without you even being aware of it.
Social media platforms can change their rules and community guidelines whenever they want. With prior notice to the users or without. Tumblr, for instance, used to be very popular among artists because they welcomed artworks displaying nudity. But suddenly, Tumblr changed their rules, banning all nude art from the platform—and artists left the platform in their thousands.
As a matter of fact, social media platforms can delete posts they don’t deem appropriate (anymore), shadow-ban your account for a while or ban it for good, if they believe you have done something that violates their guidelines. BUT—as I had to find out recently—it is also possible that they restrict your reach, without even notifying you about it!
In the ‘Social Art Dilemma‘, I speak about how Instagram cut the reach of my account to zero, because I supposedly posted content that ‘went against their guidelines on nudity’. The bones of contention were my three artworks Dearstand, Dearhunt and Dearness. Those works do display nudity, however, first of all, the nipples of the digitally created ladies were blurred or covered with little hearts. And second of all, Instagram suggested the same three images they restricted my account for as paid ads!!!
Had I not randomly checked my Account Status weeks later, I would not have known that there was a problem with my account. Because, although Instagram sends you all sort of notifications on who commented and liked your posts, who posted new photos, etc., I didn’t get any notification that there was a problem (I checked three times!). Well, the life of an artist on Instagram…
All in all, that was a huge lesson for me to not rely on social media to create exposure for my art. Artists do need a website of their own!
ART CAREER KILLER 6: Social media platforms might decrease in popularity or disappear overnight.
Lastly, there is always the risk that social media platforms decrease in popularity, are taken over by other companies, or disappear altogether. It already happened. Do you still remember how Snapchat lost much of its popularity when Kylie Jenner vented her anger about the new layout in a Tweet in 2018?
Or just think back of MySpace. MySpace was the first social media network that came up in 2003. It was the most popular network worldwide from 2005 to 2009 … until Facebook took over. From there, its user numbers dropped rapidly and nowadays, almost nobody knows the name anymore. Most recently, Twitter has been taken over by Elon Musk and become X, and we still need to see where it’s going…
Social media platforms come and go. There will always be the next new thing everybody wants to be on. In turn, the older platforms will lose much of their popularity. That also means that a major part of the work you put into growing your profile will be lost. Similarly, the contact to many of your friends and art buyers will be lost, too, because it is highly unlikely that all of them will follow you to the new platform.
Here's why artists need a website
You see how easily social media can ruin your art career. That's why artists need a website—because all the stuff we talked about above cannot happen to your own artist website!
Here’s why:
1. Your website belongs to you.
Your own website fully belongs to you. It cannot become outdated, it cannot be deleted, and it cannot be taken over—unless you decide to neglect it, cancel your domain, or sell it to someone else.
When you post your work on social media or art sharing sites, your content is just a subsection of those sites. You have no control over what happens to your creations.
Your website, your rules. You can post the art you love to create without having to worry that it might infringe community rules that may change any time. You don’t have to compete with paid ads and you can choose how to present your artwork and yourself as the artist.
2. Your web content has an never-ending lifespan.
The content you upload to your own artist website remains relevant as long as your website exists. You don’t need to post several times a day to win the favor of an algorithm.
When people are interested in your work, they can simply type your name into Google or another search engine, and your website will be the first thing that comes up!
3. Your art blog creates visibility.
Blogging is one of the best ways to increase your chances of showing up at the top of the search results. By publishing blog posts on a regular basis, you will be able to generate traffic and eventually drive sales.
Contrary to social media, publishing around one blog post in a week is enough to gain traction with your website. Plus, when you create evergreen content that people will always be interested in, your website is likely to attract visitors for years ahead.
4. Your website is the hub to build an email list.
As I mentioned above, you might lose contact with your social media followers—either they delete their profiles or your account might get banned. When you have your own artist website, you can include an opt-in for people to sign up for your email list. When someone subscribes to you, you can be sure that they have a real interest in your art.
You can build personal connections with your subscribers and keep them updated about new work and blog posts. That way, you don’t have to worry about a capricious algorithm that might not show your work to your audience. Two of the best options to build an email list are AWeber and ConvertKit.
5. You can sell your art at your own conditions.
Of course, you can sell your work on platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, RedBubble, and Etsy. But you cannot always sell it at your conditions—and you’ll need to share the profit with the platform!
Related: [TOP 25] Best Selling Digital Art on Etsy
In your own web store, you can sell your art the way you want. You can showcase your offerings the way you like, set your own prices and keep your entire profit. You have full control over how you package and ship your work.
There are plenty of ways to make money with art skills and having a shop is not the only way to monetize your website. You can add advertisements, work with brands, suggest affiliate products, and so on.
Not yet convinced that artists need a website?
Here's how to create an artist website
The good news is that creating an artist website isn’t difficult at all. You don’t need any coding experience and you don’t even have to be a techy person to build your own website.
Nowadays, there are so many website builders in the market that make creating a website for your art super-easy. They all work with drag-and-drop editors. That means all you need to do is choose a design element, drag it on the web page and fill it with your own content! Can it be any more convenient?
Here are the most popular website builders that artists use for websites:
Squarespace is one of the best website builders because it is geared towards visual creators. Many creatives have their websites hosted on the platform. Squarespace offers a huge choice of professionally designed templates for all artistic needs. With the drag-and-drop editor, building your artist website and online shop becomes super-easy—even for beginners. Read the full Squarespace Review for Visual Creatives to learn more.
Wix is another top choice for artists because it is just as easy to use as Squarespace and highly customizable. The editor offers you pixel-perfect design options, providing you with more creative freedom to build your personal artist website. Wix has a selection of more than 500 templates, while still being one of the most affordable website builders around.
Pixpa is another website builder that is particularly aimed at artists. The portfolio templates are visually on point and provide you with many tools artists need, for example, image galleries, automatic image compression, and the option to add metadata to your images to protect your work online. Pixpa’s online shop comes with powerful e-commerce functionality that makes it easy to sell art prints, downloadable files, and services.
Shopify is the best choice for artists who want to sell their artwork online and already have an established customer base. The e-commerce features belong to the best in the industry and provide you with everything you need to start selling on a professional level. You even have the option to connect print-on-demand platforms like Printful or Printify that will automatically fulfill the orders for you!
