Selling art prints is a popular and profitable way for artists to make money with their work. It’s not difficult to sell your own prints online. In fact, you can conveniently sell your art from the comfort of your home—at just a couple of clicks with the mouse. In this post, I show you how to sell art prints from home in just 4 easy steps. Are you ready? Let’s get into it!
If you are an artist, be it a traditional or digital artist like me, I’m sure you’ve already thought about selling your art in the form of prints.
That’s definitely a great idea because many of your fans and followers will be happy to have a piece of yours in their home!
Plus, selling art prints is one of the most popular ways to make money with your creative passion.
But maybe you are feeling a bit uneasy about selling your own prints online. Don’t worry, it’s not as difficult as you might think.
You don’t need to buy any expensive equipment or make any other upfront investment to start selling prints.
In fact, you can sell art prints from home—without losing sleep over printing, packaging, and shipping!
Yes, it’s that simple. All it takes is 4 easy steps and you are set to make selling prints a profitable side-hustle in your artist career. In this post, I show you how to do it, so let’s get started:
Is selling art prints profitable?
As I already mentioned above, selling prints is one of the most popular ways for artists to monetize their work.
It can be a profitable income stream—depending on how you go about it. Basically, you have two options:
- You can sell art prints via your own website. This gives you the most control and the best profit margin, but you have to take care of promoting your prints yourself.
- You can list your art prints on online marketplaces. Those places have an established customer base and you don’t have to do so much promotional work. However, you don’t have as much control over your offerings and you’ll have to share your profit with the platform.
I recommend option number one. Nowadays, it’s not hard to create your own artist website. You can use either one of the easy-to-use website builders for artists or build your artist website on WordPress. In both cases, you don’t need any coding skills.
Your own artist website gives you the most control over how you display your art prints, what kind of prints you offer, at what prices you sell your prints, and how much profit you make.
That’s why I recommend focusing on your own art shop. However, if you don’t have your own artist website yet or want to offer your prints on additional platforms, here are some popular online art selling sites for you to check out:
Can you sell art from home?
Selling prints of your art is really easy and not cost-intensive at all. You don’t have to buy an expensive inkjet printer. You don’t have to store large canvases in your hallway. And you don’t have to wrap them up and drag them to the post office every time you have to ship a print.
In order to sell your own art prints online, you don’t even need to leave your house. You can do everything conveniently from the comfort of your home—at just a couple of clicks with the mouse.
Nowadays, there are easy solutions artists can use from anywhere in the world. With that ease of selling art prints from home, you have the freedom to focus on what you love doing the most: creating art.
Once you finish a piece and want to make it available as a print, all you need to do is save it in a format adequate for printing and upload it to your online store. When someone purchases your print, the order is sent to a printing service that will take care of everything for you.
Here’s exactly how it goes:
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How to sell art prints from home in 4 easy steps
STEP #1: Digitize your art
Regardless of whether you create traditional or digital art, everything starts with digitizing your work. As a digital artist, digitizing your art is as simple as saving it for online display and for printing.
As a traditional artist, you’ll need to do a couple of more steps. First of all, you’ll either need to scan your creation or take a photo of it.
Using a camera to photograph your work is best for large pieces that can’t be scanned as well as for works that have been created using shiny materials, such as metallic pigments or gold leaf.
To get an accurate, high-quality image of your original, hang it on a clean wall with lots of natural light and photograph it from a straight angle.
Once you’ve captured your work using a scanner or camera, it’s time to fine-tune it. Use an editing program like Adobe Photoshop or similar software to correct colors, contrast, and reflections. Make sure to crop the scanned or photographed image and align it correctly.
For displaying your art prints online, it’s enough to have a 72 dpi image. For print, however, you’ll need a high-resolution file with at least 300 dpi, saved as TIFF or Adobe PDF.
You can read more about saving your artwork for print in the Best File Format For Printing Digital Art (Prints From Print Shop & Home).
STEP #2: Pick a printing paper
The second step when selling art prints from home is to pick a printing paper. There’s a whole range of printing papers to choose from.
No matter what paper you choose, you should always make sure to pick an archival paper that is high-quality and acid-free, offering the best color reproduction and highest longevity.
Here are the most common printing papers for fine art prints:
- Matte paper is ideal for framed art pints. It minimizes glare and makes your art look good under glass, preserving color depth and details.
- Glossy paper is great for unframed prints. Glossy prints have a natural shine to them, bringing out contrast, detail and radiant color.
(→ Best Photo Finish For Framing Art Prints – Matte vs Glossy)
- Metallic paper has a distinctive finish with a metallic appearance. It almost gives your art a 3D effect, offering a wide color gamut and sharp details on a durable surface.
- Canvas prints have a unique texture to them, transforming your digital art into tangible masterpieces or preserving the look and feel of your traditional works. Canvas prints are durable and don’t glare under light.
You can find more information about the different printing papers in my Full Art Printing Paper Guide.
STEP #3: Display your art prints for sale
If you want to make your selling art prints profitable, you have to display your prints in an appealing way. You have to show potential customers what your artwork looks like when hung on a wall, in different settings, and from different angles.
The better your customers can imagine what the piece looks like in their own surroundings, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
But don’t worry. Displaying your art prints for sale isn’t as difficult as it may sound right now. You don’t have to print out every single piece, hang it on different walls, in different rooms, and take multiple photos from different perspectives.
The only thing you need to have is a high-quality image of your artwork (from a straight angle) and the rest will pretty much take care of itself.
How’s that?
Well, the answer is mockups. Mockups let you display your art prints in a variety of real-life settings and even from multiple angles at a couple of clicks with the mouse.
Mockups usually come as PSD files that you can edit 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!
If the mockup displays your print from an angle, the procedure is the same: you don’t need to worry about the perspective, because it will be adjusted automatically.
You can find ready-made mockups online to display your prints in various sizes, framed, unframed, under different lighting conditions and in different places.
Related: The Best Size For Art Prints That Sells The Most
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Two great places to get art print mock-ups allowed for commercial use (i.e. for displaying your art prints for sale online) are Creative Market and Etsy.
On Creative Market, you can get find lots of high-quality wall art mock-ups at affordable prices. Oftentimes, you can purchase them as bundles at a discounted price.
I’ve browsed Creative Market for beautiful wall art mockups and found three bundles that I can recommend.
The first one is the Frame & Wall Mockup Bundle by Yuri-U. You’ll get altogether 20 PSD files with mockups of different rooms (bedrooms, living rooms, office rooms). The mockups allow you to display your art from different angles and in a number of standard printing sizes.
The second mockup bundle worth checking out is the Modern Interior Frame Mockup Bundle by Mockup Art Atelier. It contains 24 high-resolution mockup files to display your artwork in clean and modern interior settings. The minimalist design keeps the focus on your art and makes it look amazing from various angles.
Another great option to display your art prints online is the LA – Poster Mockup Scenes Bundle by Blank Studio. It includes 8 real-life mockups in different rural settings. The interior design in warm colors spreads a pleasant atmosphere and allows you to display your work in different print sizes and formats.
On Etsy, I recommend checking out the Art Deco Interior Living Room Wall Art Mockups by FaunaFables. The bundle includes 15 high-resolution living room mockup templates that you can customize in Photoshop.
All canvas mockups come in different dimensions and can be moved and resized. In many of the templates, you can modify the color of the walls, plants and furniture to make it match your artwork.
My other tip for you on Etsy is the Minimalist Frame Mockup Bundle by MoyoCreativeStudio. You’ll get 20 minimalist PSD mockups to display your art prints in landscape, portrait and square format.
The neutral color palette fits a wide range of art styles and puts your work into the focus. The great thing is that you can toggle the passe-partout on and off, allowing you to display your art prints framed and unframed with one click!
STEP #4: Select a fine art printing service
Once you’ve beautifully displayed your art prints in your online store and a customer makes a purchase, it’s time to get the actual print done. There are lots of online printing services that offer different types of art prints for different needs and budgets.
I’ve picked three of the best printing companies that provide the best-quality art prints and will drop-ship the order directly to your customer, without you having to get involved.
Here we go:
Printify is the largest global print network and probably offers the largest choice of art prints at the most affordable prices. You can get everything from framed and unframed photographic poster prints to high-quality canvas and giclée prints.
(→ What Is Giclee Printing And Where To Get It?)
Printify is a print-on-demand drop-shipping company, which means it’s ideal to sell art prints from home. You select the product on the website, upload the file with your artwork, and Printify will fulfill the order for you, taking care of print production, packaging, and delivery. The company has more than 110 printing facilities around the world and ships internationally.
You can create a free account on Printify and integrate it with many online selling platforms, such as Etsy, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, or your WordPress WooCommerce store.
Giclee Today specializes in high-quality canvas and giclée prints. They offer a choice of premium archival papers and canvas prints with premium UV coatings.
Giclee Today works pretty much the same way as Printify: you upload your design and select your favorite type of print. Giclee Today will print your order and ship it to your client anywhere in the world.
The great thing is that you can also ship hand-numbered editions and create custom prints. Plus, there are volume discounts available. Lots of good reasons why you should give Giclee Today a try!
The Stackhouse is another contender that makes it easy for you to sell art prints from home. The company offers different types of photo prints (matte, glossy, luster, metallic), as well as giclée and canvas prints.
All you need to do is upload your artwork as jpeg, tiff or png, crop it and select the media you want to have it printed on. Once a print is produced, the Stackhouse will package it and ship it to your customer worldwide. All orders are fully insured against damage during shipping.
Just like on Giclee Today, you can also get volume discounts on art prints from the Stackhouse. Check out their website now to see what’s on offer!
Looking for a greater selection of places to print your art?
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I hope this post helped you understand that it’s absolutely possible to sell art prints from home. I do it myself and many other artists do it. In fact, it’s one of the most convenient ways to make money with your art. Have you already started selling your own prints online? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!
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This guide is so thorough! I’ve been wanting to make prints of my work for a while now, and your tips on choosing the right materials and understanding print sizes have given me the confidence to finally get started.
Hi Mia, art prints are genuinely a great way to monetize your art. I think you should just take the plunge and start offering prints. Glad that the article was helpful ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ