If you have been creating digital art for a while, you probably already showcase and sell your art online. Another great income stream for digital artists is to offer art commissions. But where to sell digital art commissions? In this post, you’ll find out about the best places for artists to get commissions and how to start promoting your offerings!
Are you passionate about digital art? If so, you’ve surely been making lots of beautiful creations. Then maybe now it’s time to take your artistic skills to the next level and start a digital art business.
One of the best ways to make a living out of art is through selling digital art commissions.
Digital art commissions are works that an artist creates for a client. The commission is based on an agreement between you and the client.
The digital commission can be any type of creative work – from a portrait, to a painting, to a photo manipulation, to concept art, etc.
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 digital commissions from artists. In most of those cases, the company intends to publish the finished work and use it for commercial purposes.
Digital art commissions are one of the best ways to make a living out of your art. These are the top art commission platforms!
How do digital artists get commissions?
In this article, we’re going to go through everything you need to know to sell your own digital art commissions.
So how exactly do digital artists get commissions? The answer is – Marketing.
As an artist, you probably don’t like the idea of promoting yourself. But believe me, no sales without any self-promotion!
That doesn’t mean you’ll need to become a marketing guru in order to sell digital art commissions. But you will need to set up some sort of online presence and find out where your potential clients are hanging out.
There are several ways to go about that and you’ll need to try out what works best for you. For example, you can promote your digital art commissions on social media and other art sharing sites or you can set up your own artist website.
Where to sell digital art commissions?
To help you find the best options for you, I’ve put together the TOP 7 places to sell digital art commissions online.
Try out a few of these art commission platforms to find out which places you enjoy the most and which you find the most effective to reach your potential customers!
TOP 7 Places to sell digital art commissions
Etsy is arguably the most popular platform to sell art of all types. It’s a huge market for hand-made art and custom products, but also for digital artwork.
Etsy has been around for quite some time and already has a large audience in place. That means lots of art lovers know they can find great artwork to download on Etsy!
But the platform is also a fantastic place to sell digital art commissions. A quick search will show you that many artists advertise their commissions on Etsy and there’s great demand.
On top of that, Etsy is super-easy to use. They handle everything for you, from payments to file delivery, and so on.
They have lots of helpful information for artists to get their store up and running quickly, and they even provide you with marketing tools to help you get the word out about your art commissions!
Pinterest is a social media platform that is still a bit underestimated. What’s special about Pinterest is that it’s also a visual search engine.
Pinterest is an excellent tool to boost your reach as an artist. Just like Instagram, Pinterest is visual-driven. The images you post on Pinterest are called Pins and it’s best to use big vertical pins to catch the viewers’ attention.
As opposed to Instagram and Facebook, Pinterest pins have a much longer lifespan and the potential to drive a lot of traffic to your site.
Actually, Pinterest is ideal for selling all things that are to do with decoration. The categories that most frequently lead to purchases from Pinterest are fashion, beauty, and home decor, which include fine art prints and other merchandise.
Learn more about using Pinterest for artists:
To sell digital art commissions on Pinterest, I recommend using large vertical pins, a relevant description and hashtags. Then, link the pin back to your contact page or artist website where people can get the commission from you.
Pinterest has the potential to make your pins go viral, but it’s important to post on a regular basis. 5 to 10 pins per day are recommended.
Now, posting that often can be pretty time-consuming, but it’s definitely worth it.
I use a tool called Tailwind to keep my Pinterest account active, even when I’m not logged it. Tailwind allows you to schedule your posts in advance and provides you with in-depth statistics that show you which pins are working and which not.
To learn more about Tailwind, check out my Tailwind for Pinterest Review here.
DeviantArt is one of the oldest and still the largest network for artists to upload and promote their creations. Since its foundation in 2000, the art platform has grown to more than 38 million members.
You can create a free account, and then become part of the ‘deviants’ and share your ‘deviations’.
You can find all types of traditional and digital artwork on DeviantArt, and it is also a popular platform to sell digital art commissions. There are many ways for digital artists to get commissions. For example, you can use DA’s commission widget itself, or post your commissions on your profile page or in your journal.
If you don’t have a large following yet, you can join groups on DeviantArt to promote your commissions. There are many groups that focus specifically on advertising art commissions, so this might be a great opportunity!
Another possibility is to post your commission work in the Job Services Forum. This is where most artists offer their commissions because the forum has such a large audience.
In the Job Services Forum, you’ll be paid with real money. If you prefer getting paid with DA points instead (1 point is worth 1 dollar cent), you can use the Projects Forum.
Instagram is ideal for artists because it’s based on visuals, just like Pinterest. As a digital artist, it’s easy to share your works on the platform. All you need to do is save your digital creation in the right file format and then upload it to your IG account.
To sell digital art commissions via Instagram, it’s important to have a following in place that is interested in your offerings.
The best way to reach a lot of people on Instagram is by using hashtags.
Now, you want to use hashtags that are relevant to your post. But at the same time, you don’t want to have hashtags that are too popular or not popular enough.
Let me explain.
When choosing your hashtags, you want to make sure that those tags have a chance at ranking your post in the top search results. So when you are new on Instagram, it’s a good idea to use hashtags with less than 100k posts. This allows your post to stick around longer and to have a higher chance to get noticed.
As your following grows, you can aim for more popular – and more competitive – hashtags in the 300k to 500k range.
To learn more about hashtags, check out my post about the DOs & DON’Ts For Artists using Instagram.
One last thing to remember when selling digital art commissions on Instagram is to link your profile to your contact page. After all, interested viewers need to know how to get in touch with you!
Related: How To Upload Digital Art To Instagram & Make It Look Good
Facebook used to be a great place for artists. But in recent years, it has well been having its ups and downs.
A few years ago, it was still pretty easy to reach a large base of fans and potential clients on Facebook. However, since Facebook changed its algorithm, lots of artists and other people have seen their reach shrink over night.
Now, everything is geared towards paid advertising. If you still want to get the word out about your art on Facebook, you’ll need to pay quite some money.
Still, Facebook is not all bad and there are still a few opportunities to sell digital art commissions using Facebook groups.
Just like on DeviantArt, you can find groups on Facebook that specifically focus on art commissions. But you can also join other groups related to your niche and start being active there.
That way, you can connect with like-minded people and drive traffic to your offerings. You can accept commissions directly via DM on Facebook or link to your personal contact page in your bio or below your posts!
Related: 7 DOs To Post Your Art On Facebook & Grow Your Artist FB Page
Now, where else to sell digital art commissions? Well, another possibility is to create your own artist website. There are lots of good reasons why an artist should have a website, and selling artwork and art commissions in your own online store is one of them!
There are easy website builders for artists that allow you to set up a web site and shop within an hour or two.
A great place to sell art and art commissions is Shopify. Shopify is a professional website builder capable of handling large online businesses. But the platform also caters to artists who wish to sell their offerings through their own web store.
Shopify offers more than 70 ready-made themes that you can use to set up your art store and you will get all the advanced eCommerce features you need to start selling on a professional level.
Since Shopify is not the cheapest option, you should already have a customer base in place before you start offering your digital art commissions on Shopify.
To see if Shopify is the right pick for you, you can get the free 14-day trial here with no credit card required.
I’m sure you’ve all heard about WordPress. WordPress.org is one of the biggest website building systems in the market – and it’s completely free!
Building a website with WordPress comes with a slight learning curve. But once you’ve managed the basics, it’s pretty easy and fast. You can create your own online store using WooCommerce and start selling your artwork and digital art commissions.
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that is also free like most other things WordPress.
One of the few things that you need to pay for when using WordPress is website hosting – and maybe a website theme. The hosting provider is where you store you website online so it’s accessible 24/7. Recommended WordPress hosting providers are Bluehost and Siteground, which are both endorsed by WordPress itself.
A WordPress theme determines the look of your website. There’s a plethora of themes that are highly functional and professional-looking. I’m using the OceanWP theme for this artist website and I’m totally happy with it!
To learn more about building your artist website with WordPress, feel free to check out my other posts:
- Is WordPress Good For Artists? – An Artist’s Opinion…
- How To Make An Artist Website With WordPress In 5 EASY Steps
- Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress – WooCommerce For Artists
- Is OceanWP A Good Theme For Artists? – Hands-On Review By An Artist
- Elementor For Photographers And Artists – QUICK & EASY Page Builder
To learn more about selling art commissions online, also check out this video by amazing artist Honey & Absinthe on YouTube!
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Thank you so much for such a wonderful and informative blog post. I found it very helpful and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I am currently a full time illustrator who works on commissions and I wanted to phase out of it. This article addressed my questions and concerns. So thank you again for taking the time to write it!
Hi Marcella, you are most welcome! I’m always happy to hear when my posts can help other artists ♥︎