Selling Online: Is Art Purely a "Browsing" Proposition?

Over the years, I've heard lots of people say that it's "impossible to sell art online." As an artist myself, I'm often inclined to agree with that assertion, even though I still keep trying to sell my work online.

I hear lots of different arguments being made as to why you can't sell art online or why it's difficult to sell art online. Some of them seem fair enough; most just sound like rationalizations.

The one I seldom hear discussed is a fairly practical one, namely that art is most of the time not something you go looking for it's something you happen upon while browsing for something else, and then end up acquiring either on impulse, or after thinking about something you saw while visiting somewhere... and you just can't get it out of your head.

There's no formulaic marketing to something like that, any more than you can capture a cloud in a plastic bag.

What that means — in terms of trying to sell your art online — is that there's a very high likelihood that people aren't actually looking for your art. They might love your art, but they're not aware that they actually want your art till they see it; accidentally stumble upon it in a context where they aren't necessarily shopping for art.

Case in Point

We experienced this a lot when we had our brick-and-mortar galleries, where many of our sales were made to people who were actually going to — or coming from — dinner or the movies nearby, and they strolled into the gallery, looked around, fell in love with something in either bought it on the spot, or got information, went away and then we heard from them weeks or months later when they decided they had to have that piece.

Absent having accidentally strolled into the gallery and seen something, they would never even have known that they wanted something and they would certainly never have been searching for it.

Which brings me back to the point about selling online. Not a lot of people are searching for art online unless they happen to collect the work of a particular artist. But if you're not already a highly known and collectible artist, chances are there not looking for your work.

So when you're looking to sell your art online, it strikes me that the best approach you can have is likely just to try to find some way to simply "put your art accidentally in people's way" so that they can see it and determine that actually "Well, THERE'S something I want!"

People actually search for things like a cover for an iphone, or a diamond ring, or a flat screen tv, or the best restaurant in town, or where to adopt a cat. They don't very likely search for a "painting of a bird sitting on a tree stump overlooking the bay."

And therein may lie the great challenge in selling art online.

I look at a lot of the people who do claim to have "success" selling art online but what they actually have success doing is being graphic artists, and putting their work on coffee mugs, t-shirts, shopping bags, greeting cards and goodness knows what else. People find their work not because they are looking for a painting of a cat on a bench, but because they're looking for a mug with a cat on a bench, and then they accidentally discover the artist's work that way.

Of course, that's where we can get into the whole "selling out" debate... is agreeing to put your art on a mug selling out or is it clever marketing?

I'll leave that for someone else to decide!

Thanks for visiting, and feel free to leave a comment — engagement is always welcome!

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