Setting up an online shop -- advice

shhhh

Hi,

I am a painter looking to set up a website that serves both as a platform to connect myself and my artwork to the world, and as an online shop to sell originals and reproductions of my paintings. I am looking for advice as to the best website to use to set up shop. It should be noted that I do not have computer programming skills, so building my own site without a standard template is not a viable option. Searching reviews online has given me the impression that Shopify is one of the best sites to use in order to sell my material, as it offers comprehensive customizable features that will be useful to streamline my operation.

Any advice about this specific site or any others that may be a better option would be much appreciated.

Tanka!

Djeet

I'm not an artist, but I think you should look at deviantart. I think you'd get more exposure to people wanting to buy art. The site you mentioned seems geared to sell stuff, not art.

NightDragon

I would not look to DeviantArt as a good site to sell your work. Most people going there are not looking to buy anything, and a huge majority of the people selling their work there are insanely undervaluing their work. It's a bad site for artists to sell on.

Are you looking for a place that will create prints for you and handle all the shipping, or do you just want a website where customers can pay you directly, and you're in charge of creating the prints and shipping them?

Also, does your work fit into any particular style or genre?

darkmayo

Shopify also exists and is fairly easy to create a storefront. http://www.shopify.ca/

shhhh

Djeet, I would definitely not consider deviantart for a couple reasons. One, there is an insane amount of material on there so exposure would be lucky and random. Also, a lot of art posted on that site is, no offense to artists, subpar work. In other words, anyone who WANTS to be an artist posts their work there.

Nightdragon, I have taken some work to a high profile gallery and they and I both now possess high resolution images of the work. The idea behind the site is to sell both originals and prints. When a print is purchased I would contact the gallery and after producing a print they would, presumably, mail it to me and I would mail out the print to the buyer. As far as my work goes, the stuff on file is abstraction, but I also like and am proficient with still life. Really I don't just want a "shop", but rather a site that is my official website as artist, where people can view my material, and purchase originals and prints directly from me. One thing I noticed about shopify that is great is that pretty much every type of payment system that exists can be set up.

I realize the best way to go about obtaining that set up would be for me to build my own site or have someone do it for me, but I lack coding knowledge and the money to pay someone to build the site for me.

ceres

It sounds like you actually want an online portfolio that happens to have a shop.

bowen

You could just set up a simple portfolio website and just have a "Request Print" on items that emails you a request and then you do the work manually from there (send a quote with google merchant/paypal) and take payment, then have the item printed by whoever does that, and send it out to the user.

shhhh

Ceres that is exactly correct haha. Bowen I like your idea and I think it's a good one, but I'd really like to be as professional as possible about selling. Meaning, my potential customer could see exactly what the cost for prints are, and could pay for the print on the spot. If I simply left it at "request print" the buyer's interest may vanish by the time we get around to payment. When selling things you have a short window of time in order to make it happen, in most cases.

bowen

You're right. Do you have a lot of demand right now or are you expecting it?

You're still going to need to dump some money on this project, no matter how little you want to. You'll need a domain name, hosting for the website, a shopping cart system, and a payment system. You're looking at something like $50-100 a year just for this part. Maybe more. Let me know if you need help with this.

You might also consider square and/or etsy for the "store" portion of your site.

https://squareup.com/sell-online (I use these guys myself for payments on programming/tech stuff, but not for the online store part)

Set up a business checking account to help you keep track of stuff. Pay yourself from that, but pay bills for your business out of this first.

Make sure you account for taxes you need to pay on that income and sales, at least 25% (maybe more). You can claim that 2.75-5% that square or your payment processors take on your taxes under the business exemptions (turbotax has a $100 version for business owners). You can also claim the website costs and hosting as business expenses. And also, paying someone to help you set it up, also, is an expense you can claim. You might have to work that into depreciation/amortization in your taxes, but as a startup you can claim it 100% once I think.

It's worth getting a tax guy for this if you're expecting to make more than a few thousand a year on it.

Avoid paypal if you can, they tend to hurt business owners in the long run.

zagdrob

shhhh wrote: »

Ceres that is exactly correct haha. Bowen I like your idea and I think it's a good one, but I'd really like to be as professional as possible about selling. Meaning, my potential customer could see exactly what the cost for prints are, and could pay for the print on the spot. If I simply left it at "request print" the buyer's interest may vanish by the time we get around to payment. When selling things you have a short window of time in order to make it happen, in most cases.

You could essentially do exactly what Bowen said, but just have your pricing right there on the page / button.

Selling art is going to work a bit differently than selling random widgets on Amazon. Someone who wants to buy your print wants that particular print, and they aren't going to be able to go elsewhere to buy the exact same thing more conveniently.

You might want to take a look at something like www.portfoliobox.net. They seem to be along the lines of what you're looking for, or google 'online portfolio ecommerce' and you should find some other services being offered.

shhhh

Thanks for the feedback both if you. I will look at all options provided. What I realized after celes's input is that I should in fact have a portfolio online, as opposed to something that is a shopping website primarily. What I'm thinking is that perhaps I could create an online portfolio and link to a shopping site to buy work.

Bowen I realize that I will have to spend money to make money with this. I don't have high demand. In fact I have no demand ha! I'm just a dreamer who hopes people will appreciate what I do. When I have this stuff set up I'll share my link here, and maybe stop by the artist's corner (although I'm not really interested in critique. I know it can help artists become better artists but critique is largely a matter of taste and groupthink).

Thanks again folks.

bowen

zag's link seems like it'd be perfect for you. You might even consider getting a domain and pointing it there.

Good luck shhhh.

Lilnoobs

You might have some luck asking the people in the Artist's Corner as I am sure some of them have an online presence.

Iruka

Squarespace has its own store plug in. Its not the most robust but when it comes to simplicity they are probably one of the easiest sites to set up with the most artist-oriented themes.

Just FYI, posting in the AC without the intent to receive critiques is against the rules. Its cool if you aren't looking for it, but its not what its there for.

Figgy

You can turn your shopify store into anything you want. It can look primarily like a portfolio site but also have the shop integrated. And it can be as subtle or overt as you like.

Shopify fees are also pretty reasonable. Their transaction fees aren't much more than if you were to get your own merchant account and accept online payments through your own gateway. Merchant credit card fees are balls, especially if you're low volume like you would be.

shhhh

Cool, thanks Figgy. I really like Shopify from what I've read and I finally have the time to look at the site with the intention of setting something up.

Iruka, as a mod I hear what you're saying and I won't post my art there if the intent isn't to receive critique.

Thanks everyone!