Advice on website selling
posted by Rykk at 12:11 PMI'm in the process of putting together a website of my own with Keith's much needed help and want a lot of its focus to be selling prints of my work rather than just being a site where I show tons of images and talk about myself a lot. While there will be some of that stuff, I want to see if I can't make a go of using the site as a portal for anyone wanting a print of one of my pix.
Most, if not all, of the fractal sites I've ever visited make it a bit of a chore to order anything and you have no idea at all what price range the prints would be sold at. They pretty much all say "send me an e-mail and we'll talk"(sic). Right off the bat, let me say that my prints will be priced close to art festival range prices, will be made with the finest archival materials available and so are definitely not of the "poster quality" prints on photo paper one might get at Kinko's for 25 cents or even the ones at DA for $59.95 where the artist nets a whopping $17.36 for a 30x40 canvas print. (biggest ripoff I ever saw...) It can be a lot of work and time spent running around on your lunch breakand weekends to get a decent print made and shipped and really not worth the hassle for 5-10 bucks profit except from the flattery/vanity standpoint that someone actually bought something of your's.
So my idea is to go ahead and name the prices right up front with stats for how many of the limited edition are left. I'm thinking it would weed out the folks who aren't "serious" about buying a rare - and I've always said fractals are rare and beautiful things - piece of art. I've made a few really large sales just from folks contacting me but 90% of the time I end up stressing over how much to ask for and then spend weeks scanning my inbox to see if someone even answered after I did quote a price. Granted, I might get zip-nada requests for prints being it IS the internet but at least I wouldn't have to spend time going round and round with someone who just wants a $20 print that they could just as easily make doing a "Save Picture As" and blowing it up to 8.5x11 to print on a laser printer.
Whaddaya think?
Rick
3 Comments:
I think that your site should be a secondary outlet and that real life should be your primary one. There are people who do make money selling fractal based art at shows and galleries. I don't think that too many people will be willing to part with bigger dollars based on a tiny picture on the computer.
dzeni just described how she has been successful at selling fractals at a stock site. That's cool. I have heard of other success stories coming from places like cafepress.com and even one from DA, but you are going after a different market. You're measure of success will be to make as much on one sale as many of these people can make in several months. I think that there is plenty of room in the market for the whole spectrum.
I have mentioned this to you privately but I'll put it out here: Maria and I had idreamincolor.com set up with shopping carts, selling 11 x 14 prints for $45. We did not get a single sale in a year. I didn't even get an inquiry. It left a sour taste in my mouth about selling art on the internet. So much so that I was skeptical when I heard stories like dzeni's.
I don't know the secrets of selling art on the web but I do know that it did not work for me. All I can do is draw from that experience and say that your chances of selling high end art are better if you do it in the real world. I think that you should use your site more as a portfolio than an outlet. Putting a price on it means that you are serious about what you are doing, which is good, so I don't think that there is a problem with that.
I'm not sure about selling high quality art on the Internet! Its a good experiment if you have the time and energy and I'd love to know if it works. I'm trying to see what the market will pay for high quality prints of the type you describe. Three of my works are going on auction this Friday (its to raise funds for at a local school) and it will be good to see how much they sell for. Perhaps I'll blog more about the experience after the auction :)
I haven't had a single inquiry from my website, but I have sold quite a number of fractals at art/craft shows around central NY.
Art is very personal, and I suspect it's pretty rare to buy anything significant over the internet. You just have to see it in person to really know if you want to hang it on your livingroom wall.
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