Are you thinking about selling your artwork online, or would you like to make it easy for local people to know what events you will attend shortly? If your answer is yes to either of these questions, you will want to consider building an artist website. This post will discover the best tips for starting a new art website so you can start selling more art.
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Starting A New Art Website
I decided to try selling my original art online over fifteen years ago.
It was a difficult challenge because I was not computer savvy, and my friends didn’t know much about computers. I remember someone recommending selling my art on eBay; that is where my story began.
It took me about a year to figure out what I needed to know about online marketing, taking images of my art, how to write descriptions, SEO, keywords and the list goes on.
In about a year, I started to see some success and decided to have an art website I owned. I just thought at the time that if I wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, I should have a website where people could visit and make a purchase.
That was the best decision I could have made at the time. A year after launching my art website, I saw my sales reach over six figures yearly.
If you are interested in building an online art business, you should consider building a website for your business. It is much easier to build a website today and more affordable than when I had one built fifteen years ago.
To put it in perspective, my first website cost me almost $5,000, and it took about a month for the web designer to complete it. Today I built this website for less than $200, and it only took me a few minutes to launch it.
I also have the flexibility to change the look and feel of this site (I use StudioPress Themes for WordPress. If I wanted to change my first website, I would have to hire a web designer to make the changes I was envisioning.
You can easily have your website up in just a few minutes with BlueHost’s one-click WordPress Installer.
All you have to do is purchase a domain name and hosting from BlueHost and click the WordPress Installer, and BlueHost will do the rest.
Below is a series of videos to help get you started.
Here are some WordPress tutorials I put together to help you become familiar with your new WordPress art website.
WordPress SEO Basics eBook
WordPress Dashboard Guide Ebook
Best Art Websites
Even though it will take you a few minutes to launch your site, success comes from keeping it up-to-date with fresh content.
The best art websites are the ones that the artists regularly add new material to and keep up-to-date.
For example, more people are using mobile devices to surf the net and make online purchases. You will want to ensure you have a mobile-friendly (responsive theme) art website.
Most premium themes today are responsive. That means they will look good on PCs, mobile devices, and smartphones.
StudioPress Themes for WordPress makes it easy to build and maintain your website. They have a wide variety of themes to pick from, drag and drop capabilities, technical support, SEO optimized, secure and you can incorporate WooCommerce (an e-commerce solution that offers a shopping cart).
Writing art blog posts on a regular schedule will help drive traffic to your site.
Updating your events will help you to draw a crowd at your local events.
Your art website should become a part of your weekly tasks.
Professional Website Platforms
There are a variety of low-cost platforms available for building websites.
Some of the most popular website platforms:
WordPress.org (One of the most popular platforms used by online businesses and professional bloggers.)
There are many more platforms available but this list will be an excellent place to start.
I recommend WordPress to all of the artists I work with one-on-one. WordPress has been around the longest, and many tutorials and forums are available for support.
Website Requirements
Whether you decide to use WordPress or a different platform for your art website be sure to spend some time the services the platform and themes offer.
Here is a checklist of what you will need:
- Responsive Theme
- E-commerce
- Fast loading site, pages, images, and videos
- SEO optimized
- You can modify and customize the appearance
- Secure themes
- Regular updates for the site, themes, and plugins
- Site Tutorial available
- Email or phone support
Conclusion:
If you are interested in selling your original art online for the long haul you will want to build an artist website where your audience can view and purchase your artwork.
After you have your site looking exactly the way you envision it, take some time to learn how to drive traffic to your new artist website.
If you want to speed up the growth of your blog take the 28 Day Blogging Challenge for Visual artists.
The 28 Day Blogging Challenged has helped over a thousand artists like you.
Best Tips for Starting a New Art Website Overview:
- Best Art Websites Builders
- Professional Website Platforms
- Website Requirements
Here are some articles to help get you started:
- Increase Your Art Blog Traffic with Simple Pinterest SEO
- How Social Media Will Increase Your Art Blog Traffic
- Digital Content Marketing – What Artists Need to Know
- 5 Types of Art Blog Posts That Drive Traffic
- 5 Ways Artist Blogs Sell Art and Why You Should Start One
