How Artists Can Make Money Online

 Artists today have more opportunities to show and sell their artwork than ever before, thanks to the internet. There are lots of free and low cost sites where artist can display and sell their art.

There are online Art Galleries, print on demand sites, auction sites and more. I would love to tell you about some of the sites that I personally use as an Artist and give you some tips to help you learn to market your artwork online.

 I love print on demand sites! These are sites where you upload your artwork or designs and then sell those designs on prints, t-shirts, buttons, stickers, gifts and other items that are then printed after the order is placed. I use a few different print on demand sites.

Cafepress:

Cafepress is a very popular t-shirts & gifts print on demand site. They were one of the first companies to do this, so they have a really strong customer base and their site gets a lot of traffic. At cafepress you can get your own personal tiny shop for free, but I recommend that you upgrade to a premium shop. It only cost a couple of dollars per month and you can create a very large store. Check out my cafepress store: Mystic Mama

Zazzle:

Zazzle is another fantastic t-shirt and gifts print on demand site where you can open your own personal store. You can create a very large and cool store absolutely free at zazzle. The downside to zazzle is that it is a newer site, so it doesn't get the heavy traffic that cafepress gets. The upside is that there is less competition there and it's easier and funner to use than cafepress. Check out my zazzle store: Mystic Mama Designs

Imagekind:

Imagekind is a sister site of cafepress that is geared more toward actual artwork than t-shirt type merchandise. At imagekind you create your own Art Gallery where you can show your art or photography and then sell high quality prints or greeting cards of your artwork. Imagekind also offers custom framing and matting. With Imagekind you get one free Gallery, but again I recomment upgrading to a premium membership for a few dollars per month. Then you get unlimited galleries so you can organize your artwork into different groups. See my Imagekind Gallery: Bambi Watson Art Gallery

These are just some of the print on demand sites available for artist to make money online. Once you have your art online and your stores open the next step is to get traffic to your site, so you can start making sales. Marketing your online stores is essential to online success. If people can't find your site, you can't make money.

There are a lot more sites just like the ones I use that specialize in showcasing and helping artists sell their artwork. I just showed you the tip of the iceberg by showing the sites that I personally use.

These sites are fantastic places for artist to show off and sell their art. Most of them offer free or very low cost galleries or stores. They also have easy to use formats that make it fun to put your art online. Most of them also have marketing resources that you can use like buttons and banners for your blogs and websites.

Getting traffic to your new stores is the trick, and for that you need to spend some time learning how to get the search engines online to find your stores and direct people to them. For that I personally recommend One Week Marketing which is actually an affiliate marketing guide, but the methods you learn can easily be converted to driving more traffic to your online stores.

There are some excellent sites also available for artists and crafters alike. I just love Etsy.com. Etsy is a place where anyone who makes hand-crafted items can display and sell their art. Etsy is very popular with fabric artists, quilters, beadwork, woodwork and more.

One nice thing about Etsy is that you get your own store totally free and then you upload photos of your products and list them for very a very tiny fee per item. I listed over 40 items one day for less than $7.00.

I mostly use my Etsy store for my fabric arts like crochet and art quilts and to sell the originals of my fine art. There is also a site called Art by Us, that does artists artwork auctions similar to e-bay.

Vheck out my Etsy store: Created by Bambi

You can have a dozen online stores, all filled with fantastic art, but what good is it if no one can find your online store? In order to actually make money from your art online, you need to also know how to make your online store stand out from the crowd and be seen in the search engines, so people can find your stores.

Every online artist should have some marketing training. I myself tried dozens of things to get more traffic and sales to my online stores, and was ready to pull my hair out in frustration. It just seemed like no matter how hard I worked, nothing helped.

Then in total frustration, I decided to get into affiliate marketing and put my energy into that rather than wasting any more time on my art, which just wasn't selling. I started studying how to do affiliate marketing and after a lot of false turns I started thinking maybe affiliate marketing was just as difficult as selling my art.

Here is the thing, I am the worlds biggest skeptic when it comes to all these programs and systems for making money online. The truth is that most of them are just scams that help the guy selling the program get rich, but don't help you actually learn how to do it yourself. Then there are the other ones that might work if you have a few thousand dollars to invest...well I sure didn't.

A friend told me that a program called "One Week Marketing" was different and had changed his life as well as changed the way he marketed his products online, and that making those changes had actually worked and he was really making money online. He also told me that this wasn't a "get rich quick" scheme, that it was more like a shortcut that actually gives you the tools you need to succeed online and get real traffic to your sites.

Well, I finally broke down and purchased "One Week Marketing" myself...and yes it really did change my life and the way I marketed myself online. The thing I like about "One Week Marketing" is that the marketing methods you learn can easily be adapted to promoting your own products, which if you are an artist like me, is your artwork. This program teaches you how to get real traffic to your online stores, which equals sales, which means you are finally really making money online.

I don't normally endorse anything like this, because most of the "make money online" stuff is a scam. This is different, it's more like a tool box with instructions that actually teach you how to use the tools inside. As a fellow artist you know that having the right tool to do the job makes all the difference. You can't pound in a nail with a wash cloth and you can't wash the dishes with a hammer. So if you're tierd of broken dishes, check out One Week Marketing today!

To learn more please visit: Ways for Artists to make money online.