Avoid these 6 mistakes in your online art shop

SELL MORE, SERVE MORE. Sell art online this year by avoiding a few simple errors – errors that are often overlooked. Artists have a lot to manage in their creative businesses and an online art shop is just one part of it. But to sell art online is to give your creative business a way to scale! So let’s tackle a few common mistakes you might be making so you can get to scaling instead.

I recommend selling your artwork at in-person shows first before creating your website. Read this article here to learn why art shows move your art journey along faster.

Paying too many fees

Making a good online art shop comes with fees. Sometimes you pay them up front for listing, sometimes it skims them off of your revenue after the artwork sells. In some form or another, you will be paying fees to sell art online. (The only way to avoid this is to take cash/check by mail – but who wants to wait for that?)

When you’re ready to sell art online, you’ll first need to decide HOW people will send you payment for your lovely artwork. 

What tools will you use to transfer the customer’s money into your bank account?

This determines the type of fees you’ll pay.

You can choose to use apps like Square, Cashapp, or Zelle, which is easy if you choose to market solely on social media. Or you can post your art on marketplaces like Etsy which have a built-in payment processor. Or you can make your own online art shop and find a payment processing tool like Stripe. I suggest the last one because that’s what I do and it gives me the most control over my store.

You can actually accept cash or check through mail if you’d like, and avoid these fees. The only issue with this is the extra effort required on your customer’s side, which may discourage them, and the extra time everyone has to wait, which may discourage them as well. The lack of convenience is why people don’t do this anymore. 

Whatever format you choose will determine the payment processing fees you pay. Payment processors skim a percentage off your revenue after an item is sold, usually when you go to send the money to your bank. 

This is why you see different prices at the gas station for people who pay with cash vs people who pay with a card. The electronic transfer comes with a fee. It’s the price to pay for the service of convenience.

Certain platforms come with additional fees, too. 

Listing fees were made popular by Etsy and other artist marketplaces. Listing fees are the price to pay for the convenience of not having to design your own website or pay for a website template. Etsy also charges listing fees because you’re supposed to get more traffic on a marketplace platform, assuming more people have heard of Etsy than have heard of your name.

Marketplace sites such as Etsy can also charge yearly fees, renewal fees, pass down the payment processing fees to you, etc. and change the fee structure whenever they like. 

If you’re building your site yourself, you can get a website for free if you agree to have “.wordpress.com” at the end of your url. If you want to get rid of that, you’ll need to pay for your own domain on WordPress and yearly for hosting on Bluehost (which is basically the server your website lives on). 

Building your own site is like shopping a la carte, which I love because you can pick and choose which fees you deal with. You’ll want to buy security plugins, a payment processor, and probably a theme for design (I got mine for $30). 

Print on demand sites don’t charge any fees up front usually, but they skim a lot of your revenue off any sales you make. It makes sense, since these platforms do most of the work for you. You don’t have to think about the payment processing, listing fees, or any of that. But you could be paying a lot less fees if you do more work up front. 

Moral of the story is compare pricing before you make a decision!

When you sell art online you will pay fees. But you don’t have to overpay. 

Consider what type of platform you want to list on, what payment processor you want to use, and what extra tools or marketing exposure you’re willing to buy as well. Do the math before jumping in. 

If you stick with a wrong choice longterm, it could really hurt your art business.

Choosing a platform that censors too much

As any artist will know, not all platforms are friendly to all types of content. 

If you’ve ever tried to share a nude portrait online, you’ve experienced how quickly it can get removed and how quickly your ranking in the algorithm gets messed up. 

That’s why it’s essential to make sure that your content aligns with your platforms as much as possible. 

I’m thankful that most of my artistic interests are in nature, spiritual introspection, business, and family friendly imagery. It makes it easier on me when choosing a platform. But if you paint the physical form, want to share “controversial” political opinions, illustrate violent or otherwise 18+ scenes, watch out for this one. 

A hosting platform like Bluehost can kick you off their server just as quickly as Tiktok can remove your post. And then your whole strategy to sell art online will be down the drain. 

Payment processors, social media sites, search engines, hosting sites, marketplaces, and any other online tool can ban you if they don’t like your artwork. They can and they will.

This doesn’t mean you should self-censor. Don’t do that. Be yourself! Share what you like. We’re pro free speech and creative expression around here. 

But you should be mindful of what you’ll be listing in your shop and what the stances of your chosen platforms are. 

Don’t make the mistake of getting your whole online art shop deleted!

Not having a visual brand

The value you bring to the world as an artist stands in your visual appeal. Your message is spoken in visuals. Emotions are transferred through visuals to the viewer. If your visual brand is non-existent or thrown together unintentionally, your goal to sell art online will suffer. 

Think of visual branding like a magnet. There is a negatively charged and positively charged side. Visual brand attracts your ideal customer and repels everyone else. Being mildly polarizing is a good thing. If you have no unified message or vibe, you won’t strongly attract or repel anyone. 

Artists rest most of their visual brand on their art style. Your art style is created when you’re making your artwork through consistent choices that result in a unified appearance. 

That unified appearance is the biggest part of visual branding!

Art style and art shop branding let someone know immediately if your products will be for them. Within 1 second they’ll know if they should scroll down your product list or leave the store. 

First impressions matter! 

Especially when your value is typically not in qualities like having the most unbreakable coffee mug, or the biggest coffee mug, or a self-heating coffee mug – it’s in the most visually appealing mug. The one with the beautiful painting on it. It LOOKS irresistible. That’s the highest selling point of all your art products, whether it’s unbreakable or not. 

The brand is how each item works together. How each painting looks when it sits together with all your other paintings in the online store. That unified appearance that sends one, loud, unified, vibe out to your potential customers. 

Mixed energy is weak energy. 

You want a strong unified appearance!

Read more on what art style can do for your business here.

If you know your visual brand and art style is NOT up to par, take Elements of Art Style to get an art makeover. The “revenue” section of your bookkeeping will thank you later.

Hiding prices in your online art shop

The most rookie mistake I see artists make when they sell art online is omitting their prices. 

I’m not sure why people do this. Maybe artists are afraid to scare people away with high numbers? Maybe they’re embarrassed to charge money at all because they don’t feel confident in their art? Maybe they think it’s rude to talk about money?

Whatever the reason, if this is you, list those prices immediately.

Don’t force your potential customer to take time out of their day to send you a message asking what your prices are. Why make them go through more work just to buy from you? Make it easy to buy from you. That’s the whole point of setting up shop on the internet: convenience, ease, speed.

Any barrier to purchase is a barrier to you making money as an artist. 

Customers should be able to look at your art, add to cart, click buy and enter payment info with as little barriers as possible.

Not listing your prices is a huge barrier!

As for me, when someone says “DM for pricing,” I never do. I assume the price is too high, or I don’t have the time for a conversation, or I know after I DM they’re going to try to pressure me to buy it which is uncomfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it then I’ll feel bad for getting their hopes up, etc. 

It’s a bigger mental barrier for a lot of folks. 

Don’t start your relationships with your collectors that way.

Just list the friggin prices.

If you’re not confident in your artwork at those prices, that’s a different discussion. 

Not keeping your inventory updated

Have you ever had something sell that you meant to remove from the store because it was out of stock? It turns a “yay I made a sale!” into “oh shit I have to refund that,” pretty quickly. And now you’re disappointing a customer. Yikes! 

Make sure when you sell art online, the whole store is up to date. Especially inventory. 

This error costs you fees in sending that money back where it came from. It also costs you customer trust, which is infinitely more valuable. 

Artists run into this problem more when they sell at art shows in person and in a separate online shop. 

You can avoid this by syncing your online shop inventory with your in-person payment terminal. I always accept cash as well at art events, so I have to input the transaction into the payment app whether I need it or not, simply for the sake of record keeping and inventory updating. It takes an extra moment during the sale, but saves you loads of time after the event. People are cool with it because they’re used to a cashier taking a second to process the transaction. 

For the longest time I used a separate payment processor for in-person shows and online sales. I used Square for in-person and Stripe for my website. Inventories didn’t automatically sync up. So after every show I’d immediately come home and update the website stock to avoid double-selling any item. That works for a while when online art sales are slow.

No matter how you choose to make it work, keep track of inventory and always check that your store reflects the true stock you have in hand. 

If you make items to-order, meaning you make them custom after purchase (think rings that are the same design but need to be made to the correct size), then it makes sense to keep it in stock as long as you can keep up with the orders. Here, just add turnover time in your item description. 

Having sketchy photos of your artwork

You don’t need to have immaculate, professional-style photos of your artwork to sell art online. But avoid *sketchy* photos.

A sketchy picture makes the customer question if the item is really going to look like that in person.

Photos with obviously photoshopped backgrounds, AI-generated backgrounds or any fake-looking setup is going to sketch people out. If you can make one that looks real and legit, great. But I’ve seen some Zoom meeting backgrounds that you KNOW are fake. Or listings that show the same shirt on the same model in the same position and clearly edited to display the different colors the shirt comes in. Fake. That’s what to avoid. 

I typically opt for holding my prints up to a plain background instead. Some artists get creative with flatlays.

Also avoid editing the photo too heavily. Sometimes I’m guilty of this. I love a good aesthetic filter. But you never want to alter the photo too much because it changes the color, texture, and general appearance of the art. The customer should know exactly what they’re getting, down to the exact shade of purple. 

I will sometimes add a filter and then erase the filter where it touches my prints, so the colors are true for the print but the background is still aesthetic. 

You can still portray your artwork properly even without professional cameras. As long as it’s not blurry, there’s no messy kitchen countertop in the photo, you show multiple angles of the art, maybe even a video, and the lighting is good, you’re all set. 

Just don’t sketch people out.

Mistakes can be fixed

It’s easy to make sales once you set up your online art shop initially and nail down a system for listing each new painting. The tech, record keeping and branding are skills you gain through trial and error. Like any skill, really. 

You’re going to make mistakes. Everyone does. Think of it as a rite of passage and move on.

Learn to fix or avoid these common store mistakes and you’ll be selling your artwork in no time – with less bumps in the road. 

Which mistake are you making? Post it in the comments. 

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