But there is a roundabout way to get a foothold in the business of art without any begging and pleading and searching, albeit with some knowledge of the web of course. 

However, no matter how talented an artist you are, selling ain't all that easy. Remember Van Gogh?

There are 2 ways, so take your pick.

You are the sole proprietor of this personal website where you will be selling your art only. It will showcase your profile and your artwork which people will place orders for online. Also the added bonus of having no competition and no commissions to be paid, so the profits are all yours to keep.

But, the initial effort is quite high. You need to hire a web developer who will build your site and also maintain it, so there goes development and maintenance cost. Also cannot stress on the need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enough for the personal websites. To make your work SEO friendly, you have to word out your profile well and in depth. The more you write about your journey and your style of art, Google will understand you and show you to your audience. 

You also have to be very careful about giving out the details of your work down to the very t, like the dimensions, the collection name, the price, the medium and even the philosophy behind the piece because that plays a great role in attracting the customers. 

All of this is about the front end though. The back end, and by that I mean the financial end and inventory management, is where the real deal is. You are alone in this backroom and you have to manage it yourself. The billings, the returns and refunds and even the money. Setting up a third party payment system in your website is essential. Online Marketplaces usually use Escrow, a third party app, which stores the money till the transaction is satisfactorily completed (and by satisfactorily I mean that the art has reached the buyer undamaged, or the buyer has not had a change of whim and wants to return the piece) and then transfers the money to the seller. This is not the usual model for personal stores though, they are more into PayPal and Credit Cards. Having a safe and secure payment system is of utmost importance.

Refunds and replacements. is the murkiest side of owning a personal store. If the product reaches the consumer damaged, you do not know whether it happened on the shipping end or on their end, so you do not know whom to blame and you are the one bearing the losses. Courier companies do have insurance for damages done on their behalf but then again there are quite a few loopholes involved. Also, the customer may claim that the piece sent is not the one they ordered. So you need to go about having a safety net for yourself. And that safety net is having proper documentation. There needs to be clauses mentioned in the document that need to be agreed upon by both parties before the transaction is initiated in addition to the invoice of course which will come later on. 

The points that dampened your spirits in setting up a personal store are all killed in an Online Marketplace. All you have to do is just sign up and they will put your art up. Payments, shipment, returns, replacements and refunds are all managed by them, and they have tie ups with courier services as well, so that side of responsibility is shaken off. Online Marketplaces in fact help you to sell your artwork faster with no wastage of time on building personal stores, and at the cost of an initial registration fee. All of the process is entirely streamlined for ease of use on the artist's part. 

It even ads a mark of trust on you when the buyer considers your work, and since they already have the resources for optimizing their store, you need not worry about visibility. 

But all is not well in this village as well. 

Firstly, you are one of the many artists present on show in the site. In fact among people who belong to the same genre as you do, so that just makes buyers compare your work with others, and that dims the process of selling your piece specifically. Also, you get to exercise no control over how you choose to display your profile on their site, unlike what you can do in your personal store. The personal store acts as another piece of your art actually, every element of the website speaks about you and reflects your style of art. All of this added branding will be missing in the online marketplace. 

The biggest letdown is the commission. The cuts are large, and the higher the price of your work the bigger the cuts, so that leaves you with lesser profits. And most importantly, your work will have to be worthy of a certain price to be up on their site. So anything lower than their price floor, you will not be shown to the world via them. 

However, it is up to you to list down and the pros and cons of each mode based on how much art are you going to start off with, what will be your updation intervals and decide what works best for you. 

Things that you need to consider irrespective of going solo or in an online marketplace:

1. Know your audience. You need to understand how the buyer market is online. Accordingly you will be setting the price as well, because you need to get an idea of how much they can spend on you. 

2. Protecting your work through copyrights. Everything is honestly just a screenshot or a download away. Watermarking or uploading low resolution images don't go a long way. So get yourself registered for Copyright. That will act as your second shield after the documentation for sales. 

3. Photographing your work. No matter how beautiful your artwork is, if you do not put up an equally beautiful picture showcasing your piece, your buyer is gonna skip it.  So take into consideration the aspects of proper lighting, editing and background for your work. Since it is only the art that is going to be in the picture and not any other props, the work is a tad bit simpler, however dealing with the light is definitely tricky. You do not want some parts coming of darker or lighter than intended that will hide the details. 

4. Building a great profile. This is the sealer of your deal. This is your brand value. This is how you will engage with customers and keep them engaged later on as well. Your profile is what will be followed by the buyers. Like I said previously, the philosophy of what you have created goes a great length in selling your work. Tell people how you came across this desire of making this your profession, the passion behind your style and why you connect to it. Videos are great tools for engagement and you can create a short video of you describing your journey and even film yourself while making a piece of art so that people can see the passion with which you work. 

Now, the most essential part

Never devalue your art. 

1. Cost Markup 

Calculate all your fixed costs, variable costs, overheads and set an hourly wage for yourself and for anybody you have hired for managing your studio. S. Based on that add a markup percentage on the sum and price it at that. 

2. Comparison Pricing

Visit galleries and interact with gallery owners, art dealers, local artists. Find artists of your genre online and check their pricing rates and shipping policies, shadow them to see their prices according to the size and style of the art.

Art is no more just the expressing through colours. It is a full fledged business.