How to Get Started Selling Prints Online

Hey there art friend,

A question I get all the time from new artists is how to start selling prints. This is such a good question because it's simultaneously very complicated and also very simple. I’m going to walk you through some things you need to consider before you start selling prints and how I suggest you go about getting started.

The first question I ask artists who want to know how to sell prints is “do you have an audience to sell them to?”

Just because you make some prints available on your website does not mean they’re going to sell. So if you don’t have an audience waiting to buy your prints you need to build one. If you want to see how I suggest you go about building your audience in general, check out the free download I've made here.

Once you feel like you have an audience ready you have a lot of choices to make. Do you want to make and ship the prints yourself or do you want to outsource the printing or the printing and shipping to someone else? Do you want to print on paper or canvas? At what sizes? How much will you charge?

It’s really easy to get stuck at this point because there are so many decisions to be made.

The next bit of advice I always give when starting out with prints is to ask yourself what feels like the easiest way to get this going.

The answer to this question is different for everyone. I had graphic design and photography skills when I first started, so easy to me looked like photographing or scanning the paintings myself and printing small pieces on demand in my studio. In the years since, I’ve changed my print production process, but in the beginning that was what was easiest for me.

But if you don’t have those design or photography skills, easiest for you might look like finding a local printer to do the whole thing for you. The point it is that it doesn’t really matter as long as you get started. You’re going to learn so much about the process from doing it and may change your mind a few times along the way about what works best for you.

So instead of making a huge deal of getting started with selling prints, pick 3 or 4 of your favorite paintings, decide what will be the easiest way to get them scanned or photographed and the easiest way to print and ship them when you do make sales. I promise you will be glad to have taken the quickest route so you can adjust your process and go on to create print collections from there.

All right. That’s it for today. I just want to mention that we have conversations like this all the time inside Palette to Profit where I can help people work through their specific situations quickly. If that sounds like the kind of help you’re looking for book a call so we can talk more about your needs.

Until next time,

Jennifer