Trafficking in Art.

My sister is a clandestine artist. She doesn’t want anyone to know she paints. She works in her studio, has taken very few classes, and has never exhibited her body of work. All her paintings (they are huge- 4ft x 5ft) hang in various living rooms belonging to friends and families. And yet, she is friendly with a large group of working artists who respect her work and talent.

On the other hand, there is me. I went to art school. I finished up heavily in debt, working as a graphics designer and, later, as a wordpress designer. I want to paint. I want to paint huge canvasses but time and space and accounts payable demand I work. SO I work. Almost all the time. It’s the life of a freelancer, afraid to turn down work because you never know when the next job will be.

I chose this route instead of another because I know too many fine artists, working in restaurants and bars and retail shops, who struggle to find time to BE artists. I thought my way was at least somewhat creative some of the time.

Since I left school, many art schools have started to teach their students about finding creative solutions to their own tough economies. Stock images, tshirts, postcards, etc.

Pursuing these options became less challenging once broadband became the norm.

Find your niche, then spread it around.

Do your designs apply to coffee cups and t-shirts? Then you might consider creating a shop at Cafepress.  Start with the free one and see how it goes.

Then mosey on over to Prinfection and open another free store.

Then do it again at Zazzle. Store set-up is free. (Zazzle lets you customized each tshirt on top of any given design. Brilliant.)

Maybe do it again at Spreadshirt.

Why go through all this? Exposure is one reason. The other is, well, imitation is the best form of flattery unless someone else is profiting by stealing your Cafepress designs and selling them on Zazzle. Luckily in these stores, you don’t have to relist an item after it sells, so you only do the hard work once.

Selling on Etsy?

You might consider exploring the extensive list of alternative seller’s sites  found here and picking a couple more sites.

I visited some of the Etsy alternative sites on the list and intend to look into these further:

• http://www.1000markets.com/
• http://www.artfire.com/
• https://www.artfulhome.com/
• http://www.buyitsellit.com/
• http://www.blujay.com/
• http://www.ecrater.com/
• http://www.redbubble.com/
• http://www.shophandmade.com/
• http://www.elsewares.com/
• http://www.stylefeeder.com/
• http://www.iliketotallyloveit.com/
• http://en.dawanda.com/

My criteria? They had to be live and operational, be well designed, and have a decent Alexa rank and or Compete rank.

And then I’ll be rich and free to be creative, right?

Probably not. Most of these websites don’t promote your stuff. Not even Etsy does, not really. It promotes itself. So start planning on getting some promotion in place. A website, the right keywords, and SEO. But that’s for another article.

The irony? i haven’t even finished uploading my existing designs on Etsy and I am already expanding in my head.

Time for me to get to work.