The Online Store experiment

To find the best online storefront for my work.

Help me decide which online storefront to use! Over the next few months, I'll be populating the following storefronts with items. These will range from greeting card packs to original artwork, and everything I have in between. I'm looking forward to this gradual approach for several reasons:

I'll be able to examine the benefits of art-specific communities like Etsy and Artfire against wider-niche applications like Big Cartel

Each of these sites has a different process for setting up a shop, setting up a product, and getting paid. I look forward to determining which storefront has the set of features that is most useful to me and is the easiest to work with.

The communities surrounding these sites are varying, and it will be interesting to see if a particular community notices and likes my work.

Some of these storefronts have SEO features, and ultimately one may shine as getting the most unsolicited "stranger" traffic.

You may be able to tell me which was the easiest to use, and which you prefer!

I have already begun stocking these storefronts with items and will progressively begin adding where-to-buy links to paintings. For now, the following links should work to help you get acquainted with my new storefronts.

BigCartel

BigCartel is a small-store format (limit of 300 products) that is designed to appeal to everyone from musicians to artists. It doesn't have to be handmade or art to be listed here. Format is very simple without distractions and ostentatious styling. As a free account holder, I'm currently limited to five products here, which I'm devoting to prints.

Etsy

Etsy is a well-known community of artists and artisans selling handmade goods. I'm not entirely certain I fit in here, but I'm willing to give it a try for the community exposure. There's no free plan here to just dabble in it, but listing rates are cheap, if you only list one of the available product, that is. If you list five of the same thing, the listing fee applies five times. I think I'll use Etsy for gifty items, like original paintings and cards

Artfire

So far I am impressed with Artfire's long list of features, and almost sold on their "pro" plan - for a mere $10 it seems they give you a new planet, make you breakfast in the morning, and sell your work by themselves. Hm.. Well, I've already sold a painting from here, so they might just have gotten me.

Deviant Art

Deviant art is a sort of art social network. Successful work on deviant usually niches itself somewhere in the cartoon/fantasy/OMGhowdtheydothat genres. They have a checkout that supports stickers, magnets and prints. While I'd rather do my own printing, I might see how the magnets and similar objects do here.

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