Hello!

With all the art shows cancelled, it is clear that I need to be more present online…
But it is also clear to me that it is not my natural instinct to spend time on social media – posting what I do on Instagram or telling stories on a daily basis…

The point is that either I like it or not doesn’t matter, it is our new reality and I do have to accept it.

Consequently, I need to adapt, learn, reinvent myself and think “HOW”.
And to be clear, being visible is great – but the goal is actually to generate income in order to keep investing in my art and continue doing what I love most!

Here is the link for my store if you want to check it out. 

 

ETSY BENEFITS

Selling online looks to be the way to go. But setting up a web site to sell is lots of work – so I decided to use an existing platform: ETSY.

With Etsy, I can check 3 boxes at once:

• My work is set for sale without having to build or invest in the platform (20 cents per listing for 4 months)
• It makes my work visible to anyone who researches on Etsy – even on Google actually as I just found out few minutes ago 🙂
• I can still connect the Etsy store to my own web site since my web page www.patikd.com is very simple with just 4 sections:
  • home page with news and portfolio
  • blog page (which is redirecting to the one you are now on)
  • 1 page “about” with some bio info and contacts
  • my Etsy store

WHERE TO START

Now, there is some work to setup an Etsy store… Believe me, the platform is really good, intuitive… you still have to spend some good time into it. Starting with the pictures of your work.

You can upload up to 7 pictures per art…7! And they really recommend to post more than just 2 or 3 to attract.

As we know, buying a piece of art is rarely rational only, this is clearly more an emotional process. Since the person cannot spend long minutes looking your art live from every angle – you try to offer him alternatives by posting pictures of details, in context…

The way I decided to do it:

• Learn how to get good quality pictures from my art (feel free to contact me if you need tips – I learnt a lot form Mark Karder studio  or even Jane Davenport blog and classes)
• Find background pictures online It is important to adapt to the painting colors and size. I like to have a closer one (usually the one I use for thumbnail) and a more distant one.
• Learn how to put your art in that context…on a shelve, hung on the wall… It is very easy in photoshop to set contour and shadows to make it look real. Once you did the work for one, just paste your other same size art into it.

As important as the pictures are :

• The title
• The key words

These will define how easy your art will be to be found when someone searches on Etsy or even Google… To be very honest, I am still learning and don’t feel yet comfortable to share much on this until I learn more about it myself… don’t want to confuse anyone here 🙂

In my next post, I will let you know how the store has been in these first days!

Patricia