Do you want to know more about how to sell daily paintings online - or improve your knowledge about the painting a day movement generally?Just over a year ago I did a post about the progress made with websites which featured daily paintings - Daily painters, paintings and paintworks - and where you can see them.
Today, this post features a new site which pulls together all the sites relevant to "a painting a day" and/or "daily paintings" and/or "daily painters".
- Check out Sell Daily Paintings - Resources for Artiststo find out about websites which aim to help daily painters to sell their art online.
- This has been now added into the new group site launched yesterday Resources for Artists - Selling Art Online
- reviewing the various sites offering to help you sell your art online
- driving traffic to your blog or website
- finding out more about tools and webware which can help with e-commerce for daily painters.
My aim was to also include charts of the traffic to different sites. In the end however only one site was able to generate the data using compete.com and that was the Daily Painters Gallery started by Micah Condon in 2006.
This site also features RSS feeds from the galleries (where available) and from the blogs of leading exponents of the art of a painting a day. Interestingly not all the sites could provide feeds and the feed for at least one of the sites reveals html coding where there should be something else (I think).
After reviewing the galleries again in putting this site together here are my conclusions:
- other sites get more visitors - however if most of a gallery's site traffic comes from subscribers then the chances are you are getting visitors who are interested in looking at daily paintings
- some sites don't get very many visitors at all
- some sites don't appear to apply their own guidelines as to who should be members
- some sites contain a lot of links to the blogs of artists who appear to have given up painting on a regular basis
- nobody has yet come up with a way of filtering out the traffic coming from artists looking at what everybody else is doing.......
- ........on the other hand it should never be forgotten that artists also buy art!
- some sites don't have site feeds which work - it's unclear whether this is by choice or through ignorance. It certainly means that opportunities to relay information available through the site feed to other sites (such as my new site) is limited.
- a site has a limited number of members and guarantees I see a number of new works every single day.
- members commit to how much they produce in a given month and move on if other commitments prevent them being able to deliver this. (i.e. the Daily Paintworks approach)
- a site has an RSS feed which works and which provides a good but limited insight into what the site offers.
Those who decide to paint daily because of the possibility of increased income are missing a huge piece of the picture.
ReplyDeleteAs a 5xs/week at least daily painter for 3 years now, I can say that yes, the sales are nice, but I have benefitted immeasurably in other ways.
Painting has become entrenched in my daily routine. My easel work ethic is solid, regardless of my frame of mind when I enter the studio. I can stand in front of my easel, and my subconscious steps up to the plate 95% of the time.
My skills have grown vastly. Finishing a piece every day, regardless of it's size, sets me up to follow through the same thought processes as I did with larger scale paintings. I make the same mistakes and learn to correct them. I've learned to recognize when I should bail on a piece/start over more quickly. I've become more comfortable with my tools and materials. I see small successes almost every day, and build off that momentum and consciousness to continue with larger ones.
My collectors do not doubt my commitment to my vision, which builds confidence in their choice to purchase. Blogging daily (alongside the paintings) makes me a person they can relate to. Ultimately this leads to a stronger client-artist connection.
Other artists/creative groups/schools have become interested in the daily creation process. Having this experience sets me up to do demos and presentations on the value of regular creativity, thus inspiring others to listen and follow their own voices.
There are cons to painting daily, as well. One can fall ill, want to take a vacation, or get buried in the electronic logistics of maintaining such a schedule. The community that grows around a successful daily project demands interaction. Should sales evolve, they too, take time away from the easel.
Overall, the choice to paint daily has cemented my studio's success. I recognize that such a task isn't meant for every artist, though.
Great post for me as I have been thinking about this lately. I do have a problem just with setting up Paypal at the moment - they want a phone number in the same country as my mailing address and I don't have that. Very frustrating. Going to go and check this out and go back and read your last post of daily paintings.
ReplyDeleteYou've inspired me to return to daily - at least weekly - painting. I've been working daily on larger works, but realize that the practice of creating and posting smaller pieces encourages experimentation. Plus, it's rewarding to complete a painting in a few hours or days. Often I come to a halt toward the end of a bigger painting. Hopefully, making small art will re-ignite inspiration!
ReplyDeleteI've been a Daily Painter now for about half a year and I very much agree with what Kimberly has said here about the non-sales benefits of pursuing daily painting practice.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm also looking forward to checking out your article about the resources for SELLING daily art!
Thanks.
Excellent resource Katherine. Thank you! You rock!
ReplyDeleteAnd Kim, well said; you're so right!
very interesting post! Thank you for your blog!
ReplyDelete