Since the dawn of time the artist has looked for ways to benefit their artistic pursuits and for probably just as long they've found themselves getting screwed over by pretty much everyone else. It's no secret that society on the whole does not put great value on art. As a result the modern artist has had to become multi disciplinary. Every artist except the truly exceptional has needed to learn to be a businessman. The modern artist is an entrepeneur able to balance the books market his work, make sales, manage customer relationships and find some time to create stuff worth selling.
There are a number of ways to go about doing this these days.
Broadly speaking there are two option, sell your work yourself or use a third party. Producing and distributing your work yourself is a viable option these days with a number of printing options available on the web as well as offline. The problem with this is that once the item is sold the artist needs to keep records, make delivery and generally own the the entire customer interaction. If you hope to make art your primary income this is the kind of business you should look at running as you have control of your pricing and only have to cover the overheads of producing and shipping your works. The catch here is that it is often more expensive as to get discounts on the printing process you would have to buy in bulk which is not always an option which will normally cut into your profit margin.
Some Online printing options for artists:
Print Wild Canvas prints based in South africa with a great web site and tons of options
CanvasRus Art printing Based in the Uk and available throughout Europe
FinerWorks Art printing US based online art print store.
My next article will look at online galleries that do the selling for you.
