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I recently had a great phone call about how to sell art online with Tim Aldridge and Leyl Black.  Tim is a painter and avid Imagekind user, and he was kind enough to share with me some of his top money making tips for Imagekind.  Here’s what he had to say.

Sell art online with Imagekind

ImageKind offers an easy way to sell your art online.  You can set up a regular web site yourself, but if you donʼt know how, don’t want to spend the time and money, or deal with managing an e-commerce operation and dealing with shipping and framing, ImageKind could be a great solution for you.

Imagekind selling tips

Promote yourself! Imagekind won’t magically sell your art. Include your ImageKind store URL in email signature lines, Twitter bio, FaceBook info, and on your business cards.

The Marketing Tools page in your account administration area has Google marketing Tips, ImageKind web Banners, Sample Kits that show off the different papers that ImageKind uses and the quality of their printing.

Check out the Forums as artists are sharing tips how they are selling their art.

Categorize & Tag correctly and add keywords for your work.  You should, at the very least, include the main colors in your keywords as there is a search tool for customers that searches based on colors:

Holidays. Work w/ Imagekind Promotions around holidays, ie. Mother’s Day:

-mark down selected pieces that are relevant to the holiday.

-combine your reductions w/ ImageKind free shipping/ reduced framing offers.

-send out mailer announcing timely deals and new art (most of my sales have come from this method).

-Being able to sell prints at a lower price point will help sell to an audience that might not be able to afford original art. This way you donʼt have to discount your original art to make a sale.  You can even set up an Imagekind kiosk at your art shows so people can order prints of the originals on the spot.  Everyone who comes to the show has an opportunity to walk out of the show having bought something, no matter their price point.

Read the FAQ. An easy one that a lot of people forget.

Image Sizing/Prepping for Upload:

Read the Imagekind instructions. Make sure you have enough pixel resolution for the largest print dimensions that ImageKind offers. Once I photograph or scan my artwork. I keep a high resolution image (TIFF or PSD) locally and use Photoshop action droplets to automatically convert the large files to an ImageKind ready (correct sizing and resolution)
JPEG w/ an embedded color profile.

There is an image uploader (only available for the PC at this time) that you can use as a desktop application.

Pricing Strategies/ Markups:

- The artist gets 5-15% ( depending on their membership level) of any custom framing purchased with the print.

-You can set a default framing for your pieces; a good frame and matting can really enhance the presentation of
your work and make it more attractive to purchase.

-Cruise around and look at other artists on ImageKind and figure out what their markups are.

-Of note, if you mark up your work over 100% beyond the base price, they tack on extra 5% fee for the buyer.  UPDATE: This simply means that if the artist marks up their price more than 100% beyond the base price, then Imagekind retains 5% of the markup overage as a fee for processing the transaction.  Thanks to Nate from Imagekind for the update.

New ImageKind Storefront:

-3 style templates offered but there is customizable CSS code  and more control for power web designers.

-Google Web Analytics and Google Adsense tie-ins

-Basic Mailing List ( for Newsletters, Updates)

Tagged as: Imagekind, sell art online, tim aldridge