Starting a Business

10 Websites for Selling Art Online

Back in the day, artists were pretty limited in how, when, and where they could sell their art. There were no websites for selling art online. If you wanted to get your art into art lovers’ hands, you had to find a way to get to them in person—whether at dedicated original art galleries, impromptu street sales, or by organizing art fairs.

But thanks to the internet, it’s never been easier for artists to share their work and sell art online to enthusiasts across the globe – at this point, it’s like starting your own business.

But how, exactly, do you do that? Let’s look at some of the best websites for selling art – so you can move your business online.

Etsy

You can’t talk about sites to sell art online without mentioning Etsy. Launched in 2005, this mega-popular online marketplace has become the go-to spot for crafters, designers, painters, and artists of all kinds to showcase their work, connect with potential customers and sell their art online.

Etsy’s popularity is both the biggest draw and the biggest challenge for artists. Its online marketplace gives you exposure to a huge global audience of craft and art lovers—one of the largest audiences on the internet. On the flip side, because it’s one of the most popular websites to sell art, it also has one of the largest groups of independent artists (established and emerging artists alike!) trying to make a living off their work, which can make it hard to break through and get your art in front of the right people online.

How to Sell Art on Etsy:

To sell your art on Etsy, you’ll need to create an Etsy shop, which acts as your own online store for showcasing your art. Once you’ve created your shop, you can list your products (make sure to include high-quality photos!), start marketing, and making sales. Luckily, Etsy has a variety of tools to help you get your art in front of the right audience.

In terms of fees, Etsy charges a nominal listing fee. If your art sells, you’ll pay a 5% transaction fee and a 3% + $0.25 payment processing fee. There are also additional advertising fees if you want to promote your products on the Etsy platform or off-site.

Amazon

These days, people buy just about everything on Amazon—and that includes art.

Depending on the type of art you’re selling, the world’s largest online retailer has a variety of opportunities to start selling art online, including Amazon Handmade, which features homemade, crafted items. Plus, there’s an entire section dedicated to fine art, featuring one-of-a-kind paintings, drawings, watercolors, and photographs from partner artists.

How to Sell Art on Amazon:

Amazon has different fee structures based on where and how you want to sell your products.

With Amazon Fine Art, you’ll need to get approval through Amazon. Once approved, you’ll pay $0.99 per unit sale and a referral fee of between 5 and 20% based on the total cost. You can get a full breakdown of fees on Amazon’s seller pricing page.

If you want to sell your art through Amazon Handmade, referral fees are 15% per sale (listing your art is free).

Fine Art America

If you’re looking for versatility, consider online art marketplace Fine Art America, one of the world’s largest online art marketplaces. Fine Art America combines a more traditional gallery model with extensive print-on-demand offerings. Whether you want to sell your original artwork online or give people the option to have your art transformed into an art print, T-shirt, an iPhone case, or a greeting card, they’ve got you covered.

How to Sell Art on Fine Art America:

The steps to selling art on Fine Art America are as follows:

• Open an account
• Upload photos of your artwork
• Choose which products to feature
• Set your prices and you’re ready to go

In terms of pricing, Fine Art America sets a base price for each product. Then, you set a markup, which you get to keep when the product sells. When you sell digital downloads, you get to keep 100% of your asking price. Fine Art America asks you to add a 30% markup, which they keep as a commission. And if you make a sale on an original piece of work? You get to keep 100% of the sale.

Saatchi Art

If exposure is what you’re after, Saatchi Art might be the place for you. The online art gallery and marketplace has a huge audience. Their website gets approximately 12 million page views and 1.6 million visitors each month, and they have almost 500,000 followers on Facebook and over 650,000 on Instagram. Saatchi Art also has a global audience—and can help you sell art online on a global scale. To date, the platform has sold to collectors in over 80 countries around the world.

How to Sell Art on Saatchi Art:

To get started selling on the Saatchi Art online art gallery, you just create a profile, then photograph and upload your artwork. When you sell a piece of work, all you have to do is package it. Saatchi Art handles the shipping and takes a 35% commission on the sale.

For more on selling your artwork online through Saatchi Art, check out their Artist’s Handbook.

UGallery

If you’ve always dreamed of your art lining the walls of a high-end gallery, you might want to consider selling on UGallery. Its selection of paintings, illustrations, sculptures, prints, and photos are carefully curated to appeal to true art enthusiasts and art collectors. This online art market/carefully curated art gallery is also committed to showcasing new, exciting art. So in order to keep things new and interesting, they only exhibit art from emerging and mid-level artists—and that art must be original and exclusive to the platform. Basically, UGallery is looking to recreate the experience of visiting and shopping at a high-end art gallery—just in the digital space instead of in a physical location.

How to Sell Art on UGallery:

UGallery has a highly selective application process. To get started, artists have to submit digital copies of their art along with an artist statement, a completed application, and a $5 application fee. If you’re approved to exhibit at UGallery, they’ll take care of marketing your art to their audience. If you make a sale through UGallery, you’ll split the sale 50/50. Their team will send you a custom box to package your artwork for the buyer and cover all packaging and shipping costs.

Shopify

Not every artist uses websites to sell art. Sometimes, if you want to make a living off of your artwork, the best thing you can do is to take things into your own hands.

And that means creating your own website and selling art online yourself.

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that makes it easy to sell art online. With Shopify, you can easily build a beautiful, easy-to-navigate e-commerce website to showcase your work (whether that’s art prints, print-on-demand products, crafts, or other types of artwork) to potential buyers and drive revenue for your business. Shopify also comes equipped with a host of features (including website templates and a suite of marketing tools) that make it easy to get your shop up and running.

How to Sell Art on Shopify:

To build and host your art shop, you’ll pay a monthly subscription fee that ranges from $29 (for the basic plan) to $299 (for a more advanced setup). You’ll also need to set up a way for your customers to pay when they buy your art. If you use Shopify Payments, there are no transaction fees—but if you choose to use an external payment gateway, transaction fees range from 0.5 to 2%.

Want to give Shopify a try but aren’t sure you’re ready to commit for the long term? The e-commerce platform offers a free 90-day trial, so if you want to try building a website and selling your artwork on your own, you can do it—risk-free and at no cost.

TurningArt

If you’ve ever walked down the halls of a large, upscale corporate building, chances are you’ve walked by at least a few paintings. And if you’ve ever envisioned your art lining those hallways, you’ll want to check out TurningArt. This service rents and sells art to commercial clients, as well as coordinates original commissions.

How to Sell Art on TurningArt:

There are 3 ways to drive revenue through TurningArt:

• Leasing: The artist earns a percentage of the artwork’s price every month it’s leased
• Sales: The artist earns a commission when they make a sale
• Commissions: The client commissions an artist for a specific project

The commission structure for TurningArt varies. For example, if an original work is sold, artists get 60% of the sale—but if a canvas print is sold, artists receive only 20%. For more on TurningArt’s pricing structure, check out the FAQ pages for the Partner Artist Program and the Affiliate Artist Program.

Pixpa

Want to showcase, sell, and share your artwork, all in one place? Try Pixpa—an easy to use, no-code website building platform. Pixpa empowers artists to easily build and manage their online portfolios, thanks to 150 responsive templates to choose from, and built-in features like an online store, blog, and client galleries.

How to Sell Art on Pixpa:

Pixpa offers a 15-day trial, which is a great way to get familiar with the website builder and check out the templates available. However, once your trial ends, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Although the basic plan is approximately $8/month (and drops as low as $5/month if you pay every 2 years), it doesn’t support the online store feature. To sell your art online, you need to upgrade to their Creator plan, which starts at about $16/month.

Similar to Shopify, Pixpa doesn’t charge any commissions on your sales. You take home everything you earn, although keep in mind that standard translation fees still apply for payment gateways like Stripe and Paypal. For a breakdown of what Pixpa’s plans offer, check out their pricing page.

Society6

If you want to see your art plastered on a huge variety of products, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better partner than Society6. This print-on-demand powerhouse has one of the largest product assortments in the industry, enabling customers to explore your art through a huge variety of categories, including furniture, tech, home decor, wall art, art prints, and apparel.

How to Sell Art on Society6:

To start selling your art on Society6, you’ll need to create an account and upload your art to your artist’s shop. From there, you can choose which categories you want to enable and feature your art. For example, you might have one design that would look perfect on apparel, wall art, and phone cases and another that would work best for furniture. Once you’ve chosen your categories, buyers can choose which print-on-demand items they want to purchase.

The good news? Society6 is one of the easier places to sell art online. They take care of marketing, fulfillment, printing, and shipping. The bad news? Their print-on-demand model isn’t the most lucrative. Artists make just 10% of every sale. However, there are additional ways to drive revenue (including an affiliate program), and opportunities to set higher markups for art prints, framed prints, and canvas prints.

Zazzle

Zazzle is another major player in the print-on-demand world. Similar to Society6, Zazzle has a huge variety of products where you can feature your art. Currently, the platform has over 1,500 blank product types. But unlike Society6, Zazzle allows you to set your own royalty rate, which can help you earn more per sale.

How to Sell Art on Zazzle:

To become a Zazzle designer, all you have to do is upload your art, choose your products, and put them up for sale on the marketplace. Zazzle takes care of the rest, including printing, shipping, and customer service.

As mentioned, Zazzle allows you to set your own royalty rates. You can set your rate anywhere from 5 to 99%; then, Zazzle will adjust the product price accordingly.

Obviously, there are benefits to being able to set your own commission rate for online sales—namely, that you can earn more per sale. But because you’re passing on that rate to your potential customers, it’s important not to set it too high. Otherwise, it can be hard to drive sales in the Zazzle marketplace, especially when other artists are offering similar designs or products at a lower price.

FAQs on Where to Sell Your Art Online

Still have questions about how to sell your art online? We’ve got you covered. Let’s take a look at a few frequently asked questions about selling art online (and, more importantly, the answers to those questions):

What Are Some of the Best Places for Beginners to Sell Their Art Online?

If you’re just starting out your career selling art online, you want whatever sites you work with to make it as simple as possible to sell your art. When considering the best websites to sell art for beginners, some things you’ll want to look for include:

• An online platform that makes it easy to upload and showcase your work
• A large, engaged audience of art enthusiasts
• Reasonable fee/cost structure
• Different ways to make money
• Customer support

While the “best” place to sell your art online will depend on a variety of factors, in general, as a beginner, the larger online marketplaces (like Etsy) and print-on-demand service websites (like Society6) are a great place to start. These sites have a high volume of traffic, which will help you get your work out to a larger audience. They’re also generally pretty user-friendly; the online platforms are easy to navigate, even if you’re not the most tech-savvy—and if you run into issues, they typically have a customer support team to help you troubleshoot. Also, larger sites generally have different ways to drive revenue within the site (like investing in advertising on Etsy or putting your art on a wider variety of products on Society6)—which can help you make more money.

Are There Any Places for Artists to Sell Their Art Online for Completely Free?

As the old saying goes, nothing in life is free—and that includes selling your art. If you want to showcase your art on online art storefronts, marketplaces, or online galleries there are going to be costs involved—whether those are upfront costs (like membership fees or listing fees), costs once you make a sale (like commissions), or a combination of both. So, in other words, none of these platforms are completely free.

If you’re concerned about costs, consider going with online platforms that don’t charge until you make a sale (like many of the platforms on this list, including Zazzle, UGallery, and TurningArt). That way, you only pay money when you make money.

I Need to Sell My Original Artwork Quickly. What Are Some Ways to Sell Pieces Online—and Sell Them Fast?

Similarly to costs, when it comes to the online art industry, there are no “get rich quick” schemes. If you want to consistently sell your art, you need to invest in promoting it and getting it in front of the right people—and the better you do that, the faster and more easily you’ll be able to sell your art.

How you successfully promote and sell your art is up to you; you can focus on building a social media following—and then direct your followers to purchase art on your own website. Or you can build an Etsy shop and invest in their advertising program to extend your reach and get your art in front of the right buyers. But whatever route you decide to take, be patient; it can take time to get traction selling your art online. But once the ball is rolling, it can have a snowball effect—and you just may find that you’re selling pieces faster than you can create them.

Get Out There and Use These Sites to Make Money Selling Art Online

As an artist, your top priority is to create. And with these sites to sell artwork, you can find new customers and drive revenue for your business—which will give you the financial stability you need to continue to do so. So all that’s left for you to do? Get out there and use one of these sites to sell original artwork; you’ll transition your work online and become an art powerhouse before you know it!

This post was updated in October 2023.