Selling my art on-line (2)

Continued from the last post.

Another direction that I am exploring is to sell the images, rather than the art, which also includes photographic images. I take many, many photos with my digital camera and this boosts the number and scope of images I can use on my Zazzle stores. Zazzle ia "print-on-demand" site which means that you can buy anything from Tee-shirts to tote bags, mugs to mouse mats, and even posters and wraped canvasses. Mny more products are available. A Zazzler ( like me) can upload images and design any of the available products then put them up for sale. Each sale earns a royalty ( from 10 to 50%) and it is also possible to earn referral fees for linking buyers to the site. These are actualy higher than the royalty payments, a better way of earning money for those with an associate account. All free to set up, no selling fees - only royalties to you, and no hassle with posting or buyers. Sounds like heaven!
My latest sale is a Tee which I designed for a buyer who liked one of my ATC's on Bonanza. A humerous look at pole dancing lessons.

Todays lesson is over ladies by artyfax
Browse more Mixed media T-Shirts

Just another taster, my latest product is a wrapped canvas designed using an old pastel painting which I have slightly modified in photoplus, my digital manipulation software of choice. It's cheaper than photoshop!

Down on the farm by ArtyfaxProducts
Browse other Multicolor Canvas Prints

OK, that's it from me on selling, it hasn't changed my life style but every little helps; now where have I heard that before?

Selling my art on-line

I have not been active in this line for a couple of years, too many distractions and other things happening. In fact my last sale of a piece of art on Ebay was 2 or three years ago. I came to the conclusion that I was not getting a reasonable price for the work. You know how it goes, Ebay is an auction site (??) so you put someting on at a low start price and get ONE bid - aaarrrggg!!! What a catastrophe, and then there is the packaging and post; many people complain if you try to recover these costs fully. Always the possibility of items getting lost in the post - or that is what a minority of buyers claim. Do you believe them? Paypal certainly does! Well I had had enough, I packed it in and concentrated on trading my ATC's. No more items lost in the post, amazing!

However, recently I have been looking again at making a little cash from my hobby. I have been writing about my art on Squidoo, A site which shares advertising revenue with the top (few) web pages based on an on-site ranking procedure. These pages are called "lenses" the idea being that they are single pages which focus down on to a very tight niche. Squidoo provides lots of help in creating a lens and there is a very active community associated with the site. I will not become rich without learning a great deal more about SEO ( I do hate that subject) but I have been making a regular few dollars a month for the past 12 months or so. Many authors seem to make enough to live on doing it full time, with lots of SEO, LOL. But I am reasonably happy with a small income from a couple of hours per week, enough to buy the odd book and art materials to keep me busy. An example of one of these lenses is, Making Artist Trading Cards - 1001 Techniques

Just to keep things ticking over, I have started selling (or rather I have posted for sale) a few items on Bonanza. It has not been a very successful venture so far but again, it is all about getting buyers to your site. This is where Ebay scores of course since it has so many "users", and is often the first (possibly the only) site that prospective buyers go to. But Ebay no longer seems to cater for the small independent trader, fawning over the large (money earning) enterprises that can afford the high selling fees. see my next post for another way of earning cash on line with your art.

Free images for collage

I have been collecting old books for a while now, nothing exceptional just ephemera for my artwork and making use of the ocassional useful image. You can see some of these images which I have posted on my Flickr account. there are a number of sets on this page which contain the images. Last week I came across a book published in 1913 called, "Modern Musicians" which I thought was exceptional in that it had many B&W images of musicians of celebrities of the time. Some of them are still quite famous! I will be posting these on Flickr over the next few weeks but as a taster here are a couple of examples.

You can find larger, high resoloution versions of the images on Flickr and downloading from there - select ACTIONS - VIEW ALL SIZES. There will be many more in the coming weeks.