Several weeks ago we launched our Art and the Internet Survey in an effort to help you better understand what your fellow artists are doing on their websites. We had a great response to the survey with 749 artists participating. As with all of our polls, it’s important to state that these results are not scientific, we are not statisticians, and the respondents were volunteers, not a randomized group.
You can browse through the responses on SurveyMonkey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=KlsruOmE1Szs2btQM_2f5H9Jd_2fc64WjhpMSMTzgjP1EE0_3d to get an idea of the general answers and trends in the survey, but let’s begin by looking at some of the basic demographics of respondents.
General Demographics
Let’s begin by looking at the demographics of the respondents to get some context for the results. You’ll see that we had a pretty geographically diverse group of respondents, though most came from the U.S. and we had slightly stronger participation from Pacific and East Coast artists (which probably makes sense considering the population distribution of the country). Our respondents tended to be older than 45, and a strong majority of the participants were female.
How Artists Are Using Their Sites
Next let’s look at how artists are using their sites, and how important they feel they are in their marketing efforts.
We can see that many of the respondents feel the most important functions of the site are to market work to buyers, and inform existing customers of new work. Selling is important as well, but only 20% of respondents listed selling as being of critical importance in their online marketing efforts.
Which leads to the question of how much art is actually selling online. Average annual online sales for respondents was over $3,000. This number is skewed however by the top 10% of our respondents (in terms of total $ sales) who reported very strong online sales (more on them later). Removing the top 10% resulted in average sales of $556 per annum, and 57% of respondents reported selling less than $200 worth of art from their website – 48% reported zero online sales in the last year. In other words, the vast majority of artists are seeing very little results in terms of sales from their sites, while a small percentage are seeing very strong results.
The website can also be a tool in helping buyers make decisions about buying even if they aren’t buying directly from the site.
Respondents also reported feeling that their site was going to be of increasing importance in making sales in the future:
Creating and Maintaining Your Website
Unsurprisingly, those artists who can update their own site are far more likely to do so than those who have to send their images out for upload:
Look for additional results as we dive deeper into the data in the coming weeks (be sure to check back to the blog for updates). Are there particular results you would like us to tease out of the data (“do artists in Texas sell more art online?” for example), leave your requested queries, along with your comments about the survey in the comments below.
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi, Is the survey still going on and if so, how can I enter my info? Thanks,
This is great info to have!
Thanks so much for taking the time to make this happen…
The charts are great! Love the color choices!
This is great info to have!
Thanks so much for taking the time to make this happen…
The charts are great! Love the color choices!
This is very interesting Jason! Thanks for all the hard work! It’s very helpful!
It would be interesting to know whether the folks who design and maintain the website themselves are the same as those who have maximum sales from their website. In other words, is there a correlation between amount of online sales and the “quality” of the website (figuring one designed by a professional would be “better”.)
Jason,
Would you consider coming to Tucson some first Saturday of a month on Oracle Road near the freeway and giving this as a presentation to 75-100 artist members of the Southern Arizona Artist’s Guild???
Earl Wettstein
Many people have used IWeb to design their sites…fast, easy,and very user friendly. But, in true corporate disregard for those who already use their product, Apple is no longer going to support the application/software and will no longer host websites at me.com (or whatever the name of their hosting site is). Has anyone found a useful web host that is user friendly, IWeb compatible, and won’t require a whole new learning curve? Thanks for your input.
I have an artist website with websiteforartists.com, which looks professional and has room for 6 images and my bio/resume, but I have been getting impatient with it lately (I have had this site for 5 years) since I can only change 2 images per month and it costs $10 per month. I also have an online shop at etsy.com to sell my paintings and at fineartamerica.com to sell prints of my paintings. These are both excellent places to sell and are easy to maintain with new images and information about myself. However, I still feel that I need an artist website with my name.com for a professional reference for galleries, shows and clients, besides my sales sites and I would like my artist site to be as easy for me to maintain and look as professional as the one I now have. Are there any websites like this available? Ones that I could manage myself and still have as ellenmcmahill.com? Thanks for any advice you can give me.
Very good info for artists to have available to them. Do you have info on how artists promote their websites? Social media, email, rely on gallery representation, other? Do galleries discourage artists from maintaining their own website? Thanks and I look forward to reviewing the results of other parts of the survey.
Thank you for this information. It will help me plan my web site. I’ve been putting it off until I felt that I could be a reliable seller. Still haven’t decided whether to get a professional to do it or to do it myself.
It would be interesting to learn what those who sell a lot on line have done differently , if anything, from others who do not sell much online. Thanks for doing this survey.
My problem with this survey was this: I have 2 websites which “someone else” updates for me and it doesn’t get done as often as I like. On the other hand I have 5 blogs of my own which are updated every time I have a new painting. So while my website is a bit static, the blogs are very active.
Thank you for putting this together, Jason. It hit home in a couple of areas that I believed I was correct about and also helps me see what could use a bit more work. I agree with Diane that it would be good to see a correlation in online sales and website quality. To be perfectly honest here, if I can, at my age, I want to work on art and find it so very frustrating to keep up with all the technology. I want to learn what I want to invest myself in. Of course, I realize it is a necessary evil, but it’s quite exhausting, and I find myself for hours on the computer seeing little value in all the work put forth. I did much better with the old ways of gallery shows, exhibits, festivals, newsletters and emails, to be truthful. (+:
Really good information!!
Diane makes a great point, regarding correlation between sales and who designed the website. Possibly there might be a correlation to be made with sales and some specific features on site. i.e. prices displayed on site, image descriptions. etc.
This is very timely …. I’m currently looking at how I can revamp my website, so this kind of data is really helpful. It’s a great ‘reality check’. To me it is emphasising the importance of having a website, maintaining it / keeping it up to date yourself and using your website as an awareness building and marketing tool to support showing your work in other areas.
I look forward to seeing what is that artists who are reporting very strong online sales are doing …?
Like Judith above … I love the colour choices on the charts …!
Thanks … Niall
Very interesting and informative. Thanks
This is so interesting to see! I am so happy you did this survey! Very informative for sure…I find it interesting!
Thanks, Jason. Once again you have provided a valuable service to help us see where we fit in the scheme of things — and to motivate us to keep improving our efforts to get our art out there!
This information is so necessary for artists. Thank you.
Wow – on first glance it looks like most sites are self-done by old people who spend little time on maintenance.
I agree with Diane Taylor, it would be useful to know if professionally designed (and maintained!) sites do better in terms of sales — or not.
One question, when asked about “most effective advertising channel”, does “shows” mean art shows or art fairs? They are very different in quality and the kind of expense involved, but I hear more and more people calling art fairs or art&craft fairs “shows.”
Great to see the pie charts (for us visually oriented folks)! I discovered that I’m in the big pie slices most of the time, and where I’m in the little slice and should be getting a bigger piece of the pie (sales at shows), I feel like I’m getting a nudge in the right direction
Thanks for dessert!
Jason,
Thanks for this information. It would be useful to know if those who have high internet sales are also ones who update more frequently both the design/redesign of their websites as well as update the artwork on their websites. In other words, what is the correlation, if any between the frequency of website and artwork updates and redesigns to higher sales.
Thanks for putting this together! And, what a great response too-making the data even more reliable.
I love Diane’s question.
It would also be interesting to examine the rock stars of this group to see what it is that they are doing differently (or, perhaps it is just that their work is that much more ‘saleable’ than the others).
Such as, who does email marketing? Who is using social media to help market their work? What platforms are they using? Are they using website analytical to fine tune? Are they using key words and content rich info on their site? How do they drive traffic to their site?
Once again, thank you so much for taking the time, energy and effort to do this. What a labor intensive project!
I think I would like to see, somehow or other, a marketing behavioral profile of what it is that the rock stars do consistently to get the results that they do. I suspect that it is multi-pronged hustling!
Sure Earl – we’d just have to coordinate our schedules. Email me and let me know what you have in mind.
The survey is now closed, but be sure and follow me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jason.horejs to participate in future surveys
Very interesting to see how different and how alike the survey shows us to be! I feel I pay Hypermart a big fee just to have the website. Is this common? They are not the designers and don’t do anything other than allow my site to exist. Also, I’m thinking about dividing my work on my website into subject matter instead of medium, like figurative, landscape, abstract instead of acrylic, watercolor, etc. Any thoughts on this?
Thank you, Jason!! Great info!!!
Is Facebook or Linkedin helpful for selling, or making new contacts with collectors or galleries?
Do either of these drive viewers to your websites?
Is there a privacy downside like people stealing images for unauthorized use?
Very interesting information. Thank you for sharing it. I’ll keep an eye out for updates as you process the data!
I do sell online through online galleries such as Daily Paintworks and Daily Painters Gallery, but these are inexpensive works for around $200. It is very discouraging for professional artists selling at gallery prices to compete with amateurs who practically give their art away. I would like to know what the average selling price per painting is for those who sell online.
thanks jason! i look forward to your deeper delving. I think the internet is an incredibly untapped resource and most of us are trying to figure out how to use it without it taking over our lives!
Stats on Responders: Interesting that most responders were in the 46-75 age group. They are the most mature artists who you would think had pretty much figured out their marketing strategies. The group least responding were the youngest group,18-45, though the later ages hopefully have begun to figure out their marketing strategies.
And women were the biggest responders, 68+%. A follow up Q might have been: how many males ask for any sort of directions, geographic or relational or marketing.
Some thoughts: The youngest artists/craftspersons are generally the group most in need of acquiring marketing skills. Obviously they’re not that interested or they’re just too successful to bother! Or they think they can live on less income. Or . . . Why did the young’uns not participate more? I’m in the oldest group and never stop trying to invent new ways of marketing. I’m always interested though I don’t find surveys like this one all that germane as it’s too general: What categories of crafts/arts are the most successful online marketers? I’m a potter and would rather sell locally because of shipping costs: is this a concern for others. Why is online selling not more successful? What are some new strategies? What low-cost web-site developers have been found to be the most effective? Do buyers need to see/touch/compare a potential item for purchase? Do websites deal with this? Can they?
The online world is a huge resource and potential market. Why isn’t it more effectively used by artists/craftsperson?
A last thought: Responders to surveys, or participants in marketing seminars, tend to be those who (maybe desperately ) need to increase sales and/or are looking for new ways to reach out in an already successful business. More input is needed by successful marketers. And why are women the most interested in responding to a survey like this one? Is it the same old male resistance to asking for directions?
In this ‘business’ an open mind is the only way to survive. And it doesn’t do to complain, ‘my work is the only thing important to me,’ unless you have a partner with a steady substantial income who can keep your money losing business alive. Frankly it’s a thrill to have some one plunk down $ on a piece I’ve made. Of course if I could afford to do so, I’d give it all away. And then what?
I would like to know the average profit per month or year from web sales, verses galleries or shows.
Bruce Iverson,
My site is hosted by GoDaddy, and they support IWeb, as long as you have ’09 or later. The tech support is pretty good; they’ll talk you through the set-up. I’m told other hosting sites also support iweb, so it might be worthwhile to shop around, too.
In filling out the survey, I noted that I have never encountered a “just internet” sale. Inqueries arriving at web site, whether from galleries, customers or the just curious are almost always prompted by a real world encounter with the art. The net doesn’t seem to function as an independent tool, so much as useful part. If I am represented in a particular area, I refer customers to the gallery.
Several artists have asked about website design. I designed my own site using http://www.startlogic.com and selecting the Website Creator Premium by CM4all package. They have thousands of basic templates that you can customize to fit your own aesethic (I selected one out of their 250 some choices for art galleries). The package I selected lets me have unlimited number of pages to my web site (currently at 34 and growing) and is as easy as using a word processor. I found it easy to use and had the initial site up within a day with no previous experience (5 pages) and that quickly grew as I played with it.
Initial fee was I think around $250 to $300. I pay $10.95 a month which includes a shop site as well for processing payments from sales. Great monthly analytics are included as well. I have my own domain name which I renew through them for a small fee of I believe $14 a year. There is plenty more I could be doing with this particular package such as having a blog right in my web site as well as other features, but I just haven’t seen the need so far. They maintain backups of my site and I can make backups myself onto my external hard drive as well (which I do monthly).
There is a drag and drop option but I haven’t used it so I can’t speak to that and how it all works. Hopefully others will have some web design sites to share that are easy to update as well. I wanted one that I could update myself which I do on at least a weekly basis, sometimes even more often.
Very good and helpful data. Thanks for all your effort and input.
Terrific information. Well done. I hope that in the future you will delve into the critical area of online sales more deeply. I was very surprised at the very low sales numbers, both in volume and amount, of online sales.
I would very much like to know what the obsticals are to purschases are. I also thin that your study provides deep insight into the wisdom of participating with online galleries.
Can’t wait to see more from you
John Bodkin
I really liked reading the survey results. I guess I was surprised by how few actually sold their art work via their web site. It made me feel like I have done better than I thought. Having designed my own web site(s) and several more for other artists, I encourage artists to find template driven services where they can update it without any charge or fee. I thought the monthly fees paid by artists were a bit high. Wordpress is a great solution. It may be a blog platform, but it is very powerful as both blog and web site, plus its free. Hosting should not cost more than $100/yr and $12/yr for domain name).
I did learn from this survey that “shows” and “galleries” are very effective means of marketing and sales. I had already made plans to use those vehicles more this year and feel more solid in that decision having read this. If I could have more research like this made available I would ask the following types of questions:
Buyers: Who are the typical buyers of art (by category)? Young, old, female, male, collectors, decorators?
Price: What are the price ranges of art in each category and what sells the best?
Wholesale: Other than galleries, are their other wholesale channels in which you can sell your art work, such as framers, interior decorators, gift shops, or furniture stores? If so, how does it work?
I know this information is not likely to be readily available but just throwing it out there.
Jason, as always I have found the references from this gallery to be very informative. Thank you for providing a great resource.
All the findings from the survey were especially interesting due to the fact I will be changing careers from corporate to self-employed artist. The other artists’ input regarding to website design and vendors chosen is very helpful. Agree with others, if there would be more focused research, it may continue to support the success of online sales. Possibly, the conversation will continue with others’ input on how their sales of success occurred.
Although a seasoned artist, have always maintained a full-time career not art related. So any suggestions of keys of success will be much appreciated !
Hi Jason,
Thank you for giving all of us the chance to participate in your survey. I feel better that I fell in the majority of the the others. I agree with one of the artists that left a comment about having control over your own site. I do not as my son created it for me along time ago and when he has the time he does work on it. I would very much prefer that I have the control but that is another topic. I am represented on four other sites which I can change things at will. I really feel that trying to sell over the internet is very hard because we compete with thousands of other artists. But with that being said, I think that being everywhere you can be, is more of your calling card and very affordable advertising. The question is what is the best way of utilizing all that is at your disposal.
Jayne Morgan
I’m in the middle of your demographic.
I had a long successful career as a painter, but my market- Drs, lawyers, bankers etc no longer have that kind of disposable income.h
Heaven knows that the younger generation, if they have a home of their own, can’t afford anything but the mortgage. The people who still make significant amounts of money-computer whizzes and money manipulators- for the most part have very little experience with the arts and humanities.
lastly, I think people are so busy fooling with their ipods to even notice their environments.
We don’t need better marketing- We need a market!
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