Part 2 – Online Art Hubs / Galleries / Digital Slide Registries

There are many great online gallery services available today. For a variable fee (typically $50 to $300 per year) these sites allow you to create your own portfolio by uploading images of your work together with bios, artist statements, resumes, etc. At the inexpensive end of the range this could be an arts organization site like mnartists.org which is free for Minnesota artists. At the high-end you might be looking at something like ArtNet.com which charges more than $2,000 per year.

The advantage of this type of site is that many people visit including dealers, galleries, etc. That doesn’t mean that they will actually see your work as there are thousands of artists represented by these services – but there is a chance.

The down side to these gallery-sites is that there is no flexibility to show your work they way you would like to and their selling fees can be quite high. It is also very difficult to get a sense of the personality and motivations of the artist.

Our advice on on-line galleries: You should have your work displayed on at least a couple, so that you benefit from the high-volume of visitors to these sites. But you also need to have a personal site that showcases you and your work more intimately.

Tomorrow we’ll look at low-cost template website options

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