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My wife has finally decided to start selling her art. Paintings, decoupage, all sorts of weird stuff only women understand (or buy).
I have been told I wanted to build the website and that's despite my IT skills being below ridiculously poor.
Where do I start? A gallery with an option to buy on-line. How the hell do I do it? Using Ubuntu so software to build the website needs to consider this. Should I just use WYSIWYG stuff? Plant it onto Google Pages, redirect to her address?
No, I won't learn HTML/Java/Flash/geekstuff. It's beyond me. I've tried and failed.
Or are there any templates?
do you want an online shop (with checkout etc) or just a gallery with 'email to buy' type thing?
More like an online gallery with the shop facility inbuilt.
wordpress page with email to buy would be the easiest to use, if it was going well you can then use ecommerce plugins to integrate credit card or paypal checkouts
Don't I need to know HTML for that?
Maybe Etsy.com?
Mr site www.mrsite.com is cheap and easy, supports good and they do all the web hosting if you cba. Mr site has a selling widget that makes it a doddle to link to paypal. If you mail me some of your wifes work I can advise you on other websites to sell it through. I sell most of my work in galleries rather than online but some online sites such as www.artgallery.co.uk can be fruitful and will get her work to a wider audience, in the first instance it's about as much exposure as possible.
My bro's Mrs (who is a profession artist) used to sell canvases on ebay.
If you're talking items worth £hundreds rather than £thousands I'd imagine that's your best route.
I'm talking items from £10 to £200. We've thought about ebay too, but she wants a nicer option if possible.
Ebay and/or Etsy. Or, pay someone who knows what they're doing.
Couldn't you use someting like [url= http://www.zenfolio.com/ ]Zenfolio[/url] or Smugmug? They have built in checkouts and you can custom the pages without HTML experience.
You set the price but do have to pay a commission on every sale on top the annual fee.
Easy to set up and use.
This seems to be a fairly common "want" amongst artists, I know loads who would love to. The problem comes when people start wanting to return them etc as they are not as pictured, stuff like that, and insured postage. Personally I'd just make up a gallery and ensure the price and contact info were readily available on the page, saves all the hassle of card payments online, data protection etc etc etc.
There's also existing options, but none look very professional:
http://www.bigartspace.co.uk/
How about using clikpic or photium?
They are designed for selling photo's but you could set them up for art I would have thought, even if it's not just picture type art.
My mate and his soon to be wife is starting up [url= http://www.artpistol.co.uk/ ]www.artpistol.co.uk[/url]. They've got a facebook page as well.
They're also up for an award with Shell Livewire see [url= http://www.shell-livewire.org/my-business-kit/preview/ ]here.[/url]
[url= http://bigcartel.com/ ]Big Cartel[/url] is good. Easy to build and setup shop. With no coding required.
Thanks, both of my brain cells have become overloaded. Need weeks to digest the above 😉
[url= http://www.photium.com/ ]Photium[/url] might be just the thing - I have two of their sites. Template based, but with so many options you never see two the same, support second to none, flawless shopping cart / paypal integration, built in customisable SEO options. £7 a month!
They are aimed at photographers, but work just as well for artists. Free trial too, so no need to spend money if your wife doesn't get on with it.
Have a look at my profile to see the main site, or have a gander at my other site, http://www.hairydogphotography.co.uk
^^ Thanks, seems just the ticket.
BTW Nice pics, really.
My mate in Wickolow has this site - she's grown the business side of her art over 18 months, mainly via the web and has started to do rather well.
http://www.roisinofarrell.com/
iDave, it's lovely, really.