First, its important to know that photographers and artists — who already took the online market seriously — have been running their own art gallery out of their homes for the last 5 years.  

Many of them have been selling over $100,000 a year. 

But now — with the ability to run successful live art shows right from their house — this home-based art gallery business model has serious rocket fuel behind it.   Given the advancement of successful live art shows, coupled with no geographic limitations — it means the size of the market you can now capture is exponentially larger than it was before.  

As such, photographers and artists now have the ability to build far bigger art businesses.  It will also be easier for the little guy (or the part-timer) to earn more than they otherwise could have before.  Over the next few years, we are going to see some truly amazing things happen.

So, what are the main upsides to running your own art gallery? 

We will cover that now, and then tell you exactly how to equip yourself — so that you can do it too.

The Upsides to Running Your Own Art Gallery

First and foremost is the financial opportunity. As we mentioned earlier, there are full-time artists selling over $100,000 per year from their own art galleries. There are also stay at home moms and dads who sell $5,000-10,000 per year. These are not small sums.

Running your own art gallery online is providing artists with the largest financial opportunity and upside potential when compared to any other alternative sales channel. This alone should be enough reason to take it seriously.

Second, it is easy and low maintenance to run. Once you launch the art gallery, aside from updating it with new products, you have nothing left to do but marketing to get people in the door and facilitate orders. If you sell prints, can be handled automatically with print-on-demand.

Furthermore, it doesn’t matter if you are busy or you don’t want to put in much work. You can spend whatever time you want on the art gallery business. You’ll get out what you put in. If you want to make more money, put more time into marketing. If you are happy with your income, do whatever you please. It doesn’t matter either way because the ongoing costs are so low, it costs you less than a steak dinner to keep it going. Which brings us to our next point.

Third, launching an online art gallery is inexpensive and the ongoing costs of running it are extremely low. This means anyone can do it – regardless of your experience or success level as an artist. Full-timers, part-timers, and hobbyists. This benefit also means you can keep your art gallery running for many, many years all while you continue building it into something significant like these other artists have. This could take one year or several years; it doesn’t really matter.

Fourth, you will have an unlimited market size. Translation: anyone, anywhere in the world can buy from you, and you can market directly to anyone. What most artists don’t realize is that when they sell to physical retail art galleries, or when they exhibit at local fairs, these venues are limited to the local clientele that can be physically present at these locations.

It’s a limited market. This is one of the biggest downsides of the traditional way of selling art. Furthermore, this limitation is not resolved by uploading your artwork into other gallery websites online which contains hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other art pieces. That’s not your gallery – it’s another company’s gallery. An art gallery website that represents anything and everything, and tries to be everything to everybody, will never focus on you and your specific market.

Fifth, you will command higher prices. When you sell in the online art galleries, your only hope is that people stumble across your artwork, alongside all of the other artists competing against you with the same subject matter. Even when this happens, the sale becomes more about price than anything else. The visitor is able to price shop you against everyone else in your category. It’s a terrible situation.

In contrast, when you run your own art gallery, your sales come as a result of a deeper connection and meaning that you have with your buyers. When you are able to market to them directly, and perform romance marketing, your buyers get to know you and the meaning behind your pieces. They connect with you and your creativity, and almost feel like they know who you are inside. When this happens, buying your art is more about how you make them feel.

Price becomes a far lower priority. People will pay far more money to hang something on their wall that makes them feel good versus something that only looks good. Which brings us to our next point.

Sixth, you control the customers. When you sell through other people’s art galleries (both offline and online), you usually don’t get to know who the customer was, you usually don’t get their contact information, and you either are restricted from or have no way of approaching them to sell them more. This entire concept is at odds with the most basic fundamentals of what makes a business survive and thrive.

The strength and value of a business always comes from the size and scope of its customer base. When you have no control over your customers, you can’t push for referrals and repeat business, which means you have little control over the long-term success of your business. This puts you in a very vulnerable position in the long run.

When you run your own art gallery, you have a direct relationship with your customers. You can continually bring positivity into their lives with romance marketing. Rather than being disconnected, you’ll receive a more consistent flow of positive feedback that will feel amazing and energize you to create more.

You will also see that their connection with you is something they will spread to others on their own accord, if you just let them. Your audience size, and your customer list, will grow like compound interest as a result. You will earn repeat sales, and sales will become more consistent. In a couple of years, you will have a real business that is stable and reliable.

So How Does Art Storefronts Fit Into This?

We help artists and photographers run their own art galleries, online.

In simple terms, Art Storefronts provides an art-gallery business in a box. We give you everything you need to run your own art gallery online, and we make it as simple as possible to do.

First, we provide you with a proper art gallery website that provides the finest experience possible for your art buyers, so that you convert the maximum number of visitors into buyers.  Since all we do is focus on the art market, our websites have hundreds of art-selling features that make a real difference and that you won’t find anywhere else.

Second, we provide you with a marketing plan and ongoing marketing consulting to help you get customers in the door.  Marketing is our secret sauce, and if you read reviews about us, it is one of the most cited reasons that artists say they love to work with us.

Who Is a Fit?

Wondering whether you are a good fit for Art Storefronts? Here are the types of people we are working with:

• Full-time artists and photographers
• Part-timers who currently have another job, who want to make extra income with this as a side business.
• Stay-at-home moms and dads, who just want to make an extra $10-20k per year.
• Any artist who wants to live their dream, who wants to make the most efficient use of their time, save themselves years of trial and error, and start doing things the right way from day one.