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B+WEtsy’s appeal lies in its global
reach to millions of buyers
searching for craft, art and
vintage items. Photography
makes up a small percentage of
the items sold, but successful
photographers sell thousands
of works a year. The key to this
is pricing, as most photos are
sold for under £20 and only a
fraction are priced over £100.
Etsy is an ideal outlet if you
have a cohesive body of work
that you’re not too precious
about. You can even dispense
with framing, packaging and
posting concerns by offering
work as a digital download.
With more than 330,000
photographs available on the
site it can be tricky for buyers
to find what they’re looking
for, especially as there is no
black & white category. By
selecting ‘black’ in the colour
category the number reduces
to just over 37,000. Getting
your work seen is not easy
either, so you may have to
rely on Etsy ads to move
your images up the rankings- rows of advertised images
are seamlessly integrated into
the search results every three
rows. You can spend as much
as you want with a minimum
daily spend of $1, and then
check the performance of the
advertisement’s views, clicks
and generated orders.
Saatchi Art provides a platform
for selling all forms of art and
anyone may apply. There are
currently more than 461,000
photos listed on the site, with
87,565 in black & white. The
most popular works drift to the
top of the rankings but Saatchi
Art puts in a lot of effort to
promote the better works in
regular features such as Artist
of the Day and in selections
made by a team of curators.
They also provide an art
advisory service to individuals
and business clients.
Artists on Saatchi Art set their
prices high. Photographs can
be sold as limited edition works,
whereby you print, package
and send the work yourself, or
as cheaper open edition prints,
which leaves Saatchi Art to take
care of everything. In either case
the seller sets the price, but
Saatchi Art takes 35% on limited
edition works, while you add
your desired profit on top of a
base price for open editions.
Saatchi Art receives 1.6 millionETSY
Low costs
SA ATCHI ARTPremium pricesLIKESLIKESDISLIKES DISLIKESSPECIFICATIONS SPECIFICATIONSAccess to a huge global market
Option to sell digital downloads
Low costsHigh selling prices
Popular, international
marketplace
Option to sell limited
or open editions
Impressive promotional
effort for the best workEtsy sprinkles promoted prints in among the search results for buyers.
Curators on Saatchi Art put together collections of similar
high quality work to assist buyers.Etsy ads may be required
to get work seen
No black & white search
categoryHuge volume of photographs
for sale
Payouts are only made
in US dollarsCosts $0.20 USD (about 16p)
to list an item for four months,
5% transaction fee, 4% + 20p
payment processing.
Contact etsy.comSaatchi Art takes a 35%
commission on limited edition
sales, or sellers add the desired
profit on top of the base price
for each open edition print.
Contact saatchiart.comvisitors a month and has sold
work to more than 80 countries,
but promotion extends beyond
the website with 1 million social
media followers, a printed
catalogue and exhibitions at
international art fairs.