Those of you that venture beyond this blog to other parts of this website will probably know I’m currently working on a limited edition series of handmade artists books.

In this post I want to show how all the elements of this website will work together to help promote this new artwork, and a possible freeconomics model I’m looking at for selling the artwork.

Public documentation from the beginning of the project

Public documentation on my website

Firstly, I’ve been documenting the whole process in the Notebook section of this site.  The Notebook section is free open-source wiki software called Mediawiki - the same wiki software originally written for Wikipedia.

I chose to use wiki software because it meant I could simply log into it, create and edit pages, and cross-reference between pages very easily.  Unlike most wikis, I have turned off the ability for other people to edit it.  This is because I just want to use it as my notebook rather than as a collaborative tool.

I’ve also just started a thread in the discussion forum.  This only has an introductory post at the moment, but I expect that side of things to get busier as I progress with the project (I don’t expect to finish the artwork until around November/December 2008).  The discussion forum thread will enable people to ask questions, creating a dialogue rather than a monologue.

It’s important to note that public documentation starts the moment the project starts - it’s not something that is put together afterwards.  The Notebook section especially makes the creative process itself open and transparent.

Public documentation on Social Networks

As well as documenting the project on this site, I’m also documenting it on various social networks.  My DeviantArt profile was the obvious first choice—it’s an applied social network dedicated to artwork—so I’ve uploaded some of the initial photographs and text, and also explained the project in journals entries.

MySpace and Facebook are perhaps less immediately useful, but still important.

MySpace bulletins and blogs provide a space to explain the project and give updates, and images can always be uploaded to your MySpace photo albums (so long as they comply with MySpace’s somewhat restrictive photo policy), but linking out to your own website for further information is a grey area - MySpace seems to allow it for some sites, but not for others.

Facebook is also useful - and the ability to create groups and pages is something that should be investigated.

Using a Freemium model

I’ve blogged about Freeconomic/Freemium models before, but I’ve never suggested how they can be used to sell artwork.  So now I’m going to explain how I’m going to use them.

In the my blog post A Summary of Freeconomic Models I described the “multi-tier freemium” model used by the Trent Reznor’s band Nine Inch Nails:

Nine Inch Nail’s recent Ghosts release. 9 free tracks are available for download for free. The full 36 tracks are available for download for $5. Various limited edition high-(visual/tactile aesthetic)-standard production CD/DVD versions are available for higher prices (full details on Techdirt).

So, how do I apply this to a limited edition series of handmade artists books?

Well, having turned pale when adding up the costs of my materials so far, I am resigned to the fact that the thirty to fifty handmade artists books I create are going to have to be priced quite highly.  I’m not sure how much yet (because I haven’t finished spending), but for the purposes of this post let’s presume each one is going to be around £200 ($400 US).

Now, not everyone can afford that, or is willing to spend that much money on artwork, or—let’s be honest—likes my artwork enough to spend £200 on it.

So, here’s a possible multi-tiered freemium model I’ve been considering:

• A downloadable PDF ebook.  It’s not tactile, it’s neither handbound nor letterpress-printed by the artist, it’s not got the high production standards of one of the 30-50 books, it doesn’t even exist in hard-copy format (unless you chose to print it out on your printer) but it’s free.  This is for people who—for whatever reason—would never buy my artwork but quite like it.
• A print-on-demand hard-copy book.  Again, it lacks a lot of the high-(visual/tactile aesthetic)-standard production of an original piece of handmade artwork, but it’s printed by a professional print-on-demand publisher for around £25 (I’ve spent more than that on a round of drinks).  I need to do some research into the print quality of images in print-on-demand books.
• A Limited Edition series of thirty to fifty handmade artists books, finished to a very high standard, with photographs collaged in and the text letterpress-printed.  Each artists book will be uniquely and individually hand-bound by the artist.

I may slot some other options in there as well. How about a more expensive print-on-demand book, but with a limited edition set of postcards of some of the images?  Or just a set of postcards of the images as something people could buy separately?

By providing various options, from free to expensive via a mid-range of prices, I can not only get my artwork out to as many people as possible, but also make money as an artist.

I’ve seen a lot of artist’s websites with fierce and furious demands not to “steal” their artwork (by which they mean the small digital reproductions of their artwork), insulting visitors before they’ve even begun to explore a website.

I’ve seen those annoying cut-and-paste JavaScripts to attempt to disable the right-click functionality (as well as a lot of other useful and legitimate functionality) to prevent visitors from saving the small digital reproductions of the artist’s work, in the process crippling visitors’ browsers and pissing them off.

I run things slightly differently - I agree with Tim O’Reilly’s seminal post “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution” where he stated:

“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy”

To me the small digital reproductions of my artwork that I display on my site are not my artwork - they’re my marketing.  And if they’re viral marketing (i.e. visitors want to download them and use them as their PC wallpaper or—even better—distribute them to other people on their MySpace pages) then I’ve been even more successful.

My artwork—as you’ll know if you’ve taken a look at my galleries—consists of collages, assemblages and drawings, with a few photographs.  It doesn’t consist of the small digital images of those pieces of artwork.  So when people take those images and use them for their own non-commercial purposes then it isn’t theft, it’s other people doing my marketing for me.

Now, you could say that because I don’t watermark my images then how can it be marketing - how can someone seeing one of my images on someone’s MySpace account possibly help me when the image can’t be attributed to me?

It’s simple - people like being Mavens. When asked “Wow, where did you get that image from” (OK, it’s probably more likely to be phrased as “OMFG!!111 - WHR DD U GT THT PIC FRM?!!”, but you get the idea) then the person can show off their knowledge by pointing the amazed newcomer in the direction of the originating website - my website!

Sure, in that situation some idiots may claim that they made it themselves, but that doesn’t cost me anything so I don’t care.

Sure, it costs me a tiny bit of bandwidth if people are too lazy to host it themselves, but if that’s the case then AWStats—my stat-tracking software—will tell me where it’s being used (because the referring page will be logged), which lets me see who likes the images of my artwork and how they’re being used - which is incredibly valuable information.  And the bandwidth cost is neglible - my £100-a-year web-hosting package gives me 150GB bandwidth transfer per month and I only use a fraction of that anyway.

There’s just one exclusion to the above.  I specified people using these images for non-commercial purposes.  Commercial usage is an entirely different matter, and for commercial usage money should change hands (from their hands into my hands!).

1. Disabling right-clicking

JavaScript that disables right-clicking (to prevent people “stealing” your images) is wrong on so many levels. But it’s such a prevalent mistake that I feel the need to tell you why it’s wrong:

Small screen-sized digital images of your artwork are your most basic form of marketing, and (thanks to the wonders of the internet) can be reproduced and redistributed at no cost. If you think that trying to stop people from distributing your marketing material is a good thing then you need to rethink everything from scratch.

It doesn’t work anyway - anyone can disable JavaScript in a matter of a second. Which means I’ve still got your images, but now you’ve annoyed me as well, so I’m less likely to rave about (i.e. promote) your artwork.

2. Flash websites

Now I know this one tends to get Flash evangelists in a tizz, but I hate Flash websites. Part of the reason is that they often completely fail to work on my PC (I’m running 64-bit Linux, and there’s no official flash plugin for 64-bit Linux, so your “website” is rendered as an inactive 800×600 pixel dead-grey rectangle).

Flash websites are also favoured by linear-minded control freaks to dictate how a visitor views a website - they restrict choice. For example, they restrict the visitor from entering the site on anything but the “front” page (which invariably contains a painfully tedious animation that I’m forced to watch before the “enter” link appears).

They also seem to be used as an over-engineered “solution” to people attempting to help market your artwork (in that they prevent you from right-clicking and saving an image). Again, it doesn’t actually do anything but slow your visitor down for a matter of seconds (print-screen will capture that images easily) whilst pissing off your potential customers.

The worst Flash artists’ websites always seem to say to me “I’m a self-important wanker who demands that you see things my way - you will not deviate from the true way to appreciate my artwork” (in 8pt type that I can neither read nor resize). I know I’m ranting here, but it’s a pet hatred of mine.

I should add that I’m not opposed to small bits of Flash embedded within an (X)HTML website, where rich content or animation needs to be delivered, such as using YouTube’s Flash embedding to drop a video into a webpage. That’s fine - that’s what Flash is for.

3. Tiled wallpaper behind the artwork

Galleries have plain walls so that the viewer’s attention isn’t distracted from the artwork. Your website should too. It’s just visual noise that gets in the way of your artwork.

4. Arty Navigation

While I may be inclined to spend my valuable time analysing and building an understanding & appreciation of your artwork, I’d rather not spend that time analysing and building an understanding of your website’s navigation/menu - I don’t care enough and I’ll just go somewhere else.

I want a menu on every page of the site with the main menu items should be in writing and not icons/symbols/images whose meaning I can only deduce by clicking on them and seeing where I end up. I don’t care how “clever” they are.

5. Splash pages with “enter” links

I used to make this mistake many years ago. I had a splash page with an impressively large image and an “enter” link.

It comes from an over-extension of the analogy that an artist’s website is their personal gallery—with a door through which you enter—but that analogy is wrong.

A website is a gallery—and much more—where all the artwork is hung on the exterior walls facing out into the world, rather than being contained in a space for which there is only one entrance (this is a mistake frequently made by aficionados of Flash websites).

The 2006 blog post Five mistakes you’re probably making with your MySpace page (on Andrew Dubber’s blog New Music Strategies) applies equally to visual artists as it does to musicians.

The five mistakes (expanded on in much better detail in the blog post itself) are:

1. Using MySpace as your website
2. Using MySpace as your email
3. Having an impressive background image
4. Embedding lots of media
5. Writing lots of text

All of these points are absolutely correct. MySpace’s “My Pics” should not be your gallery. By all means, put loads of examples of your work in there (if they comply with MySpace’s image content rules) but don’t direct people there instead of to your own site.

Andrew Dubber reminds us:

Remember: MySpace is a tool. It’s one of many. It’s not your only shot at engaging with your audience or prospective market. It’s an important one though, and it’s one that it’s very easy to make mistakes with. Use it well.

MySpace, like any social networking site, should just be one of many outposts of your main website. In no way should it be your website (and nor should Flickr, deviantART, Artbreak, or any other social website).

I wanted to take a short break from writing long articles to provide a quick list of links to various sites and online tools which can help artists with selling art online.

So, in no particular order, I give you:

Strategies & tactics for selling art online

• Empty Easel - Selling Art Online: a selection of articles about designing artist’s websites, Google Adwords/Adsense, etc.
• Art Biz Blog - Selling Art Online: Emarketing for Artists.
• The Artrepeneur: seven tactics for online art marketing.
• eHow: selling/trading ACEO art online.
• Online Arts Marketing: this post is about using social networks to sell art, but there are many other useful articles.
• YourArtMarketing: artists’ discussion forum concerned with online sales & marketing strategies for artists.
• Technium - 1,000 True Fans: Kevin Kelly’s article about working as an artist in a long tail market.
• ArtMarketBlog - how artists can get noticed (plus many other relevant posts).

Please feel free to add a comment to provide more relevant links.

You may get a message saying your comment has been held for spam (because comments with links in them often trip the spam filters) - don’t worry, I’ll be manually checking all comments flagged as spam and will “un-flag” any false positives.

OK, read this blog post by Kevin Kelly first.

It’s the first time (in my knowledge) that a seasoned commentator has turned their attention to how an individual artist/writer/musician can work in a long tail environment, rather than examining it from the point of view of retailers (Kevin does reference some other blog posts on the subject, as do some of the comments on the blog post, but I think this is the first article that presents the theory in such a clear and succinct manner).

Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait. Read the comments too - there’s some great information in there as well.

…

Read it now? Good.

Kevin’s proposition is that an artist “needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living”, defining a true (diehard) fan as someone who will purchase anything and everything you make. Actually the number “1,000″, as Kevin admits, depends on the particular profit margins etc. based on whether the artist in question is a painter, musician, writer, photographer etc. but the point is that it’s in that ballpark - not millions or billions. 1,000 is an achievable goal - it’s not like trying to be as famous as Damien Hurst, J.K. Rowling or Radiohead, or trying to win the lottery.

To raise your sales out of the flatline of the long tail you need to connect with your True Fans directly. Another way to state this is, you need to convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans.

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day’s wages per year in support of what you do. That “one-day-wage” is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let’s peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

OK, so how do you get 1,000 True Fans? Well, hopefully by following all the strategies I’ve been blogging about here. Making a living on the long tail is not about avoiding the aggregators, but about using the hyper-efficient distribution they provide to reach those 1,000 people who will just love your work.

And once you’ve managed to reach them, you need to invest in them - invest your time in them (by communicating with them and listening to them) because True Fans are worth investing that sort of effort in.

1. Start with a website

OK, here’s the easy-to-follow three-point guide:

1. If you are a competent web developer then create your own site.
2. If you have a friend who is a competent web developer then ask them to set you up free blog software (e.g. WordPress) on a web-host with your own domain name in return for a few free beers. Don’t ask them to set you up a non-blog site because otherwise you’ll have to keep harassing them to update it - a blog allows you to take control and regularly update your site without needing to be a web developer.
3. If you don’t know any web developers who can help you, then sign up for a blog hosted on a free blogging service (e.g. Blogger or WordPress - personally I recommend WordPress).

The Artist’s Web Wiki gives a good overview of what content to create, but I think it makes a strategic error when it says “Resist the temptation to display every piece you’ve ever created. Show off your best!”. I think this is totally wrong - it’s viewing the web in the same way as the limited space on a gallery wall (which it certainly is not).

Only displaying a small selection of work presumes a scarcity of space - and space on the web is anything but scarce (digital storage and bandwidth are abundant and their cost is increasingly tending towards zero). The only scarcity is people’s attention.

I would suggest putting every single piece of artwork/music/writing you have on your website - every finished piece, work-in-progress and preliminary sketch/demo/note. This strategy is based on the economic model explained by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail:

The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

With the unlimited space available on the web, you don’t need to restrict yourself to a small edited selection of pieces which (you desperately hope) will accurately capture the entire range of your creative œuvre. You can put your entire œuvre on your website and let Google et al. bring in the niche customers who are interested in what—to you—is a half-forgotten piece of work, but to the searcher is the very thing they want to see - and, perhaps, to buy.

The important thing with this strategy, however, is to make sure that it’s all organised in an easily-findable way. Again, Anderson sums this up succinctly in his book:

1. Make everything available.
2. Help me find it.

When you move from displaying a carefully curated/edited selection to making available the entirety of your life’s work (so far) then you need to think about navigation, taxonomies, hierarchies, folksonomies, inter-linking, cross-references, personalisation, search, multiple-categorisation…

2. Set up outposts on Social Networking websites

Setting up shop on a variety of social networking sites enables you to take your work out to your potential audience.

MySpace, Facebook, DeviantArt (for visual artists, writers and film-makers), YouTube (for film-makers), Flickr (for photographers and visual artists)… I won’t list them all here because Mashable has a list of 350+ social networking sites with details of their niches and specialities.

You can’t just create an account and leave it, though—the very nature of social networking sites means that they work best if you work at them—you need to network with the communities that use them.

And by that I don’t mean send out thousands of spam “friend” requests - you need to actively engage with the community in the manner that the network in question encourages and respects.

This is a community you’re trying to be part of, not a crowd of passing anonymous shoppers to blindly hand-out flyers to.

3. Set up your communications

This means an email newsletter of some sort, an RSS feed (if you’ve gone for a blog then this will come as part of the blogging software), and an easy way for people to contact you (anything from your email address or a contact form to a discussion forum or the comments section under a blog post - the more ways the better).

In part two of this article I’ll be looking at how to use your website to help your art.

Umair Haque just asked “Is Etsy the next Google?” due, I think, to Etsy’s ability to build a community of artists & makers alongside (inside?) a community of art-, fashion-, and craft-lovers, and facilitate their conversations (social and financial) without getting in the way too obtrusively.

Etsy, for those who haven’t heard of it yet, is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade - artwork, clothes, crafts. A niche eBay for artists, but with a much more innovative angle on creating and sustaining conversations between buyers and sellers (AKA community-building).

Economically, it’s an aggregation site launched in 2005 connecting 60,000 - 100,000 specialist creators with their niche markets, charging a micro-fee (20 US cents) to list each item for up to 4 months, and taking a 3.5% cut of the sale price.

In their own words:

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

I think Etsy should probably open up its platform a bit, but that’s just the developer in me wanting to get my hands dirty with code. It does provide Etsy Mini - widgets for displaying your artwork on external sites (javascript versions for blogs & websites, flash versions for MySpace and other social networking sites).

Etsy could conceivably expand & innovate in a lot of different areas—a context-sensitive ad network for art & crafts sold on Etsy, Etsy-Books as a new outlet for self-publishing, Etsy-music—it’s difficult to predict which direction they’ll take.

I signed up for an Etsy shop yesterday to see how it goes. I think it might be interesting.

Oh yeah, here’s Technorati’s graph showing the rising buzz on blogs about Etsy:

Kentucky-based collage artist Randel Plowman launched a new project back in March 2006. The project—called A Collage A Day—was ambitious to say the least.

He committed himself to producing a new 4″ × 4″ collage every day and putting it up for sale on a specially created blog. Each collage is offered for sale at $25.00, which includes 8″ × 8″ archival gallery matting, documentation and free shipping within the United States (or $10 outside the US).

I ordered one of Randel’s collages back in November last year. It’s the one illustrated right here—it’s called Once Again—and here’s Randel’s the blog post featuring it.

It arrived promptly a week or so later: an original well-made, hinge-mounted 4″ × 4″ collage, complete with a signed document of authenticity, which now has pride of place on my wall (next to a postcard of Lee Miller).

Randel’s idea works so well because everything is made easy for the customer. The collages are great, the blog format is easy to navigate, the images and details of the collages are clearly available, and payment is made via PayPal. Equally importantly, he has priced the collages very well, so that just about anyone can afford one, and shipping costs are minimal (and non-existent within the US).

Let’s examine Randel’s strategy in terms of Kevin Kelly’s eight generatives—“categories of intangible value” that must be “generated, grown, cultivated, [or] nurtured” that make the non-free version better than the free version—comparing the free digital images of the collages to the collage I received in the post. After all, why should I spend even $25 on a collage when the digital image of it is available free on his blog?

Here’s the generatives that I think add value to Randel’s collages, making the non-free physical version better than the free digital version:

• Authenticity - the signed document of authenticity really nails this one - this is the guarantee that this is a one-of-a-kind original.
• Accessibility - a non-digital version means I can carry this around, and put it on whatever wall I want.
• Embodiment - The physical collage is the ultimate in embodiment. Apart from the textural qualities of the collage materials, Randel uses a nice chunky mount to add solidity to the artwork (turning it from an image into an object).
• Patronage - Kevin says that “It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators” - I completely agree, and at $25 a go, most people can afford to pay Randel.

Of these four, I think Embodiment is the crucial quality that made me buy one of Randel’s collages, followed in second place by Patronage (both of which are preceded by the fact that I liked his collages on an aesthetic level, of course - without that, any other values are moot since I’m not buying as a financial investment to make money). This is no real surprise with a hand-made physical piece of visual artwork which is unique—or scarce—by its very nature (or at least limited, in the case of a print) compared to the abundant multiplicity of the digital image.

I’m trying to alternate theory with practical examples, and it’s time for a practical example again, this time from my own practice in the world of visual art.

If you’re in the business of creating large pieces of artwork that cost more than the average person earns in a week then making your first sale is going to be difficult, whether online or in an exhibition. You’re asking people to spend a lot of money, to make a large commitment.

Making that sale online is even harder, because your potential customer is at a disadvantage:

• they can’t view the work at full size,
• they can’t see the work from all angles (and this applies to paintings as well as 3D work),
• they can’t fully appreciate texture and tactile qualities,
• they can’t talk to you to get a better understanding of the work,
• and most importantly, they will probably have to pay shipping charges (and shipping insurance) on top of the price of the artwork itself.

It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult. But there are a number of ways you can make things easier.

I’ve had quite a few enquiries from potential customers in the US about buying my assemblages. All went well in the email exchange: they liked the artwork and were comfortable with the price I was asking, even with the weakness of the dollar making my work quite expensive for American customers. But when I calculated the shipping for these heavy, bulky pieces of artwork (they’re mounted on heavy wood for stability and measure, on average, 24″ x 18″) the sale went dead.

The problem was that trans-Atlantic shipping and insurance costs more than doubled my asking price for the work - and this was the sticking point at which I lost the sale every time. And unfortunately this wasn’t just the case for international orders - even domestic shipping put too much on the overall price.

On the other hand, I have lots of friends, acquaintances and complete strangers telling me that they liked my artwork, but the concept of buying it never entered their minds - in their minds they weren’t “the type of people who bought artwork”. They were struggling for cash, or making ends meet but certainly couldn’t afford to spend a three figure sum on a piece of artwork.

I was discouraged, but not completely. I’d obviously done some things right - I was presenting my artwork correctly, I was doing my promotion well enough to attract people who liked my artwork to my website, and the various areas for interaction on my site (the discussion forum, and ample opportunities to contact me by email) were a viable alternative for the experience of talking to the artist face-to-face at an exhibition.

Since I’ve frequently lived almost hand-to-mouth, I could completely empathise with people being put off (or just simply excluded) by the price of buying my artwork. I didn’t want to abandon my assemblage work, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do something to complement it. I needed something that was very affordable, didn’t weigh a lot (so it didn’t incur huge shipping charges), and worked alongside my assemblages allowing me to try out new ideas which I probably wouldn’t have the time (or confidence) to attempt in a larger piece of work.

Obviously the heavy wood that the assemblages were built on would have to go. Paper would be too flimsy, so I looked around the art shops and found several packs of 9″ x 12″ Bockingford Board - meant for watercolours, but solid enough to stand a few layers of varnish and glue, and small enough to fit into a standard padded envelope.

I had an idea for some collages loosely based on the Principia Discordia (the “sacred text” of the Discordian religion written by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley as a parody of organised religion). I got out my varnish, glue and collections of photographs, drawings, and found objects and set to work, soon finishing 6 collages on the Bockingford Board (incidentally finding I could experiment with ideas far more quickly and freely at this smaller scale.).

After creating the first six I packaged one up and took it along to the Post Office to get weighed and priced up - the shipping cost would be under £1 in the UK, around £1.50 to continental Europe, just over £2 to the US/Canada and nearly £3 to Australia.

After costing up the board and other materials (including the mailing envelope!), I came to a price of £12.50 (about $25 US at the current exchange rate) for a single collage including shipping to anywhere in the world. I would be selling the collages at only a £1 or so above cost price - not getting any real money for my time (but not losing any money on materials or shipping), but that fitted with my longer term plan. I had decided that just about anyone could afford £12.50 - it wasn’t a financial commitment that people had to weigh up: it could easily be an impulse buy - which opened up the possibility of selling my artwork to people who didn’t see themselves as “the type of people who bought artwork”.

And so my Principia Discordia series of collages was born.

There were a number of other decisions I made. I decided to sell sight-unseen: a risky strategy, but one that made it easy to use a basic PayPal ecommerce system - the customer ordered a collage and then I made it, with no need for me to quickly edit web-pages to show that a particular collage had been sold. I also included a certificate of authenticity which each collage, and recorded the name of the purchaser of each collage in the gallery. I set up a thread on my discussion forum dedicated to the series, where potential customers could ask questions (and check on the progress of their collage). I emailed several websites and blogs which specialised in collages and a (surprisingly) large number agreed to repost my “press release” (now I understand that this blogging business can be hard work - when someone emails you to hand you a blogpost on a plate which is highly relevant to your blog’s subject area, then I can completely understand why so many kind people were happy to post my news on their blogs for me!)

So, how did it go? Well, it’s still going. I’ve sold 55 of the collages over a period of two-and-a-bit years. Many were sold to friends and regulars on my discussion forum (several of whom had not bought artwork before), but a large number were sold to complete strangers.

Stupidly, I failed to create a section in the PayPal order form where I asked how they had heard about my collages - I’ll fix that mistake next time. Most surprisingly (to me, at least) was that many people were buying multiple collages. One person ordered 10 collages!

What I’ve ended up with (apart from the money, and the great satisfaction of selling my artwork) is a number of benefits. I’ve found a way to experiment quickly and affordably with new artistic ideas which works in parallel with my larger assemblages. I’ve also now got a small-but-growing global email database of people who have paid for my artwork, who, having already invested a very small amount of money in my art, might be interested in doing so again - either another small purchase or, having had the positive experience of a safely completed financial transaction with an unknown artist, perhaps something slightly more expensive.

I’m considering a new series of artwork. It’ll still be small and lightweight, but probably slightly larger than the Principia Discordia collages, and each piece taking a bit more time and materials, maybe costing around £30 each. But this time I have a database of customers - people who have already bought my artwork - who I can notify as soon as I’m ready, which makes selling this new series just that bit easier.

I’m not proposing this strategy as the one true way of selling art online. It’s just one strategy that worked for me - I sold multiple pieces of artwork, gained a lot of traffic (visitors to my site, looking at my artwork), and I’ve got a list of customers from all over the world who have crossed the hardest threshold - they’ve made their first purchase from me. Now it’s time for me to build on that.