So you have art you want to sell? Why not market it online? Here are a few tips on how you should proceed. You first step to creating a website should be to have the cleanest pictures you can of your art. Try using a high-resolution digital camera if possible, if not then you may want to shoot it on film, and scan it with a high-end scanner.

Classic film at this point still has a higher resolution than large format digital, but the digitization process could “cheapen” your end product. It’s your choice as a publisher. If you are looking into making film samples, or audio material as demos, then what you would want to do, is to render your files in the smallest format possible, for film I would recommend “multimedia-small 15 frames/second” as your render option, and for MP3’s I would use the lowest quality possible, as to take into consideration those with Low-end computers or slower internet connections. Make your product as accessible as possible. You never know who’s looking, and from where.

You should consult with your web-designer or your search engine optimization company so that your website can be search engine optimized. The reasoning behind this, is that once you put all this work into digitizing your media, you want your website to be seen.

If you aren’t familiar with web design, I would advise hiring an art friendly web designer to help you out with the creating the website. S/He can deal with the technical aspects of creation while you worry about the design. I cannot stress enough the necessity of using an HTML editor that is search optimization friendly. Not so much for the actual design of the website, but for everything that goes on behind the scenes.

When you’re creating a website, there are two aspects to take into consideration. What the viewer is seeing, and how the website relates to search engines. Although I believe what the viewer is seeing is entirely in the hands of the designer, and owner… how the website relates to search engines is where SEO comes in.

How does your website fare with Google, MSN, or Yahoo? This is the province of your SEO, and your web-designer.

This is where items like meta-tags, keyword density, and performance come into play. Your website should be optimized for your location, content, type of art/media. When a web search is run on a topic relevant to you, your website should come up in these searches. If you’re a political artist then you should be getting hits for “political art”, in my case “Toronto filmmakers” or anything specific to your art/media content.

How an SEO can work for you, is that with your search engine optimization company will be able to tailor make your keywords, and meta-tags; so that the closer the search terms are to what you do, the more likely you will get a visitor on your site.

The more visitors you get on your site, the more likely you are to sell your product. This brings you closer to becoming an independent artist who doesn’t need deal with large publishers that don’t have your best interests in mind. Ultimately what an effective self-driven online marketing campaign will do for you is that it will allow you to sell your product at your price, and for minimal monthly fees you won’t have to sign over publishing rights or licensing, because all the fees, minus operating fees come directly to you.

SEO and online marketing campaigns are available at minimal investment, so if you’re serious about launching your art career, then an affordable advertising campaign may be what you’re looking for.

Simply by improving your site ranking, you attract more visitors. Every visitor is a potential buyer... If we want to use a retail analogy, the more people visit your store, the more stuff you’ll sell.

All it really takes is for someone to see your site when doing a web- search; this will bring you clients and contacts. A very small investment could bring you the artistic freedom you want and deserve.