What's Selling on ArtWanted.com?

08 February, 2011

ArtWanted.com Staff
1,063 Views
11 Comments

What's Selling on ArtWanted.com?

A common question for our staff that comes up on our message boards and support e-mails is: Do artists sell art on ArtWanted.com?

The short answer is yes. However, to answer this question in more detail, we have created several reports based on all the art sales data of 2010. We have excluded all artist personal purchases from this report, so the data represents true art sales from art buyers.

As a private company, we do not publicly disclose the actual number of sales and income for the site. However, we can disclose some data to help our members better understand the sales that happen on the site. We have art sales on ArtWanted.com each day that is putting money into the pockets of our members and payout commissions each month.

First off, there are two ways to sell art on ArtWanted.com… Selling original artwork where the artist ships out the artwork and our Premium Member Print Program, which is the sale of prints/products from our print-on-demand program. Here are a few more details of the 2010 ArtWanted.com Sales:

Percent of Artwork on ArtWanted.com For Sale: 29%
Type of Artwork Sold: 7% Original Art | 93% Print-On-Demand Products
Average Price of Original Artwork Sold: $81.79
Average Price of Print Product Items Sold: $20.40

Most Popular Print Products Sold:
Prints 46%
Mugs 18%
Greeting Cards 8%
Canvas Prints 5%
Mouse Pads 4%
Posters 4%
T-Shirts 4%
Magnets 3%
Key Tags 3%
All Others 5%

Most Popular Artwork Subject Matter:
Landscape/Outdoor 24%
People/Portrait 15%
Nature/Wildlife 9%
Animals 7%
Abstract 6%
Unspecified 5%
Fantasy/Mythical 5%
Places/Events 5%
Florals 3%
Humorous/Comic 3%
Mystical/New Age 3%
All Others 15%

Most Popular Artwork Media Types:
Photograph 27%
Acrylic 18%
Computer/Digital 14%
Oil 12%
Mixed Media 7%
Pencil 5%
Watercolor 5%
Unspecified 4%
Pen & Ink 4%
All Others 4%

Customer service is very important to us as well. We send out a survey to our buyers to gather feedback on their shopping experience and the product(s) they received. Here are the results of this ongoing survey.

There are dozens of factors that determine if you can sell your artwork online. Some of these are style, medium, price, size/format, popularity of the artist and subject matter. Some artists may never sell any artwork online and others will have great success. We are not aware of a "magic formula" to guarantee sales or else we would be sure to tell everyone what it is. However, there are many things you can do to increase your chances of sales.

If you are looking to have more online artwork sales, become a Premium Member and be sure to follow our marketing tips found on our sister site: ArtistMarketingTips.com

We hope the data above gives everyone a bit more insight into the art sales of ArtWanted.com. We will continue to look for more ways to increase sales on ArtWanted.com for our members that wish to sell.

TIP: Be sure to enter your PayPal e-mail address into your ArtWanted.com account settings. This will make sure you get 100% of the retail price for your original artwork sales and avoid paying any commission fees to ArtWanted.com for these type of sales.

11 Comments

Linda Eades Blackburn 08 Feb 2011

Of these numbers, what percentage of these sales are artists buying products featuring their own work? If you are including those numbers, then this information is useless to an artist trying to market their work here. If Products purchased do not include those bought by the artist that did the original, then it is a very good start in developing a helpful marketing tool for the artists on this site.

Okay, I reread your post and see that products purchased by the artists who created the original are not included here. Very good.

Personally, I would like to see examples of images that sell rather than just know it is a landscape or portrait. that gives an artist a better feel for what is selling, and what they might want to put on their site here.

ArtWanted.com Staff 08 Feb 2011

Correct, none of these numbers include purchases by artists of their own artwork. We excluded these type of purchases from these figures to give a realistic view of what is selling.

We are considering adding a "Recently Sold Artwork" section to our site in the future, stay tuned.

Carole Boyd 10 Feb 2011

Dear AW: It seems that, since mugs are the second highest selling item, that you could have, over the past YEAR, fixed the problem with offering them on any piece of art. I've been trying to get that accomplished since then, and I understand that it still is not resolved. In fact, on a piece of artwork that I previously order (and received) a mug, that option suddenly is not now available. Do you think you might concentrate on the mugs issue for a while? Thanks-

Madhu Jain 19 Feb 2011

Dear at Art Wanted

I run a website of high quality greeting cards displaying works of artists. Do you think I can have the website linked on my page or on your greeting cards page? Then how much woudl be your commission. I am in India.

I also have prints of my apitnings size 18 " x 25" on photo paper.

I was happy to have featured on calendar 2010 but I wd be happier to sell my artworks. However the prices for my apintings are not within $ 85? madhu jain india

ArtWanted.com Staff 20 Feb 2011

Madhu - Each member of our site can have an alternate website link on their portfolio, which goes to another site. However, we would not be able to promote your services from ArtWanted.com at this time.

kenneth joaquin 30 Jul 2014

Does anyone know what is a average number for views on a artist artwork. Is good 100 times or 50 times a month. Am I way off, is it much more or less. Really confused by statistics. Am I wasting my time or not. Any input out there.

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