Artists and Photographers trying to sell their work on the internet generally give up because of the difficulties involved with setting up online galleries, payment systems, creating prints, collecting money, packaging and posting, etc.
It just gets too hard.
Melbourne based Red Bubble solves all those problems, and also provides an active artists community, as well as an online gallery where the general public people can find and purchase your work.
Here’s how it works.
1. You sign up for a free account at www.RedBubble.com.au
2. You upload your images to their site, write a description, and select the types and sizes of prints that you want to sell.
(You can also sell T-Shirts with your images as well)
3. Select the markup (your income) for each item.
Red Bubble then processes the payments, prints the items, and sends them out. And pays you your commission.
My wife Belinda and I were so impressed, that we set up a Red Bubble site for her "Accidental Art".
You can see it at http://www.redbubble.com/people/accidental
An added bonus is that having your name as an artist on Red Bubble will boost the Google ranking for your name, as it is considered an authority site.
You maintain complete ownership and control over the works displayed, and the prices charged to the purchaser.
Graphic requirements for the site are pretty straight forward, but you may need a bit of help from someone if you are not familiar with creating and uploading images.
We found that the best results for Belinda’s work were obtained by using a scanner, although digital photographs would be needed if your originals were large.
This sounds like the ideal, co op idea.
Often touted but rarely works.
In this situation on the internet it is obviously a good idea and successful.
It is a pity more areas of small business could not head in this direction, after all the co op idea is for all to benefit under one banner.
Belinda, would you be willing to draw a new logo for me ?. I know what I want but I am no artist.
Paul