5 Art Sites You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Grackle and Succulents by Amber Alexander

Sure you know about Etsy and Fine Art America and Society6 and a host of other popular places to sell and promote your art. But have you heard of these?

1. Ziibra
   Ziibra started out marketing almost entirely to artists! Cool! They’ve branched out now to be just a really good ecommerce platform (read: place to sell your art online). What’s neat about them is that they track the actions each individual person takes on your site and emails so you can see their buying habits. It’s a lot better to know that one person read three of your emails before purchasing than to check Google Analytics and see that someone bought after reading an email. Same person – but with Ziibra you know that it took three emails before they were ready to buy.Ziibra has a lot of other more-complex (and incredibly helpful and awesome) features and their templates are pretty. They currently appear to be retooling some things and you’ll have to request an invitation if you want to try it out.
2. Ocula
   Ocula is sort of an art hub with lots of different ways to interact with their site, all related to art. So it’s useful if you’re an artist, but also if you’re a gallerist or a museum curator or a business looking to buy art or a patron hoping to find local art events, etc.Use their site to find new galleries to approach based on the many pictures that will help you see the gallery’s style. Sign up in hopes of connecting with one of their galleries and becoming one of the artists listed on their site (currently almost 5,000 artists are listed) which can be browsed by gallery or location. Or browse the events and city guides to help you figure out your next networking step.

   So you aren’t directly selling, but if you do get listed in their artist database, you can upload artwork that will have its information alongside a button to request pricing. So it’s a great place to connect with potential buyers and galleries and to get those initial inquiries.

3. Paddle8
   Paddle8 is a high-end online auction – like eBay but for the art elite. Most of the work sold is above $1,000. I love that anyone can submit their work whether you have gallery representation or not, but it’s curated so the site isn’t cluttered with crafters and (sorry to say) cruddy art. While those things are fine in other settings, the wonderful part of Paddle8 is that the buyers who come to their auctions can trust that what they’re getting is what they’re looking for – high quality fine art.They also have pretty generous commission rates and are fast from what I’ve heard. And the very best thing – they have a ton of collectors (actual humans who have already bought expensive art) who follow them and participate in their auctions.
4. ArtLine
   ArtLine is a great spot for finding an art dealer who you might want to approach to potentially have them represent you. [Disclaimer: you don’t have to have a dealer in order to sell art. Whether you should or not depends on the business model you’re choosing and what your goals are for your art business.] If you do end up represented by one of the dealers on ArtLine, you’ll get your very own artist page on the site to further promote your art to the many collectors who follow ArtLine.
5. Amazon Art
   Amazon Art is a relatively new endeavor for Amazon. There’s some question as to whether it will last, especially since they attempted something similar in 1999 that didn’t work out. But now the world is more ready to buy almost anything online. I think it’s a much better environment to try it now.Selling art on Amazon works pretty much how you would guess. A customer will browse the art category, find the piece they love, press the buy button, and you’ll get a notification to ship it out to them. So easy for your customer! The downside, of course, is that you get less of a personal connection to them so you may miss out on creating a really strong relationship with them that would result both in more sales and in a deeper, more meaningful transaction.

   One limitation is that you have to apply through a gallery. So you need some sort of “gallery representation”. But you don’t actually have to be exhibiting in that gallery. If you can convince a local gallery to do you a favor (perhaps in exchange for working the desk some or putting up flyers for their next show, etc) you can easily get on Amazon Art either just for yourself or for all the artists represented by that gallery too.

If you’re looking for more options for selling your art online or connecting with potential collectors, galleries, and dealers, look into some of these sites and consider adding one to your system. I’d love to hear your experience if you do!