Art Storefronts Review Of First Month (I Sold Art!!)

I will lead with what you all want to know…did I sell any art? The answer is YES!! The original above is gone from my inventory AND I have had a collector (who is well aware that prints are available) ask if I would create another original of the same building for him.

FULL DISCLOSURE:  As an artist it is smart to have multiple income streams and as Nick, CEO of Art Storefronts often says, “I’ve never met a revenue stream I didn’t like.” I am an affiliate for Art Storefronts. As an affiliate, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions are my own, and despite the affiliate partnership I will tell you exactly what I think. When I was trying to decide if I should invest in ASF I had to dig hard to find reviews that weren’t part of the ASF website, and I hope my experiences will be helpful to you.

Month One

Was it a perfect experience? No. Am I still recommending it? Yes.

Art Storefronts (ASF) is very structured and has all the key elements I was looking for with one notable disappointment that we’ll get into in a minute.

I find it easy to use and update the website with new art, blog posts, etc.

I appreciate the marketing information and guidance and found it useful. All very positive on that front.

Website Development

This was the most frustrating part of my first month with ASF.

It took 4 full weeks to build my website which is, let’s face it, a templated website. They follow a very structured approach, probably designed so that non-techy people don’t get overwhelmed.

Week 1

• You meet with your web developer once a week. They tell you what you are working on that week and get information from you about what your vision is for your website.
• The pace killed me, but I can appreciate that many (maybe most) people would prefer to go slow. I had created my own websites before so knew what they would be asking me about and what I wanted.

Week 2

• My developer cancelled a hour ahead of my first walkthrough. Apparently the web service was down. I was a little panicked at this point. I thought “omg…did I pay all this money and I’m not going to get anything out of it? Is this a scam?”

Week 3

• On week three I was getting impatient. I went into the backend and made all the changes that I could myself, which was most everything.
• Anything I couldn’t figure out I sent to my developer to finish. I’m not sure how many more weeks development would have taken if I hadn’t taken matters into my own hands.
• The up-side is nothing is gated. It is your website, you own it, and you have full access to everything.

Week 4

• My developer finished my requests and we did a walk through.
• The website was completed, but I still had to wait one more week for my first meeting with the marketing side of ASF to “launch” it.

Business Building

Just a reminder to all that I have a day job and started with zero art sales and zero followers. While I was waiting for my website I dove into the resource materials.

ASF builds its marketing platform around:

• Instagram (which I had never used before)
• Facebook, and
• Building an email list

Social Media Strategy

They recommend that you get your Instagram followers to 1000 before you worry about anything else. There is a resource in the “Art Business Vault” that walks you through how to do this.

It takes you right from how to create an Instagram account to how to create a post, reel, or story to what to do daily to grow followers.

I have gone from zero to 344 followers using their method. I was a week or more in before I started working on this and am gaining about 100 followers a week.

Pricing Strategy

I had no idea how to price my artwork. I followed their advice and set my pricing as they recommended.

Print prices are higher than what I would like, especially when taking shipping costs into consideration.

For now I am trusting the process. We will see what happens.

Support

ASF gets full marks for support.

• I have used their tech support several times to make tweaks to my website to get it just the way I want it. It has never taken more than a day to make the changes and sometimes only minutes.
• ASF gives you access to the Small Wins Community. These are boots-on-the-ground artists and photographers who are out there selling art every day. Some, like me, are newbies. Others are seasoned and talking about things from the art world I don’t even understand yet. I find a lot of wisdom and inspiration in the group.
• There are several opportunities each week to get on a Zoom meeting with a real live person to ask questions. They dig right in there and fix what you are asking about, tell or show you where to click or what to do. They will help you with Instagram or Facebook problems as well as their own system. There’s no passing the buck.

My Biggest Disappointment

I sell affordable art with originals under $200.  It was my expectation coming into ASF that I would be able to offer a variety of merchandise across price points to my customers and that I wouldn’t have to worry about the fulfillment.  I was banking on this to add an additional revenue stream.

I am struggling with the merchandise and would love to see ASF find a better company to partner with.

Shipping on a $3 sticker is $20. Clearly the fulfillment company is not trying to economize and use envelope mail instead of packages when possible.  If they are, then they are ripping off my customers!

Shipping costs make purchasing most merchandise an illogical decision and I have disabled all the smallish products.

ASF promotes the ability to sell merchandise with your artwork on it as part of the package, but is setting a false expectation, in my opinion.

I think I can probably overcome this with a workaround and by using a different print on demand company for merchandise, but I haven’t dug into that yet.

I Sold Art!

The whole point is to sell my art, and that happened.

As mentioned in the intro, I sold an original and had a request to reproduce that original (which will be a June sale). I also did a Father’s Day commission in May.

These sales did not come through my website as it wasn’t live for most of the month, but they did come as a result of the social media sharing that I was doing.

The commission was a direct result of ASF recommendations. The original sale came from me sharing my artwork on an Urban Sketching Facebook group that I had joined before I joined ASF so perhaps not attributable to ASF.

I am still able to mark it as “sold” on my storefront, which looks good for anyone reviewing my art online. They know it has sold.

Final Word

You are paying a premium for marketing and business support provided by Art Storefronts and directed specifically to artists and photographers.

It is probably the price-point but I find the membership are either:

1. Older, experienced artists who already have a business and want help with the tech/social media side of things, or
2. Serious artists who are willing to make the investment to build their business.

I’m not seeing any hobbyists, nor any advice for hobbyists, at Art Storefronts.

In my opinion, they are nailing what they do. If you use the resources and support, it will be worth the investment.

If all you want is a website and have no plans to follow their advice and take advantage of the support, you can get better value for your money elsewhere as websites can be found cheaply these days.