artFido has now been up and running for almost 9 months. Over that 9 months we’ve learned a lot. We’ve redesigned the site to make it easier for buyers to find the art they’re looking for. We’ve created featured artist and featured gallery sections. We’ve included testimonials and have just introduced a “popular art” page to bring to light some of the art that’s truly trending on the site. We’ve introduced reminders to help buyers and sellers remember to leave feedback after they transact on the site and allowed users to create their own vanity URLs. And we’re not stopping there. We’re in the process of making even more exciting changes to the site. All in the hope of doing two things: helping artists and galleries sell art online; and to make it as easy as possible for art lovers all over the world to buy art online. Fairly lofty endeavors yes. But definitely worth all of our effort. And it is effort. We’ve worked night and day for years to get artFido up and running. So, why are we having such difficulty getting our artists to put a little more effort into selling their work? Why do we still see listings on artFido with only one photo? A short description? Is it that artists don’t know how to sell their work? Don’t feel comfortable talking about their art? Or are we sadly suffering as a result of the popularity of “sharing” sites like Pinterest, Deviant Art and Reddit? Who knows. What we do know is that things will change. Artists will catch on. They’ll work out that there is a certain art to selling art online. Ways to get people more comfortable buying art online. We know this because some already have.Some artists do a tremendous job of selling art online. Take Karlo Henry for example. Based in Texas, Karlo may be an artist farthest from the artFido homebase, but it hasn’t stopped him selling works to buyers in Australia and New Zealand. And how does he do it? By knowing what needs to be done. By uploading numerous photos. By including a photo of his art hanging in situation. By fixing shipping costs and in some instances including them in the sale price of his art. David Giles is another artist who’s extended his selling abilities online. Adjusting his pitch, describing and pricing his art accordingly.
Until more artists work out that they need to help artFido help them, we’ll keep doing what we can to get more art out there and more buyers in.