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Selling your Art

zeedaam's picture

Ok, something that I've always wanted for this site is soon to become a reality. Just a hint, there are TONS of other things about to happen to the site, including a fool-proof way of keeping the site and community growing.
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Ever heard of the starving artist? Of course, most of us are living proof of it. One of the problems is making art for the masses, it has to have a general appeal to it. In other words, you have to make art that people like, not just art that you like. Another big problem is exposure. I hope we can get that here, by allowing you guys to sell your art through the site.
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Artalyst will be offering printing services through an out-of-house printing company. BUT was also going to let users sell their artwork with their own store on Artalyst setting their own prices.
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Two ways we were thinking of doing this: (1) sell your art but let Artalyst print, collect payment, and ship the art. (2) sell your art through your personal Artalyst Store but you handle the payment and shipping yourself.
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Need some input from everyone. Please tell all your friends about this so that they can get their input in also. We're coding this right now!

Comments

zeedaam's picture
Just a teaser, [url=http://www.artalyst.com/node/3629]check this out[/url]
zeedaam's picture
Awww, too bad there wasn't any input. I'm done with it now, I think everyone will like it. . . . . . April 10th, 2009
dollyllama's picture
Zee...good to see you still working on the site and I love this idea. Sorry haven't been around much but you can definitely count me in. Since I'm supremely lazy I would prefer to have the printing, etc. done by someone else, I fully expect to pay a commission for same though. Is it a choice of one or the other or will both be instituted? I know a forum where I can probably promote this a bit, it's a bunch of stock photographers and most likely they'd want to handle their own gig but maybe not. Any chance Avi will help promote? I know he has a lot going on over at aviary/worth and not sure if this would compete with him. Ok, I've been working on a fantasy series of images, kind of playing with light. Going to post them and see how they go over. Good to see you!
zeedaam's picture
Hey Dolly, nice to see you again. What we eventually settled on is this: Anyone with a free account can sell their art through Artalyst via the prints purchase. All they do is indicate how much money they want to receive per print, that price is passed on to the person buying the print. Once the print is purchased, the print is sent to the customer, and the money (amount the artist asked for) sent to the artist. Optionally, an artist can pay a monthly fee to set up their own shop on Artalyst and handle payment and shipping themselves. This is good for those wanting to sell services, natural media, sculptures, or other forms of non-printable artwork. . But this is only one of the new additions. The 5 year anniversary is April 10th, I'll be releasing more details before then.
dollyllama's picture
Ok, that's awesome. Great for lazy folk like me! I'm having trouble uploading though. Keep getting a fatal error. I resized to 500kb, should it be a certain width/height?
zeedaam's picture
yeah, the width and height should be less than 1200 pixels until the new site is live.
KevD's picture
[quote=zeedaam]Awww, too bad there wasn't any input. I'm done with it now, I think everyone will like it. [/quote] I quickly came past a week or so ago and got a climpse of the new look feature that you shared as a preview....I have to say I liked what I saw from that image....you seemed to have removed it now! I guess that is because you finished it. I am looking forward to see the new features and changes, nice to see the site kicking back into action.
zeedaam's picture
oh, I fixed it. Check it out.
KevD's picture
I assume that we have the option of allowing if our work can be up for sale? Where we would have to choose and not just by submission to the site. I am also curious about all the existing images, as they were all really uploaded in a limted size (web viewing), making them no good for printing purposes.
zeedaam's picture
Images will be able to be edited, upload larger sizes or whatever. Although when the new feature is added. You choose to upload the file and decide on selling it or not at that point. Cause if your selling prints, there will be minimal image sizes required. But if you choose not to sell the image, you don't need to upload a large size. . Though for legal reasons, to sell an existing image, you will need to upload a new file, set the price. You can change the price later if you like, and even remove it from sale. But it has to go through an approval process, just so that you don't change a price or delete an image while someone is in the process of buying it. . Now if by chance you had an existing image, it was in the Featured Images Gallery and was getting lots of ooos and aaahs, you may want to put it up for sale, then an admin can assist you in making that existing image, with all the existing comments, purchasable. . But new images will ask if you want to sell it or not, when you create the new image upload.
dollyllama's picture
Will you be disabling the right click>save, especially once you have the marketplace up and running?
zeedaam's picture
yep, already got that working. full size opens in a flash window and has save disabled.
zeedaam's picture
Also, if your selling prints of an image you have uploaded, you will be granted permission to delete comments you don't like on that image. Only for images your selling. That way you don't have some jerk saying things like "this sucks", "you want how much for this junk?", "would have been better if you cropped it differently". That could cause people browsing for art to be turned off.
LosdaBear's picture
All this sounds great Zee. I can't believe Artalyst has been around for 5 years. Los

Carl

KevD's picture
Some artist like to have signature or logo on their image, will this still be okay for images uploaded for sale, or will they have to be removed?
zeedaam's picture
You upload both the image that is displayed and the "original" separately. So they could be different if necessary. The displayed one can have the watermark or logo, but the original will be clean and ready for printing.
KevD's picture
Hi Z, Are we still on for April 10th launch ?
zeedaam's picture
Not completely. I have all of the coding done, everything works perfectly, even with the credit card acceptance, etc. There are a couple of things left to do though: 1. finish working out all the details, costs, shipping, etc with the printer. 2. do the artwork for the site, like backgrounds, buttons, icons, and such. I've been working on this but recently had a death in the family and that has taken up some of my free time. I would expect the delay to be about 3 or 4 weeks, not too long.