Making money from selling your art on Facebook is a genius idea if you’re an independent artist. With over 2 billion monthly active users on the platform, you just know that it’s full of customers who like to buy art. In fact, it is. The only problem is that most artists can’t take advantage of this amazing opportunity because they don’t know how to get exposure, create a customer base, or promote their art for sale using Facebook. Simply put, you lack a solid plan of action to generate sales with your art. But not anymore. Learning how to sell art on Facebook is actually easier than it sounds. In fact, the entire process can be broken down into three steps. To sell your art on Facebook, you must:
- Create your Artist Page
- Build your following
- Promote your art
That’s it!
Once you understand these three simple steps, selling your art on Facebook and becoming a profitable artist will no longer be a mystery.
Let’s get started!
Create an Artist Page on Facebook (Step 1)
Before you can begin to sell your art on Facebook, you must have an actual presence on the social network. The only problem is that not every kind of presence will work in your favor if you’re an artist. While you probably have a personal profile on Facebook already set up, you could be committing a huge mistake if you’re using it to sell your art and make money. The reality of the situation is that you actually need to create a business or brand page on Facebook, one that’s solely dedicated to helping you promote and sell your art. This distinct page will be known as your Artist Page and it will be totally separate from your personal profile. In fact, creating an Artist Page is the first step you must take if you want to successfully sell art on Facebook.
There are several good reasons why you should create an Artist Page on Facebook.
- An Artist Page will lend you credibility as a professional artist.
- An Artist Page will give your customers a central hub online where they can always go to discover your art for sale.
- An Artist Page will build your brand more quickly than a personal profile can.
- An Artist Page will enable you to sell your art without violating Facebook’s terms of service.
We’ll explain these reasons in more detail so you’ll truly understand how important it is for you to create an Artist Page to sell your art on Facebook.
Why does an Artist Page lend more credibility to yourself as a professional artist?
The majority of artists on Facebook try to use their personal profiles to sell their art online. However, this strategy typically results in colossal failure for many reasons. The biggest reason is that an artist’s personal profile is often filled with posts, photos, videos, and conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with the life of the artist or the artwork they want to sell. In essence, this makes most artists on Facebook appear as amateurs instead of professional ones who have valuable art for sale. So by you creating a distinct Artist Page filled with art-related content only, the people who view your Artist Page will perceive you as a professional artist and thereby give more consideration to liking and following your Page, as well as buying your art.
Why should your Artist Page on Facebook serve as a central hub where customers can discover your art for sale?
A majority of people who buy art online are looking for something unique. To accomplish this goal, many will search for independent artists and original works on Facebook. In fact, it’s where customers expect to find you, especially if you’re an artist. So to meet customers expectations, you must have a professional Artist Page setup on Facebook. Otherwise, you run the risk of missing out on attracting tons of your potential customers.
Why will an Artist Page build my brand more quickly than a personal profile?
Whether you realize it or not, by publicizing yourself as an artist and the artwork you have for sale on Facebook, you create a brand. Your brand is how customers will identify you and ultimately serve as a determining factor in their decision to buy your art. The good news is that Facebook makes it relatively easy to grow your brand as an artist, and thereby makes it easy for you to attract new customers. However, the bad news is that you’ll have a lot of trouble doing this with just a personal profile. The reason? Personal profiles cannot promote their art using paid ads. This means that any artist without an Artist Page will have their exposure and sales severely limited. However, with an Artist Page, Facebook will give you special permission and freedom to grow your brand with paid ads. As a result, you can effectively generate more followers and sales. The best part is that if your ads are really good, you can essentially grow your brand on demand.
Why will an Artist Page enable you to sell art without violating Facebook’s terms of service?
One of Facebook’s major responsibilities is to ensure its users have a great experience whenever they’re on the social network. As history shows, they weren’t able to do this for a brief moment in time because lots of company’s created personal profiles and thereby resembled people even though they were really a business. This spawned a lot of confusion, frustration, and overall bad experience for Facebook users. To address and fix this problem, Facebook updated its terms of service with strict rules and guidelines that prohibit anyone from using a personal profile for commercial intent — including artists. So unfortunate as it may be, Facebook doesn’t want you to sell anything using your personal profile. To stop the malpractice, Facebook even gives its users a way to report personal profiles that break their rules. If you get caught, Facebook reserves the right to remove and delete your personal profile. And they will. In fact, countless numbers of artists have already lost access to their profiles and the ability to communicate with customers for violating the social network’s rules. If this were to happen to you, it could destroy your ability to sell art online and make money. To avoid this extremely negative and costly mistake, the best thing you can do is create an Artist Page. By doing so, you’ll never have to worry about losing your ability to sell art on Facebook.
Now that you understand the significance of an Artist Page, now it’s time to show you how to create one for yourself step-by-step!
How To Create An Artist Page On Facebook
1. To create an Artist Page, simply locate the blue navigation bar at the top of your screen, and click the downward-pointing arrow to view a list of options.
2. Click the option ‘Create Page.’
3. Now locate the card that reads ‘Business or Brand’ and click ‘Get Started.’
4. Next, you’ll be required to create a name for your Artist Page and properly categorize it.
Note: If you have trouble inventing a name for the page, you can simply use your first and last name along with the word ‘designs’ or ‘studio’ or ‘art’ at the end. For example, if you’re an artist whose name is John Johnson, then an appropriate name for your Artist Page would be ‘John Johnson’s Designs.” Regardless of what name you choose, make sure it signifies something related to art. Categorizing your Artist Page is easy, too. To do this, all you need to do is type the word ‘Artist’ and select it as your category.
Once you fill in this information, go ahead and press ‘Continue.’
5. Upload a profile picture for your Artist Page.
Note: In almost every case, you, the artist, should desire to be the face of your brand. Therefore, the profile picture should ideally be an image of you.
6. Create a cover image. This can be a photo, video, or slideshow.
Note: Your cover image is usually the first thing a person sees when they visit your Artist Page, so you can think of it as your digital storefront. Therefore, whatever images you use to fill that space should make it extremely obvious that your Artist Page is about your artwork. To accomplish this, all you have to do is snap a quick photo of your art or record yourself creating art, and upload it as the cover image.
7. Always add links to the online store where people can buy this particular piece of art.
8. Last but not least, you should fill in a short description of your Artist Page so people will know what it’s about.
Congratulations!
If you followed the above steps, you will have successfully created a professional Artist Page.
To increase its overall effectiveness, there are actually several more things you can do to your Artist Page, such as creating artwork-related posts, photos, videos, and stories. Overall, doing these extra things will optimize your art for sale
The second step to selling your art on Facebook is to get people to ‘Like’ and follow your Artist Page.
Get People To Follow Your Artist Page (Step 2)
Owning an Artist Page on Facebook is similar to having your own online art store in a way. For it to survive and thrive, you must build a strong customer base that you can rely on to give you consistent sales. Doing this on Facebook requires you to build a large network of fans who are ‘followers’ of your Artist Page. Thankfully, accomplishing this is not as difficult as it may seem. While many strategies exist to get more followers on Facebook, there are at least three that you can always count on to work.
Create Great Content
As an artist, one of the best ways for you to get followers on Facebook is to create great content. It’s the reason people use Facebook in the first place. So you need to deliver what the masses demand. To do this, you just need to make sure that whatever posts, photos, or videos you publish, are always entertaining or thought-provoking, or a combination of both. By mastering this one thing, you can grow a following rather quickly.
Use Hashtags Cleverly
Creating great content is a huge accomplishment, but it’s of no value to you if nobody sees it. To ensure that people do see the awesome content you publish on Facebook, you need to connect your content with appropriate hashtags. The people who search these hashtags on Facebook will see your related content and subsequently have the ability to discover and follow your Artist Page. You can gain even more followers by using the right hashtags at the right time. Trial and error will help you here
Tag A Marketplace You Sell Your Art On
Do the same with other artists or fans who you think might be interested in what you create. They may leave nice comments under your posts or even share them on their timelines, and this living following may give a significant boost to your profile. For example, if you are reshared by the Displate account of +1M fans, you may experience some magic 😉
Engage People With Comments
Getting people to follow your Artist Page can be as simple as connecting your content with clever hashtags. But sometimes though, this exposure isn’t enough. To entice more people to follow you, you need to build relationships with them by engaging them in the comments of your posts. The good news is that doing this on Facebook as an artist is relatively easy, even if you’re Artist Page is brand new.
Add Links To Your Online Store
Remember to always add a link to your store to every post published in your feed. If your timeline is full of videos showing the work in progress, this is also a good place to insert a link, because the final artwork will be available for purchase somewhere, right? Just write: you can buy this design *here* and done. Easy.
Marketplaces do happen to give you the opportunity to earn some additional money on your art on Facebook by simply adding personalized links to your posts. For example, if you decide to share the links to your art on Displate, you get the chance to earn up to 25% more of total sale value. Every time you make someone like your art so much they just click it and make a purchase
Learn more where and how to get your ‘Share and earn’ link
Once you start being socially active, and by that, I mean having accounts wherever it is helpful to sell your art online, try linking between platforms. You will gain a bigger audience anywhere you showcase your creations, and it may lead you to higher profits.
In truth, these strategies are just the basic ones you should know in order to get people to follow your Artist Page on Facebook. However, you should consider them each to be a fundamental part of your success.
Once you begin gaining new followers to your Artist Page on a consistent basis, one of the last steps to selling your art on Facebook is knowing how to promote your art on this platform.
Promote Your Art On Facebook (Step 3)
There are several ways to promote your art on Facebook. Luckily, you don’t need to learn them all at once. In fact, if you can nail down the three basic types of art promotions, you will have no trouble selling your art on Facebook.
Progress Promotions
One of the best ways to get people to buy your art is to stir up their interest first. To do this, one easy method is to show them your progress. By giving your followers a glimpse at the beginning, middle, and ending stages of how your artwork was created, people will have more appreciation for your craft and talent. As a result, your artwork will carry a higher perceived value and entice some of your followers to want to buy.
New Art Promotions
Another way to promote your art is to showcase it when it’s hot ‘n’ fresh from the easel. The reason is simple. People get excited about things that are ‘new.’ And when people get excited about your artwork, they’re more inclined to buy it. After all, people buy things based on their emotions and then justify the purchase with logic later. New art promotions take advantage of buyer psychology. Now you can, too!
Final Words
Selling your art on Facebook will require you to create an optimized Artist Page, build a following of fans, and promote your art for sale on the social network (read more on how to sell art online and how to make money as a freelance artist). However, as most artists will tell you, showing some patience and a fair amount of determination will be the key to your success. The reality is, it will take some time before you start to see consistent monthly sales on Facebook.
This is especially true for artists on Facebook because nowadays you must be willing to learn a few things that go beyond the scope of creating amazing works of art. In fact, being a good artist is no longer good enough to sell your art on Facebook. To be successful and make the most money as an artist on the social network, you will have to evolve into an online marketer and a bit of a salesperson, too (read how to sell art on instagram). The quicker you learn to make this transformation, the quicker you’ll be able to sell your art on Facebook and transform your career as an artist.
And if you don’t have a marketplace to link from your Facebook to, or you’re looking for new ways to sell your art, then just…
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