How to Sell Your Digital Art Online

When I decided to become a freelancer, one of the things I knew I wanted to launch was my own online shop. What I didn’t know was how to bridge the gap from idea to launch. It took research, asking questions, and being okay with making mistakes along the way.

Thankfully, you can bypass some of those mistakes with the help of this guide. It’ll help you choose the best platform for selling your digital art or downloadable resources.

Success isn’t guaranteed, but you'll have more knowledge of what each platform has to offer.

Let’s get ready to sell!

Platform comparisons

E-commerce platforms & marketplaces

When it comes to selling digital art and resources online, there are multiple approaches you can take. One thing I love about selling digital products is that you'll never have to worry about running out of inventory. So your choice will mainly depend on your budget, product, and what platforms you’re already using.

And while I know having a lot of options can feel overwhelming, you might be closer to being ready to sell online than you think.

Etsy

Etsy has become one of the best platforms for finding unique, well-crafted goods from creators, artists, and hobbyists. Because of this, you might not have realized that you can sell digital products on Etsy too.

Before you can start selling on Etsy, there’s a one-time shop setup fee. From there, you can list your product or resource for a fee of $0.20 per listing. Additional fees will trigger only once you’ve made a sale. I hate the sound of fees as much as the next person, but what is the real advantage of choosing Etsy?

Etsy is a platform with an audience you can market your products to, both on the website and in the app. You can do this through Etsy Ads, where you’ll pay for Etsy to promote your shop or a specific listing. Selling through an ad also incurs additional fees, but it can be beneficial if you’re concerned about not having an existing social media presence. Of course, a boost in sales isn't guaranteed, but it's a great way to get your shop featured front and center under searches relevant to your product offering.

Shopify

This is a popular all-in-one platform with tools to help you start, run, and grow your business. You'll build your website, then you choose how to list your products.

Navigate their app store and install the free Shopify Digital Products app to get started. This will allow you to sell a variety of downloadable digital products in your shop. Alternatively, other apps allow you to use dropshipping partners like Printful to handle product fulfillment. We’ll look at dropshipping in the next section.

Then you have to make sure your shop looks the way you want it to. Choose a template from their options or create your own using their AI assistant, Shopify Sidekick. Sidekick can help you build your site, edit your product photos, write product copy, and more.

Want to reach a bigger audience? When you use Shopify, you get more discoverability through apps like Shop, which could convert to more sales. Of course, only time will tell, but it can help your shop get off to a strong start.

Online marketplaces

For artists who create assets and resources like fonts, templates, brushes, and more, online marketplaces are a great option. Sites like Creative Market and Gumroad are popular places for artists to sell online.

Creative Market lets you sell non-exclusively with them, giving you opportunities to sell in multiple places. They have millions of members who purchase products through Creative Market shops, while giving you the freedom to upload and sell your products right away.

Sell templates, fonts, brushes, effects, and even 3D models. When you make a sale, Creative Market takes 50% to cover card processing fees and marketing fees that help promote your shop and products to their users. It might sound like a lot, but millions of users are also hugely valuable for sellers.

Gumroad is similar, but you can sell a wider variety of products. Digital products include e-books, brushes, courses, comics, and even music.

It also has a different pricing structure that features fees rather than a monthly membership fee. They also charge a 30% per-transaction fee when new customers discover and buy from you through their marketplace. What I do like is that they handle tax compliance, so you don't have to worry about it.

Set up your page through their editor, list your products, and sell. I like that Gumroad lets sellers use a pay-what-you-want model. This gives the audience the chance to support at a level that makes sense for them.

Personal website hosting

As an artist, you might already have a platform for your portfolio site. Explore the e-commerce options available through your own site so you won't have to learn a new platform.

That's exactly what I did with my own Squarespace site. Setting up the website as my portfolio took some time, but their templates make it easier, so you're not starting from scratch. Their Basic plan already includes e-commerce capabilities, and I compared their plans to see which one best fit my needs.

In my current online shop, I sell digital downloadable PDF guides for artists. I like that I can keep my digital downloads uploaded there, collect e-mail addresses, and process payments seamlessly. While all of their plans offer e-commerce, the higher the tier of your plan, the lower your fees will be. You’ll also get access to additional store features like discounts, promotional tools, and more.

Print-on-demand

Print-on-demand is a unique way to run your own online shop. This is a way for artists to put their work on physical products without worrying about inventory.

The downside is that fulfillment costs can be quite high, and you need to factor them into your pricing. You’ll also find that these platforms integrate with the other options on this list. This is a function that links your product listings to another e-commerce platform where they can be displayed and purchased.

Redbubble

This is an all-in-one print-on-demand platform. Meaning you don’t need a separate website to manage products or set up your shop. Upload your artwork and select the product options you’d like available in your online shop. Redbubble offers stickers, clothing, phone cases, and more across over 70 product types.

To get started with Redbubble, you have to use their Artist Signup to create your account, upload five public designs to your shop, and complete their shop requirements. From there, your account will be assigned one of three tiers: Standard, Premium, or Pro.

All tiers give you your own storefront and access to their global audience, marketing opportunities, and pricing controls. Higher tiers offer more support, insider tips, and access to exclusive opportunities.

Which tier you are assigned to will also affect the fees you pay per sale. Your sales aren’t a determining factor in your account tier assignment. Rather, the quality of your shop and your overall appeal to customers on Redbubble are.

Printful

Printful is a robust print-on-demand tool that lets you put your work on over 500 premium products. Similar to Redbubble, you can choose which products you want, set your pricing, and more. What makes Printful unique is that it is designed to work with other e-commerce platforms.

You can think of Printful as your fulfillment partner, handling the printing, production, and shipping of any product that your customers purchase. What you’ll still need is an e-commerce platform like Etsy, or your own site like Squarespace or Shopify. There are thousands of possible integrations, making it a great option if you’re interested in having your artwork printed on products and already have a website or preferred e-commerce platform.

Printful has two tiers: Free and Growth. The free tier is cost-effective to start, but you will end up paying more for product samples, digitization, and custom premium products.

I used Printful as my fulfillment service when I started my shop back in 2021. It was recommended to me by another artist who had a good experience with them. What I learned was that I didn’t calculate my pricing very well. The extent to which fulfillment costs can eat into your per-sale profits was a bit of a shock to me.

Thankfully, they have their online calculator to help you estimate how much you’ll make from certain products. I recommend using it before you set up your account to help you figure out whether this is even a realistic route for you.

Getting starting

Besides choosing your platform for selling or building your shop, many more considerations need to be made. You don’t want to jump in too early only to realize that there were important factors you missed.

Not everything needs to be perfect to start, but with these tips, you'll be better set up for success with your online shop.

Pricing

What’s the magic number? I ask myself that question a lot as a freelance artist. Thankfully, with digital product shops, you can essentially approach it like a formula. Revenue - expenses = profit.

Your revenue is what you make before expenses. Expenses are the costs of running your business, like fees and taxes. Profit is whatever is left. Let's go over common expenses to keep in mind so you're not blindsided.

Here are the three expenses to keep in mind for your online shop:

• Fees
• Market
• Paid ads

As we’ve learned more about the different platforms where you can sell your digital products, we've found that fees are just part of the equation. Make sure you know the fees associated with listing and selling your products. Depending on your setup, you will also likely have taxes and credit card processing fees deducted from each transaction.

If you choose to go the print-on-demand route, calculate the fulfillment costs for each product type you’re listing. This is something you need to calculate into your pricing so you actually make a profit. My margins at the beginning were slim, and I had to raise my prices after launching my shop. These prices might be slightly higher than what you see in the market.

Understanding the market can help you stay aligned with similar products. What are other people in your niche charging for similar products? Do some market research to determine the average price for your product type. Understand that audiences can vary even within the same niche. You can research artist blogs and review artists’ social media business pages to brainstorm different ways you can make what they’re doing work for you.

Paid ads are a resource that digital artists can use to expand their reach. Platforms like Etsy have this option built into their platform through Etsy Ads. This is where you can budget up to $25 to promote your shop and listings. For other promotions, you can use paid ads through social platforms like Pinterest and Meta to get more eyes on your products. But don’t forget that there are plenty of free ways to market your shop as well, which we’ll take a look at.

File prep

File prep is very important because it determines the overall quality of what you deliver to your customers. How you prep your files for your digital products will vary slightly based on the platform. Two guiding principles to help you are resolution and color profile.

What is the intention of your product? If you’re selling digital art prints intended for people to print, make sure your artwork is saved and uploaded in CMYK. This will make sure that your colors print the way you intended. Learn more about color for digital art to set up your files in popular programs like Procreate and Fresco.

If you’re selling coloring pages, make sure that your linework is crisp and clear with a resolution of 300 dpi. If possible, consider vectorizing your artwork so it won’t lose quality. You can do this with programs like Affinity Designer 2, Adobe Illustrator, or Curve.

Guiding your strokes with precision is a lot easier with a Paperlike screen protector. This will ensure high-quality vector versions of your artwork. Even if your artwork is pixel-based, creating it at high quality gives your work greater usability across a variety of applications.

Then there are the images that you will use to list and promote your work. For the product thumbnail itself, use the platform's recommended quality. They’re typically viewed at a small size, and don’t need to be high-quality. Between 72 and 150 dpi is usually high enough for these types of images.

If you’re previewing what customers can expect from your product, include your logo branding and watermarks, and don’t show too much information. This is important because you want to tease the value of your product while still protecting your work.

Protecting your work

Protecting work against infringement has always been a challenge for artists. I wish I didn’t know so many instances of people’s work being stolen and sold without their permission, but it does happen.

With the rise of AI, there’s even more anxiety surrounding keeping your work and ideas safe from training generative models. While no precaution you take will be 100% effective, any of these is better than doing nothing.

Here are some ways that can help you protect your work:

• Copyright
• Watermarks & glazing
• Link restrictions

You own the copyright to your work as soon as you create it. Registering the copyright to your work with a copyright office will protect you in the case of infringement (like someone trying to say your work is not yours). In the U.S., you can file between 2-20 pieces of 2D artwork per copyright application. Copyright law and the application process will vary by country.

Place a watermark on preview pages for your product promotional images. Watermarks will make it that much harder for people to resell your work. You can easily apply a watermark to a PDF in Adobe Acrobat and disable certain features so that you can control how it’s used. You can also add a watermark with your artist logo or Instagram handle so that when it's reshared, it's easier to attribute it to you.

Glazing is a defensive tactic that artists can use to protect individual artworks from style mimicry. This technology has been in development by the University of Chicago since 2023. They’ve been continuously refining glazing through tests with artists interested in advancing the technology. You can learn more and download it for Mac and Windows.

Restrict access to a resource to anyone with a certain link. When I upload a digital download to my website, I put it on my Dropbox account so that I can control and track who has access. If I ever want to adjust the permissions, it’s easy to do it universally.

I’ve seen other artists use Google Drive as well. Before they even get to the link, they go through an email sequence I've set up, which also adds them to my email subscriber list to help keep them up to date on future shop launches and other studio updates.

Basic marketing

What good is having an online shop if no one knows about it? At some point, you’re going to want to share your latest venture with the world, and there are thankfully a lot of cost-effective ways to do it.

Here are popular ways to market your online shop:

• Social media (free & paid)
• Cross-promotion
• Word of mouth
• Lead generation

Your best friend for marketing your online products will be social media. It’s the unfortunate way of the world, but the good thing is that many platforms are well-integrated for social media sharing.

We’ve already seen that using paid ads to promote your shop online is an option. This will help increase your reach for new customers, but it'll become an expense that lowers your overall profit. Create a schedule for sharing about your online store a few times a month on your social platforms. I find that templating and scheduling social posts in advance with tools like Adobe Express or Canva helps make the process feel less overwhelming.

You can use plug-ins, apps, and integrations to create new sales channels for your store. Think of them as ways to cross-promote your store and get it seen in more places. The Shop app, for example, is a Shopify app that lets customers check out and track orders while also helping them discover new Shopify stores.

When I used Printful, there was an integration that let me have my items on my Squarespace site and in a shop connected to my business Facebook page. This was valuable to me because people could buy from my shop in several places.

Word of mouth can also go a long way. A lot of my early supporters were friends and family who were excited about my launch. I told them to be on the lookout for my launch date, and they helped me with my first sales. And trust me, when you get those emails in your inbox that say you’ve made a sale, it’s a great feeling.

Speaking of email, it's a great resource for marketing your shop. Even if you don’t currently have a listserv, you can start building your list through lead generation. This is a way to attract potential customers by offering a free or low-cost option to collect their email addresses. I did this a lot at the beginning of building up my newsletter, using freebies that complemented my paid offerings in my shop. You can also offer a special discount to people who sign up for your email newsletter.

This is powerful because your email audience is one that you can control and market to outside of social media. With the endless changes that can happen with different social platforms, you can rely on your email subscribers for recurring support and prioritize them for special announcements and launches.

Wrap up

Starting an online shop might be easy, but a lot of thought goes into it. Even so, don't let the process intimidate you. If you want to get started, just start. I thought about having an online shop for a long time before I actually launched it, and I always wished I’d started sooner.

You've taken the time to hone your craft and create amazing work on your iPad. Investing in tools and accessories for your iPad and Apple Pencil from Paperlike's Drawing Collection will make creating feel more comfortable and confident.

When you sell and create what you’re passionate about, the audience can connect with you more authentically. Good luck!