What the Big Online Art Galleries are Not Telling You

     Shopping for art on the internet became much more popular after the pandemic because we were forced to use the internet to do things we didn't use it for in the past. As an art reproduction business owner, I saw many of my customers struggle to get on board with selling art online, while others just took to it naturally and used any methods necessary to connect with their buyers while being isolated. Those who were not internet savvy turned to many of the large online services that promised to get their art in front of buyers while doing most of the work for them. Results varied depending on the website, but a recurring theme I have found is that both artists and buyers are mostly kept in the dark about how prints are made when they are ordered. 

     This brings me to the point of this article. Most online galleries give art buyers a huge selection of art to choose from and make it pretty easy to buy a print and have it delivered in record time. That part is great, but what they are not telling you is what makes your print worthless.  Let's review how most of these online galleries work. 

     So let's say you are a pretty talented artist and have a good portfolio of 35 images you want to market online but you don't want to spend the time and money creating a website, marketing to buyers and then figuring out printing, shipping costs and dealing with customer service. When you really start to look at what needs to be done to sell art online, it is a very daunting task for one person. After realizing this, you decide to look into selling through an online gallery, mainly because they offer you a place to sell your art and take care of all the logistics of taking the order, making the prints and shipping. 

     Most sites will ask you to upload your files so they can make prints when an order is placed. Once you upload your files, you usually are given the task of setting up your products. What sizes do you want to sell? Limited or Open Edition? Do you want to offer different papers and canvas options? Do you want to offer stretched canvas? Mounted prints? And finally, you need to figure out the prices for each image, and every combination of options you offer. As you can see, the amount of work needed just to set up your online gallery soon becomes a great deal of work! Wasn't the website supposed to help you with that? Not a chance. They will be happy to refer you to their support page that will answer most of your questions, but other than that, you are on your own. 

     Once you have your products set up on your gallery, now you are ready to rake in the cash, Right? Not so fast.. For most artists, this is the point where they realize the website is so large and offers so many options, buyers will almost never find your art unless they are specifically looking for you, or you are lucky to begin finding a few buyers who tell friends about you. Either way, the website that told you they will get your art in front of buyers didn't tell you the only way your can succeed making sales on the site is by marketing your gallery yourself. What's more, they didn't tell you that there are huge companies on the website that spend lots of money to make sure their art is seen by buyers before they see yours. So now you spend more time making business cards, placing some ads and letting friends and family know you are on the website. 

     Now that you are starting to see orders trickle in, you finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Someone is finally going to notice you and maybe you can into some real galleries. This is when you start to realize just how little control you have over your business. Some of your buyers may be happy with their purchase but others complain they didn't receive their art, or it is damaged due to poor packaging, or even worse, they are not happy with the quality of the prints. Wait, wasn't all of this supposed to be worked out for you? All you had to do was give the website your art and you would be on your way to making money. 

     This brings me to the final and most important thing that most gallery sites do not tell you.  So what happens when a buyer goes on your site and orders a 30x40 print on watercolor paper?  I can tell you the first thing that usually happens is the website sends your file to one of their printing partners that is closest to the home of your buyer. Wait, the website isn't making the prints? In most cases, no. Most of these websites partner with printing facilities in the larger cities around the country. These facilities handle orders from many different companies and produce huge volumes of prints per day. Their main goal is to do as much printing as possible to make the most amount of money they can. As you can imagine, quality is least of their worries. Employees at these companies are paid low wages and are sometimes paid by how much work they finish. I can tell you when you run a business on volume goals only, everything else suffers. The prints are rushed and are not checked for defects, cheap packaging is used to save money, cheap print paper and canvas is used to save money, and no one cares about whether the prints they are making look anything like the original art. This is the biggest, dirtiest secret about the online printing industry. Almost no one tells you where all of these prints are coming from. 

     About 5 years ago I was looking into making more money for my business and found I could become a print provider for some of these online companies. I was shocked to find how little printing experience was needed to become a partner. As long as I had the ability to receive orders efficiently through my website and handle volume, I was qualified as a printer. This experience, combined with the bad experiences voiced by my customers about some of these online companies made me want to create a site that fixes as many of these problems as possible. The result 5 years later is MDArtGalleries.com. We are not the biggest site and we may not have the art selection some other sites have, but we are unique, and guarantee you will be happy with prints made for the website because we are committed to starting with the highest quality scans and using the best quality materials to ensure your prints will last a lifetime and are something our artists are proud of.