Tips and ideas for how to use Printify to sell your art online or in person! Whether you want to sell one piece or hundreds with Print On Demand, Printify can do all that and more!
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I am an artist, marketing gal and business woman who is juggling lots of hats in my business. When I found Printify and everything it can do, I was blown away by how easy it was to use and how many different places I can sell!
Here are my top 5 reasons I think Printify is the best place to manufacture your art for sale.
1. It Is Totally Free To Start Selling Your Artwork
As an artist, getting started selling your art can feel overwhelming (and expensive!)
The cool thing about selling through Printify is that it is totally free to set up your products and pricing, get your mockups and start sharing your artwork with the world.
Here are a couple of examples of what you could do….
- Set up an art print, get the mockup and share it on your Instagram, letting your followers know they can order it by messaging you
- Send a picture of your artwork in your weekly newsletter and let your peeps know they can order by hitting reply (you could get payment with a paypal or venmo link).
- Put a picture of your artwork on a flyer and offer to sell your work consignment at a local shop
The cool thing about all of these is that there is NO COST upfront and you can get started in hours, rather than weeks or months like it could be if you ordered prints up front before even knowing what people are going to want to buy!
2. You Can Order Small Quantities
If you have ever contacted a printing company about producing your art as posters, canvas wraps or other forms, you probably already know that the more quantity you order the lower the price is.
But honestly, as an artist, can you REALLY stock and sell enough art prints to get the cheaper pricing?
Let alone knowing which of your pieces are going to be a runaway success and which are going to be duds that no one buys, leaving stuck with all those prints hanging around staring back at you!
For example, the print in the picture is a “Premium Matte Vertical Posters” product. Here is the price…
That is a great price for a high quality print!
The reason you can get that price for ONE PIECE is that that Printify is getting the pricing for LOTS of purchases from the vendors by merging all of the artists' orders and negotiating lower prices because of a high volume of orders.
3. You Can Sell Online or In Person
Once you have set up your product in Printify, you can choose to order it to be sent to you, sell your art on Etsy, or even set up your own Shopify store!
Getting One Copy Sent To Yourself
A cool thing about Printify is that you can order just one of pieces so you can have it in your house, take pictures of it for social media or even use it at a craft show to demonstrate your style.
NOTE: Do NOT order a sample, instead go to “Orders” and do “Create Order”. Samples are just product samples without your artwork on them.
Selling On Shopify or Etsy
You can integrate your Printify account to send your listing to either Printify or Etsy AND the coolest thing is that you don't have to make separate listings, you can just copy them between multiple stores, saving SO MUCH TIME!
Selling At Craft or Art Shows
You can order in quantity to have prints to sell at craft or art shows.
While the shipping isn't cheap, you aren't being charged by the piece, instead Printify charges by the total number of pieces you are ordering at one time.
4. Printify Has Built In Mockups
One of the ways that you can do artist marketing is to share your artwork as lifestyle photos on social media or your website.
Many of the manufacturers that you can choose from have mockups built into their listings!
For example, the poster I made of the wine woman looks beautiful in these extra pictures the listing made. I could use those on my Instagram account or use the images to make cool Pinterest pins!
I love that this one also shows how it will be shipped so that you can show the buyer and there will be no surprises on their end!
5. You Get To Choose The Quality and Price
One of the things that I love is that Printify has so many different vendors there to choose from based on what your art business needs!
Low Cost Art Prints
Say for example your artwork will appeal most to young adults who are going to put the piece up on the wall with pieces of tape and not keep them for a lifetime.
For this type of print archival quality might not be your first consideration, you might just want to have a low price for a fantastic artwork!
Museum Quality Art Prints
But what if your potential buyer is an interior designer type, looking for a higher quality piece and is willing to pay a higher price point for museum quality paper that is archival?
You might want to consider choosing a higher cost option that comes on museum quality paper.
Gallery Wrapped Prints
You can even choose to sell a more modern type of print, like gallery wrapped prints!
What comes to mind with this for me is how many of these types of prints I have bought at cute little gift shops over the years.
Being able to offer this kind of quality print might help you get a consignment at your local gift shop!
Printify For Artists FAQ
I know I had a ton of questions when I started using Printify to sell my art, so here are some answers to questions you might have!
How Can I Get Fast Printify Shipping
One thing about Printify is that they have manufacturers from all over the world. That is great sometimes, like when you want to have lower prices.
But if you want fast shipping, make sure you choose a manufacturer who is in your country. I am in the US, so on the products page I would choose “Fulfillment Locations” as United States in the left sidebar when I am picking my products.
What If You Don't Like Their Mockups?
I would hate to have to send out less than stellar art prints, just because the manufacturer you choose has great mockups!
I use a second website called Placeit where you can make all different kinds of mockups based on where you think your art would show best! For example, I put the “Wine Woman” in a living room scene, I for sure don't think that she would be appropriate in a nursery!
Do You Have To Have An Online Store To Sell With Printify?
I KNOW, many artists are not the best at technical things and the thought of setting up an Etsy store is overwhelming, let alone setting up and doing all the marketing for a stand alone Shopify store.
The great news is that you can just learn to use Printify and order, send out and print all your wall art in one place on a great variety of different products like posters, gallery prints or even stickers or mugs.
You can order from them for a craft show or art show. You can make an online gallery of your art on Facebook, market your art on Instagram and then ship directly from Printify.
What Is A “Print On Demand” Service?
Printify is a “Print On Demand” company (sometimes shortened to POD).
All this means is that no products are printed out in bulk before someone orders them. Here is the process from Printify's side:
- Printify gets a bunch of manufacturers together to offer products at a great price
- The artist sets up their artwork on a product in Printify
- When the artist sells a piece of artwork either in person or through an online shop like Etsy, Printify gets notified and sends the order to printed from the manufacturer
- The artist is charged the cost of the product and shipping
- Printify ships out the product to the artist to fulfill in person or sends the product to the Etsy buyer directly
Easy peasy lemon squeezy selling prints once you understand the process and all the players!
Can You Sell Framed Art With Printify?
Yes! There are all different kinds of products available on Printify for artists.
You can sell regular posters, gallery wrapped prints, framed prints, and so many more products you might never have thought of!
Can You Sell Hand Painted Artwork On Printify?
Yes! You will just have to get a digital copy of it to upload to Printify. You can do this by taking a high quality picture with your camera or iPhone or by scanning your artwork with a traditional scanner.
If you don't feel comfortable doing those things, most print stores offer this kind of service very affordably.
Additional Resource: How to sell digital downloads of your artwork
Can You Sell Digital Artwork On Printify?
Yes! And it is even easier than selling hand painted artwork because as a graphic designer you can skip the step where you have to digitize your work, it is already digital art!
You can sell any kind of art you want on Printify (just make sure it is original an not violating anyone else's Intellectual Property.)
