If you sell art online, how would you like to tap into a specialist art marketplace with 500,000 subscribers? That’s what Artfinder, which we first wrote about in 2014, now have to offer.
9,000 artists and galleries internationally offer a selection of over 300,000 artworks in categories including painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, drawing and collage and everything on Artfinder is signed by the artist, they never sell posters or reproductions.
Jonas Almgren, the founder, set up Artfinder because artists exist everywhere and so do people who love original work and want to support artists. Friendly and unpretentious, Artfinder can match you up with beautiful and unique stuff you will love – and help you support artists at the same time.
Anyone that knows me well will probably be chuckling by now at the thought of ‘Chris the art critic’ and wondering just how I got interested in art. The truth is though I love Artfinder’s new website and what immediately caught my attention was the “My Budget” option right up front on the home page. As soon as I realised there was original art for under £100. I twigged that while others might be spending £1000s of 10s of £1000s on art, there might actually be something on Artfinder that I not only like but can also afford.
The UK is still Artfinder’s biggest market, but only just – the US is quickly catching up and they are opening an office in Miami (some of the team moving out there) in March.
Artfinder, whilst it may be a niche site, is well worth a closer look. Some of the best selling artists take home over £100k a year. But many, many more have been able to quit their day jobs and support themselves through their Artfinder sales.
Visual search is something Artfinder are working really hard on, because their biggest problem is ‘I don’t know how to describe what I want.’ They have just launched a ‘more like this’ feature on the site which uses visual search to show you similar artworks to the one you’re looking at. Artfinder also have a Twitter Bot @ArtfinderEmma – you can tweet any image at her and she’ll return you artworks inspired by your image.
If you are an artist yourself, and sell on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon then you should instantly understand what Artfinder is about. It’s well worth considering a niche site such as Artfinder rather than a general marketplace.
Fees come in at 30%, which might sound steep compared to general marketplaces but equally will sound cheap when compared to the circa 50% a gallery would expect in commission. There are no listing fees or other costs involved.
Head over to Artfinder and have a browse today. If you’re an artist or art gallery you’ll love Artfinder. If you don’t sell art go and have a look at the site anyway, it oozes loveliness and you might just end up becoming an art buyer.
