Attention Artists! Avoid Online Art Sales Platforms!
- Larry Cox
- Jun 28
- 9 min read
Attention Artists! Avoid Online Art Sales Platforms! Especially Monthly Subscription Sites A very common question I receive goes something like this, "I've been signed up with the websites Saatchi Art, Singulart and Artstation for almost 6 months and haven't made one sale yet, is there some secret to this?"
There's no secret. These sites suck for 99% of artists using them. Unless you got signed up in the early stages when these websites were launched (and there are a lot of them out there now), or you are marketing like crazy to drive potential customers to your account with these sites (which you should NOT be doing, but I'll get to that later), you'll most likely never see any sales from joining them. And you'll never even appear in their search results when folks scroll through the listings. Let me get into the dirty details as to how these sites operate and why you need to avoid trying to sell your art on them.
It's so enticing, and the allure of the exciting possibilities from joining these platforms as an artist is indeed a bit overwhelming for artists that are so eager to not only get their work seen, but purchased. But make no mistake, these platforms are 100% geared toward consumers over the artists. After all, it's the consumers' money that make the platforms rich.
Hence, the platforms only push, and make visible, their existing artists that are the biggest earners for them, while 90% - 99% of the remaining artists never achieve visibility and sell absolutely nothing unless they specifically send someone to their platform profile. So why even be on the platform when you could send potential buyers to your own site, with you keeping 100% of the profits? I'll get to that.
First off, I have thoroughly tested my assessments by signing up with a dozen of these sites to see what would happen. As a successful artist with my own site, online store, brick & mortar art gallery for my art, as well as my works featured in other art galleries, I never made ONE sale in five months, nor did I ever show up in any search results, let alone any "featured artists" listings.
Before I continue, I know that many of you are probably wondering if I did any marketing (social media, advertising, Google AdWords, etc.). I absolutely did NOT. Why? because if I am going to spend time, energy and money doing any of that, I'm going to direct folks to MY website, online store and physical gallery where I keep 100% of the sales profits (just as YOU should). I'm not going to go through all of that to send folks to someone else's site where they keep 50% of the sales and most likely charge me a monthly/annual subscription fee (which you should NEVER, EVER agree to—more on that later). I strictly wanted to see how my accounts would perform visibility-wise simply by launching my accounts on these platforms. And they all failed miserably.
Okay, back to the flow of the article . . .
All of these platforms operate on the same premise, and they are all equally as useless, so no one is any better or worse than the other. However, in all of my research and contact with them, I found that Singulart seemed to offer the most beneficial platform for artist visibility simply by existing on their platform. They "guaranteed" me that my listings would show up in search results. So I am going to share the details for this particular experience.
I got my account all set up with ten listings "live" on the platform. Now it was time to see if I showed up anywhere, so I went to Singulart's home page to start my search journey to see if I would ever show up, and if so, how deep into the search results would I be.
I selected the "paintings" category and didn't select any filters (price range, dimensions, substrate, etc.). So it navigated to the "paintings" home page (page 1). As I scrolled downward about 4 or 5 rows . . BAM! . . there was one of my listings! Wow! At that first moment I was ecstatic. They didn't lie I thought to myself. And then common sense, my experiences on the other platforms, and 40+ years in business kicked in. Something's not right, that was way to easy.
So I asked my wife to do the same thing on her laptop. All of the other same listings were there, but mine was not. So I opened a different browser on my laptop and did the same thing. Same results as my wife. Then I went back to my original browser, logged out of my Singulart account and refreshed the browser. And PRESTO . . . my listing was gone.
I then contacted an IT coding guru buddy of mine and told him about this and that my suspicions were that Singulart's code must recognize me being logged into my account and modifying the search results to show my listing to make me happy that my stuff is "visible". I gave him my account login info and he opened Singulart in two different browsers, but in one of the browsers he logged into my Singulart account. Same thing that my wife and I encountered.
My buddy did his deep dive into the HTML and code for the site in each browser and isolated the search results for page 1 of "paintings". Sure enough, the code was different regarding my listing showing up. A unique string of code was inserted which placed my listing onto the page in the browser version where he was logged into my account. Pretty sly Singulart, but not sly enough.
So now that we knew Singulart is as dirty as dog rolling in the mud, it was time to run a complete search and see what happens. So we started the same search again NOT being logged into my account. That search yielded 17,460 results through 97 pages with 180 results per page. Not ONE of my 10 listings from my account showed up in those search results. And they never . . ever . . showed up during my 3-month assessment. Why was that?
Well, after inquiring about this and emailing back and forth with a Singulart representative, I learned some interesting things. I was told that out of their 13,000+ artists on the platform at the time, approximately 8,000 were offering "paintings" (as opposed to sculptures, prints, photography, drawings, etc.). Of those 8,000 artists, the average amount of paintings offered by each artist was around 5 to 11 paintings (the representative couldn't give me an exact number).
Sooo, let's do some math, shall we? 8,000 artists selling "paintings" with an average of 7 "paintings" per artist. That's approximately 56,000 listings available on the platform. However, if you remember from above, my search results topped out at 17,460 results. So what happened to the other 38,540 listings available on the platform??
To still be fair, I decided to check the numbers again by searching utilizing the five ranges of price filters to see if this by chance would change the search results and the amount of total listings. The total listing from searching by each of the 5 price filters was 25,020. You would at least think that should have matched the 17,460 number, right? But even at 25,020 we're still missing 30,980 listings.
But lets just imagine if my or your listing for a painting did happen do show up, let's say, 78 to 97 pages into the search? What do you think the odds would be that someone would search that far before finding something they wanted to buy, or simply got tired of searching?
This entire scenario is huge red flag number one. So keep that in mind if you decide to sign up anyway despite my advice . . . you can be sure you'll go right to the end of the line if you ever show up at all.
So after all of my experimenting and assessments I contacted Singulart and inquired about all of this, asking them how anyone is supposed to make any sales given my findings. Their response was:
"Thank you for contact Singulart. We are sorry to hear that you have been experiencing difficulties with your seller account. In order to provide clients with the most suitable candidates our algorithm bases search result on the most highly-rated candidates. These candidates have shown a proven track record for consistent quality work with positive-reviews. To improve your visibility and develop your own positive history we suggest the following:
1. Make yourself visible across social media sites to promote your work and
direct potential clients to your Singulart profile link.
2. Network with other art professionals in your respective specialty, such as
attending trade shows, symposiums, clinics and other such group
conferences where you can interact with people in your industry and provide
them with your Singulart profile link.
3. Utilize direct email campaigns to promote your work and be sure to
include your Singulart profile link.
4. Post your works to blogs and other publicly-accessible listings that
link to your Singulart profile.
5. Engage in paid advertising and marketing campaigns that drive traffic to your
Singulart profile.
The more people you are able to reach, the more activity you will receive here at your Singulart account, which will result in more sales and eventually better rankings within our algorithm.
Thank you for trusting your passion and career endeavors to Singulart . If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us anytime."
So what's the short version of this ridiculous response based on my findings that I presented to Singulart? They want YOU to do all the marketing and legwork that directs people to your profile, so that Singulart can make money off the 40% - 50% commission they take from every sale. Other than that, you're shit out of luck on Singulart. And it's pretty much the same with all art selling platforms where you sign up, develop a profile, and sit around waiting while no sales happen for you.
To add insult to injury, on top of the commissions these sites take, many of them force or offer paid monthly/annual subscriptions or tiered monthly fees based on sales volumes. Huge red flag number two. Such subscriptions or fees offer varying perks that allegedly offer you more benefits and better opportunities with visibility. The more you pay, the more they offer. However, this is complete bullshit. How do I know this? Because in my experimentation and assessments with the sites that I tried, I did the first two months with their "free" plan and then signed up for their most premium monthly subscription for the next three months. However, with Singulart. I started off right away with their most premium plan, because I was most impressed with them at the time. None of that mattered, as I never appeared in search results. Therefore, I highly discourage you from throwing your money away in desperation for results on what amounts to nothing more than shattered opportunities that capitalize on people's dreams.
The bottom line is that these sites have no concern for their artists and are only concerned with the established artists that are making money for them, as they should be based on their business model. I'm not saying that they are doing anything dirty. The thing that bothers me is that they paint a rosy and alluring picture of success for artists, know full well that 90% - 99% of them will fail miserably. By the time most artists figure this out, they've committed to a hefty annual membership or paid out a decent amount of cash on monthly payments, only to end up closing their accounts in discouragement.
These platforms are counting on the fact that artists are desperate to sell their work. And given the amount of artists that are on these platforms, they're absolutely correct as to the level of desperation.
Are some artists selling on these platforms? Absolutely. Have you ever made a sale on one of these platforms without YOU being the one that drove the buyer there? Maybe. Just like some people win the lottery, get struck by lightening, survive a plane crash or get elected President.
The bottom line is that your chances of being seen or making a sale on these platforms simply by existing on them is about 0.065%. So, if you are going to spend time, money and energy working to drive traffic anywhere in the hopes of making sales, it should be to your own website where you get to keep 100% of the sales profits, not driving traffic to sites that host an account for you, then do absolutely NOTHING to make you visible to potential buyers.
In my next article entitled, Online Art Sales Platforms Aren't the Solution—So what is? I’ll share exactly how you can build your own successful art sales strategy without relying on these platforms and truly take control of your art business!
