 Well hello and welcome to today's video where I'm talking about why artists should be selling their work online. Now I'm not talking about printables, downloadables, stickers, t-shirt designs, that sort of thing. I'm talking about taking what you already make and selling that online. So whether you are a 2D or 3D artist, you paint like myself or you make sculpture or maybe you already run workshops or classes, you know, we want to be looking at taking that online. For the last 18 months everything has changed as we know and we don't know where the future is going to take us. So let's look at a model that could provide a really stable business income for you in terms of building your profitable art business and that is by looking at how to sell things effectively online. Now if you're new to this channel, welcome my name is Sophie Mahia and I help female artists to make a living from their art or creativity by building a stable profitable business doing what you love. So if you like this content, please make sure to subscribe to my channel and give me a thumbs up if you like the video as well. So let's talk about why artists should be selling online. Now listen, I'm not telling you something you probably don't already know and a lot of you watching will be saying, Sophie I've already got a website, I'm up on Etsy, I've got some sort of presence online but what I'm asking you is, are you selling regularly online? I don't mean one occasionally that you say, oh, great, I made a sale over here. I'm talking about using an online model as a way to actually make a sustainable income from your creativity. So that's when you go, ah, oh yeah, no, that's probably not me, right? So just in case you're not convinced and you're saying, ah, I really just wanna stay with a physical business, I hear you, there's nothing more lovely than having a gallery running an art fair, doing open studios. It's how I built my business that like I said, we perhaps need to look at a different model. So today I'm gonna share with you seven reasons why I think you should consider at least some of your art business to be made online. So again, this might sound obvious, but number one, more people are shopping online than ever before, all right? So even if you had a bit of a presence before, now is the time to increase that because your audience are there. The question is, can they find you, of course? So reason number one, more and more people shopping online. For me, that's a no brainer. Number two, of course, you can reach a global market. So if you live in a little quiet secluded town and you're maybe struggling to build that business locally, with these days, you can sell anywhere. And there's absolutely no reason why you can't ship something from A to B even if it's the other side of the globe because there's always a way how, all right? And I think sometimes we get stuck in, it's too complicated, it's too difficult, it's gonna cost too much, but that's why you're building a business because you're going to build all of those costs into your business, all right? The thing you've got to do is to decide, okay, I like the idea of selling online, I'm going to perhaps offer this section of my business online, or perhaps I'm gonna make all of it online. And then you look at, well, where are my ideal customers? Who are the people that I really want to sell to? And if they end up being the other side of the world, you just make that happen. You make a way to make that happen and you build your business accordingly. And I have plenty of other videos helping you with all of that stuff, so don't forget to look at the description below this video. So number three reasons why I think you should put your art business or a section of your art business online, and that is these days there are so many sales platform opportunities. Now you might say there are too many and that can end up being a little bit confusing and overwhelming as well, but we're not exactly looking at, well, there's only one place I can sell my art. And gone are the days where you just need a website. There are so many different other options, no matter whether you sell physical art or whether you sell online workshops or courses or art services. Right now at time of recording, I have a free masterclass. The three biggest secrets to successfully selling your art online, look for a link below this video where you can learn what it really takes to actually successfully sell your work online. So reason number four is there are also many more flexible payment options that you can offer your customer. It's now really easy to set up credit card facilities, whereas back in the day, when we were first starting out in a business, it was really difficult. These things were much harder to do and there weren't the many options as there are now. Now there are endless different options. You can also offer people things like after pay where they pay over, I think it's four payments in that particular option. So that makes it really, really easy for your customer to make a purchase from you. And I think again, very often as artists, you don't want to look at these things because there's a little bit of tech or it looks a little bit complicated. But I promise you, the customer will be really, really happy if you do offer a few options, different payment options. Reason number five, and this is the one for me, this would be the winner. This would be the one I'd be like, okay, I don't need to listen to the other two things. When you put your art business or any business online, you can, if you want, fully automate your marketing. What does that mean? That it's gonna give you back some of your time so that you can be creating and making rather than constantly fueling the marketing machine. Now of course, you still have to do the marketing. You still have to take time to do that but because you can automate so much of it, it's definitely a massive time saver. So that for me would be the key reason why if I were considering it, I would want to take a portion or all of my art business online. So here comes reason number six, which kind of carries on from reason number five. Imagine waking up in the morning, looking at your phone and seeing all these little notifications of sales that have been made overnight. That's what you can expect when you put a business online. And of course, you set it up correctly and you sell it in the correct way, all of which I'll be teaching in that masterclass. But once you have that all working for you, that's exactly what you can have the ping on the phone. You know, I hang out with a friend here in Perth and she tuts every time her phone goes kaching. Oh, another sale, another sale. And it's like, isn't that the place you wanna be at? Oh my goodness me, another sale. I need to just bag that up and ship it out. That's a quality problem to have, okay? And that's because in this particular case, she set up her business online fully some years ago and has just been fueling the marketing machine and it's all automated, it's all working for her. And you can do the same as well if you decide to. So reason number seven, that I think you should put part or all of your art business online is what I said at the very beginning. The future right now is uncertain and you don't want to plan the whole of next year, all physical events and then go through disappointment, disappointment, disappointment if things work out where you can't do it like that. So I think right now is a perfect time to consider. You don't have to put all of it online but you could at least say, okay, well 50% is online so I've got some stability and then I can add on top of that some physical events if they work and if I'm able to. But it doesn't matter if of course something happens and one of those physical events doesn't go ahead because I have my core business online. Now having said all of that, it's not always as easy as it sounds. This is why I've put together this free masterclass because in this masterclass, I'm gonna share with you exactly what you need to do those three big secrets in order to successfully set up and sell your artwork online. So if that's something you're really interested about, don't forget to look below the description below this and you can click on the link and register. It's free and you can get the information via that training. So thank you so much for watching today. If you've enjoyed this video, don't forget to give me a thumbs up, leave a comment below the video and let me know if you found this useful and also let me know if you are putting your business online, you have it online or you're thinking about doing it or you're now inspired to do it. We love to hear from you. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next video.