Change is in the air for 2007 – especially for Art.com’s Original Art and Photography community.
If you’re already a part of OAP, you know that it’s one of just a few websites where you can display and sell your original works of art for free. It also gives you the opportunity to make royalties from selling posters and prints of your work on Art.com, potentially exposing your art to millions of prospective buyers.
Art.com has decided to push this program further and will be re-branding OAP while creating a new online marketplace exclusively for the sale of contemporary artwork and prints.
OAP will become “Artist Rising,” which is admittedly a shorter and catchier name than “Original Art and Photography.” The new marketplace will be called “Sistino” (reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel, perhaps?) and according to a recent Art.com newsletter, it will focus on “the artist’s story behind the art.”
I’ve only been a member of OAP for the past month or so, and have held off getting too involved because of all the changes that were taking place while it was still in Beta.
If you’ve been doing the same, it could be that now is the time to act, based on this statement by the president and CEO of Art.com, Michael Heinstein: “After 8-10 weeks as a preview site, Sistino will officially launch with an extensive marketing and promotional campaign.” (my emphasis.)
Free promotional hype is always good, and I was even more impressed when I compared Art.com with Imagekind (another online art marketplace previous reviewed here) to see which one I’d rather work with in the long run.
The following paragraphs contain a few points of interest.
While Imagekind lets you set your price per print as high as you want (meaning higher profits for you), Art.com prices all of its posters from $8 to $22 and only gives you a 10% royalty.
Of course, Art.com has always allowed artists to keep 100% of their original art sales, and has a system in place specifically FOR original artwork. Imagekind does not.
Imagekind gives only its Pro and Platinum Members a 5% commission on frame sales now pays ALL of it’s Members a 15% commission on any frame sold along with their prints, while Art.com’s framing sales commission is still just 10%.
But perhaps most importantly, Art.com is the market leader for online poster sales worldwide, and has been in business for 11 years. Art.com, Inc. also owns AllPosters.com and Posters.de in Germany, giving you (if you choose to join) a tremendous market for selling your art.
The nice thing is you really don’t need to choose between either Art.com or Imagekind – feel free to use both. After reading through both companies’ legal terms, it’s clear that all printing rights are completely non-exclusive. The only exception is if you produce a run of limited edition giclées through Art.com. In that case, certain restrictions apply for a set period of time.
There’s a lot more information about OAP/Artist Rising that I don’t have time or space for in this article. However, if you’re interested there’s an online webinar about Artist Rising and Sistino this week where you can learn more about it all.
The webinar will be held Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 1pm PST. You can click here to register for free and reserve your spot. If you can’t make it, don’t worry. I’ll take notes. : )
I’d love to hear any comments you have about OAP, Sistino, or Art.com, so feel free to comment via my contact page. And remember to check back in next week for my update on Sistino and Artist Rising including extra information from the webinar.