How would you like to sell your art in Europe and the US?
Obviously the internet is a global marketplace already, but with offices in the US and Spain and a fully functional Spanish/English website, PicassoMio.com might be the closest thing there is to a global art gallery online.
But how does PicassoMio stack up to other art selling websites on the internet? Well, after taking a look around the site, here are my thoughts.
The design and layout of the site wasn’t the best I’d seen. Websites like Imagekind, Sistino, BoundlessGallery, and ArtFlock have really raised the bar, design wise, and PicassoMio just isn’t in the same league.
If they put as much space around their logo as I did, it’d be a good start, but overall I thought there was just too much clutter, too many links and text, and not enough strong navigational flow.
I was certainly impressed by the complete Spanish version though (same design, just in a different language), and apparently French and German websites will be available sometime in the future as well.
One of the things most artists might not like about PicassoMio is that each artwork is juried before being accepted on the site. That means not all artists will be accepted to show their work. However, it seems likely that the art on PicassoMio will be of a higher quality because of that juried process, so I’m personally not against it.
Another thing worth noting is that if you belong to any other online galleries, you’re not allowed to list the same works on PicassoMio as you do elsewhere.
Once your artwork is accepted, there’s a start-up fee of $95 for the standard package (which allows you 25 works of art online) along with a commission fee every time one of your works sells.
They’re a little cagey about what percentage that commission is—they just say that it’s lower than “major galleries” and varies from artist to artist. I guess all we can really assume is that the commission rate will probably be below 40 or 50 percent and maybe better if you’re a well-known artist.
Of course, if you’d like shell out more cash for the professional package, you can pay a one-time fee of $379 for the first year and $100 every year after and receive your own website (shown below), 100 images of your art on the PicassoMio website, and a few other gimmicks like a guest book, free listings with the search engines, and a page for your upcoming exhibits.
But why would you?
You can VERY easily set up your own website using WordPress or some other free blogging service, and have a much better looking and more manageable site than the ones they offer.
Don’t worry about missing out on those search engine listings for your stand-alone website either; I guarantee most of the people viewing your art will be on the main PicassoMio website anyway.
And how many viewers might that be? Well, PicassoMio says they receive over a million visitors each month—which would be fantastic—but we can’t know that it’s necessarily true. So, like usual, I’ll just compare PicassoMio’s stats with a few other art websites using Alexa.com and Compete.com and get a rough idea of where they stand.
Alexa (the more popular internet traffic scoring service) currently puts PicassoMio.com at 72,501 in its rankings, just behind BoundlessGallery.com at 68,194. (And lower is better.) Imagekind is even farther ahead at 25,412, while Sistino and Artist Rising are back at 109,074 and 109,985 respectively.
According to those numbers, PicassoMio is right in the middle of the pack which means a fair amount of traffic each month.
After checking the rankings with Compete, however, a newer and perhaps more accurate service, I found a different line-up.
Here, PicassoMio trails at the bottom, behind all the others, and both Sistino and Artist Rising are ahead of BoundlessGallery. However, since Compete only uses US data it’s more than likely that PicassoMio’s European traffic would boost its rankings quite a bit—perhaps even up into second place.
In any event, the important thing is that PicassoMio is at least in the same ballpark as these other sites, as shown by two independent tracking services.
Overall, I didn’t end up being that impressed with PicassoMio. It costs more right from the start than any of the other sites I’ve reviewed, its web design is lacking, and it restricts you from selling the same artwork on other websites. They DO have enough traffic to be considered one of the bigger players, but I’m not convinced that it makes up for all the rest.
My opinion? I’d say give PicassoMio a pass unless you’re directly aiming for the European art market or you trust their claim of being the top art seller online. If those two things aren’t true, then I’d suggest looking elsewhere to sell your art online.