Several months ago I reviewed BoundlessGallery.com, a website for selling original art online. (Read my original review of BoundlessGallery here.)
Since then, Boundless Gallery has been updating and improving several features on their website (for both artists and art buyers), and has also changed their membership fees and commission rates—so here’s a quick update on some of what’s new at BG:
(Full disclosure: BoundlessGallery is also an EE advertiser.)
Socializing Tools:
Boundless Gallery is one of the few art-selling websites that I’ve seen actively marketing themselves in the social media world of Myspace, Facebook, and more. They’ve even taken social networking one step further by adding a simple network to BoundlessGallery itself, allowing artists to “befriend” art buyers and other artists, send messages, and basically develop further relationships with art-interested people.
While this may sound a little “Myspacey,” making friends with past buyers of your artwork is pretty smart—after all, as anyone in business knows, it’s easier to keep an existing customer than make a new one.
Color Search Functionality:
Although I haven’t checked it out thoroughly yet, BoundlessGallery has updated their color-picking tool to help buyers find artwork matching specific colors.
Buyers can now upload an image and pull a color out of that, or simply select from the millions of possible colors in BG’s digital color wheel. Just from my initial test, it did pretty well at finding art that contained the color I chose.
And while this doesn’t directly affect artists, it does help art buyers find the right artwork quicker which is good for everyone in the end.
Pricing and Commission Rates:
Here’s the biggest change of all, I think—BoundlessGallery now charges a yearly fee, but takes a lower commission rate for every sale.
There are three membership levels to choose from: $60 per year with a 10% commission per sale, $120 per year with a 5% commission, or $240 with no commission at all.
The reason for this change (as explained to me) is to be fairer to the artists who consistently work at promoting their artwork on BoundlessGallery, and have more art sales as a result. For some, paying $240 a year for no commission is a better deal.
At the same time, this commission structure allows new artists to choose a cheaper membership if they’re not certain how many sales they’ll make to start out with.
I understand the reasoning, but I did like the free membership with its 25% commission. That membership made it easy to try BG out and get a feel for the site without putting any money down—now it’s only available for current members if they choose to keep it.
Finally, as I promised on Sunday, there IS a membership discount available specifically for EmptyEasel readers. I can’t take too much credit because I didn’t actually think to ask them for this, but when they offered I figured some of you might be able to use it. (NOTE: Discount ends February 2009.)
Just enter the discount code “EE15″ and you’ll get 15% off the price of a new membership plan. (You’ll have to register for a free BoundlessGallery account, I think, and then choose your plan.)
As always, if you have any thoughts on these pricing changes or BoundlessGallery’s new features feel free to let me know.