Free Places to Display Your Art Online
The internet may have become the great equalizer for sharing, but it is also a vast sea to get lost in without having much impact. Choosing a limited range of locations that tie in to your focus helps build the type of following and viral platform growth to drive your art business. Making sure that you’ve made it easy for interested viewers to buy your art ensures your social media efforts aren’t wasted.
Top art specific sites to reach a receptive audience
- Behance – On your initial glance, you may find that Behance seems to be used heavily by graphic designers, illustrators, and digital artists hoping to find work. It also focuses on showcasing in a pleasing format, where visitors are expecting to find art.
- ArtStation – Similar to other showcase sites, ArtStation has a focus on self-promotion for gig work. It is primarily used by entertainment industry artists and designers seeking work. Though it’s format can also benefit fine art display, especially for artists who enjoy getting contract work.
- DeviantArt – The large user base may make getting noticed seem like a daunting task. Deviant art has a large user base among early-stage artists seeking feedback.
General use social media sites that work for artists
- Instagram – Instagram probably has the highest user-base of people interested in sharing art and caters to visuals rather than text.
- Pinterest – Though not a social site in the traditional sense, Pinterest may seem like the odd site to include here, but visually oriented users who appreciate art spend time on Pinterest. Well-articulated meta-data and comments can promote your art and your brand.
- X (formerly Twitter) – X is the easiest place to create backlinks directly to your art and seems to have great topic algorithms for promoting content that matches the viewers interests. It allows for combinations of image, text, and clickable links in every post, which means you can show your work, share a thought and create a click through to purchase your art in every post.
Making your efforts worthwhile
While the overhead of showing your art online is fairly low, it is not zero. You have to take into account the return on effort and time. While your reach across the internet is nearly limitless, your views can be dismally low to start with. Don’t stress over low initial response. Focus on consistency.
And don’t make the mistake of replacing time spent creating new and better work with time spent posting to build a platform and following. The main driver of your art business success should be the appeal of your art.