Introducing the Painttwits ArtCart
November 22, 2009
Introducing ArtCart!
ArtCart: A free online Google site template to help artists sell their art.
Five reasons to go and get an ArtCart right now:
- Its Free!
- Real-Time Inventory for artists
- Embeddable into several formats (sites, blogs and more)
- Create discount codes for collectors, galleries and fans
- Build a public or private database of all of your work
You will need a free Google checkout account to set it up properly. With the help of ArtCart, artists and small manufactures now have an easy way to update their inventory and sell directly to their clients. This is made possible by updating a simple spreadsheet.
You may want to create more than one ArtCart. This is a good idea because you could sort your artwork by theme, media, type, style, or some other tag. Once you set up your first ArtCart share it with the painttwits group! We love to see how our inventions are empowering you and your artwork!
Here is how it works:
Step 1) Make some art!
Step 2) Uploaded it to your site
For example a blog, a flickr.com page or your own domain. Basically, anywhere where you can find a direct URL back to the image file. If you are not sure what I mean by this, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to explain it there.
Step 3) Create a Google Site from our template. Visit this link to do that.
There is a little button that says Create a site from this template in the upper right hand corner. Make sure you click that.
Click the 'create site from this template button'
Step 4) Make a copy of the Google Spreadsheet.
You will need to add each artwork that you are selling online into a Google spreadsheet, click here to open a window to make that copy.
Step 5) Once you have your site established. You get to choose which pages are viewable to the public.
If you are like many artists, you may not want to show how much you are asking for each work of art. ArtCart allows you to control who sees what. You could choose to hide your price list and only make it available to those who make serious inquiries. This could be easily accomplished by adding a price on request link on your site.
That is all that is needed to do the basic ArtCart install.
One great feature of ArtCart is live real-time updating of your inventory. If a fan or collector buys an artwork your inventory immediately reflects this and reduces that items quantity field by one (from the spreadsheet). This works great if your work is available in multiplies (prints, photo, etc.)
A suggestion: Keep your new site separate from your image files. If you have any questions please post them in the comments. I’ll do my best to answer all of them. I’ve set up a few example sites here:
http://www.blancopaintings.blogspot.com/
http://www.corporateartstyle.blogspot.com/
http://www.towardscubism.blogspot.com/
Enjoy ArtCart!
Lucas
