Showroom or Personal Website?
There is no reason you have to choose between the two. You can have both. However, there are several benefits to using Artrepreneur as your main site.
Get Your Showroom: A Showroom is an unbranded page with only your work for sale. The Showrooms have a unique design so it doesn’t look like the rest of Artrepreneur. If you are selling work, we recommend using your Showroom as the site page you share with customers. Take a look by going to the Showroom Directory.
Ease of Use: It is just a lot easier to add work and maintain a Showroom than it is your personal site. Upload a work, add relevant details, fill out the Marketplace Popup form and that’s it. No-fuss. Plus, you have a complete resume that you can continually use to update your creative highlights and add credibility to your work.
PayPal: You can get paid directly for any work you sell directly from your customers with PayPal and pay NO COMMISSION on your sale.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Personal sites usually get their traffic from word of mouth or through a good social media following. But getting customers to discover your website organically through search engines can be very difficult. There are many criteria that go into what sites are placed high in the search result of a search engine, there is too much to discuss here, but large sites with lots of visitors, like Artrepreneur, generally rank higher. Your Showroom can benefit from our SEO strategy.
A Built-in Audience: We already have thousands of visitors viewing hundreds of thousands of works each month. Since Showrooms are highlighted on our platform and given priority in search and browsing, you can reach an audience of buyers and collectors you wouldn’t be able to reach with your personal website. Don’t miss out on the 2+ million pages viewed on Artrepreneur each month.
Artrepreneur’s Marketing Efforts: Artrepreneur has implemented a substantial marketing effort designed to attract Buyers and Collectors to view our Showrooms and customers to see your Services listings. We want to make our Showrooms and Services successful and you can benefit from that effort.
The Downside: Artists receive certain credibility from having their own URL with a website and email account. However, the credibility level depends on the site’s quality and whether it is up-to-date and maintained with new work. So if you have the time to develop and maintain a website, then we recommend having your own site.
On the other hand, if you don’t have the skill or the money to create and maintain a site you can be proud of, then it may be better to use Artrepreneur. If you do, don’t forget to customize your Profile URL so your work is easier to find and share. If you have your own URL, we cannot use that on Artrepreneur but you can always forward the URL to your Artrepreneur profile.