Why is having physical inventory so important for selling art online?

You cannot sell a two-dimensional digital image on Instagram or on your website. What collectors are actually buying is a finished product they can hang on their wall—a physical print or an original piece. If you don’t have actual inventory ready to ship, you’re not even in the game yet. This is a surprisingly common problem: artists and photographers try to sell based purely on digital images without having any finished products available. Modern e-commerce websites can help manage this challenge, but at the end of the day, you need real, physical pieces that can be purchased and delivered. Without inventory, you’re just showing a portfolio, not running a business.

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Asked by an artist without physical products · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-10-17