Working As: an Artist for Minted

How to Sell Your Art through Minted

Today, I will share with you how I began to sell my original artworks as high-quality prints online. This is the beginning of a new series "Working As" where I will explore the different ways that I see creative people having success out there in the real world. My hope is that this series will give more artists and designers ideas about how to connect with an audience who truly appreciates their work.

This piece was inspired by a conversation that I had with a colleague the other day who had recently graduated from college. She had a strong interest in developing her work as an artist post-college. She asked me a variety of questions about how I sell my work online, which is something that I have been experimenting with over the past 5 years.

One of the first places other than Etsy and craft fairs that I have sold my fine art prints is through Minted.com. Here are the steps that I took to sell on Minted along with what has helped me to get my first few designs published. 

Shibori fabric design for Minted

I knew that one place that I really wanted to sell my artwork was on Minted because I love the brand. I discovered Minted as a customer first and each year our family would design our holiday photo cards through the customizable design work of independent graphic designers.

For those of you who haven't heard about it before, Minted is an online marketplace of independent artists and graphic designers. Today, I will tell you how to set-up a Minted account which will enable you to enter the Minted Design Challenges. 

1. REGISTER
​To enter the design challenges, you will need to Create an Account. I already had an account because I was a customer of Minted first, if you have never used Minted before, you can register here.
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2. SEE OPEN CHALLENGES
Next, you can look up the Open Challenges to see opportunities to enter your work. I like to peruse the challenges way in advance. Sometimes I design based on these challenges, but I also submit pieces that I create as a part of my studio practice that I think are a nice fit. 

​This abstract painting below was inspired by a trip to the Joshua Tree desert and I entered it in the Minted x West Elm Challenge. 

3. SUBMIT YOUR DESIGNS
I recommend submitting more than 1 design especially if you have more than 1. You can also submit a series of artworks. I submitted both pieces below to the Minted x West Elm challenge. If I'm being honest, I really thought the piece at right would receive the most votes. To my surprise the piece to the left was chosen as an Editor's pick.This was my second win! I was so excited because, I love West Elm and had always wanted to be selected Feedback is often helpful and can also surprise you! 

4. JOIN THE COMMUNITY
You can gain followers and friends by commenting and liking other artist's work that you genuinely enjoy. You can build a little community of artists and fans, plus receive meaningful feedback. Later, I joined the Minted Community group on Facebook, where I was able to ask questions about the best ways to digitize my art. Below, you will see some of my favorite artists that I began to follow. I learned a lot by looking at their winning artwork. 

Once voting begins, you can participate by voting on the artwork in each challenge. You can get friends and fans on social media involved by asking them to rate your work, or you can send out an email to a group of close friends and family.

5. GET YOUR WORK NOTICED 
Creating a poll is another way to gather feedback about your work, while making your work more visible. Many people can see it on Minted, when you create a poll to ask a question about your work.

Sometimes when a new challenge is announced, it inspires me to create a new artwork, and other times I use a piece of art from my portfolio that I feel is appropriate or speaks to the challenge. For my first big win, I entered the Drawing and Sketching Challenge, I chose to enter my watercolor of Amer Fort shown below. I think it shows my ability to sketch and I had received a lot of positive feedback on the piece from friends, so I thought it would have a good chance at being selected. That particular challenge although competitive did not have as many entries as the larger West Elm challenges and I thought that might be a good place to start. 

6. SET UP YOUR SHOP
Congratulations! Once your first artwork is selected by the Minted community or editors, you are ready to set up your Minted shop. You will be guided through the steps online. You will create an artist's bio that describes your work, is interesting, and can be viewed by many people online. ​Later, I created a banner and added photos from my art studio. An evocative banner might feature the materials you use, a close-up of one of your artworks, or your studio space. ​I chose to show a picture of my workspace and artwork in progress. ​​

Below is a graphic color wheel collage that recently I submitted to the Pottery Barn Kids x Minted challenge. I noticed that many people liked this piece prior to voting, so my fingers are crossed! 

7. NEVER GIVE UP
Lastly, I would like to encourage you! My work was not chosen for the first 2 challenges that I entered, so in this case I did not have beginner's luck. It was only after curating and improving my work that I had that first win- so have patience and never give up! Once you have a shop you can "self-launch" other artworks and this can also be a good way to find out what people respond to. 

​Stay tuned to find out how I am growing my Minted storefront along with tips on how you can too. This has been the first post in my Working As ​series, and I would like to hear from you. Please let me know, if you have any questions about how to take those first steps with Minted. Have fun and be creative- there are no limits to what you can accomplish!