Create you own website and promote on social shopping sites
My wife paints in her spare time, and is thinking of selling her paintings via an online shopfront.
She asked me how she could create a webpage, I straight away thought a wiki, but then the idea of this is self editing, not really collaboration.
Here is a list of website/host creators:
Google Page Creator
Weebly
SiteKreator
Synthasite
Squarespace
Sampa
Has anyone played with any of these, or know of examples of websites made using these services?
I guess the idea is to be able to make a website with limited web knowledge, and be able to host the site as well.
I guess the design of the site would be a lot of photo’s of paintings, maybe even a feed for new photo’s…maybe photo’s from flickr can be embedded, or a presentation on slideshare.
She’d also need perhaps a a sidebar for PayPal, email, etc…
We are also thinking of a way for people to interact so they can request paintings…I guess they can just email, or use IM.
Another idea besides her own personal website is to promote her paintings elsewhere on the web, perhaps a social bookmark shopping gallery, I noticed esnips kind of does this (I’m talking e-commerce social bookmarks, see example).
Anybody know of free social bookmark shopping sites where you can upload a gallery of your merchandise?
I wonder if there are services like esnips that really hone in on the e-commerce side of things.
I just found Stylehive, Closo, elsewares, ThisNext, Etsy, and Zazzle, maybe there is a site like this specialising in paintings…I found one, check out deviantART…and the rest…beholder, NextMonet, Art Exchange, also Original Art Online.
When she gets going perhaps I can promote her paintings on my blog sidebar, kind of like a shop.
Perhaps she can make her own lens on Squidoo.
And of course she can sell on e-bay or Aus Action, or any other social shopping sites.
Check out this article about art blogs, Artists take paintings to masses…I like this idea as blog engines get you traffic. I also like this idea as it is not a straight up shop, there is a theme or difference.
This article has led me to the perfect site ARTbyus.com.
Gee, with all these services, you hardly need your own website.
More:
Online art auction takes off in India
ImageKind
Funny thing is that as I blog this post I start researching and finding answers to my questions, but I’m sure there are many more services out there.
One again del.icio.us was brilliant for quality research on this subject matter.
[ADDED 5/12/06: David Rusenko from Weebly points to a unique site called, Shopify, it is a combination of your own website within a shop type of format, ie. create your own online shop (gallery, inventory, sales, etc…). They collect examples at Shopify.org.]
[ADDED 5/12/06: After reading the TechCrunch post on Shopify the comments, as usual, provided a plethora of new services:
Vendio, Big Cartel, Yahoo! Stores, and eCrater.]
