I figured out a scam. Tell me if I'm wrong

In My Humble Opinion
41

What is it you expect that Artstorefronts would do for you (or any artist) over a standard webhost + some educational online marketing videos (which would cost about $20-$30/mo each)? And printing + shipping could still be drop-shipped with something like theprintspace.com, where you just pay for the production and shipping costs rather than a % of your sale price.

To you, what makes them potentially worth their high startup fee and commission on every piece? They are not a gallery, so that’s not really a fair comparison. A site like Etsy would be more like a gallery, because there at least you get exposure from the network effect of all the Etsy users. When you make your own website, on the other hand, it’s totally up to you to market it.

So what is it that would make Artstorefronts potentially worth this additional cost? Is it that you think they offer better websites, or SEO marketing templates, or a generally superior experience in some way? Is it the integration of all these normally-separate services — so you don’t have to separately deal with Wix, the printer, the learning videos providers, etc.?

If that sort of “white-glove” service is worth $3000 + 5% to you, well, I guess they found their target market!

But given that you started this thread with some skepticism, I think you intuitively understand that this isn’t a good value for most artists, especially those without an established career already. You can separately get those services for much cheaper, or just pay a web/marketing agency to set something like that up for you, with no further commission on sales.

50% commission might make sense for a physical gallery that vets its artists, has an established clientele and/or walk-in visitors, and has a good chance of actually selling your art. When you just put some images on a website and post on Facebook a few times… you know, chances are, very very few people are going to ever see it and buy anything. When was the last time you found a random new artist online and spent several hundred dollars on a print? I’ve never heard of that happening, but maybe I’m just not in the right circles? Usually if something like that goes viral, it’s because they showed it somewhere offline (gallery, show, market fair, whatever) and directed people to their website, or they made a hit piece and it got widely shared on social media, etc., or they spent a lot of money on targeted advertisements and worked with creators to astroturf it, etc., not because someone happened to stumble on their website and decided to buy a print out of the blue. And even then, there’s no guarantee that some other entrepreneurial thief doesn’t just steal your art and share it and sell it as their own. It’s just a totally different world online.

Artstorefronts probably knows all that and doesn’t want the risk of trying to survive off commissions, which are probably too infrequent, vs the certainty of a high startup cost + ongoing subscription. The initial cost is not only a nice bonus upfront, but it also adds to each customer’s “sunken cost” feelings, making them less likely to churn for another provider. It’s sorta genius for them, but sucky for the artists. Their artists’ income distribution is probably very very uneven, with most of them making little to no money but still paying their monthly fees.

Let us know if you do decide to discuss this with them and hear back. I’d be amazed if you got them to rethink their tactics… that would require a real crisis of conscience on their part, lol.

42

Thank you. I had been thinking very similar things. I wasn’t sure just how to say it, and unsure of my figures.

Re Galleries

We have some in Philly. A show at one of them is not just exposure to a moneyed clientelle. It is an endorsement by the gallery of the artist and their work. The gallery has every right to a percentage of each sale. They are contributing a great deal.

Why should this company get any commision at all? They have no reputation. Their endorsement of you (which they have not given) is worthless. Staging a show at a physical gallery costs money. The site this company will provide is worth less than they charge you for it.

I would have to check with my Gobhi (her last job was in web site design and internet marketing. Her current job is a lot of things I do not understand and search engine optimization) but I would think unless you need a very special website, a good one should be cheap and easy to set up. It might require upkeep now and then, but that should not be difficult or time consuming. I know very little about search engine optimization. I suspect this company knows about the same amount.

Reply raises an excellent point. Does this company say anything about protecting your work once it is on the internet? This is a major concern.

Again, the services that they offer are not outright fraudulent. From what you have said, they are offering a service you could get elsewhere for a much lower price- and they want commision too.

43

My guess is that this service locks people in and makes it difficult to transition away from them, perhaps by how they handle payments, and web design licenses.

It’s not a scam in the sense of something illegal, but it is in the sense of a rip-off business.

44

You’re perfectly right. I started this thread by labeling it a scam and i still think so, though i want to be fair to them and point out ways they’re a legitimate business but one that takes advantage of artists’ naivety and desperation.

It’s definitely not something i need. I’m much better off learning how to market myself and to sell and ship my art myself, which has been pointed out as something i could learn to do far less expensively.

But it was only through examining their business model of requiring thousands up front that i realized what stinks here .

To DocCathode’s point , they do include watermarking all work shown online. And they do admit (not very obviously) that i’d need to do a lot of the hands on work of running my own website. So to that extent they are legit.

But no way am i getting involved with them, thanks in part to my own understanding and in part to the things that have been pointed out to me in this thread.

45

I decided against getting into a back and forth with them about their business model. I wouldn’t change their minds, of course, and i wouldn’t sign up no matter how low a fee they charged me. I’ve invested enough time examining their practice.

But I did get some good ideas. I wonder if someone with a good mind for business would be able to do a version of my #2 model for a hefty commission.

46

I doubt it. ArtStoreFront (I think that’s their name) has a great model to make themselves money. If a company had a model based mostly on commission- they would need to evaluate the work of every artist who wanted their services (How much is worth? How much does the artist want for it? Will anybody buy it?), they would have to actually spend time and money marketing themselves as a reliable place to buy art and to promote the work of the artists they represent, instead of being certain of making money from a large entry fee and monthly fees they would need people to buy art. This is extremely risky. If things work out, they would indeed make more money. But why take a risk that will very likely not pay off when you can stick to an established business model and make a profit?

47

Not specifically for fine art, but for what it’s worth, this is very common in the software and video games world. The iPhone and Android app stores take about 30% of sales (maybe slightly lower now, after some lawsuits and EU pressure). Steam (a gaming marketplace) does similar. And some game tools also use a similar commission/royalty based model where they provide the tools for free, but you give them a percentage of every sale if the game becomes successful.

That works well for digital products that sell based on volume, where you make it once and then sell infinite copies at no significant per-unit cost (unlike art prints or originals).

For physical goods, Etsy charges only a 6.5% commission (with no sign up or ongoing monthly fees, as far as I know) and eBay 5-15% depending on category. They are able to provide a storefront (and do much of the SEO work) for much less than a 50% commission. They don’t have the same costs as a physical gallery.

For physical goods copied on demand (like the print store above, or Redbubble, Cafepress, Zazzle, etc.) it’s usually based on the manufacturing costs of whatever you’re having them make, and then you charge a markup above that.

For just basic ecommerce storefronts, it’s a really saturated market with Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.

For simple galleries/portfolios, there’s Artstation, DeviantArt, Behance, etc.

Is the art niche really underserved by all those options above? It’s hard to imagine what value add a store would need to provide to be worth a 50% commission when most are much lower. Websites are generally expensive to make the first time but very cheap or free to copy for any number of users after the first. They don’t need to charge such a high commission.

I am pretty confident that a site like Artstorefronts could be run profitably with EITHER a high one time fee OR a reasonable monthly cost OR a low commission. That they want all three is what makes them seem like a greedy ripoff. Most similar services just use one of those and make a business out of it.

48

I’m talking specifically about a person who would set up and oversee my website, hook me up with a shipment and fulfillment entity, provide me a list of visitors to my website etc.-- basically all the stuff i thought I’d be getting from artstorefront-- for a good chunk of my profits, if any. With a much smaller upfront fee since i might not make enough profit to interest anyone.

Even if i gave him a big enough commission to mean i wouldn’t make much, i wouldn’t mind. I’m not in it for the money, though that’s always nice, and I’m too lazy to be marketing myself very well right now. And by “lazy” i mean “too interested in painting to get off my ass to promote my paintings”

49

Maybe a college student looking for internship opportunities, a person just starting out in their career, or a techie friend/family of yours? Probably unlikely otherwise :frowning:

Well, that’s the thing… I can see how that would be enticing from the artist’s side. But from the provider’s site, as web developers/hosts or SEO marketing firms, it’s a high-risk and low-reward effort unless you were already a famous artist or at least have a record of successful previous sales.

It takes time to set all of that up (not an absurd amount of time, mind you, probably just a few days of work for a good enough beginning, with some ongoing monitoring and tweaking in the weeks to follow). But that’s still time they could spend billing other clients, typically at $50-$200/hr, vs taking a risk on a client they might never get any income from.

For what it’s worth, the inverse situation can happen too: Some techie or businessperson wants art for their website/upcoming game/new business but doesn’t want to pay for it upfront, so tries to find someone willing to do it for a share of eventual profits. That’s often seen as exploitative because more often than not the business doesn’t make it, or at least doesn’t make enough money to pay that artist back for their time.

Similarly, I don’t think it’s impossible to find someone to work with you on a profit-sharing basis, just difficult, especially when there’s not a cap to the total amount of time they might have to spend, not just in the initial creation but also in all the ongoing marketing, etc. It’s asking a lot of a stranger who doesn’t know you or your art or its commercial viability. You’re asking for a business partner in a very risky industry.

Are there art agents, like the ones actors have, who go out and promote art for artists? How do they typically charge and make money? What do other artists and galleries in the area do… presumably they already have networks of such people?

PS… if this isn’t just a hypothetical and you actually are trying to get an online presence up and running, can I ask if you’ve already given those self-serve page builders (Wix, Shopify, Squarespace) or storefronts (RedBubble, Etsy, etc.) a try yet? They’re meant to be doable by any normal person with a little bit of patience and a few hours. It’s work you would’ve had to put into Artstorefronts anyway. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two to get a basic thing up and running, and they have their own support channels or probably me and other Dopers would be happy to help if you run into issues.

And this way, at least you have a basic website to show both potential customers and anybody you want to act as your potential profit-sharing marketing agent. It gives them something to look at and evaluate.

It’s usually just a matter of picking a template you like, uploading some high-res photos of your art, and then adding some boilerplate “Hi, I’m GailForce…” text. That’s by no means a complete marketing strategy, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing, and would probably cost you somewhere between $0-$30.

50

It isn’t part of my area of expertise, but there are various services online that offer watermark removal using AI technology. So the company saying they watermark online work may not protect the artist.

51

I strongly strongly and strongly recommend taking this advice. The Dope is home to many people with all kinds of knowledge, skills, and advanced degrees. They would very likely be willing to help you set up a website if you have any trouble.

52

My son is a potter who used to manage the business side of an art gallery. I asked him about this and before I got even halfway through the description he said, “Yeah, it’s a scam. They’ll hit you big with upfront fees, and then take more from you every month. I’ve gotten pitches from a bunch of them.”

While he personally doesn’t use any service to sell his work (he has a website, but mostly he goes through galleries) he did say he knows some artists who use Bigcartel.com. I looked at it. They don’t charge an upfront fee, they have basic plans for free, and a pretty clear guide of what their tiered levels of service give (and don’t give) you.

He also pointed out that art doesn’t magically sell itself. The gallery that takes a 50% commission is doing all the marketing, sales and fulfillment work the artist doesn’t want to do.

53

Don’t think I don’t appreciate the offer, because I do, but I’d feel funny about accepting for free the time-intensive work people would need to do to set me up, advise me about running a website, and so on. I’ll gladly take advice on specific issues, but for now I’m just wondering if some computer-science student/intern would accept a small fee and a commission for helping me out, especially if he/she/they liked my art and thought it might sell if marketed properly. (It’s kind of niche-y stuff, unusual, edgy, which could be good or bad). I have used interns when I taught in a university, and some of them were quite skilled, especially with web stuff, though some were resentful of their status as unpaid interns, which I could easily understand. I don’t even know the difference, for example, between “page buiders” and “storefronts,” and I’m not very motivated to learn the distinction or the difference between the entities you named within them.

I have good photos up on a website currently, of my last gallery (which didn’t do much for me–my stuff was too edgy, they said, for their clients, who were interested in home-decor more than fine art, though the gallery was very encouraging when I first showed them my stuff.) I don’t use them any more, but they haven’t taken down my work yet, so I was able to direct artstorefront to their site to give them an idea of what I do. It’s mainly marketing that I need to do more efficiently.

I’ve entered into agreements before, that worked out well, where the person I contracted with and I agreed to do something together until that day when one or the other of us wanted out, and I’d be willing to gamble a little upfront money to entice someone to get me started. My last gig lasted almost six years until the person (who was paying me, not I him) decided he wanted out.

Not my area either, obviously, but I’m not sure what anyone can do besides watermark my art–after all, it does need to be shown on the web, with pretty good resolution. Is there more I can expect other than watermarking?

I’m getting a shipload of emails from artstorefront, which are just telling me that they think they’ve got a live one on the hook–not at all persuasive I should sign up (today is their deadline for a reduced rate–not very reduced, and an obvious pressure tactic.) Here’s one of today’s emails:

What do you see as the #1 thing preventing you from selling more of your work right now?

Is it a lack of an audience? Or maybe you have an audience but they’re not buying? Struggling with niche?

Hit reply and let me know. Will share any advice that comes to mind to help you overcome it.

Patrick Shanahan
Art Storefronts

54

Sorry, those aren’t official categorizations, just loose groupings I made up. Doesn’t matter. Sounds like you already have a basic site / gallery up but want help marketing it. You don’t need another one then.

I hope you find someone that can help with the marketing side instead. Sounds like it would be a fun opportunity for someone getting started in the field, especially if you can pay them at least a minimum hourly wage to get started.

I’ve seen (but don’t know anything about) some “business of art” type courses at local community colleges, which might have the kind of student intern you want? Or maybe just normal marketing students.

55

A late report: despite no positive interactions with me over the past two weeks, they have been flooding my inbox with questions, invitations, Zoom infomericals, testimonials, offers, discounts, you name it. The harder they sell, of course, the more assured I am that this is a ripoff, preying on the desperate and the ill-informed.

56

It’s probably an automated drip campaign that will keep going until you unsubscribe. It’s easy to set one of those up and make them seem personal, but usually they’re just highly automated and send you emails on a schedule, or after some period of inactivity, etc.