How to Sell Prints On Etsy

For a long time I’ve wondered if I could be successful selling my photography prints online.  I finally did it, have made 178 sales as of today.  Evidently, I am in the midst of growing my shop to hopefully be my full time income some day.

Today I’m going to share how to sell prints on Etsy and my personal experience after 4 years on the platform.  There are many different ways you can sell your prints, which I’ll break down below in this post.

What Platform To Sell On

Etsy – The reason I chose to open my print shop on Etsy is there’s an existing customer base shopping and searching for unique products on their platform.  I would have to do less marketing and would not have to drive traffic to my own shop.  There is a low start up cost, which is a great way to test out your business idea.

– No fee to open your Etsy shop
– $0.20 / listing
– 6.5% transaction fee
– Payment processing fee depending on payment type

Shopify – Shopify is a great option if you have an existing customer base or are confident in driving traffic to your shop.  Shopify runs $29-299/ month.  This option was too expensive for me and I didn’t have the knowledge to drive traffic on my own.

However, there are several galleries for photographers (Sprout Studio & Pic-Time) that you can create your own art gallery and link it to your favorite professional print lab.  I like the idea of this, but again, you have to be able to drive the traffic and sales alone.

Deciding Where & How to Print

After you choose where you’re going to sell your art prints, you’ll need to make some decisions about how you’re going to have them printed.

Occasionally, I have seen sellers who print and ship at home.  Also, you can use print-on-demand printing for this as well.  You can connect a third party printing company to your Etsy shop.  They will print and ship the orders directly to your customers.  A few of these options are Printify and Gelato.

I decided I didn’t want to print in house or worry about the hassle of shipping.  It was important to me to be able to run my business from anywhere, without inventory.  For the longevity of my business, I think I will enjoy this option long-term!

Undoubtably, making the choice to print through a professional lab, I know my margins will be smaller.  It was also important to me to offer high quality art prints from a professional lab.  Something that customers can’t get on their own, making my products more unique and valuable.

After making these decisions about what was important to me, I decided to place orders through a professional print lab to process each order.  They will print and drop ship directly to my Etsy customers.  This has worked really well for me, as I don’t have to have inventory and can place orders from my computer.

Some of my top professional labs are WHCC, Millers, Bay Photo & ProDPI.  You have to be a professional photographer to be accepted into these labs.

Have more questions about how to sell your prints on Etsy?  I’d love to hear them, leave a comment below!

Jenny is a family and commercial photographer from Columbus, Ohio.  She also sells art prints on Etsy.