Tips for Artists on Using DeviantArt to Increase Online Exposure

I'm a digital artist and run espiritoart.com which sells canvas prints of my work and that of my dad, a successful fine artist. I've operated his deviantArt account for the last 3 months (he writes the updates, I do the mundane parts!), which has generated over 15,000 visits to his artwork in that period. I've received numerous sales, enquiries and commissions, as well as website traffic through deviantArt activity.

Added to that, it is quite enjoyable, you'll see a lot other people's interesting work and talk to some interesting people - all with not a great deal of effort and no cost.

Every time you upload a picture to deviantArt you get the option, for free, to activate it so that visitors can buy a print. They do everything for you, printing and shipping-wise, and you get paid for it.

Personally I don't use this option, I prefer to direct people to my own website who are interested in purchasing. Also, for prints to be enabled, you have to upload a large, high resolution image - this takes a long time. And, you don't get a lot of money per sale, around 15% of the entire purchase price.

If you do go ahead with the print options, be prepared to wait a long time while large images are uploaded.

I've used a number of different sizes, and prefer a picture size that fits nicely on the screen. This means I don't exceed 800 pixels wide, or 600 pixels from top to bottom. Anything within these boundaries gives the viewer a complete view of the artwork, with no scrolling needed.

In terms of resolution, at these sorts of sizes, your images will be clear enough to look good even at lower (web-optimised) resolutions. Personally I go for 72 pixels/inch which looks good and cuts your waiting time for uploading right down.

There are watermark options too, allowing you to protect your work. But, at these sizes and resolution, nobody could steal your work and make a print of any sort of quality - so it is best to disable these options rather than spoil the view of the visitor with intrusive marks.

This was a mistake I made I have to admit. I put a lot of pictures on in my first visit, which was a mistake. I'll come to methods of promoting your work on deviantArt shortly, and once they are in play - uploading regularly, one artwork at a time will generate a lot more visits than bulk-uploading everything you've ever done.

Starting off with 3 or 4 pieces gives visitors something to look at, but keeps work back to upload and keep things fresh once you've established some popularity.

There are plenty of forums you can contribute to, but the best is the thumbshare forum on deviantArt. This lets you post a small thumbnail of any or all of your artwork to a thread. These can be very popular with up to 3,000 posts per thread, giving you lots of opportunity to be seen. When you post to a thread, the author of it will also receive a personal message with your selected artworks on it.

There is a code for posting thumbnails (e.g. :thumb110798729:) which you copy and paste from the images in your gallery. This automatically produced code is obviously impossible to remember, so as you get going, it is a good idea to copy and paste these to a word or wordpad document. This allows you to quickly copy and paste all your work in one go, rather than laboriously visit every work in your gallery each time you want to post.

Key to success here is to post regularly in the forum, making sure you cover every relevant thread in the thumbshare forum.

Although other forums on the site can be useful, the general section called 'deviants' should be avoided. This appears to be where the dregs of the community - those with nothing constructive to say - reside.

You can start your own thumbshare forum threads, asking to see work in any particular genre, style or subject matter. You can't show your thumbnails in the opening post, so once that is written, go straight back in and reply, showcasing any thumbnails you have that you want to share.

Of course, once people start posting their own thumbs, you'll get messages in your deviantArt inbox showing you their pictures. Replying to these messages posts your replies to your forum thread and keeps your thread at the top of the list. If you are particularly thorough, you can even keep messages back to reply to later when your thread has died off and dropped off the main forum index page!

Every time your thread is visited, the first thing they will see is your artwork. The number of people who will click through and look at your work is surprising....

Your signature can contain a link to your website or other site and appears each time you post in a forum, send someone a note or leave comments for other artists. When people see your work and make it one of their favourites, visiting that person's deviantArt homepage and leaving a thank you message is not only polite, it leaves your signature and weblink on their page too. You'll soon build up quite a number of links, purely by being curteous to other artists.

Your journal features on your homepage and can be used to promote your website. I've done this with an honest request asking people to check out my site and give any feedback. Its an open and honest request and has been responded to with plenty of traffic and some comments and feedback.

Joining groups allows you to submit your pictures for inclusion in that group's galleries. Some groups are very well known and have 1,000's of views each day, so it is in your interests to be represented there too.

Your groups may also offer contests which you can enter. These are usually judged by the senior members of the group and if you win you can have your work featured in various places across the site. Even if you don't win, you usually get featured in a news article or journal documenting the entries recieved to date.

You can also search the news pages for 'contests' held by other groups and individuals which can help spread the word of your art.