How can I make a basic online shop to sell my art work in the UK?

Doing your own website and on-line shop is not as difficult as it sounds. We’ve been doing our own for years.

You can use an industry standard like Dreamweaver or Adobe Go Live (that’s the one we use) without needing to understand code. You work with them typing in what you want to say and use one of their templates for your layout. Using something like Word or Publisher is even simpler. We used Publisher for our first sites and they brought us business.

We use Easyspace for our domain names and hosting and set up our shop through Roman Cart. Once you’ve entered your products on there, they give you the code to put into your site for your buy now buttons. You just copy that and paste it into the code of your site. With programmes like Go Live, it’s easy to see the code and where to put in the stuff you’ve copied from Roman Cart.

We then use Paypal to accept payments and have a business account with them. It’s easy to move funds across to your business bank account.

We don’t sell a lot of our art via the websites but they’re useful galleries and bring enquiries from people who’ve looked at them and then want to see the physical works.

Easyspace also has the facility for creating the whole thing using their templates. I’m not sure what the fees are - a few hundred pounds, I think. That’s an option if you want to follow a template from start to finish.

Places like Deviant Art are all right, up to a point. The problem with them is that you’re jostling with hundreds of other artists to be seen and unless someone knows your name, why are they going to look for you?

With your own site you can make sure you have key words that help people to find your kind of art, in your location.

Good luck!