I’ve been all over the map. I’ve tried Google sites, Blogger, WordPress, Medium, and sundry other possible places for my “Art’s Place” website. Interestingly enough each one has its assets and liabilities … so far I haven’t found a perfect app, although WordPress stand-alone is certainly the closest. After descending into near total confusion, I decided to list the essential criteria I needed.
- COST. Since I hope a family member will take over this effort, I want the site to be essentially cost free. Choice boiled down to blogger.com and wordpress.com. Other free sites like medium.com don’t provide the essential format.
- SPACE. Almost all apps charge more as you require more bandwidth … space to store your stuff. Only blogger.com seems to have no limit while wordpress.com has a relatively small free limit. Since I have a ton of materials that needs some place to go, space is not the only criterion. You need to be able to retrieve these items and the blog platform is not really suitable for a library style operation.
- EASE OF USE: I wanted something that a total amateur could run. While blogger.com will do almost everything you need, it does require some continual learning. A free WordPress site on the other hand is much easier to learn and provides the page/menu format I need as well as a simple blog to communicate with followers.
Long-story-short – I’ve chosen wordpress.com for the website with links to facebook, twitter, linkedin and other social media sites. A simple announcement or product post will find its way to all of these key sites.
Now what to do about all the stuff. I’ve hunted hard for a place that handles a broad range if items and there are any number of them … but they all charge in someway for a listing or by the month. My search was strictly for a place that is free or applies its charge only when the sale take place. As far as I can tell there isn’t a single place that will do it all. So I have chosen the best for the types of items.
- PAYPAL – The simplest and best way to keep track of your sales and accounting. Well known and reliable.
- ART – Fine Art America provides excellent selling services and it’s my choice for artwork
- ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES – And the winners are: kijiji.com and Ebay.ca (although the listings are limited to 50 per month).
- BOOKS & DOCUMENTS – There are boxes and boxes of books and documents to sell. Some are rare and valuable … some are just good reads. After trying many options, ebooks and print on demand are going to Magcloud.com and downloadable references to scribd.com. We are also currently testing albiris.com … a major international book seller.
We hope you will join us in our virtual downsizing adventure.
Art
ARTS PLACE 