It's taken me several weeks of hard slog but I have finally taken the next step with my artistry website and set up the capability to take payments online.

Up until now my website was simply a gallery to be used to view my artwork before one would be redirected to a separate online shop in the form of Etsy. This was fine to begin with but it came with issues.

Etsy on its own is actually a great selling platform. Once you have your products added with all the right keywords you would have access to potential buyers with relatively little effort. After all, millions of prople visit Etsy every day. Of course, it helps if you pay for advertising so that your shop can be highlighted and found! So, if you're just selling direct from an online shop it's fine.

The other issue is cost. Etsy is actually quite expensive when it comes to fees. You pay to add to your stock listings, you pay to advertise and promote and you pay fees and VAT on your sales. On occasion the fees can be as high as 10% in my experience.

But, there is one other major disadvantage with using a separate online shop. Redirection! If your buyers cannot buy direct from your website and you redirect them elsewhere you risk losing the sale, for a variety of reasons.

Your buyer may trust you and your site but not the site you redirect them to.
Your buyer is not happy entering their personal details into another site.
Your buyer may feel obliged to register with the online shop when they don't want to resulting in walking away.
Some people don't know or trust Etsy or other online shop.

I received feedback from customers and all of these points were raised at some point. The answer? Take payments online direct from my own website.

I won't lie. It sounded easy but the whole process was a long slog. First, my website had to be upgraded to be able to do commerce and this meant creating individual inventory items complete with lots of details. Then, I had to set up business PayPal and Stripe accounts to enable me to accept payments online. Of course, these accounts then have to be linked to your website which proved to be anything but simple! But, after many hours of plugging away at it I have finally set up my online shop within my own website.

Was it all worth it? It's too soon to know but I'm optimistic as ever.