As a licens­ing artist, I have an online gallery of illus­tra­tions which I pro­tect with a pass­word. I only share that pass­word with poten­tial cus­tomers with seri­ous inquiries about my work. I pub­licly dis­play only some of my illus­tra­tions, a few pieces that I think get my artis­tic style across, so buy­ers have an idea of what my col­lec­tions look like.

Two of my clients at least ended up work­ing with me only after I showed them my full gallery. They hadn’t thought of ask­ing me to see it, and had only showed some mild inter­est in my pub­lic illus­tra­tions. Being proac­tive helped me in that sit­u­a­tion, but I can’t help but won­der about all the missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. After all, I can’t keep track of vis­i­tors to my site if they don’t con­tact me.

I con­sider what I have pub­licly dis­played on my web­site to be a sum­mary, an intro­duc­tion, a pre­view, of the entire com­pi­la­tion of art. I try my best to select rep­re­sen­ta­tive pieces from my col­lec­tions. Unfor­tu­nately, not every­one has the abil­ity to imag­ine or visu­al­ize what my col­lec­tions look like as a whole, with­out actu­ally see­ing them, and cus­tomers can’t like what they can’t see.

The ques­tion is, should I unveil my whole collection?

I was try­ing to weigh the pros and cons of actu­ally dis­play­ing every draw­ing I cre­ate, for every­one in the world to see. Here is what I came up with:

The pros of mak­ing my entire port­fo­lio public

1– A poten­tial cus­tomer will be able to view all the art that I have avail­able, with­out hav­ing to go through the ‘process’ of con­tact­ing me and ask­ing for a pass­word. A ‘process’ that takes a cou­ple of min­utes if I am avail­able right when they request access. But peo­ple are turned off when they have to wait for any­thing nowa­days, and I understand.

2– If they can see the entire gallery, there is a chance that one, just one draw­ing catches their eye par­tic­u­larly, and seals a deal! A draw­ing that might have been among the ones I’d cho­sen to hide.

3– My web­site would be more active, hence more appeal­ing or ‘alive’ if I pub­licly added new illus­tra­tions to my gallery every now and then, instead of doing it behind the scenes.

The cons

1– Yes, steal­ing. I obvi­ously reg­is­ter every draw­ing at the Copy­right offices before I pub­lish any­thing, pub­licly or not, but I still can­not pro­tect my art from being stolen. We’ve heard many sto­ries of man­u­fac­tur­ers or pub­lish­ers just using images com­mer­cially with­out com­pen­sat­ing the artist. See­ing my art on some prod­uct I don’t know about and hav­ing to go through court and all this is really not my cup of tea so I’d rather just hide my hard work from online thieves.

2– Artists steal too! I don’t mind inspir­ing artists; I myself find inspi­ra­tion in other artists work. But get­ting inspired, and copy­ing the draw­ing (or the col­lec­tion idea) are two sep­a­rate things that unfor­tu­nately not all artists discern.

But, then again, what are the chances of some­one steal­ing my work? And what are the chances of some­one giv­ing me work because of a piece or two they’ve seen, that could have been inac­ces­si­ble to them?

I am still unde­cided. The pros and cons I’ve listed are equally impor­tant, which doesn’t really help me make up my mind. It is nat­ural for an artist to pro­tect their art, espe­cially when they make a liv­ing from it. But what if it’s not the right thing to do? What if show­ing every­thing is a good thing that gives the artist more expo­sure and more business?

Tara Reed just wrote about this today too. Check out her post: Four Rea­sons to Con­sider a Pass­word Pro­tected Port­fo­lio on Your Art Licens­ing Web­site. She sug­gests that an artist just start­ing out in Art Licens­ing might want to pub­lish all their work in the begin­ning to get them­selves known, and set a pass­word once they are well estab­lished in the industry.

This is def­i­nitely some­thing to think about… It is a bit scary to just put all your work out there, all the pre­cious illus­tra­tions you spent so much time and energy (and emo­tion?) on for every­one to see. It almost feels like they lose some of their value, doesn’t it?

What do you think? Should I make my entire port­fo­lio pub­lic, or should I not?☮