Alright, you've got an Etsy shop, you've got a Zazzle shop, you've got a DeviantArt account. If you build it, they will come - right? Wrong. You can have the most awesome artwork in the world and it isn't going to do you a lick of good unless you promote it. If nobody sees it, they're not going to buy it.
When it comes to promoting your artwork, dinking around on a bunch of little forums spreads you thin - you need more power, more bang for your buck. I won't downplay the importance of promoting on forums or by commenting on other blogs, but I'm focusing on things that deliver the most exposure for the minimum amount of work. In addition, there's nothing wrong with self-promotion, but if you're constantly squawking about your Etsy store, people are probably going to tune you out. I'd suggest sticking to an attractive-but-not-annoying forum sig and posting in sub-forums dedicated to arts and crafts.
One of the more useful things I learned from working in retail on commission is about Conversion Rates. Your conversion rate is your ratio of visits to purchases - or, in the case of an online storefront, your ratio of hits to purchases. When the store I worked in started examining conversion rates and counting the number of people walking into the store, the first thing I learned was how startlingly low our average conversion rate was. When asked, off the top of our heads, how many people who visited our store actually bought stuff, we thought it was maybe 60-80%. The truth is that it was much lower than that, probably around 20%. And that was a really good conversion rate. That meant that only 2 out of every 10 customers we had bought stuff.
And that was a brick-and-mortar store, which meant the people coming in were people who were thinking of buying something in the first place (or else they wouldn't have come in the store). Your online viewers are probably going to be far more casual, and probably not intending to make a purchase at all, depending on what it is you're selling. So your conversion rate may be much, much smaller. On top of that, you need to be selling something that people actually want to buy, and you need great photos and presentation of the product. So hopefully, now you can see why selling artwork online can be a real challenge.
Pinterest is fantastic because it's definitely not an artist echo-chamber, and it's wildly popular. In addition, anything you pin directly through Etsy is pinned with the price in the upper left-hand corner - convenient, eh?
Facebook is pretty obvious, but I don't have much luck with Facebook, to be honest.
Twitter is also pretty obvious, and Tweets can be a powerful way to promote your stuff once you have enough Followers.
CraftJuice is another way to promote. It's a website that focuses on crafts. Yes, it's another case where a ton of artists are going to join, but it gets a great deal of traffic, and remember - the more people you reach, even if they're other artists, the more of a chance you're going to have to sell. In addition, it's one more place that your artwork is listed, which means that particular link becomes "tastier" to search engines.
EtsyLush is a place to promote your Etsy Work and store. They're pretty strict about jewelry submissions, because they get so many of them, but you can also promote your art originals here.
100 Craft Links allows you to submit a link to your Etsy store or website. As more links are submitted, your website gets bumped down the list. You can resubmit once it's been bumped completely off.
A Squidoo Lense is another way to promote. This one takes a bit more work, as nobody is going to go to a Lense that doesn't exist, but Squidoo and Twitter can definitely be a power-combo.
Cuteable can be a great way to reach your target audience, if your stuff is cute. Don't be afraid to submit!
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