Founder of Instapainting here! We were actually far from the first in this space as well (there were incumbents at the top of the Google search ranks from the mid to early 2000s).

As for Instapainting, when ordering and requesting an artist directly, our fee is 26%, unless the artist quotes lower than our base pricing in which case our fee is the difference.

We have artists from India too! http://instapainting.com/gallery/made-in-india https://www.instapainting.com/artists/sunny https://www.instapainting.com/artists/lavdeep

We put you in direct contact with the artist and you can view your artwork through our website and collaborate directly

This is a Show HN. I’m sure the poster would greatly appreciate feedback from someone with experience like yours, not an advertisement for your own service.

Of course! If they are reading this feel free to email me anytime (email in profile) for feedback or advice.

It looks like this is an MVP setup on shopify and is exactly how it should be started to test the waters. There's no reason not to start simply because Instapainting, etsy, or countless other sites exist already, but it does mean the grind is going to be long and hard (I've just been slowly iterating since 2014 and unbeknownst to me there were dozens of incumbents even back then) and unlikely to be VC-backed in this space. I've seen many come and go as most upstarts in this space find the revenue and profits unimpressive—this is honestly the biggest reason why most fail.

Getting press is generally hard because the idea isn't technically new, and people don't like to write about it as-is as it's too commercial.

SEO should be the main focus, as any such sites that don't rank on Google will quickly find ad-driven user acquisition costs to drive down the already thin margins too much.

I would also be prepared and iterate and implement a more robust tech based platform off this initial traction as quickly as possible. I honestly don't think there's much room in the space in the future for plain middlemen in this space between Instapainting and Etsy being available that enable direct artist participation. We look like we just forward orders over to artists but artists are basically running the show now on Instapainting, and we just try to surface the best performing ones.

Love the fact how helpful you are being in a post about a potential rival.

Woah there, that seems just a tad negative!

I didn't read this post as an advertisement - if anything, I was surprised by the humbleness of their post, which made clear that they were not the first with this idea, and that they take a very reasonable percentage.

How did it not sound like an advertisement? It was pretty matter of factly "WE DO THIS TOO BUY FROM US"

It was nothing of the sort - it was a reply to comments specifically about the InstaPainting service.

But implicit in that is that HN is not a market place nor a captive audience for you to advertise to either. It is common (and appreciated) that people post details of related services/products and their experiences creating/using them.

26%! wow! Looks like this field needs some competition.

26% is low. It's a buyer/middleman's market through and through.

The pricing is decided by the artist, and every style is owned by an individual artist. We add percentage of commission on the base artist pricing.

That's a good approach. I think it would be worth including that information on the FAQ page - transparency builds trust and such issues are more important in a global marketplace.

As an amateur painter myself it's nice to see this equitable approach which also leaves room for each artist to maintain an individual style. Well done!

I love this, good job.

I'm curious, does the purchase transfer the copyright to the buyer? Or does it remain with the artist?

Thank you! According to current copyright laws the buyer does not hold copyright to the artwork.

What does current law have to do with it? Works for hire are generally copyrighted by the hirer, and copyrights can be transferred by contract.

Just to add a bit of (useful) pedantry - what happens to copyright depends on the jurisdiction. In some (Norway, for instance) you can not fully transfer all rights, even if you want to. (This _is_ pedantry, as you can pretty much transfer any commercial rights - just about the only thing you can not transfer is the right to be named the creator of the work.

It's kind of true that you can't transfer all rights in the US, where while you can nominally transfer all rights, any such transfer can be reclaimed 35 or 40 years, with the required notice of he reclamation provided after 25 or 30 years.

IIRC/IANAL, in Germany you are allowed to transfer commercial use and declare any different name as the creator. But you can't transfer the copyright itself, so you will always stay in control.

The painting is also a derivative work.

I remember an old shark tank episode where kids would paint for you. Here it is: https://umano.com/

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