Art.com is in the process of changing how you register to become a publisher artist on their site with a new contract agreement - see:http://www.artistrising.com/
It is free to sign up and put your art out there, but you have to provide either your Social Security Number or a Corp id (such as your federal business tax license, or in Europe the VAT - Value Added Tax) so you can get paid.
The good news is they are improving how much money you can earn from their site through sales. Now your percentage includes any framing which customers choose of your work as well. So you get a percentage of the sale of the print and a percentage of the frame sale too.
To actually get started what you need are high quality images, either photos or scans of your work. The specifics are on their site.
Be careful to select all the options for sales, in the past Art.com allowed you to just offer works for sale in one size when you could make it available in all sizes. There is no reason not to publish your work in all sizes unless the image is not high enough in quality. They review for both content and quality.
I recommend you only purchase a paid account when you see if it pays for itself to start with, or if you already have sales, and want to add your large portfolio to the Web.
One thing that bugs me a little is the exclusivity clause that Art.com requires. In other words if you are doing business with other companies to produce your posters, and THEY approach Art.com for sales and marketing, then there is no "exclusivity" clause. Otherwise you have to promise that they are your sales and marketing on the Web.
Also I recommend researching the hierarchical structure of WHERE you place your art images in their classification (controlled vocabulary /ontology) - make sure that you really think it fits the category or will lead to SALES even if it is miscatagorized. It's part of the process of posting your work on their site, to categorize your own work. A practical example of this is the breadcrumbs you see in Art.com:
home > collections > art on the verge > abstract
To get your work to appear in Google's Image Search or Microsoft's Live Search results - Query from time to time on the open Web in Google's IMAGE SEARCH, or Live Search for your art images by their TITLE, and then check to see if Google/Live Search etc has crawled them. The images should appear under the Image Search after a few days! Why? Because they are Google, that's why!
What does this mean to you? This means that you need to create titles which speak to the work, but are also likely strongly identifiable queries, so for example "The Couple" is ok, but "Two Lovers at the Paradise Waterfall" is better, because it can return in more queries and also is more specific.
Categorizing your art in their schemas under "Aliens" is probably not going to be helpful - except if there is something fantastic or alien about it - because alien stuff sells. But, for example, if the work has a strongly Hispanic flavor, categorize the image as Spanish, Mexican, or Latin culture is help build the image in a one-to-many relationship for the image databases, which will help people locate and purchase your work.
You can also sell original art on Art.com but as my experience shows, it may be easier to sell your work on eBay.com
Another place to consider selling your work is in Second Life. As I understand there are 180 art galleries out there and people are doing some amazingly successful works. (Reference: Doug McDavid's Doug Mandelbrot in SecondLife, as of Feb. 2007)
If you wish you can also create work for sale which only exists as a digital file and only becomes a physical representation of it when it is sold as a copy. Lots of software lets you create original work, even Photoshop works to do that.
Let me know if this helped or you need more. There are other sites which sell works on the Web in addition to Art.com, including those for commercial art.
If you do publish in other locations online that are not paid, such as Flickr to help drive sales. The digital world exists to be linked.
So for a test, I recommend you order one of your own prints from Art.com for a friend or love in your life so you can see the quality. Art.com's printed editions, I have to say, are very very good. I was extremely impressed with their quality. If you are impressed, as I was, tell people. It is a great, inexpensive way to bring your art into people's lives.
Since so few of my prints sell what people don't know is that they are actually getting a very limited print which will become more obvious in the future.
Best of luck in marketing and selling your artwork over the Web!
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