369 Aether / Case study
Case 01 · budzko.art
A painter's website that sold a painting on its own.
Katsiaryna Budzko is a painter. She is also my wife. I say it first: this is my first case, and I won't pass a family project off as a client one. Every number below is measured on the live site.
Where it started
September 2026.
A template site with placeholder images instead of her paintings. Addresses like /#/gallery that Google couldn't open. 25 characters of readable text on the page. Zero pages in Google.
Sales only through Saatchi, which keeps 40%.
What I built
Six things, each one checked on the live site.
- Every painting has its own page — size, year, price, the story behind it, and "sold" when it's sold. 29 of 29 works with the artist's own description.
- Google can read it. Each page reaches the browser as finished text, not an empty shell waiting for scripts: 25 characters became 1,500–2,500.
- Google indexed it. After fixing the internal links, 36 of 36 pages entered the index in 11 days. The site now has 40.
- Enquiries land in her inbox. A contact form on her own domain that knows which painting the visitor is asking about. Email at hello@budzko.art.
- Her paintings appear in Google Shopping. 23 available works in Google's free listings, with a catalogue that updates itself when a painting sells.
- Running cost: €0 a month for hosting, email, form and analytics. Only the domain is paid.
What happened
A sale with no marketplace in between.
On 7 October a collector in the UK wrote through the form on the page of "Simple Presence". He quoted the size, the year and the price — he had read the page. The painting was sold, shipped on 17 October, and the deal is closed. No marketplace took a cut.
One sale is one sale, not a trend. But it came from the exact thing the site was built for: a page per painting, findable and with a price.
Before → after
The numbers.
Measured on budzko.art, September–October 2026. Not estimates.
Your site
Same approach, built around your paintings.
Not sure yet? I'll mock up your homepage with your own work in 3 days, free.