Online art gallery is a platform of purchase painting online, it is designed to generate new sales from new clients, whereas individual artist websites and social media platforms are essential networking tools.

Those points are all good advice, the problem I have with the ones I use is that all of them seem to be inept at displaying the art. Some are better than others, I find the Pod galleries only useful for exposure, people do look . I have only had success with people emailing me privately through those sites. The reason, I think, is when a buyer wants an original, most want to see it, or directly speak to the artist about the piece, it makes sense. Getting something that is not as it appeared online is a bad experience , no matter the return policy.
At the same time, the internet in my opinion can be a great tool in your box. Marketing is the same in both buildings or virtual locations, in the respect of how you value your art, not only in price but in it's company as well.
Example , a watercolor seascape , ocean and sky and on either side is a "waterscape" of little land or water to the scape but two prominently featured as the main subject and very well proportioned nude men. The paintings both had the fellas in some sort of close physical contact.
I'm not anti gay, or nude, however, I don't think the people interested in my type of art, are looking for homo erotic statement art. On another online site many of my images
have much poorer resolution and look bad but I did not load them that way and they did not look bad for quite a while. Are they being downloaded by others , effectively deteriorating the image? I wonder but have no knowledge of it, certainly it's possible at least.
Finally they all seem to have intermittent hacking or system problems that can prevent access, you know , sorry site under construction... does not look good when somebody goes there looking to view your work.
Still I can't resist the free exposure, if somebody robs me , it still will be my work and not my original. They can't steal those virtually.
I could not have gotten to the first page of an image search of my name without using those site and sharing them with certain words online.
I Believe your points are useful and valid , this is my personal experience and not meant to be opposing.

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Thank you for offering this advice. I am on the fence about online galleries. Some galleries show a good amount of contemporary art and others are extremely traditional artists. I am not sure if the ones I know of as yet fit a profile that suits my work.

I also do not think the artists' work is secure with the majority. Definitely, there are many reasons to have your work at an online gallery, but more research will be necessary.

It takes up a good deal of an artist's time and efforts to place anything in any kind of a gallery. No one wants to waist their good intentions and time by choosing the wrong gallery for them.