Hi Donna: I do fairly well on this Pixels/FineArtAmerica site. Strangely the stuff that sells best are these horror images, lol. They also have excellent SEO, meaning your stuff shows up prominently on Google search. On Pixels, you can customize your artist website, like mine OTTO RAPP website I use other sites as well, but they are mostly a waste of time. FAA/Pixels pay you per paypal right away once the return period has past. I also got stuff on Zazzle, but not doing that well on there. I just sell enough on Zazzle to pay for printing my business cards there (using my accumulated earnings). If you have merchandise, you constantly have to flog it, and for that, I don't have the time.
As for your private site (unless you have a service already) I recommend either Weebly or Wix. I have most of the websites I control on Weebly.