Art Print Issues by Barney Davey

Useful Links for Building the Best Website for Visual Artists

Perhaps you are a late adopter and haven't yet built a Web site. That's okay, it's never too late to get in the game. Or, perhaps you have built a Web site but wonder if it is the best you could have done, or you know it needs help. Whatever your situation, fear not, there is awesome help available. And, as with so much you find on the 'Net, it's free for the taking.

Clint Watson is an art lover, former gallery owner, software guru and the proprietor of FineArtStudioOnline. If you are looking for a turnkey Web site solution designed specifically for artists, this is one you should seriously consider. Clint also publishes the Fine Art Views blog wherein he provides help for for artists on a wide range of subjects, including his insight and expertise on building and marketing Web sites. Follow this link to find his archived posts on the subject.

Here is an abbreviated list of topics Clint covers:

• What REALLY Drives Web Traffic - Word-of-mouth and Advertising
• Top 10 Essential Elements of an Artist's Website
• Web Traffic Driver #9: Build RSS Subscribers
• SEO Not the Most Important Thing
• How to Make the Best Use of the Internet to Sell Your Art

Charley Parker is a wonderful illustrator, and a whole lot more as his own self-description from his blog advises:

I am a webcomics artist, cartoonist, illustrator, web site designer and Flash animator (yeah, me and my 5 clones) living in the Philadelphia area.

Being an artist and independent Web site designer gives Charley unique qualifications. That he writes clearly with purpose and humor makes his information targeted and precious. He has an ongoing series of articles with sage advice for artists seeking to build a Web site. He started with How to Not Display Artwork on the Web and followed with six posts so far of the eight to ten he envisions for the series:

Part 1: Finding a web hosting provider

Part 2: Registering a domain name

Part 3: Building your web site

Part 4: Planning your web site

Part 5: Designing your web site

Part 6: Preparing images for the web

The information provided by Clint and Charley is as helpful and specific for visual artists as any I've seen. Their different backgrounds provides you with a wonderful perspective. Given this is Thanksgiving weekend, what they do is just another reason to be grateful for people like them who willing share so much so artists can freely learn new and improved ways to go about their business better.

Why I Am Thankful

Why I Am Thankful

From the moment of creation when each of us became the specific person we are, endowed with our own uniqueness and incredible special gifts, we are indeed a most lucky person. We have beaten the tremendous odds in nature's selection process to become a person, to be alive. Who cannot be thankful for the opportunity to be alive?

If you are reading this blog, you, as I am, are greatly blessed. For there are so many who, while lucky to be alive, will never glimpse much less experience the privileged lives we lead with our computers, cell phones, cars, warm homes, plentiful food and with an abundance never known by previous generations.

I am grateful for what I have and have been given. To me the greatest gift of any parent is the one I have known and possessed all my days, that is unconditional love from my parents, siblings, extended family and close friends. I will be in the company of many of them over this Thanksgiving holiday weekend. For that too, I am grateful and blessed and am eager to bask in the warmth of their love and friendship. No material gifts nor money can match such a magnanimous rewarding gift.

Reflecting on Thanksgiving and family brings to mind the powerful poignant lyrics of Tracy Chapman's "Heaven's Here On Earth" from her New Beginnings album.

I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise
Of ordinary people leading ordinary lives
Filled with love, compassion, forgiveness and sacrifice
Heaven's in our hearts

In our faith in humankind
In our respect for what is earthly
In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding

Look around
Believe in what you see
The kingdom is at hand
The promised land is at your feet
We can and will become what we aspire to be
If Heaven's here on earth

Have a blessed safe holiday if you are celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend. Wherever you are, regardless if it is a place where it is a mere late fall weekend, take a moment to rejoice for your blessings, gifts and your little piece of heaven here on earth just the same.

Please know I also am thankful, humbled and honored to have you as a reader of my blog.

All the best for a Happy Thanksgiving!

Artists, Toot Your Horn - Tout de Suite

TOOT YOUR HORN

Regular readers of this blog know I also am a guest blogger on Absolute Arts, one of the Internet's most heavily trafficked art sites. This weekend November 16, I have a post there titled Artists, Toot Your Horn - Tout de Suite. The topic is self-evident. It simply implies if artists don't toot their own horn, who will do it for them, and who will hear or know about them? And, that there is no time to waste in doing so.

If you've committed to a career making art, or you aspire to one, you are a rare person. We will take it on faith you are blessed with the talent and tenacity to tackle the tough formidable task of establishing a successful small business in a field crowded with many ambitious players. This blog is aimed at helping you achieve your goals and besting your competition.

Getting ahead in such the art world requires efficiently multi-tasking a variety of activities, including the all-important task of confidently letting the world around you know you are here. Really, as a successful artist, you are much more than merely here or arrived, you are the one who brings to those whose lives you touch something special, unique and out of the ordinary. Part of your success quotient is in your ability to communicate about your art, about yourself. In other words, to toot your horn.

In my Absolute Arts blog post, I mention a couple of books. One, I believe will be so helpful for just about anybody it is worth mentioning here as well: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Published in 2002, this remarkable book remains on the Amazon.com Top 100 list and is ranked #1 in three separate categories there. It has a 4.5 star reader review rating and has been reviewed an astounding 359 times on Amazon.

By comparison, my book, How to Profit from the Art Print Market (linked top right of this blog) has garnered 10 reader reviews since being published two years ago. This is much closer to the average for most books. I'm proud it regularly ranks in the top 20 Business of Art category on Amazon. This is gratifying given its narrow focus serves a relatively small audience as compared to a general self-help or business book. I hope you find time to read the blog post on Absolute Arts and the book mentioned here. And, if you haven't read my book, I'll toot my own horn and suggest you order your own copy while you are on Amazon.

Seven Break Out Art Marketing Ideas

Is working and marketing inside your comfort zone paying off for you?

• If you are not getting the results you want from your marketing.
• If you are frustrated with your sales volume.
• If you desire to have greater awareness for your art, you ought to be thinking of unique ways to do something about these things. It may be time to shake up your thinking and start with some fresh ideas for your marketing methods.

CONSIDER WILD ABANDON

If your marketing is average, mundane, run of the mill, ho-hum and just like everyone else's you are putting tremendous pressure on all other aspects of your business to make it successful. It means your art has to be extraordinary, your customer service off the charts and business acumen second to none. There was a time, not all that long ago, when a formulaic approach to launching a print career was doable. Such is not the case eight years into the 21st Century.

Im not a devotee, but nevertheless do confess to the guilty pleasure of occasionally watching the hit TV program "Dancing with the Stars" for its pure pablum for the brain. Besides charisma, and a modicum of talent and a fan base, those who go far are able to shed their inhibitions to let loose and dance with passion and wild abandon using their bodies in ways that outside of the dance floor would be considered embarrassing lunatic behavior. As viewers, we love the spectacle and appreciate the dancers' ability to leave the modest outer child in the dressing room so the wild inner child can come out and entertain us.

It occurs to me that if one pursues creating and marketing art with the same level of intensity as displayed by these non-professional dancers who put themselves far outside their normal comfort level of behavior, it would open doors you might not even know existed. I'm not suggesting embarrassing lunatic behavior for your marketing, but rather to stretch yourself to go beyond what you might normally do. How far you go is up to you.

How do you get your art to market? Increasingly, the traditonal means are less powerful as aids to art marketers. The recent three-part story on ArtExpo here shed light on how this is so. Not to say tradeshows and trade magazines don't have a place in the art marketer's arsenal, they do and can still deliver new buyers effectively even if their potency has ebbed in the face of changing times.

So what other creative means are there for print artists to find new collectors? The following is a list of some novel art marketing ideas you can use. They are just concepts, mostly borrowed, some with new twists, but all things you could be doing that will help ratchet up your sales and awareness. Think of them as brainstorming exercises to help you break out of the marketing doldrums:

1. Collectors Club - This hardly qualifies as a new idea. It's been used by sucessful print artist for decades. The twist for artists here would be to start now regardless of how many prints or buyers one has. Who says you have to wait until you've published hundreds of prints and have thousands of buyers. Start now and begin to build your own loyal collectors from the ground up. You can study such diverse artists as Michael Godard, Edna Hibel, P. Buckley Moss and Thomas Kinkade to name a few who have effectively used a collector society to grow their business and market share.

2. Get into retail stores - Again, not revolutionary thinking unless you haven't done it. I have known artists who were able to do shows several times of year in their local Nordstroms store. Nordies doesn't need your help marketing. If you pick a lesser known store, you can offer to do some co-marketing and publicity. In the spectrum of retail goods, art is a relatively sexy product. Keep this in mind and use its potential in your pitch to retailers and in your marketing with them. This recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "The decor store as gallery" should give you inspiration and ideas.

3. Get publicity - How creative can you be in doing something newsworthy? Donating another piece of art for a charitable function is at once worthy, overdone and tedious. Don't take me wrong, you'll get mileage from such activities, but it's not cutting edge  or out there with originality. Think about what you can do that is worthy, slightly or very outrageous and specific to your art? How far out of your comfort zone can you go to get your local/regional media interested in you and your art? It doesn't have to be lunatic theatrics, but if you've got a hidden wild streak that in you that can be brought out for fun and profit, why wouldn't you use it? Those aforementioned dancers, even those who are actors, find themselves shaking their booties and acting well out of character and are finding they have the ability to release aspects of themselves they weren't even in touch with. Can you shake it loose in some ways with your marketing and publicity efforts?

4. Outdoor art - Painting a mural with a message on a public wall is one idea. It is trite and not original. But if you look at what Wyland, the marine artist, has done with his 100 whaling walls for inspiration, you realize you can put as dramatic a twist on things as you have the chutzpah to attempt. In Wyland's case, he's taken it a step furhter and set up the Wyland Foundation. What outdoor canvases can you conjure for yourself? If you can paint large scale, or project your work large scale onto an outdoor screen or wall for a cause, or for the hell of it and it makes sense in some way to garner media attention, go for it.

5. Start an art Meetup group - The neat thing about the Meetup concept is you get to define the purpose. Maybe your group will meet monthly to do art walks in your area together. Maybe you will meet to do field trips to museums or wineries. Here's an idea: partner with the wineries in advance and a local artists group, you could do an art & wine affair. Or as in point #2 above, seek out some retail stores to partner with. The only thing stopping you are self-imposed limits on your ingenuity and willingness to take charge of your marketing. Meetup groups can become great social networks as well as business networks. You'll get from it what you want from it and what you put into it.

6. Free art - Print up a bunch of prints and have them ready to give to appropriate people for free. You can tell them if they like the work, they can send you a check, or make a donation via a Paypal account on your Web site. You can tell them to call or email you and like the band Radiohead did its new album that gained great publicity, tell them they can pay what they think the art is worth. Offer to send send them a Paypal invoice to make things convenient. Don't be afraid to suggest the price they should pay for the print, but let them know they can pay more or nothing at all. Figure out how to get your local media involved so you get free publicity from it.

I've written here about the British artist Banksy and Australian artist Hazel Dooney who are both controversial and who are both giving away their work and gaining much more publicity from it than they could afford to buy by doing so. Both these artists have prints on their Web sites that they offer as free downloads. How can you do them one better?

7. Graphic wrap something wild and/or unique - Graphic wraps for cars and buses is old hat these days. You see it all the time, so it's not quite as effective as when new. Think about the concept artist Christo, he's wrapped the Reichstag in Germany, put saffron gates in Central Park and had dozens of other auspicious art installations. Now you may not have the budget and audacity to do something quite so grand and outrageous as that, but what can you think of that could be graphic wrapped that is different? Something that will get lots of attention for you and your art? List all the things you would never graphic wrap. You are bound to come up with some ideas from that sort of brainstorming exercise. How about: Awings? Windows? Buildings? Refrigerators? Bars? Dance Floors? Bandstands? Roofs? World's largest postcard? World's largest coffee cup? You get the idea...

Kick your creative genius into thinking on a different scale and use it to figure out ways to break out of the doldrums of ho-hum everyday marketing. If you are ready to deliver your art on scale from gaining wide exposure, you'll find yourself in another league before you know it.

Bet on Facebook - It Could Be the One

Much is written about the potential of Web 2.0, which is a catch-all phrase for all the developments around using Web apps as opposed to those residing on your computer. In that world, your word processing, spreadsheets and other programs would be updated without you having to purchase the next Office 15.0 suite to stay current. You would have to have a subscription, no free ride there.

Other important components of Web 2.0 are social networking and social bookmarking platforms with  MySpace and Facebook typifying the former and Del.ico.us, Digg and Technorati the latter. Blogs are Web 2.0 and so are YouTube and Flickrto name but a few of the most popular 2.0 type sites proliferating on the Web. Some would say altenate universe sites like Second Life are in this group as well.

For some marketers, including artists, galleries and publishers, these and other sites like them have represented new ways to find new collectors. Clint Watson in his Fine Art Viewsblog recently passionately argued spending time trying to create your own community instead of using Facebook or other opportunities. Clint feels it is not the best use of one's time. It's hard to disagree with him.

My observations from talking with artists and reading and posting to artist discussion board threads is some are getting very good value from their time using the abovementioned links and others such as Squidoo and Stumbleupon. They report gaining blog traffic and finding new customers by spending time with any or all of the links listed here.

While I agree with Clint that a more traditional approach given a finite amount of time for marketing makes the most sense, I see evidence artists are making these new opportunities pay off. Those who are finding success are diligently working the programs...hey that's just exactly what it takes in traditional marketing. You have to do it, do it some more, get smarter about what you are doing and do it some more.

If you read my recent post, you know I suffered a hard drive failure. I am working to restore the data (fingers crossed). It had many links to stories about Facebook that I planned to use and present to my readers. Since I'm not sure when that will happen now, I'm plunging in with this information. Facebook has been bought in part by Microsoft. Other articles I've been reading and anecdotal information from various trusted resources leads me to believe Facebook is the one and first place among the Web 2.0 possibilites that I would put attention to marketing for myself and for artists I advise. Here is a link to a story from Henry Blodgett's Silicon Alley blog: Facebook Ads: The Devil's In The Details. Recent articles in Internet Retailer magazine also talk about how mass marketers are diligently working to learn how to put Facebook to work for them.

This post could be more thoughtful with more insight provided from the currently unavailable links on my dead hard drive and a little more time cogitating from me. But, I don't want to wait longer. I want to urge you to consider using Facebook as the place where I think you can get the greatest bang for your buck (and time) from among all the Web 2.0 opportunities out there. I'm sure there are those who will disagree and I welcome any comments.

If you have been following along with how our industry is changing and how the marketing efforts of companies in all industries are changing, you know you may need to pick a horse to bet on. I'm not saying the others won't deliver, but with limited time, I would go with Facebook as my primary source.

Will Rogers once said: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

Rogers' wisdom applies for marketers in the 21st Century. You can't wait until a clear winner evolves and play catch up. You have to get in somewhere, the sooner the better and going with Facebook looks to me about as a good a choice as you can make.

How to Lose a Customer for Life

(Note: If you have corresponded with me and are expecting a reply, please try again. My hard drive failed last week and I have not been able to resuscitate it to date. It had all my contacts and emails on it. I'll keep trying as failure is not an option in my opinion, but it may require patience on your part and mine.)

How to Lose a Customer for Life - Good Customer Service Is Not Optional

Unfortunately, customers, clients and collectors don't grow on trees in the back yard. Instead they are expensive and difficult to attain for the tiniest one-person business up to the largest multi-national conglomerate. Regardless of size they are the lifeblood of every business.

Artists and publishers can find information here and in my book about how to find customers, it's called marketing. Additionally, there is a plethora of art marketing advice available from a wide array of providers on the subject, including books, magazines, blogs, Web sites and consultants. Nearly all of it is aimed at how to capture new business. Don't let the preponderance of information about getting new customers lull you into thinking keeping existing ones is less important. It is the opposite.

Keeping customers is more important than finding new ones.

The conversion of a prospect into a customer begins a nourishing, nurturing process. Here is a simple truism: Companies that are successful at customer care will flourish while those that do not will not. Investing to keep a customer happy is far less expensive than the cost of acquiring new ones. There is a break-even point where having a customer becomes profitable. When a business frequently sells to repeat customers, its profit margins grow dramatically as the cost of the customer acquisition is amortized over multiple transactions.

The following is an example of an easy way to lose a customer for life.