Entries from December 2007 ↓

It is now possible to build your own social networking site, one that goes beyond a mere forum and has the functionality of Facebook and MySpace. The following list comes from Matthew Sherborne’s site.

1. Ning - http://www.ning.com/

Ning will have your social network site up in running fast. Similar to a Blogger blog, free Ning sites are all linked to the central hub. This can be a blessing or a curse depending on how popular your Ning site is. The most popular sites are featured most prominently. As of this writing there are over 6500 Ning sites in operation.

2. CrowdVine - http://www.crowdvine.com/home

Similar to the Ning network, Crowdvine is easy to set up. Crowdvine can even allow you to incorporate RSS feeds to update from your blog, other social network sites or photo stream.

3. KickApps - http://www.kickapps.com/

KickApps offers users a vast range of features including Widget support, guest books, video feeds and a lot more. One of the more feature laden of the up and coming social networking platforms.

4. GoingOn - http://www.goingon.com/

GoingOn allows you to set up an interactive blogging platform with many features such as blogging search tagging and feeds.

5. Me - http://www.me.com/

The Me.com concept gives you the tools to create your own social network site around your passions and splits 50% of the revenue your site generates with you.

6. CollectiveX - http://www.collectivex.com/

With CollectiveX you can create an online community around you product, blog, interest or publication.

7. PeopleAggregator - http://www.peopleaggregator.net/homepage.php

The PeopleAggregator site was created in order to allow you to edit store and share all of your digital information in one place. You can use it to manage your friends, groups and content.

8. Elgg - http://elgg.org/

Elgg is an open source social networking platform that brings together some of the best resources commonly found on popular social networks. With Elgg you can create communities of specialized targeted networks.

And an additional one:

9. Vostu - http://vostu.com/

Why would you want to create your own social network? Funny you should ask, we’ll be talking about that next time!

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

This last year has been the big year for online social networks, especially MySpace and now Facebook. The trend this next year will be towards smaller, more niche-based social networks. I can see a social network for artists. I can see a social network for painters. I can see a social network for painters that do plein-aire. I can see a social network for painters that do plein-aire in the Pacific Northwest.

Get the idea?

This is not a new idea. There already exists such organizations. Many of these exist online as forums or email groups. I went to Yahoo! Groups and within seconds found the Pacific Northwest Plein-Aire Painters Group. Imagine a format like Facebook where you can add friends, easily email or write on “walls”, join sub-groups, and all the many other services these provide. Online social networks are about getting together with your friends, sharing, communicating, seeing what everyone else is up to… everything you do with offline social networks.

On Monday we’ll look at some of the tools that are available right now for building your own social network.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

Social media is supposed to be the cornerstone of Web 2.0 and with this I agree. I’ve been dipping my toes in the social media waters for over a year, now, and I’m just starting to get a clear picture of what roles each piece should play. (How’s that for mixed metaphors?)

I still think that blogs are the most powerful forms of social media and communication out there. They are so flexible and can be customized in so many ways, that often you do not even know you are looking at a blog. Blogs have also become mainstream and that has increased their power and reach several-fold. Whatever you do, you MUST have a blog. You can see my personal blog at PeacefulBirder.com.

Tumblelogs are a form of mini-blog, a way of sharing various forms of media (text, photos, video, and more). To get an idea of what these look like, you can go to the Tumbler home page or to my own Tumblelog.

Twitter is even more streamlined, 140 characters of text per post. I can see many uses for Twitter that go way beyond the traditional “here’s what I’m doing now”, although even that serves its purpose. Here are some of the more unusual ways of using Twitter and here is a good guide to Twitter. You can see my own Twitter feed and even follow me if you wish.

This is just a brief introduction to some of the means of social networking available. The next post will talk about some of the really big social networks, like Facebook and MySpace and what changes I think we’ll see in the next year.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

Continuing my review of this ebook, “Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook” by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo…

This book does a great job of introducing you to many of the ways that you can use the new social media aspects of the web. This includes blogs (writing your own and participating in those of others), social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etcetera), microblogs (such as Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku), wikis (and Wikipedia in particular), virtual worlds (such as Second Life), and more. Much of the focus is on blogs (about half the book) and I think rightly so because blogs are still the most prominent form of social media out there and have the most options for anyone involved in marketing (or just communicating).

There is a section on risks or things that could go wrong and they address what I think is the biggest issue: It Doesn’t Get Off the Ground. So many of us have tried to make an impression on the web and have supposedly done everything right and have done the blog, Facebook profile, photos, videos, etcetera; only to find that nothing happens. We even contact other bloggers, join various groups, and have tons of friends on our Facebook account and nothing much happens. This section of the book addresses that and gives some useful suggestions.

My overall impression is that this book is a great start. I highly recommend it because so many of us simply do not have a good grasp of what has been going on with online social networking and how to get started using it. I immediately saw a need for a second book, one that gives you even more specific tools and ideas. For example, what are the all the different kinds of posts you can try on your blog (contests, top 10 lists, and so on), what sorts of things do you put on there, what additional plugins and features can you add… the list becomes very long. [I am currently putting together a toolbox of all the various online marketing tools you can use and this will become part of my upcoming paid membership site. Just the section on blogs alone is expansive.] I look forward to the next book from these two!

(Question for Darren and Julie: do you have an affiliate program set up for selling this book? Have you looked into ClickBank?)

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

This book was impossible to just plow through because they kept giving so many interesting examples and websites that I was constantly setting it down to go check things out (damn Baitcar.com!). My first “oh, yeah” moment was when I read the section “Get Linkable”. I have been designing websites for artists for a couple of years, now, and almost everyone wants one of those pretty Flash-based gallery sites. The problem is that you cannot send someone a link to just one of those pictures and say, “hey, I really like this one.” The best you can do is say, “go to this page and then click on the 12th thumbnail over and that is the picture that I really like.” In this new age where more is happening online rather than offline it is vital that you make everything on your website linkable. How does a blogger send someone to their favorite painting of yours if they have to explain it in terms of navigating a Flash site. They don’t. They will end up not even bothering because you’ve made it so difficult. So in addition to my motto of “make it easy to buy from you”, I add a new one: “make it easy to link to you!”

Along these same lines, they suggest that you make it easy for people to embed your images into their website. A great way to do this is to upload your images to Flickr. (I am already picturing a remake of one of my websites where all of the art images are only in Flicker and I simply use their code to embed them into my website.) Another great benefit of this method is that you can tag your images in Flicker which makes it even easier for people to find YOUR picture! (For those unfamiliar with the term, a “tag” is simply a “keyword”.)

My next post will wrap up the review and give you my final recommendations.

The website for this book by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo is www.socialmediaready.com. They are also run the company Capulet Communications where they offer web marketing services and truly walk the walk. From Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, they now live in an old farmhouse on the island state of Malta (south of Sicily).

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

Boy, that sounds bad. But actually “Getting to First Base” is the name of a book by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo on social media marketing. I just requested a review copy, so hopefully I’ll get that and can give you a detailed review so you can decide if you want it for yourself. It sounds like a great addition for what we do! I’ll keep you posted.

Update:
Within mere minutes of my request, I had heard from Darren and received my review copy. He even subscribed to this blog! I just printed it out and should have a review up for you in the next few days.

P.S.
Their website is at www.socialmediaready.com.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

In my last post, I promised to answer the question of how to use perceived value as a way to sell more art. I think the bottom line for most people is not to sell more art, necessarily, but to make more money. In fact, it would probably be ideal to only produce and sell one painting a month that took care of all of your living and working expenses with plenty left over. So, on to the question of perceived value.

The best way to increase the perceived value of your work is to simply charge more. Too many artists short change themselves and charge far less than they should. If all of your paintings were listed at over $1000 or over, the perceived value that most people would hold for your work would be quite high. Let’s face it, the “true” value of a piece of art varies from person to person and is highly subjective. You may not buy a work for $1000, but you will probably have a much higher perceived value than if it was only listed for $100.

If you find that you are unable to sell your work at a higher price, try a payment plan that makes it easier for the customer to purchase. I would give them the option of 4 payments of $275/month or 12 payments of $100/month. Charge more and then make it easier to buy from you.

So you can see that perceived value does not depend on a fancy presentation alone.

However, if you do want the fancy presentation, but do not want to rely on a gallery or cannot get into a gallery, you can still accomplish your goal. Have an open house at a fancy hotel in a nearby larger city. In fact, the farther away from home you are, the more impressive this will seem. Rent one of their conference rooms and set up your own one or two-night show. Be sure to do some local advertising to bring in potential customers and offer something unusual like gourmet coffee and chocolates. You will also get the attention of the high-paying guests staying at the hotel and the more expensive the hotel, the more likely these guests might become customers. Bring some friends with you to keep you company and help fill up the room (and help pay for a motel room in a nearby and less expensive establishment). Keep a clean and elegant look to the show, for you are concentrating on perceived value. Dress to the nines and play it up. And make sure you capture the names of as many potential customers as possible! Do not pass up this golden opportunity. Give away something for free in exchange for their name and email address. You can even have them sign up their email address and you will send them the link to a free print that they can download and print themselves.

These are just a couple of ideas for increasing the perceived value of your work. Use your creativity to come up with even more!

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

This is the question that got me working in this niche of art marketing in the first place. It has also led to more questions than answers. Why is there so much polarity in the value we place on art? Either we see it as very valuable and expensive or we see it as common and not worth much. It seems our perception is more jaded by the presentation than by the art itself.

For example, you walk into a beautiful, expensive-looking gallery. The decor is plush carpet, dark hardwoods, even some marble. Every piece has its own lighting and is presented flawlessly. You expect these paintings to go for hundreds or thousands of dollars each. You know the painting you buy is also a valuable investment that will be worth many more times than what you paid for it. You finally pick one out that goes for only $2500 and you feel like you got a great deal. You hang it proudly on your living room wall.

Next, you are driving to the grocery store and you see a man on the side of the road with several paintings stacked on blankets with a sign that reads, “Starving Artist Sale”. You pull off of the road and check them out. Nice work, but you do not expect to pay any more than $25. You go home and proudly show what you bought and figure it would look good in the basement.

What is the difference between these paintings? Is the first one really 100 times better than the second? What if you compared the two and realized with a shock that they were painted by the same person and were virtually identical?! The only difference between the two is your perceived value based on where you bought it.

You know that this is a truer scenario than we would like to admit. The real question then isn’t “why” for we know that answer. The presentation influenced our perceived value more than the quality of the painting itself. The real question, or at least the more useful question, is “how do I use this knowlege to sell more of my own art?”

That is the question I will answer in the next post.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

A few days ago I received an email from a friend and client of mine who asked, “why is art sold for so little on eBay?”

The answer to that question involves supply and demand. Hundreds, if not thousands of artists are trying to sell their work on eBay. I just did a quick check of the ‘paintings’ category on eBay and there are almost 50,000 different paintings! Many of these, especially by newer and unknown artists, are going for ridiculously low prices, often below $5. How can you ever make a living like this?

You can’t.

If you produce a less common form of art, say hand-formed clay tiles or wooden totems, you should have better luck. But with the current abundance of paintings, it is only natural that the prices have been driven so low. Now, certain paintings are going for a very decent price, but these are for the works of well-known artists.

I have a few suggestions on how to utilize eBay successfully. One method is to become well-known. In a future post I will give you some ways that you can accomplish this. Another method is to only try to sell art that falls within a category that does not have a high level of supply. If you are only a watercolorist, though, this will not do you much good.

The third method is to use eBay to help increase awareness of you and drive people towards another website. eBay rules do not allow you to include web addresses in your item description. One way to get around this is to use the About Me page to include that information, but I have an even more effective method. Sell an ebook. Create an ebook about a subject that will attract the sort of person you know would be interested in your art. If you are a pen and ink artist, write an ebook about the lives of well-known pen and ink artists and how to choose art that will increase in value as an investment. Include yourself in that list of artists and include your biography. Give your website in the book and let the reader know that there will be more information available there. Sell it for a price that is low enough to encourage purchasing, yet high enough to imply that there is value. I would suggest $7 and make sure that after they purchase it, they are sent a link to download it immediately. You can either just send them the direct link or go through a company like E-Junkie which charges only $5/month to provide protected download services (among many other really cool services).

There are many other ideas for ebook topics and I’m sure you can come up with several. Be creative and put on your marketing cap!

Speaking of value, provide it. Do not just throw together a few pages that talk about how wonderful you are. Provide useful and interesting information and do a good job. Get help writing and designing it if you need to and make sure that you provide real value for your customer. Here is a great article by Steve Pavlina that talks about this (sort of) and is well worth reading. And stay tuned for that post about how to become well-known!

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

These last few posts have applied the Eightfold Path of Buddhism to marketing. This all got started because I grew sick of reading marketing information that was full of hyperbole and was not concerned with anything other than making more money for the auther… at any cost. I also realized that my own website had become the same way, influenced no doubt by all the material I was reading and absorbing. Enough was enough.

I kept the posts relatively short for a couple of reasons. One, we are all in different situations that require different patterns of thought and we need to apply this way of thinking to our own unique situations. Two, this whole process is still relatively new to me and I do not have a lot of experience to draw upon. As I learn and experience more, I will share it with you. As I go back to talking about other marketing subjects, I will keep in mind the philosophy behind right marketing, sometimes applying it directly and sometimes just experiencing its influence.

One more note. I want this to be a website where you come to get useful information, not just interesting philosophy. I will also keep that in mind as I continue to provide you with quality posts.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com