Entries from February 2008 ↓

Brenda Boylan is one of the best pastel artists that I have seen. A couple of mornings ago, Sara and I sat drinking our coffee and just going through her blog, Dusty Fingers, looking at each of the pieces and marveling at their beauty.

We especially loved looking at the posts where she showed several images of the work as it progressed. One of her latest posts, Cafe’ Seating 8.5″ x 13″, takes you through the progress of painting a scene from a cafe in Portland. Her use of the blue and orange under-coating was brilliant and helped create a work that was full of vibrant energy and color.

Here is her “Bathing Yellow Irises”, an 18″ x 24″ painting that was selected as one of the most popular on EBSQ. I can see why because this one really grabbed me, also.

You can find Brenda’s work at the following places:

• Portland Open Studios
• Imagekind
• CafePress
• EBSQart.com
• Creative Literacy Project

Go take a look, subscribe to her blog, let her know how much you love her work… and buy something!

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Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.YourArtMarketing.com

1. A New Theme

I went with the Copyblogger theme that comes with all WordPress installations. I chose this one because it allowed a lot of flexibility, was widget-ready, and looked clean and professional. Chris Pearson is a great designer. I’ve already had a few people comment that they liked the change and none that did not like it.

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2. A New Way to Purchase My Book

After discussing my experience with Lulu.com over on the forum, I decided to switch to my regular provider of digital download services, E-Junkie. E-Junkie has really been delightful to work with and they provide everything you need to start selling online. Their shopping cart setup is as easy as adding products and then adding buttons to your site. You can also use them for non-digital products (aka… art) and use more than just PayPal for payments. I’ve used them for a couple of years and have been very satisfied.

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3. Support This Blog support page.

I talk about this more on the support page, but the ideas was this: keep the main content area free of annoying ads and yet still provide a way for my readers to help support this blog. None of the ads require you to purchase anything, you just fill out some information and then I get paid each time. The first ad, for example, pays me $25 for each lead, so you are really helping me when you do these offers!

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So there are the 3 big changes to the blog, I hope you like them.

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Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.YourArtMarketing.com

How to Make Money from Your Blog

My head is literally spinning from all of the new information I have been learning in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been delving into the world of affiliate marketing and trying to get a grasp on the whole thing. You see, in the world of making money online, affiliate marketing is huge. All it really consists of is selling other people’s stuff, but when you put that model online you can do all sorts of new things with it. I mention this because some of what I’ve learned in this process can be used to help you make money on your blog.

First, here are some of the ways that you can make money from your blog:

• Google Adsense
• selling your stuff
• selling other people’s stuff
• placing ads
• selling ad space
• create a mailing list

I put Google Adsense first because that is what a lot of people first think about when they think about making money from their blog. I have also found that it is not a very good method. It is fairly easy to set up, but it provides a low return. I set up a blog for a friend that utilizes Google Adsense extensively. Last month she had almost 150,000 page views and almost 42,000 unique visitors. Even with that kind of traffic, Google Adsense only brought in about $100. Now that’s not bad, but for that kind of traffic you would think that the return would be much higher.

Selling your own stuff is what most artist do. Whether you sell directly from your site or you have links to online stores such as Etsy, eBay, or CafePress, you are probably doing some variation of this one.

Selling other people’s stuff is what is referred to as affiliate marketing. There are entire books, courses, blogs, and more written about this. A common way to do this is to write a post about a certain subject or product that you believe in and then include your affiliate link for people to click on and purchase. When I write about mailing lists, I will talk about Aweber and when you click on that link and then sign up, I get a small percentage of that sale. (Actually, I get 20% which is pretty good!)

Placing ads is what I have just started to do on this site. I will try to keep it minimal and will pay attention to the aesthetics of the site, but I do want to make a little bit of money to help support my habit (blogging). The ad at the bottom of this post helps people to find more information about particular education programs. Many of us like to take classes now and then and when you send for information using that ad, I make some money. The ad at the top of my sidebar is also something that some people will be interested in. Until you can make a living full-time from selling your art, it helps to have another way to make money at home.

Selling ad space is not something I have pursued yet, but may in the future. This is a more consistent source of income than placing ads, but may or may not pay as much. For example, a company may ask to place an ad on my site for a month and pay me anywhere from $50 to $500 for that. I have not pursued this because up until now, my readership has been rather low. Once I started posting a longer content-rich post once a week on Mondays and my featured artist post on Fridays, my readership has been steadily growing. Last month I averaged 36 unique visitors per day and the month before only 5. I am also up to 31 RSS subscribers.

The last thing to talk about is a mailing list and instead of rehashing what I have already written about on the forum at www.YourArtMarketing.com, I will instead point you to that post here.

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Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.YourArtMarketing.com

Heather Brown Truman, of Lexington, KY, is the talent behind BAD! Kitty Art Studio. Her work is awesome, inspiring, beautiful, and magical. She works in both oil and mixed media and the results are phenomenal. Here is her latest, “I danced all night” and if you go to her blog, you can read what she has to say about it.

In her profile, Heather has a quote from Sol Lewitt, American conceptual artist and minimalist. Part of that quote goes “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists.” Heather is definitely a mystic as her work reaches out and grabs you by the heart and soul, a much deeper place than mere rational mind.

For a broad look at Heather’s work, her online studio can be found at www.badkittyartstudio.com. Visit her blog or join her at www.YourArtMarketing.com.

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Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.YourArtMarketing.com

Today I am going to make a departure from my normal schedule and talk about a new way that Diane Clancy and I have found to help all of you artists learn about art marketing and share your own experiences. We have been working and planning for the past month and are finally ready to announce our new art marketing forum, YourArtMarketing.com.

We have both received a lot of questions about art marketing and were becoming frustrated that we did not have a way to quickly help you and also keep all of these great questions and answers for others to learn from. Additionally, many of you have a lot of your own knowledge and experience in art marketing and we wanted to be able to draw on your wisdom as well.

YourArtMarketing.com will be the place where all of us can come together to help each other out. Diane and I will spend a lot of time there, answering your questions and doing what we can. We are pretty excited about this and have come to think of all of you as part of our larger family. Building a sense of community is important to us and we know it is important to you, also.

I ask that all of you go to YourArtMarketing.com and register and then introduce yourself in the “Say Hello” section. If you are unfamiliar with forums, just click on “Say Hello” and then click on the “New Topic” button to add your own post. After you do that, please go to one of the other sections and ask a question… even if you already know the answer! We want to get the forum populated with questions so that new artists coming to the site can benefit from our knowledge and experience.

I look forward to seeing all of you over there!!!

Peace,
Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.YourArtMarketing.com

papiers collés is the blogsite of Neda Doany, an artist formerly of Beirut, now living in Austin, TX. Multi-talented and with a Doctorate in Speech Communication, it appears that it is through her art that she makes her strongest statements and influence in this world.

Neda’s collage masterpieces are “unique handmade pieces made with paper, glue, scissors, and passion.” For me, an appreciation of collages did not come right away. I grew up on a small farm in rural Minnesota and thought “real” art had to be realistic. Fortunately that state did not last and I learned how to experience art both intellectually and emotionally/spiritually. Neda’s art definitely connects with me emotionally.

In addition to her blogsite, you can view Neda’s work at her online gallery at www.MarayaGalleries.com. Please visit Neda’s online world and experience her art for yourself!

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com