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Chris gave me this login so long ago and I haven’t got round to writing a blog post because I’ve been busy, so I’m going to put that right now.

Sometimes it seems that you just can’t find the time to do all the promotion that your artwork deserves.  Sometimes you’re too busy working on the artwork itself, often it’s the demands of your day job, family or friends.

As part of my online activities I run my own blog about promoting artwork, a discussion forum about art, music & writing, and of course my own web galleries (and galleries for various friends on the same site).

Sometimes the promotion seems to use up all the time I need to actually make artwork!

So one of the best promotion tools I have—one which doesn’t take much time and doesn’t even feel like work— is adding meaningful and constructive comments to other art blogs (and non-art blogs too).

Not “Nice post.  By the way, check out my art!!”, but a well-thought-out response to the blog post you’re commenting on.  Don’t even think of it as promotion - it’s just social interaction.

Every blogger (myself included) will always check out the link of every person who comments intelligently on their blog posts.  You don’t need to draw attention to it, or even mention that you’re an artist - just respond to blog posts that you find interesting.

Many blog readers will also check out the links of commenters on blogs if the comment is well written and relevant.

What you can’t do is speed-up the process: no pre-written comments that you can cut and paste into multiple blogs (that’s just spam), no hastily typed-out thoughtless comments in order to reach your self-allotted target of comments.

Social interaction—conversation—is the best form of marketing. And the less you think of it as marketing, the better.

Paul.

It’s been a month since I decided to limit how much work I was doing with this site. I created an opportunity for people to write their own blog posts here and several people signed up for an account, but so far there have not been any posts. I’m not disappointed by this as I did not create the expectation that this would happen. I thought it would be cool if this turned into a community blog, but I was not sure if that was what everyone else wanted or needed. My goal has always been to create an online resource that would be of help to other artists. I do not intend to abandon this site, despite the lack of anything new in the past month. I have stepped back from many of my online efforts, partially to focus on our upcoming lifestyle change, partially to gain some perspective. Sara and I plan to have some more direct experiences to share with you over the coming months. We want to spend more time creating art and experimenting with many different ways of selling art, both online and offline. From these new experiences, we will have much to share with you and I’m quite excited about this.

If you do not want to have to come directly to this site all the time to check for new articles, please consider subscribing with a newsreader such as Google Reader or News Gator. It will make things MUCH easier!

Lastly, Sara and I will be leaving Las Cruces in 3 days! We sold all of our furniture except for the fancy memory foam mattress which is going into the motor home. A lot of excess possessions went to Goodwill, some was tossed out, a few things went into storage, and the rest will somehow fit into the Honda Civic we’re driving to Minnesota. You can follow all of this at CreativeTribe.TV!

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

If you are interested in becoming part of this blogging community, please send an email to me at [email protected]. I’ll get you set up with an account as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: There are exceptions to most rules.

1. We make money by selling something. This something might be a product, it might be a service, or it may only be an idea. Replace selling with exchanging energy.

2. We make money by exchanging energy. If you sell a natural resource, something that you did not have to expend energy to create, you still expend energy collecting and distributing that resource. If you sell a product, you use resources and expend energy to create and distribute that product. If you sell a service, you are selling your energy. Even if you write an ebook on your computer and sell that online, you have expended energy. Ebooks are information products and the resources used to build it are ideas and knowledge.

3. To simplify things, you make money either by selling a product or selling a service. Think in these terms and apply it to what you know.

Here is an example of how a friend of mine will be able to switch from selling products in a store to selling online. She currently runs a small store where she sells beads and other jewelry-making products along with some cool clothes, cards, incense, and other similar items. She wants to work from home and move her store online. Should she just sell the same products through an online store or is there a better way? The problem is one of competition. There is relatively little competition in the small town where her store is located, plus it is a college town which increases the percentage of potential customers (college kids tend to like these kinds of stores). Going online, she suddenly is competing with thousands of other online stores selling similar items. How does she stand out or compete?

One of the best things she can do is shift to a main product line that has less competition. In her case, her skill and knowledge lies in creating jewelry. She can put together kits from the resources she already has and include instructions in both written and video formats. She is shifting from selling simple resources (the beads, wire, tools, etc.) to selling a product in which she has added considerable value by using her skill and knowledge. If she then leverages all the ways to connect with customers through online social networking, she can compete against the huge online stores that sell hundreds of varieties of beads and other jewelry-making resources.

This article is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise on how to make money, rather it is meant to show how simple the basic ideas really are and how you can apply them to your own situation. Can you take some less expensive resources, add your own energy, skill, and knowledge, and create a product that will sell for more money?

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
YourArtMarketing.com
CreativeTribe.TV

There is an article on doshdosh.com called “Social Media Networking and ROI: How to Maximize Value and Minimize Cost“. For those of us who want to sell our work online, it is important to understand how the online world works these days. In the last couple of years and especially in the last few months, social media networking has become a valuable tool to help us connect with people and sell our work. But online social networking is much more than just a tool to sell more art. Think of offline social networking and how that works. When you go to an event where you know other artists and gallery owners are going to be present, do you come barging into the room and start handing out your business cards and telling everyone what you have for sale? Of course not. You know that it is about building relationships.

Read this article and help yourself reach a better understanding of what the online world is really like and how you should be involved.

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

I don’t often cross-post, but I just felt I needed to share this. Part of this post is based on a comment I made on Connie Rose’s blog. I also posted this on my newest site, CreativeTribe.TV. Here it is:

I have tried to keep up with all of the information flowing into my world through the internet. I subscribe to more blogs and podcasts than I can count, receive dozens of emails, and watch the Twitter updates flow by in an endless procession. I have tried to keep up with all of it and drink every drop of the stream. I cannot. I try to cut back to just a few blogs and a a couple of podcasts, but those only reproduce again and soon my inboxes are all filled up. Do I give up completely? Throw my MacBook in the dumpster? Stick to my moleskine and the post office?

Yesterday I gave up. I gave up trying to answer every email and read every blog and listen to every podcast. Instead of unplugging, I gave in to the flow. I let it wash over me and I did not try to drink in every drop. And amazingly enough, I felt free. I was free to dip my cup in and take a sip whenever I wanted without drowning in all of that information. Since there is so much to choose from, I can have the most delicious and tasty sips and let the rest just flow by. What a wonderful feeling! Now I want to do this with the rest of my life. I do not need to see every rare bird that comes along or learn every song that touches me. There are more wonderful people than I can ever know well enough to truly call them my friends, but I can have dozens of acquaintances that enrich me with the brief contact I have with their amazing energy. What an incredible gift, this revelation.

Chris O’Byrne

Our schedule for moving out of our home in Las Cruces, NM and into our motor home has moved up. We are now moving out by the end of May and then driving up to Minnesota to start our new mobile lifestyle. This means that I have A LOT to do in the next couple of months. To make things even crazier, most of April (from the 1st until the 25th) will be spent taking care of non-online commitments, including another trip to Minnesota. Uff da!

Let’s move ahead on making this a community blog. All you have to do is send an email to me with the first and last name you want used on the blog and I will set up an account for you and send your username and password. You are free to write about anything art related, including yourself and your own art. If nothing else, this is a great opportunity to self promote. I’ll be making a few changes to the site, mostly in that middle column.

Traffic and subscriptions have been increasing quite a bit these past two months, so this is an opportunity for you to really get your voice heard and art seen. Which reminds me, you do not have to be a visual artist to be part of this community. Performing art is welcomed and you are allowed to embed videos into your posts as well.

So sign up and let’s create a fantastic community arts blog.

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

I’m hitting the road! Sara and I are buying a 33-foot Southwind motor home and will be living on the road full-time. Granted, we’ll be spending a lot of time at different places, but we’ll be living a mobile lifestyle. I hope to have internet access most of the time, but I won’t be able to rely on that, especially when we are enroute from one place to the next.

What that means for this website is that I cannot count on my ability to post 2 to 3 times per week. I have also faced the fact that I am put a lot of time and energy into this site and receive very little monetary reward. I need to focus my talents and energy towards efforts that will help me pay the bills.

I am not abandoning you, however. I will continue to write articles and be active in the forum. And I have two ideas that I want to run past you.

One, I want to reorganize and redesign this website so it is easier to find and use past articles. There is a lot of good information in this blog, but it is not very easy to find. My thought is to create a library of articles that is organized and easy to use.

Two (and this is the big one), I want to turn this site into a community blog. This means that any of you can have an account on the site as an author and then write whatever or whenever you want. Of course, we’ll keep it within the realm of art marketing, but that is a pretty broad umbrella. For example, you could sign up and create your own post about you and your art, similar to what I’ve been doing with the Feature Friday. You could also write about anything to do with your own art marketing, online or off. There are several blogs that work this way, including ReveNews.com.

Please let me know what you think of all of this and especially if you think you would ever be interested in joining this site as a community blogger.

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

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Barbara Simler, a.k.a. moonbindery on the forums and blogs, is a talented and artful bookbinder from Kamloops, BC. Her handmade books have just the right feel to them. They are works of art that are both stylish and inviting and long to be filled with your thoughts and visions.

You can keep up with Barbara’s life at her blog and you can usually find her work for sale in her Etsy store. For the next couple of weeks she is revamping her studio and her store and getting ready to present her work anew. Bookmark her store and subscribe to her blog because you don’t want to miss the grand reopening.

Here is my interview with Barbara:

OAM: What kind of art do you currently produce?

BS: I do the occasional OOAK artist’s book, but mostly I make handcrafted books–journals, sketchbooks, address books, and a few other things. I love William Morris’s idea that everyday objects can and should be beautiful, so my objective is to make books that are both beautiful and useful.

It’s been an interesting adventure–some people tell me that my journals (the ones with handmade paper cover designs) are too beautiful to write in. Funny, eh? It had never occured to me that something could be considered too beautiful. One woman told me that she never writes in her book. She just takes it out of a drawer now and then to look at it, which gives her pleasure. It’s a real compliment, but not at all what I was expecting!

So, it’s been very interesting to explore the balancing point where beauty and utility meet. In terms of designs, I tend to make what interests me, rather than following a particular fashion, but at the same time I want to be responsive to people’s needs, so I’m making more books that have a specific purpose, such as address books and sketch books, books that people will want to keep for a long time.

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OAM: How many different ways do you currently sell your art and which 1 (or 2 or 3) have worked the best?

BS: I currently sell my work four different ways:

1. Higher-end arts and crafts shows

These have been the most successful venues for me so far. My books are very tactile–the covers of some of them have pieces of bark and leaves in them, and others have leather covers, so I think it’s helpful for buyers to be able to pick them up and really touch them. One thing that has improved my sales a lot is that I set up a separate small table next to my book table that has examples of all the kinds of books I make, along with cards that briefly explain the histories of the different bindings. Doing demos, telling your story, things like that can be very helpful.

2. Art Gallery Shop

I have some of my books on consignment in the gift shop at a local art gallery. Sales there have been steady for two kinds of small books of quotes that I sell for around $12 . I recently added some journal/sketchbooks, and sales of those have been increasing. Two things I’ve found to be useful in increasing sales at the shop are a) telling the story of my books (I created a display card and put the information in each of my books), and b) just being patient. When you do work that’s a little bit different from what people expect, it can take time for them to decide to make a purchase.

3. The third venue is online at my Etsy store at http://moonbindery.etsy.com.

I opened this store over a year ago, but only put books in it late in November, 2007, so I’ve only had an online presence for a little over three months. I’m still busy getting the hang of selling online, and like many artists, I suspect, I’m wondering how people will respond to the idea of buying based on seeing a picture of my work, as opposed to seeing it up close and personal.

One thing that’s been amazing about selling online is that I’ve discovered a whole world of artists in cyberspace, people who’s work I’d never have known about if I hadn’t joined Etsy and started blogging. I really have to restrain myself, or I’d wind up spending the whole day surfing blogs, instead of making books

4. Word of Mouth.

I sell a surprising number of books just from people telling other people about me. Which is really nice! I try to remember to always carry business cards, in case people ask.

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OAM: What additional avenue for selling your work would you like to pursue?

BS: I only have a certain amount of time and energy for marketing, so instead of adding more avenues, I’m focusing on refining the ones I’ve listed above. Doing fewer and larger art/craft shows, paying attention to what people are buying at the art gallery, so I can supply more of those kinds of things. Trying to make the pictures in my Etsy store look as good as possible (a never-ending challenge).

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OAM: Do you have any additional thoughts about selling your art online that you would like to share?

BS: I think I’ll probably have more thoughts after I’ve been online longer! One thing I am trying to do is to refine my book descriptions, to give buyers the sense of how nice the books look and feel–to supply the things they can’t necessarily get from looking at the pictures.

I think like most artists, I’d much rather spend all my time creating, rather than doing the marketing part. For me, the important thing is that the people who buy my books are people, not just “buyers”, and to relate to them on that level.

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

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I have really been putting a lot of thought into this whole idea of making a living as an artist and although I do intend to continue with “How to Sell My Art Online”, I wanted to take a step back and look at the big picture of making a living as an artist.

First, I came up with a very general list of tasks to complete:

1. Determine your USP and identity (similar to brand and image, but more real).
2. List all the possible products you could sell.
3. List all the possible services you could sell.
4. List all the possible ways you could sell your art.
5. Advertise (spread the word).
6. Network (build relationships).
7. Build your online presence.
8. Change your lifestyle (possibly).

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Now let’s take a closer look at each one.

1. Determine your USP and identity (similar to brand and image, but more real).

This one we have talked about in detail already (see last week’s post). Also, think about how you may be seen through the eyes of your customer and how you can help them cultivate the image you really want.

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2. List all the possible products you could sell.

Some products that come to mind are original paintings (various sizes), prints, cards, tiles, coffee mugs… you know, anything you can get your image on. Maybe you could sell tattoo designs (be creative here). Some other products might include your own series of art instruction books, books of your art accompanied by stories, a story book accompanied by your art, and so on. How about digital products? You could sell CDs and DVDs of your art, ebooks, downloadable prints, online guides, and more. Just make a huge list of every possibility you can think of. Remember the rules of brainstorming, don’t filter anything at this stage or think of why you can’t do something, list all possibilities.

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3. List all the possible services you could sell.

Again, follow the rules of brainstorming. You can do commissions, give classes (online and offline), give workshops, lead tours, write books and guides…. and many other ideas I haven’t listed here. Please, add more ideas in the comments below.

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4. List all the possible ways you could sell your art.

What are the ways that you have used to sell your art? Galleries, shows, competitions, your website, online stores, art fairs and other similar venues, on the street, directly to people you know, opening up your studio one day a month, farmer’s markets, to businesses, through magazines… again, please add ideas to the comments!

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5. Advertise (spread the word).

There are many ways to advertise. Magazines, newspapers, other print media, billboards (gutsy, I know), word-of-mouth, signs up on bulletin boards, and many online methods such as forums, Craigslist, and even Adwords. Can you think of more?

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6. Network (build relationships).

As with any selling, your relationships are vital. These might be relationships with gallery owners, previous customers, potential customers, local businesses… your business relationships are vital and can help you in ways that don’t reveal themselves until much further down the road. Always be willing to go the extra mile to establish a relationship. Even if that relationship never helps you sell or make money, the karmic goodness you receive is always worth it.

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7. Build your online presence.

This is what this website and series is all about, helping you learn how to sell your art online. Plan this out before just diving in and trying everything. Do you want one main presence (your website) or do you want to spread your presence through several avenues (online stores, Facebook, forums, etc.). If you spread your presence, do you always send people back to your website or do you want to sell from each of these avenues.

What is the purpose of each piece of your online presence. Is it to communicate? Establish deeper relationships? Sell specific works? Learn and explore? Create possible joint ventures? Keep people coming back? How does each piece fit into the whole plan?

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8. Change your lifestyle (possibly).

This is one area where a lot of people do not want to compromise, but it could make a huge difference. This is especially important if you are considering a switch from a full-time job to a full-time artist. How cheaply can you live? Think of each chunk of your life. How small of a dwelling can you live in? Can you move to a small rental space somewhere and cut your housing bill in half? What extras can you live without? How about moving to another country where your dollar can go much further? There are many creative ways to cut back on your living expenses, some of which are less radical than others. Brainstorm!

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That is a very brief look at the big picture of making a living as an artist. Many of you have been through this process, maybe more than once. But it always helps to take a step back now and then and think about the big picture.

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

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