Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

Update

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

Looking for Bloggers

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.

Dipping My Toe in the Stream of Information

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

Big Changes Afoot

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

[Comments]

Putting a Hold on WordPress Screencasts

The latest version of WordPress, version 2.5, was due out today. I have had a sneak peek at the admin pages of the new version and there are so many changes to the layout that I am going to hold off on doing more screencasts. As soon as the new version is out and I have it installed on my test blog, I will start doing the screencasts and will start from the beginning.

In the meantime, if there are any specific questions you need answered about customizing WordPress, please hop over to our forum at YourArtMarketing.com and post a new topic under Blogging: Setting Up Your Blog. I won’t mind doing a quick screencast if that will help you!

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[Comments]

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

ONE True Fan

I am so happy to have been invited and accepted as a staff blogger at ReveNews.com. My first article is about a topic I plan to write more about on this blog, but for a teaser I invite you to read the post at ReveNews.com and feel free to leave a comment there if so moved.

Peace,
Chris

Tomorrow’s Featured Artist and Screencast Improvements to Come

I’m very excited about tomorrow’s featured artist. I am changing the format just a little to make it more useful for everyone. In addition to talking about the artist, I am including a short, written interview where I talk with the artist.

Also, I received a new book from Amazon. It’s called “Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide” and it will help me create even better screencasts for you. Camtasia gives me the option to edit after the capture and do cool things like zoom in and highlight the areas I’m talking about. This book will help me figure out how to do that!

See you tomorrow!

Chris

Weekly Video

I am changing the format (again) of the weekly video. I already have two scheduled posts each week and I do not want to tie myself down with a third. That being said, I hope to release these screencasts more than once a week.

The videos can be accessed by using the screencast.com widget below my welcome video or by direct link in the Screencast category. The posts in the Screencast category will also have a brief explanation of what each screencast is about.

The Resources page that can be accessed from the top menu also contains a link to the mindmap that lays out a plan for future episodes and will continue to grow and contain even more useful information.

Lastly… I want to share MY art with you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcbGk2gULbo

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Peace,
Chris

New Series: How to Start Selling My Art Online

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Last Monday’s Marketing post had “How to Start Selling My Art Online” as the title. That seemed like a good title for an entire series of posts and I will start that series this coming Monday. I’m a very organized person, I can’t really relax until I have things in order, both mentally and physically. What this means for the series is that I will start out with an outline so you can see the general plan. I’m also a big fan of mind maps, so I may find a way to incorporate one into the series. There will be a special page you can access from the top menu that will have resources to accompany this series and I will have a separate category so you can easily look at all the posts for the series within one page.

I like that this is an interactive website and I have come to respect, admire, and appreciate my wonderful readers. Please let me know what you would especially like me to address in this series.

Peace,
Chris

Video Troubles Mostly Figured Out

For most of you, the weekly video should work fine, now. I have them hosted at Screencast.com and they are in Flash format, so they should play on everyone’s browser, regardless of operating system. Here are two troubles I found:

1. I had trouble playing in my MacBook using Firefox. Turns out I needed to install the latest Flash player from Adobe and that solved that problem.

2. My server cache is slow to update. What this means is that I can make a change to the website and even though I hit refresh on my browser, the change still does not show up until sometimes an hour later. This means that this delay is occurring on the server end and there is not much I can do about it. Diane had trouble getting the link to work for the new video. Well, that’s happening because my server still has not updated the link! It should work fine if you access the video from the front page and then after a while the other page should eventually update.

Thanks for your patience!
Chris