-This post contains affiliate links. If you are already going to be buying something from Amazon, I would be overjoyed if you continued to do so through one of my links on this post. If you click one of my ads on here and continue to the website with your purchase, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you which is a total win-win!
Develop your online presence
To successfully sell your art online or in person to consumers and art collectors you will need to have an established and credible online presence. Something that will give you more of a way to show that you are accountable, reliable, consistent, honest and you know what you are doing. I'm not suggesting that you aren't any of these, you just need to broadcast this loud and clear without actually voicing it.Blogging is a popular way to achieve many of this. I will caution you that blogging is not as easy as everyone makes it look. Creating a personal website with your own domain to showcase your art for sale is another great idea where you can attach a blog later on if you decide to.
Etsy and Vango Art both offer easy website creation options that simply transform your inventory over into a domain that you prefer if you aren't tech savvy. The downfall of this being that when you reach a certain amount of unique viewers and are able to start using Google Adsense you will have to switch to a different host due to not having access to your own HTML page in which you will have to add codes over to your website when you get to that point.
Can you keep up?
What if I told you that if you created a high-quality blog post every day in addition to creating a beautiful painting at least 11"x14" or larger every day, as well as networking in person with local businesses that this will drive in the traffic that you need within 3 weeks?You're probably thinking yeah right if it were that simple then everyone would be doing it! And you are correct, there are 2 secrets I want to share about this.
1.) You have to continue this for 8-12 months. It will take about 3 weeks to gain repeat visitors. If you are able to keep this up for 3 weeks consistently everyday, hitting the publish button at a promised time and over delivering this strategy will 100% work. Especially if you map out your blog content ahead of time. I read about this idea after blogging inconsistently since November, then last Monday I just dove in and started without having it mapped out first or updating my readers. It's not that I didn't intend to tell everyone, I was just having a difficult time keeping my head above the water to produce a high-quality painting every day and a high-quality blog post.
2.) You cannot begin to steer your readers to where your art is being sold at until after the 1st week of consistency is established. By "steering" I am talking about implementing pop-ups within the blog or website calling a reader into action. However, you can still ask them to visit your different art sites and add you to social media within the actual text just don't act like a used car salesperson
Join the challenge!
After you do this for 2 weeks, it becomes more natural and part of your everyday routine according to a branding coach I spoke with recently (it was a colleague I hadn't spoken with for quite some time that my blog reached not someone I hired or anything). I am currently at the one month mark, its intense and my phone keeps buzzing with texts reading, "Where have you been I haven't heard from you in a while but I love your blog posts" from concerned friends. My introversion has alluded me again...I seem to assume that people will put two and two together which is one of my own downfalls. Never assume anything! There were a few days this month where it doesn't look as if I posted anything however, I count re-contenting older posts as a part of this.SEO
Search Engine Optimization, SEO, a fancy way of saying that you must add certain (key)words in your website, titles of your artworks, artwork descriptions, blog posts, the first paragraph of your blog post, throughout your entire blog and website in order for it to register in computer land. This is important because you want viewers to be able to find you. Misty Anderson, an awesome brand coach, does a wonderful job describing this in her blog post, Basic WordPress SEO: For Beginners. I recommend that you take a look at this as she describes exactly why you will be needing this and how to implement it into your blog as well as set it up using WordPress.Branding
You spent all that time developing your own talent and creatively standing out from the crowd, now its time to put all of it into making a brand for yourself so that buyers can associate it with you from the other creative entrepreneurs. You want something that resonates your passion and your mission but it must also clearly communicate what you want them to feel when viewing your art along with your main colors, image, logo, and tagline. You don't have to think in terms of paperwork and copyrights just yet, we are only at the beginning of this phase as I will be continuing this topic by launching Series 3: Part 1 tomorrow by 5pm.I hope that you join me in this challenge and return back tomorrow for the continuation of this topic! In the meantime, add me on Twitter where I usually post my works in progress during the week!
Nice blog thanks for posting.
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