Art Palaver Artist Marketing Blog

Introducing The Art Palaver Art Marketing Webinars

Daryle Dickens — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:02:13 +0000

Learn business, marketing, and promotion of your art with free artist webinars…

Promoting, marketing, and selling art is always a challenge and for many artists selling art online is an even greater challenge. I believe a big part of the challenge comes from an artist having to go at it alone most of the time when it comes to art marketing. Most artists do not have the benefit of a representative or a manager. Even those that have gallery representation must do some self promotion to maximize the opportunity of being in a gallery.

Of course money is an issue as well. A lot of artists must “boot strap” their art career by scratching together funds to help market their work from wherever they can. Few have the benefit of a big bank account, an angel investor, or a wealthy supporter.

Always keep in mind that these are just challenges, not reasons to stop pursuing your life as a working artist.

My mission with Art Palaver is to help artists with those challenges. I try to offer information and support in anyway I can. Recently I’ve stepped back a bit and spent a lot of time doing some Art Palaver soul searching on how I can advance it to the next level and offer better help and support in new ways. From that came one of the new tools I am offering which is free webinars on a regular basis.

Each webinar will be about an hour long and will focus on different topics that relate to promotion and marketing for the modern independent artist. I also hope to bring in guest panelists who are knowledgeable in areas that would be helpful.

The first art marketing webinar will be next week on March 17th at 2PM Mountain Time, the topic will be Facebook. (Look for a follow up post with more details. But you can register here now.) I also plan on scheduling evening webinars as well. Time will tell what days and times work the best for most people. But even if you can not make the live webinar event you will be able to download the audio a day or so after the webinar.

I did a series of webinars in December of 2009 and I really liked the webinar platform for many reason. It allows the audience access in a couple of ways so more people can be included. Either join on your computer via the internet or call in on your phone if you can not be on a computer at the time of the live event. Webinars also allow audience members to participate in the discussion through text chat and voice chat. This interaction is probably what excites me the most. Writing blog posts is great but I never know if I am delivering the exact information you are looking for. When we can have a discussion we can get specific questions answered as well as learn from each other experiences. I’ll be looking for artists to be on the panel as well, to share what has worked and what has not worked.

Let me stress that these webinars are 100% free.

I look forward to having you join me on this new adventure.

Introducing The Art Palaver Art Marketing Webinars is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

AP240S Episode Six | Crush It! Contest and Aaron Ristau

Daryle Dickens — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:30:26 +0000

Helping you sell more art online…

In this video I talk about the Crush It! give-a-way. Facebook. Artist Aaron Ristau. Boing Boing. Lightsabers. All in only 240 seconds. It’s a good show.

The name AP240S comes from Art Palaver 240 second Show, get it? Each episode is just about 4 minutes long, or 240 seconds. AP240S looks better than AP4S to me. The idea behind the show is to do a fast one take no edit 4 minute recording where I talk about art, artists, selling art, marketing art, promoting art, and anything else that fits within all of that.

This is only episode six and I am still getting used to the format and speaking into the camera. Four minutes is actually a long time for an internet video so I know I am going to have to get better if I am going to ask for 240 seconds of your attention. And I am working towards doing two of these a week, one on Monday and one of Friday so I am really asking for 480 seconds of your time every week. Which is a lot. But I don’t expect everyone to watch every episode from start to finish. That is just the way of video on the internet. And if they seem to be a bit much I can always change it to the AP120S or maybe even the AP60S. Time will tell.

AP240S 006

You may have noticed the Art Palaver site has been a little funky recently. I’ve been tweaking and improving the design and function of the site and it can cause things to be a bit weird at times. Sorry about that. The changes to to make room for many new resources that are coming down the pike. But that is all I am going to say about that. Look for changes to start really being hyped in March. This site is kind of my version of a one man band so it takes me a bit of time to get all the instruments in working together.

AP240S Episode Six | Crush It! Contest and Aaron Ristau is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

Wordpress Wednesday | Windows Live Writer

Daryle Dickens — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:30:33 +0000

Wordpress blog software is an ideal application for promoting and marketing your artwork online. It gives you all the tools you need to create a professional looking artist website and easily publish fresh content, keeping your search engine optimization… well optimal. And all this leads to more sales of your art. But WP is not perfect, far from it. (Though there are many people always working to improve it.) A common complaint I hear from artists who blog with WP is they have trouble getting their posts to look just the way they want them to. Configuring text, fonts, headlines, images, and video players within Wordpress’s built in post editor can sometimes be frustrating. There are plugins out there to improve the default editor but today I am here to talk about Windows Live Writer.

Live Writer is free blog editing software from Microsoft. It was created for the Windows Live community but it works with a number of blogging platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, SharePoint, and Community Server.

I’ve been using Live Writer for over 2 years now and it is how I manage this blog and all the other blogs I publish. Which brings up another useful aspect of Live Writer, it allows you to manage multiple blogs neatly in one program. And I know a few artists who manage multiple blogs. Writer formats its editing screen to look like the blog you are publishing to so that you are able to see what your post looks like before you publish the post. This also helps me keep my blogs straight.

I like using it because it allows me to work on my blog posts while I am offline. And for me that means less distractions. I also keep my working drafts stored within Writer. This means when I open Writer I get a list of posts I am working on listed to the right of the workspace. Writer also has many easy to use features that are better than the default WP post editor. You can easily adjust the font, text color, text size, numbered lists, and bullet points, just to name a few. The real benefit though comes when you want to add images, tables, maps, or videos. Live Writer makes placing these and adjusting these a breeze. You can also make simple edits to images like rounded corners (which I dig) or sepia tone (which I don’t dig).

Wordpress users are accustomed to using plugins to add function to their blog. Live Writer also has the option of plug-ins to add even more functions to the blog editor. These help a writer incorporate things like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, as well as further customize your posts. I personally do not use any plug-ins in Writer but they are an option.

If you decide to give Live Writer a try you’ll need to make a small adjustment in your Wordpress dashboard before you connect Live Writer to your blog. Under “settings” click on “writing” and look for “Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols.” and check the box, hit “save change” and you should be good to go.

Give Live Writer a try, it is free and makes publishing to your blog a little bit easier. Mac users can check out Blogo which is blog editing software designed for Mac.

Wordpress Wednesday | Windows Live Writer is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

Wordpress Wednesday | Create A Free Artist Website With Wordpress.com

Daryle Dickens — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:30:00 +0000

Wordpress is a great resource for an artist that is looking to create their own website to promote themselves and their art. I recommend going with the self hosted Wordpress platform found at Wordpress.org. But there are some costs associated with going that route.

First you’ll need to purchase a domain name which is about $10 a year. You will also need to get web hosting which can be $6 to $15 a month depending on the hosting company and the plan you choose. I believe these expenses are investments in your art career and well worth the cost in order to promote you and your work. But I also know that for some artists just starting out these are expenses they simply can not afford.

If you are looking to create a web presence without spending a dime I recommend starting with Wordpress.com. This is a completely free blog service that offers plenty of great features and customization all within a community of other users who are there to help you when you need it. You could head over to Wordpress.com right now and have a website/blog up and running in less than 15 minutes without ever having to break out the credit card. This option takes away any excuse you may have for not having your own artist website.

The great thing about starting with Wordpress.com as your website service is that the content you create on your site is easily transferred to a Wordpress.org site when you’re ready for an up grade. Also Wordpress.com offers paid upgrade options as well to improve your site without ever having to move it. Any time and effort you invest in Wordpress.com is not wasted due to this ease of upgrade that is built in.

Wordpress.com Vs. Wordpress.org

If you are not familiar with Wordpress you might be a bit confused at this point by the mention of Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org. They are two different blogging solutions. Simply put the .com version is a blog service and the .org version is a blog software.

Wordpress.com hosts your blog or site on their servers for free and your domain name is something like artpalaver.wordpress.com.

Wordpress.org offers software that you install on your own server you’ve rented from a hosting company and is then connected to your own domain name. It is what I use here on artpalaver.com.

Wordpress.org is super flexible and can be customized in just about anyway you can imagine to just about whatever you need it to do. Right out the box it is very search engine friendly. There are countless themes and plugins available for free that help you change the look and function of the your site. And there is a large community of avid users found on blogs and forums around the web that will help you when you need it. Those are just some of the reasons I think Wordpress.org is a great solution for a do it yourself” web presence. But I do understand that the approximate $120 a year price tag can be too much for the emerging artist.

Start with the completely free option and eventually move to the better self hosted .org option.

If you do start off on Wordpress.com though one small expense you might consider is buying yourself a domain name. Scrape together the $8.88 needed to secure the name for a year and then have it forward to your Wordpress.com site. myart.com is better than myart.wordpress.com.

Any questions?

Wordpress Wednesday | Create A Free Artist Website With Wordpress.com is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

Wordpress Wednesday | Stopping Spam Comments On Your Art Blog

Daryle Dickens — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:30:00 +0000

If you publish a Wordpress self hosted blog eventually the comment spammers will find you. Comment from spammers is pretty easy to spot. The comments are brief, generic, and often off topic. Most will contain links to sites selling things that you don’t want to be a part of. The longer your blog is out there the more spammers will find you and the more fake comments will come in that you have to deal with. This can be quite time consuming. Thankfully Wordpress ships with spam protection built in with the plugin “Akismet.”

But I know many artists who use Wordpress never get around to activating Akismet because they get confused when it asks for a Wordpress.com API key.

What is a Wordpress.com API key and how do I get one?

Basically the API key allows your blog access to Akismet’s service to check if the comments appear to be spam or not. There are two simple ways to get your key. You can go to Wordpress.com and sign up for a username only account or you can go directly to Akismet’s site and have them email you a key.

Does not really matter which route you take, they are both very simple. But I highly recommend that you do take this step of getting that Akismet plugin activated. It will save you a lot of time by weeding out the real comments from the ugly comments.

Wordpress Wednesday | Stopping Spam Comments On Your Art Blog is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

Cost Effective Email Marketing For Artists

Daryle Dickens — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:30:00 +0000

The email newsletter is probably one of the oldest internet tools available for an artist to promote their art. They have been around since the invention of email. Many artists send out “email blasts” through their email client like Gmail or Hotmail. Cutting and pasting a list of emails into the “To:” box and hitting send. This is the easiest method and it is free. It is also illegal.

Yes I said illegal. You see when you send out an email like that 9 out of 10 times it does not conform to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The biggest reason for non compliance is there is no easy way to opt out of the emailings. To comply with the CAN-SPAM act the professional artist will turn to an email service to handle their mass mailings.

There are a few to choose from but only 1 that I know of that lets you run a list of under 500 addresses for free, that service is MailChimp. I’ve been using MailChimp for six months now and I highly recommend it to any artist looking to have an easy to use professional email service.

That’s really all I got for you today. If you’ve been thinking about using email to market your work start with MailChimp.

Cost Effective Email Marketing For Artists is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

Win A Copy Of Crush It By Gary Vaynerchuk | AP240S Video 005

Daryle Dickens — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:31:00 +0000

Getting your head around social media and learning to use it to properly promote your art can increase sales. Crush It! will give you many new ideas on how to use social media to promote your art. And in this short video I tell you how you can win your very own copy.

Don’t see a video? Click here.

Win A Copy Of Crush It By Gary Vaynerchuk | AP240S Video 005 is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

How To Keep An Artist Blog Updated | AP240S

Daryle Dickens — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:30:00 +0000

Since I am doing more videos like this one I am working on a way to separate the RSS feeds so you can only subscribe to the type of content that suits you. Just FYI, though I have not heard any complaints about the videos. (yet)

If you don’t see a video play simply click this link.

How To Keep An Artist Blog Updated | AP240S is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

Video Is A Good Marketing Tool For Artists | AP240S 003

Daryle Dickens — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:30:00 +0000

Hello Hello. Here we are again with another Art Palaver 240 Show episode. Hopefully I am not going to lose too many readers with this little experiment I am working on. I know some folks are not ones to click play on internet videos. Feel free to offer any feedback, even if it is negative.

Also wanted to share with you the new podcast is about ready to be unveiled. Each week I will have a 30 minute episode that features a different artist. I know, exciting.

Well enough words on to the moving pictures…

If you don’t see a video in this post just click here.

Video Is A Good Marketing Tool For Artists | AP240S 003 is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.

AP 240 Show | The War Of Art By Steven Pressfield

Daryle Dickens — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:56:52 +0000

Okay here we are at #2 of the Art Palaver 240 Show. A quick book review for you. I am still looking for a winner to the contest being held in the video.

Enjoy…

If you don’t see a video click here.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

AP 240 Show | The War Of Art By Steven Pressfield is a post from: Art Palaver the Artist Marketing Blog.