Whether your art marketing focus is to Show, Connect or Sell art to your fine art website visitors, the central point of an artist website must be your art images. Here are the basics to show your art in the best possible light, from a customer point of view. Show your art well: 1. Use a good photo of your art. Photograph the art directly, never through glass. Use natural indirect daylight (on a cloudy day is best) and use a tripod when shooting 2. Crop your images - do not show any portion of a frame, and if you over-crop, meaning cut off some of the original work, that is far better than leaving a distracting portion of background 3. Don't fret too much about adjusting image colours on the photo. Showing art online is like standing on the TV showroom floor - every screen has different settings- so even if it looks good on your screen, you have no control over how it looks elsewhere. Instead you invite customers to come to see the work in person. 4. Present a selection of images as smaller images, called "thumbnails" on your site and provide a way to expand each thumbnail to a full page view 5. Load internet sized, clear images. Customers will not wait for your image to load, so use an image around 100 kilobits (Kb) plus/minus 20Kb in file size to ensure reasonable loading times, and yet maintain high image clarity. Too small a file size and the image appears pixelated or fuzzy looking. 6. Let your art be the focus of the page. Don't distract with conflicting background colours, patterns or animations such as scrolling text 7. Minimize the clicks -  Make it easy for customers to navigation from one full page image to the next, or to see text on your art page 8. Change up your images regularly, keep your site current. Email your customers to let them know when new content is added. Connect to your customer 9. Tell the story - every artwork has a story - please tell it! Customers want to know more about the piece and about you the artist. 10. Give a story that helps the viewer relate to themselves. Imagine what your visitor would say if they showed this image to their friends and family. 11. Be sure your purpose comes through in your brief narrative to tell customers why you created this work, and how it connects to your central purpose in making art. 12. Use key words to describe your art, or your story that are preferred words for Google to pick up on. Search your topic on Google and see what words are going to best resonate with your audience. 13. Add links to relevant sites, blogs, that add more context to your narrative. 14. Insert a YouTube clip of you in your studio to add emotion and your personality to your art work comments. 15. Let your visitors make comments on your website and respond to them when they do. 16. Offer connections to social media, so customers can easily share the work with their contacts. 17. Let visitors sign up to follow your artistic progress Sell to your customer 18. Show prices online. Customers want this on your website. They want to know if they can afford the work, and they don't like to ask in person. Price your works with potential galleries in mind. 19. Give customers a "call to action". How about a discount if you order by Friday? 20. Provide copies for lower price ranges. Customers have been found to buy just about as many copies as originals. Offering say a limited edition at lower prices enables a wider range of buyers to sample your work, and start to get to know your work better. 21. Connect the art for sale to your ordering system. Your site should provide a clear and simple means for ordering online. 22. Make it clear how to contact you, and that you stand behind your sales. Offer a guarantee to limit the customer's perceived risk to buy. Outline your purchasing and delivery policies. 23. Provide options for gift sales - what if a gift receiver wanted to return it, or exchange it? Our fine art market customer survey report shows that customers purchase art to give to others almost as much as they buy for themselves. Your artist website should assist your art marketing efforts by enabling easy ways to accomplish most of the above. Much of this list can be quickly addressed for each additional artwork. Remember that you don't have to do this entire list - see our article about deciding what your website purpose is as a guide to what you may want to do. Typically start at the top of the list and work your way down. Do you your customers say "wow!" about your art? Do you agree these suggestions would help? Let us know how you wow your customers! read more ...

Who are these people? This is a question every artist website owner asks, as the number of hits grows. Let us try to look into how Google can help. Most web services offer rudimentary hit or page counts. But there are many more statistics about your visitors beyond counts. Google has tackled this issue head on, and provides a free but very sophisticated tool called Google Analytics. You might wonder why Google provides this for free. By helping their clients know how to improve their site, Google knows their paying advertisers will increase their advertising spend. So Google Analytics tries to provide everything you need. Google Analytics is easy to install. All you have to do is sign up and paste some code on your website. Some artist website services such as our site, MyArtClub.Com make this an easy one step thing to do. Analyzing site traffic is a great way to see what your visitor is doing on your website. You get to follow what your customers are doing online. You win by learning from them, and adapting your website to take maximum advantage. This article will not describe each feature and how to use it. Google does a good job of course on their resources pages. See the brief product tour for an overview Here are couple of good overviews written for artists of the basics of Google Analytics related to marketing art Marketing Art Online: Using Google Analytics and Why all online artists and art bloggers should use Google Analytics Cutting to the chase, here is how you can use this powerful tool to augment results for each of the three main goals of an artists websites: to show, connect and sell. (Click here for a discussion on these goals) Showing your art - Google Analytics helps here to: Know your customer. You can count your traffic, break it down by geography, and where the traffic came from. Action: Based on where it is coming from, or what search terms attracted the traffic, you are encouraged to do more of what worked, less of what did not. Judge your content. Take a look at this artists report in the illustration below, it shows percentages of who clicked where on the page. Interestingly, the first and last positions have higher numbers of clicks. Action: Experiment with moving art pieces around to see if traffic moves with the piece or with the positioning. This is useful, as it shows which art attracted most interest. Can you add more art like the ones of most interest? Connect to your customer - Google Analytics helps here to: Measure the results of your promotions. When you invite your mailing list to view your latest works, or send out a newsletter, you can see how the number of visitors is affected over the next few hours and days. Action: Experiment with tracking the effect on your traffic of different types of promotions, such as emails or newspaper articles, or mail pieces, even handing out flyers at an Art in the Park event. Follow these events to see what creates more traffic. Sell to your customer- Google Analytics helps here to: Measure the sales you get. When clients visit your site see how many enter the sales process pages. How many complete that process? Were there steps on the process where more exited the sales process than on other pages? How might you adjust the ordering pages? Action: Experiment with different types of sales pages or page content, such as varying the sales story, trying special offers, etc. Your goal is to see what works better, and keep improving and tweaking your sales approach. Caution: Measures of traffic and attention mean nothing. You want to meaningfully expand your audience and build their trust. Audience: Just measuring Google page view counts and traffic increases does not mean you are developing an audience or growth in the community that you wish to serve. Measure growth in your mailing lists, or interactions from your audience (interactions like comments on blogs, emails to you, etc) to show progress with your art marketing. Trust: Just measuring attention your website gets in traffic and time spent, does not mean you are building trust. It is trust that truly defines the digital connection you have with your audience. Building online trust takes a lot of time. Be authentic and deliver value consistently to your audience to build trust. The bottom line: What then exactly is the value of Google Analytics to artists?!?! Answer - a general indication of your marketing efforts, and a way to identify potential changes to make. Try the actions suggested above, prioritized depending on your artist website goals. Take an interest in learning more about your customers by following their activities on your site, you may be in for some surprises! Set up your Google Analytics, wait a week, and see what your biggest "ah-ha" may be. What did you find? read more ...

A lot of artists wonder what it takes to sell art. They wonder what they have to do to become self supporting selling art. Some dream to earn a good living as an artist. There is nothing wrong about the idea of selling, and selling often. It doesn't have to be some wild and crazy dream to earn a good living from art. But it does have to be a business. Stop for a moment and ask yourself this: who do you know that makes a good living doing as they please? Is your answer a movie star, sports star, political figure, perhaps business owner? Think for a moment...are these people really free...totally free....to do anything they like and yet will continue to grow their incomes? Consider these career types a little deeper and you will see the movie star has to play a written role on screen and do it well, the sports star has to practice, produce points, and the business person is expected to add value to the bottom line. If they do not, their income will diminish and probably quite quickly, not grow. I think the only possible positive answer to this question is someone who is financially independent with a broad portfolio of business interests not reliant on the investor. A wealthy person can earn a living from their money and investments. They do not have to serve others to live comfortably if their investments are well managed. Artists who are financially independent are indeed fortunate, however in order to sell their art beyond sporadically, they still need to behave as if they are in business. As an artist you may think simply producing art is a valued service. Isn't that enough value add to be paid? Maybe, but only if someone else takes care of the admin and selling. It will take great art marketing. In short, all thriving businesses must provide products or services to customers that are 1) unique, 2) desired, 3) known, 4) convenient and 5) current. Let me explain these points from the view of the customer, with the example that they are purchasing a cell phone which is selling extremely well, the iPhone 4. Artists can provide these 5 necessities, here is how: 1) Unique A cell phone has a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). For example, the Apple iPhone 4 offers slimmer phone, better screen viewing, among other features. Apple itself as supplier is also important. Apple is a well known provider of designs that work well. The stronger the USP for a product vs. other similar solutions, the better it will sell. All works of original art are by nature unique. Uniqueness of art is a major attraction. This does not mean the art must be only the original. Our art marketing customer survey showed that of all potential customers, 65% said they purchase originals and 67% buy copies. How the customers value their unique personal connection to the work is more the nature of uniqueness in the art world. Artists create a personal brand image that is unique to them. There is only one you. Customers value knowing the artist, and add the uniqueness of the artist to the uniqueness of the work in valuing an individual art work. Build more about yourself into your art marketing. 2) Desired There are two main desire marketing aspects, product benefits and scarcity. In the example of the iPhone 4, it has sold very well because the USP offered is something customers value. If the USP of the iPhone 4 was that it made random noises, customers would not like that USP, and that product benefit would be not valued! When Apple launches any new product they follow a set formula to make it seem scarce. The build desire to the point early adopter buyers line up over night to be the first to have one. Sometimes the uniqueness can turn off a buyer, so just being unique is not enough. A desired work of art is beyond just unique. Customers in our survey (78%) mainly bought on impulse, because they loved the work. Really great quality of the art is the essential element that is required. Components of quality of art abound, but here is one particular simple view I liked. Artist (or should I say 100 artists in one � click here to understand why I say that ) Shea Hembrey suggests the main aspect of art can be summarized as Head, Hand, and Heart. Does the art and thus the artist stimulate intellectual interest or curiosity? (the head) Does the art illustrate the highest skills of the artist? (the hand) Does the art show the artist's passion? (the heart) A big part of desire is scarcity, whether real or perceived. When Apple launches any new product they follow a set formula to make it seem scarce. They build desire through pre-launch marketing to the point that buyer's line up over night to be the first to have one. Original art is very scarce, yet rare is the line up! Creating scarcity is what merchandizing marketing does when the offer is time limited, or available only to the first few in the door, or limited quantity, etc. Artists with better merchandizing use these techniques to boost client's desires. Very few artists market this way, until maybe after they die, and someone else takes up the marketing challenge. Consider pre- releasing information about the art. Arrange a private showing only for special clients. Consider a website with log-in for those privileged few to view hidden pages. 3) Known This element is about people knowing about an available product. Typically advertising whether formal or by word of mouth, are the means. Apple and the iPhone 4 are certainly well known, and are advertised everywhere, just to keep it top of mind. Artists and their art must be known in many ways. Known as to who they are, recognizable in their art, and known for what they stand. The more you show, and are seen by your customers and potential customers, the more chances you have to be known. It may sound simple, but it may be the artist's greatest challenge to become known. The good news is that, if uniqueness and desire levels are high, then getting known is much easier, as others will help pave the way. Until that hallowed time when others jump in to do your all your marketing, you need to focus mainly on your art, and building customer base as best you can. Communicate to your buyers often. Websites, newsletters, emails and social media facebook are great ways. Let them know you are still out there, so you too are top of mind. Be sure to follow up with your current clients to ensure they are most satisfied. When you are very sure they are, ask if they may want to invite a friend or two to your studio. It would be a way to show your appreciation to the client, and that they may show your works to potential new clients. 4) Convenient Today with the general conveniences offered by stores, shopping centers and the internet, all with carefully crafted displays and customer policies, it is hard to imagine buying an iPhone 4 could be made even more convenient. Notice too, a big part of the convenience is the display is especially set to maximize impulse purchases. As mentioned earlier, customers reported that art is mainly an impulse buy. One implication is that art must be available to be seen. So just being out there, everywhere, with highly attractive product is best. While this is not practical or easy, the more you do to offer your art, the better. Each year plan your exposure count. How many people will see my work, and will know it is by me, and will come to know me and my work? The more you can be seen by potential customers, the more you will sell, and grow your business. Offer to hang the buyers purchase. Offer to help them choose a frame. Offer great money back or gift exchange policies. Our art marketing customer survey also found of art buyers that 70% buy for personal use and 58% buy as a gift. Don't miss the gift opportunity! Have a convenient gift exchange policy. Tickle the customer's impulses with the age old suggestion that this makes a great gift. 5) Current A product can be all of the above, but if it is perceived as out of date, it will not sell. In the cell phone example, the iPhone 4 is the current rage, for sure. But sales will plummet the day Apple announces the coming of the iPhone 5. The price of the iPhone 4 will drop at that point, to bring more clients in to their customer base. New art does not necessarily bump out old art, but there is a school of thought that art from living artists should be perceived as recent works. After all, if you are progressing, a customer may perceive your more recent works to be higher on the progression scale. Keep your products and services evolving! You should be showing progress as an artist, you need not however, to be following fads. Stay true to your art AND progress. All your marketing print and web promotional items should be current and refreshed regularly. Stay with the times. Reflect what is going on in our world, through your work. Tell us some interesting stories through your work. Are you in business? The list above shines more light on the nature of the demands our customers place on all sellers, and in particular artists. Notice the customer perception of how you fulfill the demands is key. I know you do this already, and can do even more, when you break down what it is you are providing your client. As you think about these, do you see ways to make this a reality? How are you doing in each of these categories? Which area holds the most promise / opportunity? read more ...

R.I.P. Steve Jobs. What a man of vision and accomplishment. Spend a few minutes pondering how he did it at this amazing Simon Sinek video presentation on how great leaders inspire action. Reading some of the many tributes, what inspiration can he provide artists to build their business? Steve built Apple into a huge success, what can we learn? The Wall St Journal has an excellent page of Steve Jobs best quotes , covering a broad range of areas. I encourage you to read them all and let me know what you think applies to your art business. I focus here on a couple customer-related quotes here. Talking here about computer design, Steve says: "This is what customers pay us for�to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, 'Oh my God, that's great!' Artists �translate this quote to your work world as: Do not expect to wow a customer by giving them what they articulate. You have to put together work that excites and pleases their senses and delivers the impact your customer seeks. Trust yourself. Talking about lessons learned with the iPod product, Steve says: "Look at the design of a lot of consumer products - they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through." Artists �translate this quote to your work world as: Dig deeper in creating your art, think through how you can simplify your art, or client access to its message. Try to capture the essence of what customers truly need to receive from your art. Then you will connect to them emotionally, and will have a very loyal customer. Work hard. Do you think Steve's comments apply to your art? How? read more ...

One aspect of art marketing these days is affordability. The everyday consumer is reportedly under a lot of financial pressure, with the result that maybe buying fine art is just not high enough in priority these days to actually do it. So what to do? Follow the money! The money is either with the wealthy 1%, the extremely wealthy 0.1%, or with businesses. Unless you know the wealthy or have some great connection strategies, you may find business more easy to approach. Pick the successful businesses you see in the news. Canadian banks for example just announced record profits, across the board. B2B marketing As an artist, you are a small business. Small businesses often focus on Business to Business (B2B) marketing. For a detailed definition and how to do it check out Wikipedia . A lot of business decisions are based on building a business case to justify the purchase. Art work can be seen to provide a welcoming environment to customers, enhance and help to communicate your brand values, bring life to dead spaces, invigorate colleagues, and define specific areas. Your task is to show how these benefits can translate into dollars, for the business. And show that the dollars they would spend would be far less than the dollars they can expect to get back return. The trick is having something by way of proof to substantiate your claims. This is where perhaps a little market research could go a long way. One research project I would like to see, would be to compare art per square foot, to profitability. Has anyone ever tried B2B art marketing? How did it go? read more ...

You may have read the fascinating story about a stolen painting that was recently recovered. If not, please read it - a great story! The website the boy in the story googled is run by MyArtClub, and it is called Stolen Fine Art. The story behind the website really starts with Reet Herder. Reet has been a founding member of our website. In 2005 Reet let us know that she and 2 other artists had suffered a devastating loss, a theft of 17 paintings. Peter and I were shocked to hear how bad it was. At MyArtClub.com we always like to respond to artist request for features, or listen to their business issues, and look for ways we can assist. This practice has been wonderful for both the artists and for our development as a service. Peter and I put our heads together and figured we could host the images of stolen art as a collection. The MyArtClub site was already set up to host artist groups, so we simply leveraged that as a way to focus on this awful issue. We ask artists for a police reference number of some kind and police and artist contact information. Harbouring Great Memories, recovered from this listing: As you may see from the example on our form below, Reet was really the founding person involved in creating the form. Karma has a way doesn't it? She helped build a service that we host and hope it is of some use to artists, and voila � her art is the one found through the internet! I telephoned Reet, to congratulate her on the recovery. Reet is amazed at not only the painting's recovery but the media attention! "All I did was paint it" she says. This was one of her earlier works, but she was happy with how it had turned out. It was based on a visit to Schooner Cove. The story continues: as might be expected the painting itself was not in the best of conditions. However with luck Reet had prepared to create giclees from this art, and so offered this kind family a giclee in return which they accepted. Reet says " the giclee's colours look better". I thanked Reet for being a long term MyArtClub artist, and especially for helping to start a service for artists, Stolen Fine Art, can now be said to be "proven effective"!! If you have experienced theft of your art, we offer the service free to all artists, write for a submission form to us at [email protected] There are also interesting organizations that focus on stolen fine art. You may enjoy the ARCA blog, written by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief,a Canadian based in LA, who kindly first alerted me to this story. ARCA stands for the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a non-profit organization promoting the study and research of art crime and cultural heritage protection. See her story about this here. What has your experience been? Please add a comment to share your story! read more ...