The Secret for Artists The following blog is the first in a series of articles from a guest, Ruth Payne. For many of you in the Vancouver area, Ruth Payne will need no introduction. Ruth is the curator at the Ferry Building Gallery and the Visual Arts Coordinator of West Vancouver Cultural Services. The Secret for Artists The Secret for artists is first knowing what you want to have happen in your art career. The film THE SECRET (if you haven't watched it, DO!) spells it out in simple terms. The Law of Attractions is always at work and you create what you think about. You must have a clear dream so why not make it big as well as real for you? As Somerset Maugham quipped, "it's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." Dream from your heart while keeping your feet firmly on the ground. This will give you your heart's desire and a vision that you can articulate. Before you delve into the specifics necessary to present yourself to a gallery with the intention of having them represent you, it is necessary to do some in-depth self examination. This authentic, reflective and investigative journey is worthwhile for all artists�and it makes the journey simpler. Art-making and art marketing is a heartfelt journey; to keep that connection is essential. I believe it is in the heart-space that one knows what the dream is. Do you really want to exhibit in New York City in a world-class museum? Or do you want to be a weekend painter, giving your art as gifts to your family and friends and occasionally exhibiting in a local community gallery? Do you prefer the art festival and outdoor market type of venue? Do you want to sell your art as a sideline business which you run as a sole proprietorship? Does the idea of exhibiting in a group show appeal to you more than showing solo? Do you prefer to show people your work in your home or studio and not exhibit in galleries? Are you an Internet buff who would rather spend more time promoting yourself on-line? These are just a few of the questions you want to ask yourself�now you know where to start. Spend at least a month on this, journaling your thoughts and inspirations on what success is going to look like to you. Draw pictures, use lots of colour, cut out images and sayings in magazines. Make a Personal Success collage of your art business. Set aside a special sketchbook to make notes, jot down ideas, successes, tips, doodles, goals, dreams and entitle it: My Successful Art Career. Visit galleries and look at as many other artists' work as possible (advice from painter Gordon Smith). This will give you an idea of where you fit in the art world. Also think about where you fit in art history. What is your style, influences, mentors? Then share your findings with a fellow artist, trusted family member or friend. The next step is to Begin with the End in Mind by imagining yourself at the end of your life. This is a very useful visualization, one of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People from the book by Stephen Covey. What did you do with your art that you are so thrilled with? What did you accomplish that was just right for you? Now you can work backwards to present time and make plans, goals and commit to making your dream happen. Next, write it all down. As long as the idea is just in your head it is a slogan. I believe to make it a goal and make it manifest, you have to write it down. Now you can begin the path to successfully exhibiting and marketing your art. Stay tuned for more in April on the specifics of organizing your art business for success. Ruth Payne, Visual Arts Coordinator, West Vancouver Cultural Services, Ferry Building Gallery About Ruth Payne Ruth brings 25 years of experience as a gallery curator, visual artist, stress management consultant and teacher and runs the popular Arts Connection Networking Salon for visual artists. This article first appeared in the My Art News Letter #12 read more ...

DIY (Do-It-Yourself) art marketing has never been so full of potential to help artists become successful. However artists need to realize results will be proportional to the amount of effort they put in. DIY artist websites offer artists the advantage of low start up costs; total control over content and display options; and powerful art marketing tools. With this in mind, artists need to consider how to make the best use of their time and money. We believe the key considerations are to determine: 1) your internet marketing goals and 2) your time commitment to execute your DIY effort. Goals: The first question to ask when considering your DIY web presence is: What are your expectations from having a website? Your answer might be some combination of: To show your art to others To connect with and build your audience To market and sell your art Time Commitment: The second question you need to ask yourself is: How much time are you willing to invest in achieving your DIY web presence objectives? You might reply with one of these typical answers: 1-2 hours / quarter � Time to build and maintain a web presence is time out of the studio! Save me from the computer! 1-2 hours / month- I just want to update occasionally when necessary. 1-2 hours / week � I am fairly committed � I see online presence as an important part of my marketing efforts. 1 hours / day � I am on the computer a lot and I really want to promote my art and art career for part of my day! An organized approach: With your answers to these 2 top considerations you will know where to focus your efforts. In upcoming blog entries, we will go into detail the web activities available to you to achieve your goals, reviewing the purpose of these activities along with their pros and cons. A summary of many typical artist website features or activities can be found here or a short commentary can be found here. Think of the three goals as if climbing a ladder. First build your site to show, then up a rung to connect, and further up to sell your art. Your time commitment should focus on the minimum required portion, the Basics of each rung, before advancing to the next rung on the ladder. Select anything from Optional section to enhance your artist website efforts. To Show Basics: Prepare suitable "jpeg" images of your art. Upload art images. Upload a picture of yourself. Choose your domain name. Optional: Upload a logo / signature header. Set site template colours and fonts. Group art by type in sub-pages (we call these "Studios"). Add your YouTube videos. Add a flash slideshow. Add music. To Connect Basics: Upload your Artist Statement, Resume and Contact info. Announce your website launch and subsequent updates. Link to sites you love. Add your domain name to your email signature. Add commentary, stories about each artwork. Optional: Set prices for gallery sales. Upload calendar events. Upload your email list. Email news of shows etc to your list. Blog about your target customers needs. Segment your contact list and email targeted messages. Use Facebook, Twitter to connect from and to your website. Create videos on YouTube and post to your blog or website. Add lots more links. Post comments on the blogs of others. Showcase your unique expertise or passion. To Sell (direct from the artist) Basics: Set up a payment provider account (e.g. PayPal, Visa etc). Set your pricing for direct sales. Add Order Forms, Price List and an Art Catalogue. Ask clients to buy from your site. Optional: Advertise on the internet. Offer specials � do some merchandizing. Prepare prints or lower price versions of your artwork. Give your customers specials / freebies. Use eBay and other online markets to meet new clients. Target your customer segment and converse via their community's blogs. How do you feel about our assessment? Your comments would help us understand your artist issues with managing an artist website. What have we got right or what have we missed? 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 ...