How to Reach Out as an Artist – Part One
How to Reach out as an artist – Part One
I am having such a great time meeting and talking to other artists and people involved in art over the Internet through various mediums. (The latest of which is Twitter) There are definite benefits to be realized from reaching out. Gone are the days when artists have to work in isolation with very little contact with their peers or customers. In fact I think I may be in danger of being a bit of an ‘attention whore.’ (Hey I did grow up in a family of 14 kids I can't help it!)I love getting great comments on my artwork, and that’s part of it, but I think the real attraction lies in feeling a ‘sense of belonging’ to an art community of some kind.
The path I followed to get where I am started here:
FanArt Review (about 3. 00 per month)
2006 Joined FanArt Review and stared posting my digital paintings. Did it for about a year (I think) then stopped because, to be honest, the overall quality of the work (especially digital) wasn’t worth the time you needed to spend viewing and reviewing it to get enough credits to get yours noticed in various ways. I have just joined again recently (for 3 mos.) and am pretty much of the same opinion. I will give it another chance and probably blog some more about it.
Artsites.ca (100. 00/year)
March 2008 started a website with Artsites.ca and found it easy to use, but not geared to online marketing as much as I needed it to be. (There is a Post on my old Wordpress blog at http://joanahamilton.wordpress.com/ about PayPal buttons driving me crazy!) That says it all!
Wordpress Blog (free)
September 2008 Started a Wordpress Art Blog on Digital Painting and learned tons doing that. I was up to 1215 hits a month with it by April 2009. I’ve since decided that the number of hits doesn’t mean too much. It was the information that I obtained from my stats (Wordpress gives great stats –hint hint J Dan and Zac) that made me realize that a lot of people were looking for information and help with “digital art.”
Why My Art Couldn't Sell
I could tell people were returning by the way they searched the painting title or my name or even the demo titles. All this was great, except it wasn’t getting me any sales for a number of reasons. (1) WordPress doesn’t support PayPal buttons (except Donate ones and I thought that was a little presumptuous to say the least!) I tried describing the piece in the blog and giving a direct link to my web page (where I did finally get some PayPal buttons installed). But, even when they got there (2) the process was so cumbersome and confusing that most people (read anybody!) would be reluctant to attempt it. (3) It was really obvious that I needed to combine my blog and my website (which was basically a gallery anyway) into one. If I was going to do all the work of doing tutorials and demonstrations I’d better have my products there too, ready to sell.
I have been looking at artist’s websites and blogs for about five years now on a very frequent basis. Photography sites like Flickr , online galleries, art forums, art marketing blogs, websites … anywhere I could find “art” and 'art marketing" on the internet ( always keeping one antennae out there for digital art in particular… saw a lot of awful stuff too!) and had a chance to tune my tastes to what I liked and didn’t like about other artist websites and blogs (not taking into consideration their artwork). I tried to find people producing art and attempting to sell it over the internet to see how they did it. Got drawn into checking the Daily Painters site and still get an email update everyday from them with all the paintings posted that day for quick viewing. I’m finding so many of them look so the same day after day, that I may opt out of checking so often. Maybe that’s why they look so similar. I bet mine would too. Didn’t manage to find a similar Daily Digital Painter group (maybe because it takes longer than you think to paint digitally … the “computer isn’t doing it for me” you know.) I see there are some in Google now, but I'm too busy right now to try it.
This is getting too long for one post, and I have lots more places to tell you about …so (to be continued…) J Plus I have to find the links for all these places I’ve mentioned.
Posted in Artistic Growth on June 9th, 2009. 2 comments so far.
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Jackie Jacobson said:
YOU ARE AN ARTIST. You're on your way to getting more experience. But...You are very much an artist. Thanks for your willingness to share. Hugs to you, Jackie