So here's something that surprises me: I see some other artist website services recommending you use their software for your blogging solution, but, for their own company blogs, they use Wordpress or Blogger. That should tell you something. How do they find the pain points? How do they know what to fix? [1] Why don't they think their own software is good enough for their own use? [2] [...]

Three simple tips for your art business. [...]

...make sure that your links are relevant. What's relevant? Your art, your website, another website featuring your art -- the theme to this is you, you, you, which goes against everything your mother spent the formative years hammering in, but you are the product that you are marketing. It's difficult to do this without drawing attention to yourself. [...]

Those of you who run your website through FASO are like Dorothy and her ruby red slippers -- you already have the means and technical support to get back to Kansas and generate an online newsletter, with all sorts of useful options like an automated notice to you whenever someone signs up for your newsletter, statistics on who opened your newsletter, and an ongoing list of your subscribers and their e-mails. If you do not have a FASO account, check into your website host and see what they have to offer. [...]

Just because it's complex and ever changing doesn't mean that you can't give it a try, though, and the best way to do this is to do what we did last week: just get started. Writing anything is better than writing nothing. [...]

Old information is worthless information. And even worse, you just might alarm your fans into thinking you've checked out. Let'em know you're still working this gig. [...]

What has happened is a learning curve on my part, because the more I have listened, the more I have learned from people who articulate themselves well, generously share their knowledge at the level I can grasp it, and genuinely want to see my project succeed. Each change I make adds knowledge to what I picked up from the project before, as well as customizes our website to meet our marketing, client, business, and personal needs. [...]

We're not normally "I told you so" type of people, but we told you so. :-) We cannot stress enough the importance of sending a newsletter...it worked for Jacki and it can work for you, too. [...]

I like that, because of the combination of my fumbling experimentation with the guiding expertise of technical support, I am less intimidated by (some of) the inner workings of my website. By experimenting with customization options, we created something that is uniquely ours, showcasing the specific products and services we offer, and enabling us to better market them. [...]

The important thing is to make sure that you take advantage of every opportunity available ? and in order to do this, it helps to recognize that opportunities come in different forms that aren't always obvious, predictable, or traditional, and in marketing your art, you will expand your horizons beyond the easy, customary, and expected. [...]

Things to look for: (1) A sense of urgency (2) Poor grammatical use in the email (3) Wanting to pay by Cashiers check (sometimes a greater amount than you are asking) (4) They want to use their own shipping agent. [...]

We are the sole proprietors of our own business. We create products, which we need to sell. We have to deal with expenses, marketing, sales, financing, legal, and all other business aspects, not in this specific order necessarily, but in some way that will make our business viable, thriving and sustaining. [...]

Praise from a FASO client. She explains how she uses our stats to do something you can't do with Google Analytics... [...]

So go ahead, call yourself something kicky and cool ? The Staggering Stegosaurus Studio ? but somewhere, make sure you add your name, a very important part of you, to your brand. [...]

Major businesses today are trying to do too much with too little, and while that may work for awhile, it's not sustainable. People switch to a smaller bank, the corner grocery store, the ugly little restaurant with the phenomenal food, the Independent Yarn Shop, because verifiable contact with humans becomes as important, or more important, than price. Big business hasn't learned this. [...]

Following my last post on 10 ways to use your smartphone to help your art career and the additional comments many of you posted on other ways to use your phone (which I summarized in a follow-up post on my blog), I had several discussions with artists about their pains with technology and its usage to help them with their art career. This, coupled with Clint's recent posts on Facebook and other social media, I was thinking that it might be the right time to open this to you, the artists community. [...]

I found the process valuable as it made me write down, in one place, a lot of information I had scattered across our blog posts and in my head. Since we don't know how much of the information will be used in the actual article, the interviewer, John Parks, kindly gave me permission to post my answers here even before the article is published. I've cleaned up the raw answers I sent him (there was a deadline) and expanded a bit upon them. I hope you find some useful information in them. [...]

You've worked hard to be the visual equivalent of a world class musician - don't try to show your work in the subway station. The right people are waiting for you at the right time, in the right places, make sure you meet them there. [...]

I don't mean to sound like a laundry detergent commercial, but if you have a website through FASO (Fine Art Studio Online) and you haven't discovered technical support, then you don't know what you're missing. [...]

I am a blog reader, but, let's set this straight: I don't read just any old blog. And while a lot of the blogs I read hang out under the FASO FineArtViews Blogs - Insights Directly from our members! heading, by no means do I read all of them that reside there. "Why?" you ask. Because I am demanding. And because I can't afford to give away very much of my 24 hour day to the blog reading arena, so I focus on the good ones. But for those of you who want to up your readership, here's a list of my demands. [...]

Becoming organized is liberating and allows you to focus on the given task at hand rather than being distracted by other tasks. During your art creating time, you can focus all your energy on creating. During your business time, you can focus on bookkeeping, marketing, organization, emails, cataloging, etc. The two sides of your business will not collide for attention as often [...]

If you honestly don't know how to price your art work it might be wise to step back and ask yourself why you are promoting and trying to sell your art in the first place. Honestly, can you imagine if stores were ran in that way? Every item listed without a price -- leaving customers scratching their head. Would you enjoy shopping in that manner? If you want to haggle go to a flea market -- if you want to sell art list the damn prices on your artist website. [...]

Kathy Bloomgarden, Ruder Finn co-CEO has stated, "The mobile phone is becoming the most powerful online device, and the faster businesses can adapt their services to harness consumer mobile intent, the more rapidly they can capitalize on understanding their customers to drive growth." In that sense one could suggest that artists need to provide their customers-- art buyers-- with a mobile-friendly art website in order to tap into that aspect of selling art online. Thus, I have to commend Clint Watson for understanding that his customers-- artists-- need to be able to harness mobile technology. FASO allows that. [...]

Having and maintaining a personal artist website is important regardless of the state of the economy. Influential voices in the US art community ranging from Edward Winkleman to Mat Gleason have all noted the importance of why an artist should have a personal website. However, as I hope I've made clear-- having an artist website during times of economic struggle can provide an artist with unique opportunities for gaining exposure and promoting artwork. The tactful artist can take advantage of any recession-- and come out ahead. [...]

This practice of hyping raw data from media measurement websites is a form of exploitation. It is exploitation when you consider that the art website companies utilizing this tactic are striving to dupe unsuspecting artists into thinking their services are the best choice when in reality they may not be. Again, this depends on the context of how the information is used by the artist website service. Some make it very clear that the data is not exactly solid information. Unfortunately, the majority I've seen over the years convey the information as if it is factually based on the entirety of Internet users. [...]

Artists have a lot to consider when finding what works best for them in regards to selling art online. It does not make it any easier when you consider that artist website service providers are a dime a dozen today. It often seems that new ventures pop up every other month-- all 'telling' an artist exactly what he or she wants to 'hear'. I don't blame them-- they want to sell their service by suggesting that they provide the best artist websites online. However, more often than not the services provided are not exactly what they are presented to be. [...]

The future is clear when you consider that some grade school children know more about surfing the Internet and finding what they want compared to some adults. Decades fly by fast-- some of these youngsters will be the art collectors of tomorrow. [...]

After searching around in various places, I discovered that blogging was like anything else, it needed attention. [...]

Website visitors-- especially potential buyers-- don't want to have to solve a puzzle just to view your artwork. They don't want to waste minutes of their time trying to figure out your website design. In other words, they don't want to explore the design of the artist website at length-- they simply want to view images of the artwork, contact the artist with ease if needed, and have an easy transaction if a purchase is made-- all while eating their lunch. [...]

Remember, we all have a story to tell. Telling that story is the most humanly powerful ways to connect to your audience. [...]

When times get tough, creative folks come up with new ideas. Innovative ideas seem to spontaneously generate out of bad times. Change can be good, but let's face it - as long as the status quo is working, hardly anyone seeks change. [...]

Don't confuse an artist's statement with a biography. Many artists often combine the two into one document that lacks the intended focus. They should be two separate documents with different purposes. [...]

The final, most important not to use your full-content feed is this: You and I should not be working so hard only build traffic for Facebook (so they can sell Facebook ads). I am working hard to share my thoughts with my audience.....but I want to do it on my site, presented the way I want it presented, and shared in a way that brings people to my website. [...]

By discovering creative ways to approach self-promotion online-- and taking the time to implement them-- you may find that your online followers do the brunt of the work for you, so to speak. The following suggestions can help you to spend your time wisely online in regards to promotional efforts that enforce your art marketing strategy [...]

Did you know that accessing the Internet via mobile devices is the fastest growing part of the growth of the web today? The iPhone truly did change everything. I see it every day as people I know increasingly use or purchase a smartphone...including the most computer illiterate person I know...Your art website should be mobile friendly. Here's why: I am actually MORE engaged in looking at art on a mobile device because mobile devices are inherently consumption devices, while desktop computers are production devices. [...]

My first suggestion is a basic aspect of online marketing that artists, based on my experience, tend to overlook. That suggestion being-- the need to post links to your artist website or specific images of your artwork online. By making a routine of posting links to your art you will help your art to spread virally online. There is nothing wrong with helping to get the ball rolling, so to speak. [...]

Following Clint's article earlier this week and the amazing follow-up discussion, I saw some need to explain in easy terms what some of those geeky-tech-terms are all about. [...]

Back when people wrote by hand more, apostrophes were easily controlled by leaving little ink splotches where the writer thought they might, or might not be, but with the advent of excessive keyboarding, this little trick no longer works. [...]

There's no advantage to 1,000 people going to the website if the average time spent there is less than 10 seconds. Far better for fewer viewers to be spending more time. [...]

There is exactly one day left for 2010 before we drop that big ball in Time Square and welcome 2011. Can we squeeze in one more piece of information? I think we can! So today I wanted to share with you one piece of recently new technology which I think can be very useful for all of us. [...]