Barney Davey Posts: http://barneydavey.blogs.com/printmarket/2007/08/thirteen-sure-f.html [...]

Michael Masterson explains the pitfalls of being a professional artist and some practical solutions to actually sell artwork. In his article, which I will probably reproduce and send to the FineArtViews newsletter list next week, Mr. Masterson gives some practical advice on marketing and selling artwork.  His advice mirrors what we've been saying - your best customers are the people already on your mailing list - you must develop and nurture those people.  You need to get your marketing focus on to developing real relationships with people. Read Michael Masterson's Article: http://www.earlytorise.com/2007/08/27/so-you-want-to-be-an-artist.html [...]

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This Post is by Clint Watson,  former art gallery owner/salesperson/director and founder of FineArtViews. 

This blog has covered the importance of using words in your html with your images so that search engines can "see" your image.  See the following posts for our past views: Search Engines Can Only Read Text Use Image ALT Tags For more information we send you over to Empty Easel, another art blog.  This week they cover the search engine/image subject in their informative post, How to Increase Traffic to your Art Blog by Describing your Artwork for Google. Sincerely, Clint Watson Software Craftsman and Art Fanatic PS - remember that our service, FineArtStudioOnline, handles all this image tagging for you automatically. [...]

Don't make your customers work to purchase your artwork - under each artwork on your website or blog include a link to the venue selling that piece AND the phone number. For example, if you have a painting in "Gallery A" - you should have a link under that painting to Gallery A's website.  And better yet, to the particular page on Gallery A's website that displays your painting.  Also include Gallery A's phone number - your prospective client might just pick up the phone and call. [...]

We've addressed this many times in the past - the short answer is YES. Came across the following in an online forum: As an art dealer and galleriest (sic) I won't consider an artist who doesn't have prices listed on his or her site. This is one of the BIGGEST mistakes artists make on their websites. Many collectors will pass an artist by due to the lack of pricing on a website. Very few potential buyers and gallery owners will take the time to contact the artist and ask for a price. If your site is for exhibition purposes only be sure to include NFS (not for sale) where [...]

We've seen in the art forums and across the blogosphere references to a recent USA Today article "Blog Art" by Kathleen Conroy who writes: If you love buying small works of art for your home or office but don't have time (or money) for the gallery scene, consider shopping on art blogs, where enterprising artists sell their own work directly. . . The article goes on to suggest the "new" and "innovative" method for buying and selling art - blogs.  But this seems to be a bit of a reach....so we don't want you, dear artist, to think you must run out and [...]

Last week we posted a piece titled "Less is More" - which essentially argued that every artist should have their own, stand-alone web site and that the big "online gallery" type art sites should be considered more as advertising as less as a replacement for a "real" web site.  Yesterday, another, very well written art blog, Empty Easel, referenced that post and, while generally agreeing with our main point, they seemed to differ with us just a bit.  We encourage you to read Empty Easel's post Are Personal Websites the Best Way to Promote Art Online?  Their post brought up several other items [...]

Traffic to a website is important.  Without traffic, there's really no reason to have a web site...but what's the best way to get traffic to your site?  And who are the visitors that you're attracting? In the art marketing arena, I'm becoming concerned about the tendency of artists to focus almost exclusively on search engine strategies and particularly on Google as their primary, and in many cases, only marketing strategy. In fact, I covered this not long ago in my post Google Alone is Not Marketing. When I visit online forums where artists discuss online marketing, this seems to be the focus of [...]

Here's a great opportunity to study and see Europe.... Plein Air Oil with Kenn Backhaus $2,500.00 Location: Tuscany, Italy Workshop Dates: 9/27/2008 - 10/4/2008 Contact Person: Susan Truitt Among the goals for these workshops will be for the participants to relax, live and paint in Tuscany for the week. The workshops will be structured with 3 full days of instruction, 1/2 day of instruction with the afternoon free, and 2 mentoring days. On the mentoring days, the group can choose to paint alongside the instructor or at another location. On these special days, there will be late afternoon group critiques. The accommodations for the workshop [...]

GI wrote me to ask about displaying prices on his art web site: I noticed that most artists don't put prices on their paintings. Is it better to leave them off unless there is an inquiry or interest in a painting? I just began to market my work,and have no galleries yet that carry my paintings. What is your personal opinion? Is it more professional to not put the prices in the works pages? Thanks for the question GI.  I'm not sure why more artists don't put their prices on their web sites.  I've always been on record as saying that artists should [...]

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I mentioned yesterday that I reviewed some stats and discovered that the most visited pages on an artist's website are: 1.  The About the Artist Page 2.  The list of galleries that carry the artist's work 3.  A page showing available artwork This means that your About the Artist page should be high on your list of important pages to update and keep current. I would suggest thinking of your "About the Artist" page as an overview of who you are, what you're currently working on, and a guide to your web site.  Don't think of it as something that you write once and then mark [...]

Sometimes when marketing art, people get really focused on traffic, as in "how much traffic does this site receive?"  But I think when it comes to marketing art, less is more. I was recently reviewing a thread in an art internet marketing forum and the debate largely centered around online art marketing sites such as art.com, artbyus.com, etsy.com etc.  I believe the discussion was started by reviews of some of these sites posted on a blog called Empty Easel. Most of the contributors were debating the amount of traffic these various sites generated and in particular how much more traffic etsy.com generated as [...]

The most visited pages on an artist's website are: 1.  The About the Artist Page 2.  The list of galleries that carry the artist's work 3.  A page showing available artwork I was curious which pages people visit most often when visiting an artist's site, so I delved into the stats of several of the higher traffic artist who host with my company, FineArtStudioOnline. The above list shows you which pages, other than the home page, are the most visited.  I deliberately left the home page off the list because home pages tend to get a lot of "looky-loo" traffic that ends up on your site [...]

Hopi Basket by Martha Pettigrew

The people go about their daily business....living their peaceful, simple but rich lives....gathering food, fetching water, playing with their children....perhaps simply gathering flowers for nothing more than enjoyment or for a gift. We're taking a trip back in time, away from our cell phones and pagers.  Further back even than railroads, saloons and gunslingers.  Back to a peaceful time.  A time and place to be at peace with the great spirit and revere the magical land of the southwest. This is where the sculpture of Martha Pettigrew takes us.  Having a piece of her work on your desk, or a larger work in your garden is a magic time machine to [...]

FineArtStudioOnline - New Members [...]

Want to be creative?  Speed up. On the Creating Passionate Users blog (which is about software development), Kathy Sierra writes: "One of the best ways to be truly creative--breakthrough creative--is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast. From the brain's perspective, it makes sense that extreme speed can unlock creativity. When forced to come up with something under extreme time constraints, we're forced to rely on the more intuitive, subconscious parts of our brain. The time pressure can help suppress the logical/rational/critical parts of your brain. It helps you EQ up subconscious creativity (so-called "right brain") and EQ down conscious thought ("left brain")." Of course artists have [...]