There has been a lot of hype about blogs in the last year and, in many cases, too much hype.  In fact, last summer I wrote a piece that was fairly critical of blogs.

See Blogs and Success, Separating the Wheat from the Chaff:
http://data.fineartstudioonline.com/dataviewer.asp?page=fineartviews&keyvalue=126&subkeyvalue=379

Since my service, FineArtStudioOnline, has since introduced an integrated blogging platform, today my goal is to focus on the specific, real benefits that one can achieve from blogging.  As an artist, one major reason you want to blog is to bring traffic to your website in hopes that at least some of those visitors will be interested in your art work.  How does this work in practice?  Well, it is important to generate, over time, a lot of content for the search engines to pick up.  Each blog post might only garner you 2 or 3 page views a month, but the blog posts stay on your web site forever, so the effect becomes cumulative.  This means you need to be committed to post on a regular basis and you need to expect results in the long-term . . . NOT immediately. For example, I have been blogging for over a year now and have something like 120 posts in my blog.  At the end of this article, I have provided a list of the keywords that brought traffic to my site from 1/1/2007 to 1/26/2007.

A couple of thoughts about the list below.  I'm getting traffic from people who are searching for other artists.  These people found my blog because I have blog posts that discuss other artists.  This reveals an important "secret" -  you can garner traffic to your artist web site by writing about other artists whom you admire.  This might be more effective if you write about artists whose works appeal to the same clientčle as your work.  I also notice that I'm generating a fair amount of traffic due to keywords referenced in blog posts by guests - other writers whose work I "reprinted" with permission.  Another "secret" revealed - if your not a prolific writer, make a deal with a few of your friends to "share" content.  You can let them post your stuff on their blogs and you should definitely post their stuff on your blog...just make sure you exchange links in those posts too, this way you can benefit from garnering more inbound links (See A Look at Links)  Lastly, I notice that a lot of guys must be desperate to find out what to buy their wives for their birthdays since there seem to be a bunch of variations on that theme (all no doubt due to my blog post "What NOT to Get your Wife on her Birthday").

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired magazine calls this phenomenon the "Long Tail."  You've probably heard of the 80/20 rule - 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers...or, in our case, 80% of your traffic comes from the top 20% of your keywords.  With a traditional web site, you had to focus on getting your site to come up on a search engine in those to 20% keywords.  With MOST artists, I would argue that what you really need to focus on is your own NAME, because most people looking for an artist, search for the artist by name.   The 80/20 rule is fine, but by definition it means your ignoring the 80% (80% of your customers, 80% of your keywords, etc).

What blogging allows you to do, over time, is slowly build content that captures the "long tail" or the remaining "80%".  This analogy is not perfect since there are essentially an infinite number of keywords, but you get the idea.

One other thought - you could create a lot of the benefits of blogging that I have outlined by being sure to post new artwork often, and to write a paragraph to display with each piece...remember: search engines can only "see" text.  In fact, I recommend you do both - post paintings often with text AND blog.

OK Without further ado, here is the list:

Search Engine Keywords for ClintWatson.net 1/1/2007 - 1/26/2007:
clint watson" on Google   (We would expect this to be number one)
"paul oxborough" on Google  
"malcolm liepke nudes" on Google  
"jeff watts art" on Google  
"internet art scams" on Google  
"review liepke" on Google  
"sylvia white art advice any good" on Google  
"'miles mathis' gravity" on Google  
"van gogh, ears of wheat, blotch"  on Google  
"red frog paintings" on Google  
"developing your own style" on Google  
"san antonio spurs little general" on Google  
"artist and gallery relationships" on Google  
"art pricing guidelines" on Google  
"art variation " on Google  
"clint watson utah" on Google  
"marketing art using ebay painting
small paintings" on Google  
"'kelly crow' and 'wall street journal'" on Google  
"paul oxborough arc" on Google  
"hui han liu " on Google  
"paintings from bravo" on Google  
"'more than eight' usability" on Google  
"claudio bravo easel" on Google  
"'how to become a fine artist'" on Google  
"clint watson art" on Google  
"what to get my wife for her birthday" on Google  
"'pricing art" on Google  
"brian kliewer price" on Google  
"robert spooner" on Google  
"allusion painting" on Google  
"art evaluation worksheet" on Google  
"art christmas ghost of present" on Google  
"good names for painting jobs" on Google  
"edvard munch aspergers" on Google  
"barbara henning loomis" on Google  
"the invitation, morgan weistling" on Google  
"dreams about zebras,what do they mean?" on MSN  
"dateline nigerian internet scam cashier check" on Google  
"abstract pantings" on Google  
"glorious paintings" on Google  
"art florence syndrome" on Google  
"artists to collect" on Google  
"oxborough paintings" on Google  
"rosann munger" on Google  
"thomas mcknight, artist, lawsuit" on Google  
"drama through paintings" on Google  
"robert coombs paintings" on Google  
"fineartstudioonline.com" on Google  
"marketing complimentary idea" on Google  
"getting round the right click disabler" on Google  
"clint, modern art" on Google  
"da vinci type of perspective" on Google  
"bravo, claudio kitten" on Google  
"$140 million pollack painting picture" on Google  
"varnish technique" on Google  
"malcolm liepke decline" on Google  
"what to buy my wife for her birthday" on Google  
"quote leonardo learning skills fade away" on Google  
"bank one incoming wire transfer warren, ohio" on Google  
"kelly crow wall street journal" on Google  
"joe wojdakowski" on Google  
"artists to collect for the future" on Google  
"1920's media hype " on Google  
"steve huston nudes" on Google  
"artist gallery relationship" on Google  
"wired magazine what kind of genius are you" on Google  
"who buys art and why do they buy" on Google  
"'robert coombs' art" on Google  
"sue becque" on Google  
"the good, thebad, the ugly art gallery" on Google  
"how does kinkaid market his art>" on Google  
"aron weisenfeld" on Google  
"gallery/artist relationship" on Google  
"what to buy your wife for birthday" on Google  
"what to get you wife for her birthday" on Google  
"unused links" on Google  
"what percentage an artist agent" on Google  
"what does an artist's agent do" on Google  
"renoirs for sale" on Google  
"yahoo checking inbound links" on Google  
"framed prints of stone city by grant wood" on Google  
"we are free indeed" on Google  
"jim wodark" on Google  
"classic 'art fanatic'" on Google  
"galleries and how an artist should approach" on Google  
"stendhal artist" on Google  
"don sahli" on Google  
"arts and gallery relationships" on Google  
"etching hopper" on Google  
"anders ericcson" on Google  
"artist and gallery relationship" on Google  
"push yourself past your comfort zone" on Google  
"art variation" on Google  
"nigerian scam art test" on Google  
"critics of bill bonner" on Google  
"artists who collect" on Google  
"what to get your wife for her birthday" on Google  
"relationship artists" on Google  
"claudio bravo last sales" on Google 

Hoping you found this information useful,

Clint Watson
Software Craftsman and Art Fanatic

PS:  My service, FineArtStudioOnline, sports a fully integrating blogging platform.  For artists, this is a great tool because your blog and your web site are all in one place and provided by one service.  If you're not a current FASO customer, give it a try at:
http://www.FineArtStudioOnline.com