15 Minute Craft Website Tips  

Blogging is a great way to help promote your artwork online. Unfortunately, setting up a blog is a lot easier than actually blogging on a regular basis. Life gets in the way, you have a show to prepare for, the house needs to be cleaned, the kids are sick, or you just don't know what to write about anymore. Before you know it, it's been months since your last blog post. A blog is only useful if you post on a regular basis. So how do you start up again when it's been months since you've even looked at your blog? In this episode, I'll discuss ways to get out of a blogging slump and how to stay out of the slump in the future.

SEO or search engine optimization is one of those important things that many artists tend to ignore because it seems like it either too difficult to do or doesn't work. But if you ignore the importance of making your website or blog attractive to search engines, you're missing out on potential customers for your art. On today's episode, I'll talk about why it's important to make your website more attractive to search engines and a couple of tips on how to do it.

When most artists think about making money with their art, they mainly think about direct sales....you make a piece of art and you sell it to a customer. But there are number of different ways to make money in addition to selling your artwork. And these alternate streams of income can help supplement your bottom line. In this episode, I'm going to talk about 5 alternate ways to make money without directly selling your art.

If you're an artist trying to promote your artwork or sell your artwork online, you've probably heard of social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. Perhaps you've already dipped your toe into the social networking waters. But is it working the way you're expecting? Is it getting you results or does it feel like a waste of time? Social networking can greatly benefit your marketing efforts IF you take the right approach. On this episode, I'll give you some tips that you can use right away that can help you successfully marketing your art through social networking.

Simply building your art website is only the beginning of marketing yourself online. You also need to promote your website if you want it to work as an effective marketing tool. But, if you're a working artist or an artist that also holds down another job, how are you going to keep with the marketing part of your website AND creating your art? In this episode, I'll discuss ways you can keep up with both creating your art and marketing it on your website.

1. Understand that promoting your website is a long term task
• traffic doesn't arrive by magic
• you have to market and promote regularly and often to keep a steady flow of traffic

2. Make marketing your website a part of your overall marketing plan
• remember, your website and online marketing is a tool in your marketing arsenal, not a • separate part of your marketing plan
• combine your offline marketing efforts with your online marketing whenever possible

3. Plan ahead
• create a marketing schedule
• make sure your plans covers slow periods as well as holidays
• build scheduled times during the day to market online and scheduled times to be in your studio

4. Don't try too many things at once
• pick a couple techniques at a time and master them
• don't chase after the shiny new "thing"
• constantly test and measure your results, modify or drop the things that don't work
• add new techniques after you have your current ones set

5. Don't let your computer become a time sink
• group related tasks together and get them done at the same time
• use tools to help you accomplish things faster
• have a plan or a task list before you sit down at the computer
• stick to your schedule

6. Get help if you need it
• outsource the tasks that you aren't good at or don't like
• enlist the help of tech savvy friends, family members
• hire professional help when needed

If you need more information on how to hire and work with a great web designer, as well as information on how to interview a web designer, how to avoid a bad designer, and how save money and time managing your web project, you get more information at www.howtohireawebdesigner.com

Simply building your art website is only the beginning of marketing yourself online. You also need to promote your website if you want it to work as an effective marketing tool. But, if you're a working artist or an artist that also holds down another job, how are you going to keep with the marketing part of your website AND creating your art? In this episode, I'll discuss ways you can keep up with both creating your art and marketing it on your website.