15 Minute Craft Website Tips  

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