Why Do You Need to Be Search Engine Listed?

Unless you enjoy paying for all or most of your website traffic, being listed in a search engine and achieving a first page listing can significantly increase selling art online profitability. The reason it is important to be on the first page of any search engine is that most web searchers do not look beyond the first search results page. Another added benefit is that this is typically free traffic to your website. Meaning once a page from your website is listed in the search engine results there is typically no additional cost to maintain that page listing.

What Do You Need to Do to Get to the First Page of Google?

Assuming you already have your website built you need to start by selecting your keywords. If you’re selling art online you should focus on a very clear set of keywords or keyword phrases. These keywords or keyword phrases will need to be incorporated throughout your website. Additionally, you want to make sure that your meta-tag and meta-descriptions also contain these keywords. Although you can use the same keywords for the entire site is often better to use a variety of keywords based on the page content.

What Is the Importance of Web Copy/Content in Relation to Your Search Engine Listing?

When creating your website you need to strategically consider the placement of your keywords or keyword phrases. By providing the proper placement of your keywords you are attempting to convince the search engines that your webpage is relevant to particular keyword. In order to accomplish this you should place keywords in headings, near the top of the page, make keywords bold as needed and place the same keywords in your title page and meta-tags. Avoid linking to other pages with irrelevant content but when linking from one page to another make “keywords” the link rather than “click here”. This is a really important part to selling art online successfully and should you feel unable to complete this process you should consider hiring a professional to write some or all of the text for your website.

How to Use Links to Increase Your Search Engine Listing?

Now that you’ve laid down the foundation it’s time to start linking to your site. One way to do this is to write an article about a particular topic and post it to an article directory. By visiting forums you may be able to answer questions and provide links back to your website. Although these are just a couple examples to consider when selling art online they should create a solid foundation for you to get started.

Once you’ve laid the foundation, the art of selling art online should become easier. You need to keep in mind that competition is fierce, and in order to stay on top you should constantly be adding new content to your website, as well as creating links back to your website from other popular sites.

Educate Buyers

Whether in the studio or online an excellent art marketing idea is to offer knowledge that would be of interest to buyers. By providing real knowledge about art you can keep the interested buyers coming back to your website over and over. So how do you decide, what art buyers want to know?

Consider what a buyer needs to know about caring for their artwork. A good example would be how to safely clean your pieces of art. A great idea might be to write a tutorial or create a video tutorial showing them how to clean their art. You could also make a video tutorial about how to frame art. Or you may consider offering a list of the best places to have their art framed. By providing ideas to potential buyers you create a rapport which can build a lasting relationship and turn a visitor into a customer.

Create a Unique Buying Experience

There are many new marketing art techniques emerging from upcoming artists. Some include giving away art and other interesting and unique buying experiences for potential customers. Consider a play on words and offer your art as “Free to a good home.” With this approach you could make a game out of it and require that in order to get the free piece of art they need to answer an art question.

Another great way to build a potential buyer list is to offer a free piece of art once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month. Potential buyers who are interested in them receiving a free piece of art are required to sign up for your newsletter. Let them know that you will notify the winners through the newsletter only. This allows you to build an e-mail list that you can then send additional information to on a regular basis to try and convert them into buyers.

With the use of the Internet, you have at your disposal subject to cost issues, various software that can help you to provide your buyers a fantastic online viewing experience and with special areas only for the Esteemed Buyer, you can create that feeling of exclusivity in the buyer.

No Questions Asked Guarantee

You need to have a no questions asked guarantee to really stand out from the crowd by making it easy for buyers to return art that they are not happy with. You take the risk for them completely out of the picture (pun intended) and make it easier for them to buy your work of art.

Also consider allowing a potential buyer to take a work of art home to hang in their house for several days without having to commit to purchasing. Depending on the way that you accept payments you could offer 30 days free before billing.

With a creative mind like yours, you will be able to come up with interesting ways of making a unique visiting and buying experience for your customers.

In essence marketing is the ability for others to hear about you and build a brand name that people trust. This is done by promising and delivering on those promises and commitments. Even marketing as an artist, the basic formula never changes. You need to develop a marketing strategy that will fulfill these goals. A perfect marketing art strategy will fail if the reputation of the artist is tarnished.

The most powerful tool you have in your marketing campaign is your portfolio. For today’s artists it is imperative that you not only have your physical portfolio but to also have an online portfolio that will allow you to showcase examples of your work. Online portfolios allow easy access to potential buyers, while making it easy for you to update. However, you should also consider having a paper portfolio to show potential buyers. This paper portfolio should be filled with high quality photos of your work. Remember marketing art is about your ability to make your products look fantastic in the eyes of the buyer. It is also important that you keep your resume, rates and references up-to-date. As an artist by having a world-class portfolio and personal information up to date you are in possession of the most powerful marketing art tools available to you.

When creating your Catalogue, you need to review other catalogues and see how other well known professional artists are showcasing themselves and their works. Nowadays, there are tools out there that can help you get fantastic and professional catalogues which are not very expensive. You need to keep in mind the following when preparing your catalogues

1)      Professional and Clean Photographs of your Art Work

2)      Layout that is easy to follow and where Each Artwork can be clearly focused on.

3)      There should be no spelling or layout mistakes

4)      Use quality paper with a Cover and Back Page that stands out.

5)      And off course the Content needs to excite readers about you as the Artist and The Artwork being portrayed.

As an artist you need to keep in mind that your name is the brand that you are selling. In order to fortify your reputation you will need to establish excellent credentials. Work diligently to overcome any buyer concerns or complaints in an effort to avoid building a negative brand name. Diligently work to meet deadlines, answering customer’s questions and make sure to follow through. Consider sending thank you cards to customers that bought and those that did not buy. If you can keep in touch with customers on a regular basis you keep your name brand in front of them and potentially have an opportunity to sell to them later on.

1. Being Unsure of Your Target Market. Artists are often unsure of themselves and don’t understand their target market. To find your target audience you should ask yourself some key questions. These include: Are you able to identify the target market? What is the gender of your target market? Do you know their age group? What is the brand name you’re trying to build for yourself and how will you reach your target market.
2. Making A Bad First Impression: Many artists completely blow the only chance they will have to make a great first impression. In most cases, an artist will only have a single opportunity to make that outstanding first impression. You need to work diligently to really make this an outstanding opportunity. Avoid showing potential buyers works of art that are not finished or you would prefer not to sell.
3. Huge Sale Jitters: Choking in front of a potentially huge sale. Many young artists do this when they realize for the first time that they may be making their largest sale ever. You really need to remain calm and professional regardless of the situation.
4. Asking the Opinion of Friends and Family: Avoid falling into the pitfall by asking friends, what they think. Many artists looking for gratification for their work seek out friends or family in order to ask their opinion. This can be devastating to an artist, since it is highly likely you will not be selling to friends or family. Unfortunately many family members may not understand your artistic creativity, and therefore not see your art as a potential buyer would.
5. Creating Too Many Inexpensive Works: By creating too many inexpensive works of art you risk diluting your more expensive pieces of art. The majority of buyers are looking for an investment and if they feel that their investment may be diluted they may avoid buying additional pieces.
6. Being Over Confident: Avoid being overly confident and be ready to take constructive criticism from buyers. When marketing art the real people you want to listen to are your potential buyers. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth by blowing off an otherwise constructive piece of advice from a potential buyer.
7. Lack of Consistency: Be true to your artistic creativity. Artists are often guilty for creating a name brand for one type of art and the name sporadically changing to another. This is devastating to your marketing strategies and can significantly hinder the growth of your brand name.
8. Not Making Full Use of The Internet: Lack of an online gallery for artwork. As part of your marketing art strategy you need to have a website that allows you to display your works of art for potential buyers. The inability for buyers to access your works of art creates a void in your marketing strategy.
9. Not Reading the Fine Print in Contracts: Seek legal advice before signing a contract. Artists who are commissioned by a gallery to create art are often in such a hurry to sign up that they do not read the fine print. Depending on the contract you could be required to share a percentage of all the art you sale regardless of whether it is sold from the gallery or from your personal studio.
10. Approaching Major Galleries Hastily: Aspiring artists fall into the trap of trying to introduce themselves into major galleries without the right preparation. Unless you have a brand name and have established yourself in the local community try and avoid forcing yourself on a major gallery. Taking the time to find out the best way to approach the gallery will increase your chances of getting in the door.

Being organized is one of the essential elements of being a successful Artist or achieving success in any walk of life. In order to get your business running smoothly and increase your Art Marketing campaigns and results and off course to keep the taxman happy, you need to begin organizing your paperwork in such a manner that allows you easy access to the important documents, phone numbers and contact information that are needed in our daily lives

There are numerous benefits to being organized with the main ones being:

1) saving TIME by finding the information you need quickly

2) saving MONEY by being able to claim all your expenses in your tax return and by getting a better idea of your profit or loss position so you can price your art work correctly

3) appearing PROFESSIONAL to potential customers and business partners and instilling trust in dealing with you.

4) Increasing your DATABASE of customers by being able to keep a track of all your contacts and communication with them fostering long term relationships.
Thankfully, the computer has significantly increased our ability to stay organized. Here are some ideas to help you stay more organized and focused more on Art Marketing rather than chasing paper.

• Create a file system that is easy to use and understand.
• Create folders for each and every type of paper you expect to receive these may include phone bills, electric bills, projects, Art Marketing bills, etc.
• Avoid printing e-mails or other electronic documents. Create files on your computer to store the same information.
• Create a miscellaneous file that’s exclusively designed to keep papers that cannot be filed anywhere else.
• Use a daily planner to track your daily events, but you should keep specific items such as phone numbers or contact information in a separate book. Also consider purchasing software specifically designed for maintaining your contact list.
• Dedicate a certain amount of time every day for filing your paperwork.
• Clean your mailbox and your e-mail box up by unsubscribing from any distribution lists that don’t benefit you on a regular basis.
• Create a special folder or file location to store documents that are used on a regular basis.
• Regularly review your stored documents and throw out those that are no longer needed
As an artist trying to maximize your Art Marketing campaigns, you need to be as organized as absolutely possible. Recordkeeping can be a difficult and painful task if you do not take the time to set yourself up to succeed from the beginning. Do yourself and your Art Business a favor and get organized today. Once you are organized, you should be able to find more time to spend doing the things you love rather than the things you dread doing.

An artist today may find it possible to create news out of almost any situation that they are facing in their artistic career. How an artist goes about creating this into a story rather than just news is the difference between an artist who has learned how to make use of the power of press releases and is receiving the monetary benefit that this process produces.

Reporters and readers alike enjoy a great story especially a story that is factual and personal. In creating a story for your press release you need to think about marketing your art, not by the process in which you create that art but by the story behind the creation of the art. Think of a piece of art, and the story that went behind what happened, what were your feelings ,what did you desire, what was it that made that piece of art special to you. This is what reporters and readers alike crave and desire. Put these thoughts and feelings and desires into a bullet point list.

Now that you have your bullet point list about a particular piece of art you need to turn this into a story. If you don’t think that you can write your own press release, then you should consider hiring a professional writer. With your bullet point list ready, the writer should be able to ask a few simple questions and create a rough draft of your press release. Clearly define to the writer the purpose for your press release.

You may also want to consider who you are creating the press release for. If you are targeting different audiences, you may want to create press releases specially designed for each audience. Remember when marketing art the objective is to capture as many interested parties as possible. If you will be showing your art work at a gallery or other local event make sure you include this in your press release.

You need to focus on the Headline and make it catchy headline. If you fail to do this your press release could get lost in the thousands that are created every day.

Now that the press releases that created you need to get exposed. The easiest way to expose your press release is for online press release websites. There are hundreds of press release websites that would all be a good audience for your marketing art campaign. However in order to weed out the undesirables talk to your writer and/or do a search of the Internet to find the best.

CASE STUDY: As a result of a Press Release I did for an Artist, he was invited to a Radio Interview on one of the BBC Radio Programmes and through this he got amazing publicity through hits on his website and through the Artist becoming an Expert overnight.

Twitter has become primarily a sounding board to allow people to discuss their daily lives almost minute by minute. Artists today must learn how to sell artwork using Twitter in order to benefit from this amazing application. Here are some points that should help any artist asking the question” how to sell artwork using Twitter”.

Among the first things to do when creating your Twitter account is you should customize your Twitter page. There are many websites currently that offer Twitter backgrounds either for free or for sale. If you have some experience with graphics software you could create your own. If you don’t have experience than a good plan would be to hire a graphic artist and use a background from one of your paintings or several of your paintings anything that represents you as an artist and shows your quality and commitment to your artistic creations.

Connect your website or your blog to your Twitter account. Although most people do this with a blog, if you have a location on your website where you regularly post updates you could do this for your website also. The point of doing this is so that when you post to your blog or website, a small amount of text is also sent to your Twitter account and your fans will know that you’ve updated your account. This is a great way to let people know that you’ve uploaded new photos of your paintings or to simply let them know what’s going on in your life.

Search the Twitter site for artist or other individuals who have similar interests as you and become their fan. The real key to Twitter is developing a fan base. There are several ways to do this, but the best way is to be a fan of others. In many cases other Twitter users will have their account set to automatically follow fans. So if you join their fan network, they will join yours.

Another key to learning how to sell artwork using Twitter is to post regularly. While many people create a Twitter account, they often leave it dormant. As an artist you should be giving updates or blog posts very regularly about your artwork, where you are displaying your art, upcoming art shows or other details relating to you or your art work. People are often just as interested if not more interested in the artist is they are the artwork that they produce.

1) When greeting potential buyers make them feel comfortable and welcome. You should have printed materials readily available about your bio, exhibition history or other relevant information. Take the time to show the buyer, what they want to see and talk about how you created the work of art. You could also have a TV screen showing your portfolio, previous exhibitions etc.

2) Talk to your buyers about you and your art, and why you do what you do. Avoid lecturing the buyer and do not become argumentative. However, if your buyer truly expresses an interest in having a conversation you should engage them as an artist not a salesperson.

3) Arrange your studio in such a manner that you have a location expressly reserved for the finished works of art. Trying to arrange this section of your studio to appear as a gallery will make buyers more comfortable in viewing your art. Keep in mind that traditionally many buyers/collectors are accustomed to seeing the finished works of art in a sterile environment. Remember you are marketing art and if your showroom space is cluttered and dimly lit it will be very difficult for potential buyer to truly assess your work of art.

4) Sell buyers what they are interested in not what you are interested in. This is a mistake by many artists when marketing art, they presume they know what the buyers looking for however the buyer may be interested in older works of art or something entirely different than what you envisioned for them. Remember, it’s their money, so allow them to buy what they want or are interested in, rather than forcing your views on them.

5) Try to sell to buyers with a wide range of budgets. Even if buyers clearly have a modest or low-budget, if somebody has expressed interest in your art try and sell to them. The more opportunities you have for others to see your art the more opportunities you will have to sell additional pieces of art.

6) Pre-price all of your work before allowing buyers to see it. This is where many artists go wrong when marketing art, by trying to price their art on the fly. This often leads to different prices between competing buyers. The downside to this is in many cases; buyers may talk to each other and find out that you’re offering different prices to different individuals. If you are wishy-washy about the price of your art you can expect it to rub off on buyers, and they too will be wishy-washy about whether to buy your art or not.

7) One of the key principles to marketing art from your studio is to have regular business hours. Even if you can only open your studio, for one or two hours a week to allow buyers the opportunity to view and purchase your art this should be clearly posted.

Art Marketing Strategy of creating your brand has been difficult in the past. However this is not the case in today’s world of Internet Marketing. Using some simple art marketing techniques you too can be successful. Let’s look at both some online and off-line art marketing strategies to employ.

1. Purchasing a domain name and creating a website is the primary way to start your Art Marketing Strategy. In this day and age, most people go to Google and other search engines to find things out and therefore your online presence is very important. An important point is that you may want to purchase your name as your domain name or the name you intend to use as your artist name. This goes back to the branding strategy is a must for today’s artists.

2. Create a blog about you and your art work. The primary difference between a blog and a website is typically a website will contain your gallery, contact information, some basic website text about yourself and your art work, while your blog is used to talk about yourself and your art and is updated on a regular basis. To use the blog effectively, you should create three blog posts a week. These blog posts can be from 100 to 300 words and can talk about what you did that week or what project you’re working on.

3. Join both online and off-line organizations, forums and networking groups. Contributing in online forums, in a positive and non-selling way is a great way to build brand. Joining a local organization is also a great way to create your brand.

4. Writing short how-to articles and posting them either to your blog or to online article directories is an excellent art marketing strategy.

5. Joining your local community and provide some free services or training, will go a long way to creating your image and brand.

6. Create a newsletter that potential buyers can sign up for either on your blog or your website.

7. Organize live workshops either online or off-line.

8. Create an e-book, showcasing some of your techniques, include pictures of the art where the techniques were used and offer this e-book for free to potential buyers who sign up for your newsletter.

9. Talk to the local radio station to see if there’s something you can do to help them out or provide a service that will allow you to get some free air time.

10. Contact an event organizer or a charity to determine if there is a way that you can contribute to a worthy cause with a genuine intention of helping the cause or charity but with having the natural consequence of building your brand recognition.

While there is a plethora of differentiating opinions there is a consensus that there are 10 valid points that need to be considered when pricing your art correctly. Keep in mind that depending on where you are in your career as an artist will influence the price that you will be selling your art for. If you consider yourself to be an artist starting of on your career, then do not expect to ask premium prices for your art you will also need to be realistic about the price of your art.

1. The first step is off-course to do your research. The internet is a fantastic medium for this. Check out artists who are at a similar place I their Artistic journey and see what prices they are charging. Check out as many similar artists as you can who are preferably working on a similar medium and size and determine an average price. This will be your starting point.
2. Whilst setting the price of your art, you need to be careful you are not selling your art to cheap. Keep a track of the time you are spending on the Artwork in relation to the size of the Art and then work out the Rate you are getting per hour based on price divided by hours. This will be your hourly rate. If it comes to say $2, then you know that you effectively paying yourself $2 per hour and you may need to increase your Art price or take less time to prepare the Art price. Your task then is to increase your rate per hour.
3. Once you have your starting point, then identify a formula for increasing the value of your art. This can be a combination of factors such as, number of people buying your art, interest in your art, media exposure, critical acclaim, your growing clientele base, auctions etc.
4. Unless you’re trying to hide something you should publish your prices. Be open and honest about what you’re asking for your art, and don’t be ashamed if others think that the price is too high.
5. As your career develops try and regularly increase your prices a little at a time. This will help previous buyers with their investment and will benefit you by providing larger profits as the time taken to produce the Art does not increase.
6. You should never be tempted to lower your prices once you have set the price.
7. Be consistent in your pricing. Do not offer a discount to one individual over another. When selling art, it is important to be consistent. Potential buyers may talk to each other and if you’ve offered one a better deal than the other you could lose the sale.
8. Try to avoid pricing your art by your talents or the time taken to create the art. You should focus on selling your art, by the size.
9. There may come a time when you feel that you need to discount your prices. This should be in extreme circumstances only and not an easy option for you to make.
10. When selling art, it’s often easy to let the agents and dealers take control. Avoid this at all costs. It is your art and your business so stay involved.

These are 10 principles that artist’s who are selling art need to consider carefully and applying in their everyday business practice. Being creative and creating art is only 50% of a successful artistic business.