FOTW Q and A – Session Forty-Six
Whew! We deep dive over a dozen questions – including using avatars in your marketing, where artists have been selling during Covid, is the work in galleries worth the hassle and expense, self-publishing, salesmanship, and much much more!
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Weekly Q and A Session Forty Six Audio
Click on the link to play or download the session audio!
Resources:
VideoScribe by Sparkol. Hands down the BEST “whiteboard” video tool available; nothing even comes close!
PowerDirector by Cyberlink. I’ve used PD for years. It’s tremendous, and very, very affordable.
Shopify is our recommended “tech-shy” option for a website/selling platform – and they have a free trial version!
WP 101 – WordPress is only a little more involved, but has infinite potential as to building your own site. Check out our exclusive discounts on the groundbreaking WP 101 course (it’s what I used to learn WP, and in less than an afternoon, you can put up your first website!)
And at a hair under $10, it’s FAR less than having someone else build your site for you!
Elegant Themes It’s hands down the most flexible and easiest WordPress theme I’ve ever seen! Elegant Themes is the name of the company, and specifically what we’re using is the Divi theme or Divi page builder, and the Monarch Plugin for social media buttons.
Divi Booster – makes the best WordPress theme even better!
Divi Commerce – an inexpensive plugin that allows you to better customize your Divi/WooCommerce product pages!
WooCommerce – The most popular e-commerce platform, and it’s free! You can use one of their WordPress themes, or add the plugin to your existing WordPress site! (I use the WooCommerce plugin on my WordPress site that uses the Divi theme. Don’t get freaked by those terms if they’re unfamiliar to you – go check out our WordPress course!) If you need more functionality than in the core WooCommerce plugin or theme, added options can be added on for nominal charges via “extensions”. You pick and choose only what you want.
Product Price Info For WooCommerce – an inexpensive $15 plugin that allows you to add text beside the price in a WooCommerce product!
Child Theme Configurator Pro – The easiest and best way to change or edit CSS of customize WP Themes!
WP Retina 2x – The new retina screens need higher resolution images to make our art look it’s best. iPhones, iPads, and other “retina” screens make regular images look crappy and almost blurry. WP Retina 2x is a WP plugin that takes our images and serves up high res 2x images on retina screens…and it’s free!
Compress JPEG and PNG images – Google punishes slow websites in the rankings. This free plugin makes your website faster by optimizing your JPEG and PNG images. It automatically optimizes all your images by integrating with the popular image compression services TinyJPG and TinyPNG.
Magic Zoom – that awesome zoom in feature on my art images is a simple WP plugin!
Jotform – a handy and embeddable form creator that I’ve used for years. And it’s free until you get to 100 signups a month. https://www.jotform.com/
WP InstaLegalPages – Quickly creates the necessary legal disclaimers, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Affiliate Disclosure, Anti-Spam policy, etc., that’s SO vital to keeping our sites Facebook, Google, and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) compliant. I wouldn’t build a site without it!
Website Hosting
Hosting means “where your website lives”, and here’s an article on website hosting: https://marketingtoolsforartists.com/hosting-art-website/
GoDaddy is easy and cheap, but slow and has had security problems.
Siteground is a good option. I recently moved The Colonel’s Website there and am happy with how it went.
WP Engine is my hands-down favorite hosting solution. A tad pricy, but rock solid, super awesome support, and secure as Fort Knox. And it makes your website freakishly fast…!
Evernote – has allowed me to go virtually paperless. MUCH better than bookmarking sites and/or bits of paper floating around and/or transferring lists between devices and your computer. Tag things so you can find them in a flash.
Asana – is hands down the BEST way to manage projects. For my purposes, a project is just something that has multiple steps, such as building a website, setting up a series of art shows, publishing a limited edition, and so on. And it’s free!
Trello – is an online way to get rid of those Post-It notes/Kanban boards. It’s free, and a terrific way to manage to do lists across various devices, instantly, and very visually.
In essence: Evernote is the online filing cabinet that stores everything, Asana is the project management, and Trello is the tasks and to-do lists.
Myspeed – Simply invaluable! A tool that allows you to speed up or slow down online videos without getting “Mickey Mousey”. Retention goes up too, because you’re actually focused on getting the words as they go by.
Ccleaner – keeps your computer running fast and stable by cleaning out caches and cookies and temporary files. I used the free version for years, but have recently upgraded to Pro Plus, and I run it a couple of times a week.
Use Chrome as your browser
There’re special features in Facebook that only work on Chrome. And since it’s Google, it ties in very neatly with Gmail, YouTube, Drive, Google Calendar, Adwords, etc. And the password function is awesome! It remembers online forms as you fill them out and does it for you next time.
Use Gmail – Make the change. It ties in with everything, your email is accessible over all of your devices and is updated instantly (meaning, if you read and delete an email on your phone, it’ll also delete it when you open your email on your computer. No multiple copies or confusion). Plus, you can finally get your email to be yourname@yourwebsite.com instead of yourname@gmail.com!
Also, ActiveCampaign can link into your Gmail, so that, for instance, you have a customer emailing you, that customer’s account will automatically show up in your Gmail account – you don’t have to open up ActiveCampaign to get their info or make any changes. SO easy!)
Google Drive – changed the way I work! It puts a new folder in your documents, and this folder is stored “in the cloud”, meaning, it’s stored in Google’s servers around the globe. Now you can get to the stuff you were working on from anywhere – your laptop, phone, tablet, or even logged in from another computer (remember to log out afterward!) It’s SO much easier than lugging around USB drives everywhere. The basic version is free, and nothing is safer!
ActiveCampaign. You NEED to keep in touch with clients, and you NEED a good email marketing platform to do that. This DOESN’T mean emailing through Outlook, Gmail, or heaven help us, Hotmail or AOL… You don’t need to send everyone an individual email: you write one, and ActiveCampaign sends it at the appropriate time. It’s also used for sending out newsletters, notices of upcoming works or shows or events, to wish them holiday greetings, birthday well-wishes, and more…automatically! Makes a monkey out of Mailchimp…
https://www.legalzoom.com/ – you may be able to handle a lot of your licensing and legal needs online. I’ve used them and was very impressed!
PayPal Pro – recommended for newbies and veterans alike.
Stripe – allows you to take credit card payment on your website. No setup or monthly fees, you only pay for what you use, and they take about the same percentage as PayPal Pro.
Square – those cool dealies that plug into your smartphone or tablet and allows you to swipe client’s credit cards. I never leave home without it.
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Owen! You picked my question! Thank you so much, I feel so honoured!
I’ve been reading Tim Ferris’s Four Hour Workweek and was wondering if it was possible for artists as well.
Valuable takeaways from your answer:
– virtually everything can be systemized
– set up an email autoresponder + probably some kind of welcome email series (make it sound like I’m emailing everyone personally)
– automate marketing as much as possible by using tools, autoresponders, system batching.
– automate fulfilment (print on demand/dropshipping options – or having a standard size, frame, packaging, etc)
– systemize my creation (have a process, have trusted tools)
– mix work with play = travelling expenses become tax deductable.
Sorry if my question wasn’t very well-phrased. Thank you so much for taking the time to read it and answer it! I look up to you so much!
Awh, thanks Angelique! It’s my pleasure. 🙂
EMail and story. I LOVE LOVE LOVE telling stories through the art. I have a very loyal 110 subscribers, but has not grown in years. I write well. I tell a good story. My artwork is abstraction which makes lots of room for others to incorporate their stories through the same artwork.
Oh and tell us about how you work in blocks.
THNKS!aa
oh, I could not find where to sign up for video notification or even where to find them. BUt it is late. Maybe I just missed it.
I also want to raise $6000 for EJI. So far we are doing okay with pandemic (we find out next month if hubby keeps his job). I wanted to use the profits for EJI instead of myself as a way to contribute. How to do that would be good. I am having them buy from me so that I can donate and get the tax right-off.
Thanks Gwen! If you mean the other Q and A videos – and of course future ones, you can check it out here: https://marketingtoolsforartists.com/q-and-a/
thanks alot. pleaase send me any more info…
Thanks Patrick! If you mean info on the other Q and A videos you can get more info here: https://marketingtoolsforartists.com/q-and-a/
Hi Owen,
Nice to meet you. I have been studying your information & I am gaining a lot of useful insights. Thank you for all that you offer.
I regret I did not come across your work sooner so I was not aware of the offer from Justin Brooke. This would have been a great resource for me. His interview was insightful & such an opportunity to research further. Ah well, no regrets.
One comment which is small potatoes but frustrating nonetheless is there is no date on your posts. I can not tell if I am referring to information posted in 2009 or 2019. I come across this on a number of web sites not only yours but this is a courtesy I appreciate.
Looking forward, you indicate you might spend some time finding another offer along similar lines as the Justin Brooke course. I would be very interested in this if you do find another offer.
OtherwiseI understand you will be sending out a questionnaire about what artists are seeking right now. If I may, I would like to comment about this.
Selfishly I am thinking about my own issues and I have identified 2 key areas.
1. Distilling down my broad areas of interest into a focused topic or subject. I see you have done this well with your subjects meeting your market. My interests are broad & I am a great one for being distracted by shiny new things such as lovely luscious gouche or watercolours. I would be interested to learn more about your process & how you identified where you would put your energy & focus so you have a style/product that you can market.
2. From what I can see you have zero posts on Instagram (but you do have followers). Is this a platform you are not pursuing consciously ? Could you elaborate on your strategy on this platform ?
Hey Sarah! Thanks for the kind words!
Darn tootin’ there’s no date on the posts, and the “can’t tell if it’s 09 or 19” is why. We humans all get influenced by the Law of Primacy, meaning we thing “new stuff is better”. If the posts were dated, a perfectly valid topic from 6 months ago is psychologically dismissed in favor of the one 6 days ago. But we’d really prefer something from today. I do it too! So I work hard to ensure my stuff is as evergreen as possible, and don’t undermine it’s validity just because it’s got a date on it. If I did, people would discount it, regardless of its merits.
My focus on my style and market is, as much as I’d like to pretend it is, no great insight. I got lucky. I’m partially colorblind so I had no real choices for medium. great! Less decisions! In terms of the oil rig stuff I do, it was my clients asking for it; it took about 2 years for it to percolate through my mental cement for me to understand that “Hey! Give them what they want!” In terms of my “style” (if any), I decided that I wanted my drawings to look like vintage black and white photographs. Once I’d got that primary decision out of the way, it only took a couple of months to figure out how to achieve that look; it was the deciding that took the time.
I’m not an Instagrammer. I should be. We should all be. But we can’t be everywhere, and picking where you are is mostly a matter of being where your clients hang out. If they’re spending time on Pinterest, then you should too. I avoid Twitter like the plague. As the oil patch gets younger, IG is definitely eclipsing FB. FB is seen as being for Olde Folkes (ask my sons…)
I have a new business starting up, and we’re making IG our social media of choice. Even before the product launches, we have 900+ followers. But here’s the thing. That’s not 900+ client, and we constantly need to remind ourselves of the difference…
Thanks!