Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Sell Fine Art Online - Part 11: Google Adwords

 

Google AdWords are an excellent choice for driving potential collectors to your website. AdWord campaigns allow you to create online ads based on keywords and other criteria.

AdWord campaigns work on a cost per click (CPC) system. This means that when someone clicks on a Google AdWord link, they are taken to your website, and you are charged whatever the CPC for that keyword is. The cost is determined by the word's popularity. The more people that want to be found for that word, the more expensive the word becomes.

Fortunately Google allows you bid for words and set a daily budget for how much you are willing to spend. This keeps the cost more affordable and less risky. Plus Google gives you some amazing statistics and feedback for how well your campaigns are doing. Then you can make adjustments to help improve your campaigns.

Learn more about Google AdWords.



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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Sell Fine Art Online - Part 10: Blogging

Fine Art Websites
Blogging is a great way to help promote and sell your artwork online. Unfortunately, most artists I talk to about blogging absolutely despise the idea. They perceive blogging as a venue for angry teenagers. The truth is, while angry teens may use blogs for venting, blogs are a very useful marketing tool and here's why:
  1. Search engines love blogs.
  2. Blogs are easy to setup and easy to manage.
  3. Some art collectors actually enjoy reading blogs, plus they can subscribe to blogs.
  4. Blogs are FREE!
Search engines love blogs because blogs typically provide fresh and relevant content. Every time you create a post on your blog, you can include some kind of a link back to your artist website. Back links are great for search engine optimization. Everything time you link from your already SEO friendly blog back to your website, you're actually helping your website get indexed by search engines.

You want to be careful not to over do it. If you intentionally flood your blog and website with links you can actually hurt your SEO results. Simply add a link when it's relevant and you should be fine. If you're posting about a new piece of artwork you just released, add a link from your blog to that piece of artwork on your website.

In this day and age, blogs are really simple to set up and easy-to-manage. This blog is actually powered by a Google blogging platform called Blogger. I prefer Blogger for most of my blogs, but Tumblr is another excellent choice as well.

Some people actually enjoy reading a blog over visiting a normal website. Just like search engines, people want to read the latest and greatest news. Normally the most currently information is right there at the top of the homepage.

For those people who enjoy reading blogs, they can actually subscribe to your blog. Depending on your settings and the settings of their subscription, every time you create a new post, they will be notified. This keeps people coming back for more which is huge.

Finally, it's free! Should I explain how this is a good thing? Well I'm not going to.

When it comes to blogging, especially for those who aren't overly exciting about the idea, treat your blog like a news post.
  • If you have a new release, post a picture of the image with a brief description. Be sure to include links to your actual website where they can learn more about the piece and even purchase if they want to.
  • If you have an upcoming art show, create a post that lets people know about it. Once again, include a link back to your website — preferably to a news page or events page. Then when the show is over, create a new post on your blog that talks about home much of a success the show was, how fun it was. Include pictures from the show.
  • If your artwork gets accepted into a museum or show of some sort, blog about it. Include relevant links and pictures.
Blog posts don't have to be long, maybe just a few sentences to a couple paragraphs.


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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Sell Fine Art Online - Part 9: Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is such a big part of selling fine art online. How else will people find your artwork online? Search Engine Optimization refers to the act of designing or changing a website in such a way so that the website is more likely to be indexed or found by search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and so on.

SEO usually refers to the how well the text, links, and code are written and formatted on a given website. When someone does a search on a particular subject or "keyword", search engines want to return with the most relevant web results possible. Search engines use links and "back links" to validate the worth of a given webpage. Google also considers a websites code— is the code up to date and how well does the website load?

When it comes to text, it's better to just to be honest and thorough with your content. Think about the perception of your site visitors — search engines do. If you are an artist who paints realistic oil paintings of Colorado landscapes,,, where is the text that talks about it. While image examples of your work are great and search engines do pick up on images, you should still have some textual content that goes into the details of your work.

Be very specific and detailed with how you write. If you're writing your biography, write it in the 3rd person. Writing in the 3rd person does 2 things:
  1. It sounds much more professional.
  2. Your name is more likely to be indexed by search engines. How is a search engine going to pick up on your name if you're constantly using the word "I".
Fresh content is really important too. Search engines like to give users the newest and most up-to-date information possible. That's why events pages, news pages, and blogs are so valuable.

Links and back links are very important. Search engines like to see that other webpages are linking to you. They also rank the value of the links that are linking to your website. The more relevant and popular a website is that links to your website the better.

Search engines consider code carefully. They don't want to send users to a website that takes forever to load or has a bunch of page errors. Broken links or links that take users to non-existent pages are also bad.

Finally, there is no such thing as instant gratification when it comes to SEO. If someone is promising you fast results they are lying. Long lasting results take time and persistence. It usually takes a few months or more to get to the top and it's usually pretty bumpy in the beginning. In the first couple of months you'll probably see some ups and downs. Good seo requires constant updates and new back links to valuable sites.

Interested in a search engine friendly artist website? Learn about our artist memberships.


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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Sell Fine Art Online - Part 8: Online Marketing

Online marketing is an important part of selling fine art online. Simply having a well-designed artist website or gallery website doesn't guarantee success. Fine art websites provide artists with an online venue for selling fine art, but the trick is how to drive traffic to those websites.

There are several ways of marketing art online or driving traffic to your fine art website:
  • Search Engine Optimization - SEO
  • Google Adwords?
  • Pay Per Click Advertising
  • Yelp, Google Places
  • Blogging
  • Social Networking 
  • Email Marketing
All of the items listed above are all about trying to drive "interested" traffic to your website to buy artwork. I say "interested", because there is no reason to drive "uninterested" traffic to your website. This may seem like an obvious statement, but this is something way too many artists people don't understand or just simply miss.

People will often throw tons of money into pay per click campaigns and they think the more money they spend the better their results will be. This is not the case. Successful campaigns are not just about spending money. They require a lot of thought and planning. Heavy traffic from uninterested visitors will get you nowhere.

You have to put yourself in the mind of your ideal collector. How does a collector go about finding your type of artwork online? Google, Art Related Websites, Blogs, Yelp? If they're going to Google, what keywords are they looking for?

"Snow Creek" by Quang Ho
Don't market for every type of art. Market by media, subject, and style. If you're a oil painter who paints landscapes, why would you market to collectors interested in abstract charcoal drawings of kittens? Don't waste money on collectors who don't collect your type of artwork.

As a landscape oil painter, look for online venues that are about landscapes, oil paintings or both. If you're an abstract artist, look for those venues. There are so free online venues, blogs, and social networks out there. Take advantage of them.

I'm not suggesting that you neglect online venues that cater to all artwork types. Some collectors may not know what kind of artwork they're looking for. In those cases, they may seek out fine art websites with more variety.







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