12 points to take you from zero to hero online art seller.

This hubpage contains a copy of an artiacl i put on EzineArticals about selling art online. I have created this so you have somewhere to link to for the artical that I could then expand on the artical giving you more details.

Now art selling online seems to be that much harder then sell other products and I have been wondering for sometime why that is. I have written this article to get my thoughts on the subject out there to the world. Now the main reason its hard to sell art is your market is small very small only about 5% (approx) of the population invest in art, much small then other sectors. For this reason you need to be good at what you do if you are going to make it. I have put this article together to help you through a 12 points to take you from zero to hero online art seller. I plan to right more articles on this topic to give you more info and will try and keep this concise.

1. Define keywords [1-5 hours]

If you are going to sell art on the web then you are going to need traffic, don’t think that because you have a blog or website that you are going to have people come and see your art.

When you want to sell anything online and are starting out cold, (by that I mean with only limited money and resources behind you) you need to target a niche. You do this with keywords. Don't think you are going to be able to get people to your artwork using 'art' or 'paintings' as your keywords. Yes these are connected terms but they are all so saturated internet terms.

You see with most of your traffic coming from search engines you are not going to be able to rank on single keywords; you will need to find phrase keyword combinations. for examples 'artists from Manchester'. You will need to use the tools I named before 'google search' and 'google trends' to help you locate keyword phrase combinations that have traffic but are not saturated allowing you to get in on the market. If you have any questions please do ask.

2. Write better artwork descriptions. [5 minutes]

When selling online over 65% of your traffic will come from search engines, for this reason and because it makes sense you have to have a good title. Ideal is 4-10 words will think of titles try and add your keywords if possible.

3. Be more social. [20-40 minutes per site]

Social networking has taken over the internet the last few years so much so that it now right up in the top three reasons for a person to use the internet. For this reason you must take advantage of this and embrace the technology. There are MANY social networking site you can use, and a few ways you can use these. In short you can:- start a page/group/feed on a social networking site, submit URLs, submit RSS and more. I could write a full article on this subject alone and probably will soon. For a place to submit to a number of social sites try: http://www.socialmarker.com/

4. Start an art blog/mini blog. [1-10 hours work]

This step you might well have done already but if not why not? A blog is a place for you to show, sell and advertise your art all with its own URL. There are a number of blogging platforms out there and I am not going to argue which one is best I have tried them all and they all have the advantage and disadvantage. To name a few:-

• Blogger
• Wordpress.com
• Wordpress.org
  
• Typepad
• Hubpages
• Squidoo
• Twitter
• Tumblr

5 Start a portfolio site on existing art website [1-5 hours work]

the advantage of doing this is you will have quality traffic come your way or at lest getting close to your page. The problem is many of these will charge you, ether for a set up and monthly fee or a fee for each piece of art you sell. I will do a follow up article on this and give you a full list of options out there with advantages/disadvantages and cost.

6. Start producing content [1-2 hours per copy]

There is no point having a blog and not having content on it. Clearly you need to have your art but also you need to have copy/text something that interests your readers. Writing copy is in itself an art but don’t get to hung up on that and try and produce the best copy you can. Look around you there is copy on every website, printed document, advert you see look at the techniques they use. So how do I know what to write about I hear you saying. Well there are ways to approach writing content, you can do it on a personal level talking about yourself and what you are up to, you can talk on a commercial level selling your work with words, you can an information source/authority source were by you inform about what other people /artist /blogs /business are up to.

7. Submit your RSS feed and blog. [10-30 minutes per submission]

There is many hundreds even thousands of directories out there which you can advertise on, but for now I want to focus on blog directories and RSS submitting. Blog directories only list blogs which makes them ideal for artist as many already have a blog. RSS feed submission is much like blog submission and can often be done in the same directories as blog submission. The advantage of RSS submission is you often don’t have to sign up for an account to submit saving you time. But don’t read that as a call to tell you to rush blog submissions. You are better of making sure all the information is submitted correctly and that all is in order rather than submitting some half a**ed job that you would be embarrassed of if you saw it latter; besides this submission will lead directly to you.

8. Create an email newsletter for art lovers. [1-2 hours]

Once you have a web presence you need to start to communicate with your potential customers, one way to do that is to use a newsletters, this can then be send via email, RSS, or social networks to get it to your reader

9. Advertise your art website (in print). [time and money]

When people are online they can very easier forget about the real world, but hello we all live in the real world so don’t forget us. There are a number of printed mediums you can use and a number of ways to get that advert out there to potential customers. Be it cards, flyers, brochures, magazine adds, posts etc. Your budget should be the only thing constraining you here. Don’t forget to add your blog adds.

10. Team up with other artists. [dependent]

When you are starting out on your own its can be and will be allot of work to get yourself out there. One way to make life easier is to team up with other artist. There are a number of ways you can do this, you can share a website/blog you can link to each others blog forming a community. you can give your community an identity and all help to sell it. Many hands make light work.

11. Stick to it for at least 6 months. [200-600 hours]

Don’t think you are going to put a weeks work in and all will be fine, be realistic there are a number of artist out there and the web is a competitive place. You are going to have to work hard and stick to it for 6 months. Although the web moves every fast establishing a blog will take minimum of 6 months before you have the traffic you require.

12. Wanting more

So you have a blog and have traffic but you want more! So you have money now and don’t mind sending a little get you more traffic the most obvious options that come to mind are adwords, Affiliate program, paid links, advertising. Again I could write allot on this section and will but for now thats me.

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