It’s ready! It’s ready!

If you’re ready to join an online community of artist entrepreneurs, then please visit the Abundant Artist Community and sign up. I can’t wait to see you on the inside!

The link to sign up is here: http://theabundantartist.com/community

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then take a moment and read More Community, Please and My Big Audacious Goal. You’ll get the idea.

UPDATE: Just so that you know, when you sign up, there are TWO confirmation emails – one after you pay, and one after you register your username. You’ll need to click on the link in the second email to access the rest of the site. It mentions it during the registration process, but a few people have missed it.

Lots of questions, and the easiest way to answer them is to show you this video.

The Abundant Artist Community combines the following elements to help you turn your art into a business:

Recorded audio lessons focusing on building your art business. These lessons will cover the following topics:

• Identifying your ideal collector and where they hang out online, as well as learning to differentiate yourself from all the other artists. Also, a sample business plan for you to fill out.
• The elements of a successful website. What does your website really need to be successful?
• Email marketing – building a mailing list is the most crucial element of a successful art business. We’ll spend a whole week just on email marketing.
• SEO for artists – learn how you can leverage search engines like Google to get more traffic to your website.
• Social Media – Broken up into several modules, we’ll cover Facebook, Twitter, and several other popular social media pages that can help your business.
• Paid advertising that actually works. We’ll talk about Adwords, Facebook ads, and other really effective ways to sell art.

A members-only forum. Discuss the lessons, ask questions, and get advice from myself and from other dedicated artists.

Groups & Friendships. It wouldn’t be a community without the ability to find other artists like yourself who are dedicated to building a business, and learning how to form partnerships with these artists to promote your work.

Monthly Q&A Calls. Each month members of the Community will have an opportunity to jump on a conference call with me and other successful artists, where we’ll talk about how to build your business.

Tell your friends – the Community opens this week!

Serenity by Lesley Atlansky

Yesterday I posted that my Big Audacious Goal was to have 100 Artists Build Business That Support the Lifestyle They Want. Some of you shared some of your awesome B.A.G.’s.

So, here’s the power of sharing your goals, and here’s the power of communities. Lesley Atlansky (her website is here) shared that one of her goals was to be featured in the Oregon Art Beat, a local news segment produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting. It’s a great example of a goal that is measurable, doable, and …

something the community can help with.

Here’s Where the Rubber Meets the Road

The real power of gathering people around you is not only in motivating yourself to do more & do better, but also that the people you gather can help you accomplish your goals. So here’s a crazy idea.

Let’s get Lesley on Oregon Art Beat!

There’s no instructions for how they evaluate who should get covered, but you can submit a story idea here:

http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/contact/storyidea

They say that they get an average of 2 – 3 story ideas per day, which is a fair amount, but that’s nothing if those of you reading this all go after it at once and decide to help Lesley out.

If you like Lesley’s art, visit the story idea submission page and submit why you think Lesley’s art should be covered by Art Beat. If she makes it in, you’ll have done a good deed and helped out a fellow artist.

Lesley’s website: http://www.lesleyatlansky.com

Lesley’s Facebook Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lesley-Atlansky-Art/110741355625541?ref=search&v=wall

Some ideas for the submission form:

I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Lesley a couple of times online and she’s just a really nice person. She takes learning her craft seriously, and she has even taken the initiative to start her own gallery cooperative in Estacada, Oregon. She is one artist that is dedicated and passionate about her work.

Oregon Art Beat has a Facebook page - post Lesley’s story there too! Just tell them that you “want to see Lesley Atlansky featured on Oregon Art Beat, because her work is full of beautiful accidents, and isn’t that what Art is all about?”

Can we do this?

Help 100 artists build businesses that support the lifestyle they want.

That’s my Big Audacious Goal. Everybody needs one.

How did this come to be my B.A.G.?

A month ago I was sitting with some friends on a beautiful Portland roof top. These friends are the people that I meet with every two weeks to discuss business. They’re my mastermind group. (Since I’m a secret evil genius, I must have a mastermind group, yes? I digress).

My friends all have Big Plans to achieve their Big Audacious Goals. They encourage me to dream big.

When I started The Abundant Artist, it was simply to explore the idea of the Starving Artist – and sometimes share my marketing knowledge with my fellow artists – but then people started coming out of the woodwork, emailing me or calling me and asking for advice on selling art online. I decided I’d roll with it and see how many artists I could help. It’s been fun.

Now, I’ve made some mistakes along the way. I’m an action-oriented guy and I’ve gotten a little too big for my britches now and again, but all-in-all, I’d say that I’m having a blast and that things are looking up.

But now my Big Audacious Goal is tripping me out.

I’ve given myself three years to achieve it.

Help 100 artists build businesses that support the lifestyle they want.

So, in my mind, this mostly means artists are receiving their primary source of income from their art, and they don’t have to work a day job or complimentary career unless they want to.

But it could mean other stuff too.

It could mean artists who are already making their primary living from their art make the transition to a better-managed business.

It could mean artists employing other people, creating jobs and fulfillment in other ways.

It could mean artists moving from making art they don’t care about because they have to make a living, to making art that inspires them, and still making a good living.

Why Am I Doing This?

I like challenges, but that’s not really why. I’m doing it because of what it says in my beautiful graphical header above – The Starving Artist is A Myth. There are lots of artists making a great living, but far too many who are not, and I want to change that. Perhaps it’s because I’m an artist myself and somewhere I still battle that demon deep inside. Mostly, I just want to make a difference, and this is an area where I feel I can do that.

That’s why I’m starting The Abundant Artist Community. It opens next week.

What’s Your Big Audacious Goal?

When I started The Abundant Artist, it was an exploration of the idea that the starving artist is nothing more than a myth that artists self-perpetuate. It’s easier to believe that being an artist inherently means being poor, or bad at business.

Since then, however, I’ve met a lot of artists who are pretty good at business. They’re artists who have turned their passion into their work and have left the day job far behind. They have invaluable information to share.

One of the things that has been amazing to me is that there are thousands of artists online desperately seeking to connect with the information that these artists have, and yet only a handful of people who are sharing that information in any sort of useful, studied way.

There are various art forums around the Web, many of them with a marketing section attached, like some sort of afterthought – but where are the places that artists can go to really study and get feedback on their business? Where’s the community of business-minded creatives?

Can I Bring Together A Stronger Community?

For the past year (plus a little), I’ve been bringing business savvy artists to the Abundant Artist blog through interviews. They’ve shared their information, but because of the limited nature of blogging, there can’t be a lot of discussion back and forth on the ideas discussed there. Blog comments only go so far as a discussion and learning forum.

Ever since I had a discussion with Carol from one  of my first group coaching programs I’ve wanted to bring an online community together for artists that would enable artists to get the training that they need to succeed online, as well as create a place where those who are really serious about learning how to sell art online can gather to discuss what works and what doesn’t.

I’m nearly done with the bare bones of this new part of The Abundant Artist and I can’t wait to show it to all of you. I just have a few questions:

If you were going to be a part of a community of artists focused on learning to sell art online, what kinds of things would you expect from the site? What would you want to learn right away? What would you want to learn down the road?

Yesterday a new acquaintance of mine mentioned that he visited this website. The conversation went something like this:

Him: I visited your website.

Me: Oh?

Him: Yeah, it was pretty cool!

Me: (thinking to myself) Why are you visiting my site? You’re not an artist… (Out loud) Did you like it?

Him: Yeah…(awkward pause). It was pretty cool!

The End.

Are Your Website Visitors Art Collectors?

Later as I was walking away from that conversation, I realized why it was so awkward. My new friend had visited my website because he knew me and was curious, but he isn’t the person that this site is intended for, so he felt awkward about engaging further.

Is this happening to you?

I see a lot of artists falling into this online trap. They jump on Facebook, Twitter, or other places online and start following other artists. Other artists follow them back. Soon everyone is caught up in ‘engagement,’ which feels good because you feel like you’re doing something, getting responses.

The problem, of course, is that if you are only reaching other artists and you’re not selling any art, then you’re mostly just spinning your wheels.

How to Tell If You Are Getting the Right Kind of Website Visitors.

As a general rule, social media visitors don’t buy much (though you can get them on your newsletter, where they’ll buy later), referrals from other websites are a little better, search engine visitors are better still (someone doing a Google search for Bronze Buffaloes for Sale is probably going to buy them if you have them for sale), and people who visit from your newsletter are most likely to buy.

The following are some key indicators that will tell you about your visitors and whether they’re the right people.

Low Sales. The primary indicator, of course. If the right collector is looking at your art, but you’re never selling anything, then perhaps you need to figure out where they’re all coming from, and go find them somewhere else.

Newsletter subscribers. You do have an artist newsletter, right? If nobody is signing up for your newsletter, but you have website traffic, then you either aren’t getting the right visitors, or you haven’t done a very good job of making your newsletter easy to sign up for.

Bounce Rates & Time On Page. If you’re using tracking software like Google Analytics, then you can see how much time people are spending on your website.

If the average time per page is less than one minute, it might mean that the people visiting your site aren’t the right market (it could also mean that your art isn’t very interesting – but that’s another discussion entirely). The Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who click back on their browser within 30 seconds (they realize right away that they don’t like your stuff).

Ask them. Sounds simplistic, but it’s so easy to do. Put up a survey on your website, asking people what kind of art they buy, whether they buy art regularly, whether they are artists themselves. SurveyMonkey.com allows you easily create an embedded survey form

image by Wonderlane

Tami Espe, a Mandala artist asked:

“I am a Mandala artist. The hardest thing for me is finding the right places/connections to show my artwork. So my question is How do I find the right venues/sites/contacts with such a specific topic?”

Well, Tami, luckily for you, finding the right place to display your art is even easier when you have a specific topic. It may not be easy to find tons of places, but you should be able to find the right ones fairly quickly.

Find the Right Place to Sell Online in Four Steps

Set Up Your Home Base. One of the first things that I noticed is that if I do a Google search for ‘Tami Espi Mandala Artist’ I don’t see a website for you and your work. You need a website that displays your work in the way that you want it displayed, and you want to make sure that your site pops up when someone does a search for your name.

Find Your Target Audience. Who likes Mandala artwork? Probably people who are Buddhist or Hindu (or who come from cultures that are predominantly those religions), but also anyone who likes geometry or numbers. That’s a pretty specific group of people. Throw in the fact that you need to narrow it down to people of a certain age and income bracket, and you’ve got a nice, narrow group of people that you can focus on.

Find Out Where Your Collectors Live. Where do the Mandala Art-loving, Buddhist, Hindu, math loving people hang out online? Well, you can probably find them on Facebook and sell your art there. Besides Facebook, you could find blogs and other websites that write about these topics (they’re out there, I’m sure). Start by using Google Blog search, then try Alltop.com, or Technorati. Advertise on some of these sites or get them to write about your work (and include pictures, of course). Even better, get on their mailing lists.

Bring Them Back to You. No matter how you advertise, no matter where you advertise, you’ll want to make sure you get a significant portion of those people onto your mailing list. Get their email addresses by offering them something for signing up for your artist newsletter. This way, even if they don’t buy from you now, you can remind them later!

Online Art Galleries: A Word of Caution

There are lots of great places to sell art online that have proven traffic and marketing savvy to get your work seen by the right collectors. It’s easy to get sucked into placing your work on sites like Imagekind, Etsy or Fine Art America and then wonder why your work isn’t selling.

Many artists fall into the trap of placing their art where there are tons of other artists just like them. Many sites are primarily visited by artists, and not very much by collectors. Talk to other artists before you spend a lot of time getting set up on a new online gallery. Have they had good experiences? Have they sold much art? What are the fees?

Last week I had a client email me because her artist website was a mess. The company that she was with had made some changes to their websites and she didn’t like the changes that were made. In addition, the company was keeping her mailing list hostage – she couldn’t export her mailing list if she switched websites. It was a bit of a mess.

Artist Website Templates are for Amateurs

If you are serious about marketing your art online, you need to own your own website and not use one of those templates that so many companies are offering. Here are the reasons why.

Non-flexible features. Even if the company just launched and they have every bell and whistle in their current templates, the Internet changes fast and you need to be able to adopt new technologies into your site as they come along. Most artist website companies shoehorn new features into their sites in ways that are awkward and unwieldy. Also, some artist website companies try to be all things for their artists and they end up not doing anything very well.

It makes you look cheap. If you are selling $2000 original pieces of art, why do you have a website that looks like it cost $30? Your image has to match your market. Since most collectors are wealthy and educated, they are probably going to expect something a little more sophisticated.

Outdated & repetitive design. If you’re using a template then your site looks like hundreds or thousands of other websites. People expect artists to value creativity and originality. Your site should differentiate you enough to make you stand out. Also, most artist website templates already look like they were designed in 2000 with no updates since.

No custom URL’s. If your website is something like www.YourName.TemplateCompany.com then you are leaving a lot of opportunities on the table. A real domain name (www.YourName.com) costs about $8 – $10 on GoDaddy. There’s no reason to not have a custom URL. In addition to it looking more professional, you will do better in the search engines.

No access to the html of your site. In order to make real customizations to your website, you need access to the html files. If you don’t have access, you can’t change borders, colors, sizes, and where page elements are placed. In addition, if you ever decide you want to move your website to another hosting provider or another company, you’ll have to start over from scratch.

Search Engine Friendliness. This is a tough one for most web designers. Quite often, if they are good at making pretty designs, they’re not too good with making sure the search engines find your site. If you want to be found online, then you need to make sure that your site can easily be optimized for search.

How Do I Get A Good Artist Website?

I recommend hiring a professional website designer. I can give you referrals if you want. Expect to pay $500 – $2000, depending on what you want.

I also highly recommend Wordpress as a way to get a high-quality website up and running. Wordpress is a free website building software that can have a site up and running in literally minutes. I put together a quick video talking about using Wordpress to build an artist website here.

Great question Ellen. This is a screen shot from the How to Sell Art Online Facebook Community Page.

It’s one that artists of all stripes wonder. There are thousands of jewelry makers around the world who sell hundreds of thousands of pieces online. How can you get anyone’s attention?

Making Art Stand Out Is A Process

In January of this year I wrote a blog post called Your Art: An Opiate to the Masses. In that post I talked about how you you can make your art stand out. I’ll break it down for you here in a succinct way.

Define your target audience or collector. No matter how great you are, your jewelry will never be loved by everyone. Who really likes your stuff? Who do you know that has said, “wow, I really love your necklace/painting/song?” Of all the people who’ve said this to you, what do they have in common? How old are they, what are their interests, approximate income?

Define what makes you unique. Even if you consider yourself just another jewelry maker, chances are that your work is unique in some way. Perhaps you make jewelry out of recycled glass? Maybe you really like to make customized pieces? Combine that with the unique things about your target market.

Sell to your audience. Don’t worry about standing out for everyone who sees you. Once you know who you’re trying to reach and what makes you unique, just put yourself in the places where those people hang out. Display your work on Etsy, Amazon, and the other places to sell art online that are out there, but then start visiting niche blogs that your target audience is reading. Find a way to get your art featured there.

Build a List. This is crucially important, and too many artists miss this. Once you start getting attention you need a way to keep their attention. Sign up for an email list management service like Mailchimp.com, and then put up a signup form on your website. Put on your website that you offer special offers to your mailing list and let people sign up for it. Most of your sales will come from your mailing list.

From there you can try lots of interesting things like Facebook advertising for art, Google Adwords, video and other targeted forms of marketing – but first you need to identify what makes you different.

image by Elaine with Grey Cats

Yesterday I was having a great time at my mastermind meeting discussing future goals. As we were sharing with each other our goals for the next few months, I had the realization that these people were functioning at a whole-brain level. Everyone in my group is an artist of some sort. Musician, actor, dancer, photographer and more – we are all artists who have a passion for succeeding in business as well as in our art.

I’ve come to believe that artists aren’t necessarily well served by just learning how to turn their art into a business.

Art is More Than A Job

There’s a lot of negative reinforcement towards artists. I remember in college when someone asked me what my major was and I responded, “Theatre.” The first follow-up question was, “So, which restaurant are you going to wait tables at?” I shouldn’t have been offended, but I was.

Another one of my friends tells me that when she tells people that she’s going to Art School, they make fun of her ‘easy’ major. Last semester she spent dozens of hours on a single sketchbook that was her final for one class.

On top of that, people argue about the value of art, while at the same time unconsciously paying huge sums of money for work by renowned artists in their consumer products.

There’s a disconnect in the conscious appreciation of art in every day life. It seems that the general population places the most value on art when it’s disguised as something else – something that has more practical uses. Art disguised as non-art.

Then it becomes apparent that if those around us value art when it’s disguised as something practical, then perhaps artists have an opportunity to make practical art.

What does practical art mean?

Turning the mundane into something transcendent. Isn’t that what Art is really all about? We create something out of rather mundane tools: brushes, pigments, a hand, a voice, a step, a look. The whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.

In a study release by the University of Michigan, fully 58% of Americans said that they think often about the meaning of life. In an age of unprecedented abundance, there is more opportunity for Art than there has been – perhaps ever. Even considering that we are in the midst of a terrible recession, there is a tremendous amount of wealth in the world. Even those in the USA who are having a hard time aren’t starving like people were 100 years ago. In spite of this new abundance and wealth, there is a dearth of spiritual awakening.

Robert William Fogel, a Nobel-prize winning economist, said, “Spiritual (or immaterial) inequity is now as great a problem as material inequity, perhaps even greater.” As a race, we are looking for meaning. Our spirits are longing to be filled.

As artists, how can we fill that need? I do believe that it is our calling to fill that need, for what else can fill it? Religion offers hope of salvation and comfort in this life, but even though I am devout, I find that my day to day life is enhanced immeasurably by being surrounded by beauty and meaning.

How do we, as artists, create that beauty and meaning? It might not be in the way that you think you should.

As artists, we tend to think that if we just create the best painting, the best play, the best movie, the best sculpture that we know how to create, then we will reach people, really affect change. I think doing that work is good. It provides meaning for us – but it doesn’t always provide meaning for the non-artist. Without context and hours of Art history study, a regular person will  never comprehend the Abstract movement. Jackson Pollock’s genius is lost on the masses – and that’s not necessarily their fault.

Creating meaning may be very different than we think. And it may be easier than we think.

Make Art Out of Life

Where do most people spend most of their time? Usually at work. 8+ hours per day, 5 days per week. Unfortunately for many, this work is drab and unexciting. As an artist, can you turn that work into a piece of art?

Can we, with our unique abilities and insights, turn the mundane office cubicle into a piece of art that a person can live in and actually increase happiness AND productivity?

We know that children learn how to interact with the world by playing. My wife was babysitting our friend’s daughter and she wanted to play house. Come home. Kiss the dolly. Make dinner. Clean the kitchen. Clean the bedroom. Hours go by and she was entertained.

Can we turn a boring class or job into something that is akin to play?

Why hasn’t Wal-Mart crushed Target yet? They both sell household goods. Stuff that we need for our day-to-day lives. Part of that answer lies in the fact that Target signed deals to get the best designers to make their stuff. You can buy designer toilet brushes at Target. Housewives everywhere rejoice in the fact that every aspect of their home can be something that looks nice and is functional.

Can we create every day objects that are beautifully functional?

An artist who wants to live an abundant life has a few options. They can turn the creation and manufacture of their original works of art into a business and become good at marketing. They can hire an agent and a manager to grow their business for them. They can also create a side-business that relates to other skills that they have which generates income to support their art.

I think, for me, I’d like a combination of those choices, where I have a business that takes the core principles of what I know how to do as an artist and teaches others how to learn and implement those skills.

What do you think? Do you have any interest in creating Art in other areas besides a traditional artistic medium?