Michelle_Theberge_Master_Class

Highlights from the interview:

[2:30] What does it mean to be Mindful?

To be thoughtful and present. Taking TheMindfulArtist.com has a URL set a bar very high for me.

[4:15] How does being Mindful affect your career?

I used to just do what everyone said I should be doing as an artist. Now I try to be a lot more service oriented in my work and pay attention to why I’m doing what I do.

[6:50] How do you go about practicing mindfulness?

Meditation helps ground in the day to day. I didn’t start out this way, but I’ve become much more conscious. I start my day with yoga and meditation.

I find it easier to return to focus and stillness throughout my day if I keep that daily discipline.

[12:00] Writing down 5 things you are grateful for each day is really powerful. Visual artists will often be grateful for color or texture.

“Life is full of good. Sometimes we get caught up in our own minds and we forget how much good there is for us out there.”

[17:30] Great discussion about the pain that comes from being an artist. The Resistance that gets in our way when we create. New artists need to learn to get through their own version of the runner’s wall.

[30:45] Michelle’s Mindful Artist program – what it is, and who it’s for.

info@themindfulartist.com
www.themindfulartist.com

TAA_Coaching_Call_July

[At beginning]

The Community has a ton of content and I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to have it all done before this call or how fast I should be doing it.

The answers is – as fast as you can get through it, at your own pace.

Break everything down into small chunks – here is the video that I made of how to use WordPress to get a site up in 10 minutes.

[6:30] I’ve had my site up for 6 months, with no results. What can I do better?

-       Don’t send people away from your site.

-       Give them a reason to sign up for your email newsletter

-       Optimize your sales pages to cut down the clutter

[10:20] Should I be visiting the main blog for new content in the Community?

No, the blog is general information. The Community is updated about once per month because the content is so in depth, and I will email everyone when that goes out.

[13:00] A review of www.rogueartist.net and other Nichole DeMint websites.

-       Create an email newsletter opt-in on the home page.

-       Don’t use the newsletter offering created by your web hosting company. Use Mailchimp.com – it’s free and has more functionality.

-       Images should have their own pages with descriptive text. This is better for search engines.

-       Copy protecting your images can actually get in your own way. See the interview with artist Gwenn Seemel.

-       You need a call to action on the sales pages if you want to make a sale.

[25:30] An in depth discussion of how to name your image files and how to put them on the website.

[28:00] Should I sell my art on my site if I’m also selling it at the gallery?

-       It really depends on your relationship with your gallery. Whatever you are comfortable with.

-       Never depend on a gallery to be your sole source of income.

-       You should feel comfortable with the terms of the conract.

-       Older galleries and critics see artists who sell on their own as less legitimate.

-       Hazel Dooney is a great example of an artist who is selling on her own.

[33:00] Review of www.mindsievestudio.com

-       What do you hope people will do when they land on your website? Invite them to do that.

-       The home page will set the tone for what people do on your site.

-       Feature your images front and center.

-       Make sure your pricing and inventory are clear and easy to understand.

-       Give people a reason to sign up for your mailing list. A giveaway to get them excited about your work.

[41:00] Ways to supercharge your mailing list

-       Give them a reason to sign up

-       Use bribes – both digital and physical

-       Use direct mail/snail mail as well as email

-       Hit your list when you have a showing/gallery event.

Gwenn_Seemel_Interview

June’s Interview with Gwenn Seemel is probably one of the best that I’ve ever done. Gwenn is so humble, and so nice, and so smart that it was just an absolute pleasure to talk to her.

Highlights and action points from this month’s interview:

Copyright – an experience with intimidation as a child made Gwenn want to find ways to live her life that weren’t competitive, but collaborative. She points out that it’s nearly impossible to enforce copyright protections on the Web anyway, so why not make your images open and easily shared by everyone?

Action item: put your images on photo sharing sites like Flickr, Photobucket, and other sites. Encourage people to share your images with attribution to you. Read this blog post on how to make your images found on the web.

You, as an artist, cannot be copied. Your style, voice, and subject matter combine to make your artistic voice. Even if someone copies your painting, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to pass it off as original when challenged.

Blogging can be a great way to find your voice as an artist, both in your work and your voice as a member of the community.  Gwenn attributes her artistic voice to her writing experience.

“Work doesn’t have to be better than mediocre to sell.” – Do you worry about whether your work is good enough to sell? Odds are, you should take a look at how your art is packaged, framed, and the buzz that you create around our brand.

Action Item: What sets you apart from other artists? Have you completed Lesson 1?

Develop a relationship with people who can get publicity for you. Journalists and critics are approached by hundreds of artists. Instead of just sending them a blind press release, get to know them, their work, and develop a conversation with them. When you do this, you’ll discover opportunities for media coverage.

You can represent yourself. You don’t have to have an agent or a gallery to make money. Gwenn sold a significant amount of art without the help of a gallery. Even though she has a gallery now, it’s a non-exclusive relationship. Gwenn has really taken charge of her work. She’s very good at sales, even though she doesn’t come across as a salesperson.

TAA_Community_Coaching_Call_Dec

Click on the play button to listen to this month’s coaching call. We covered a variety of questions, including Facebook marketing, email newsletters, and several other topics.

Video Download:

Lesson 7 Analytics

It’s overwhelming for many artists to look at website traffic, subscriber numbers, and other data and try to figure out what it all means. Today’s lesson walks through several resources that will show you how to easily analyze the data and make decisions without facing ‘analysis paralysis.’

Here are the resources mentioned in the video:

Google Analytics – there’s a lot of data inside of Google Analytics. Figure out which data is important what you can ignore, then learn how to take action based on that data.

Hootsuite – a social media management and analysis tool. See how many people are clicking on the links you share and who is talking about you.

Feedburner – use this to see how people are subscribing to your blog, and what content they are clicking on, wherever they are.

Mailchimp.com – what do open rates and click through rates really mean? How do you determine whether your emails are working, and how do you make them work better?

Hi all,

I decided to split lesson #6 into a few sections. In part because my macbook hard drive is dying, and in part because there’s a lot to go over and I don’t want to overwhelm you. So here’s the first installment. Hopefully my Mac doesn’t die before my new hard drive gets here!

This is a video where I show you how to set up an effective Adwords campaign. It’s about 16 minutes. The next video will show you how to refine and improve your campaign after you get some data.

After that, I’ll post a video showing you how to create effective Facebook ads.

Here’s the videos:

adwords video 1

UPDATES:

Adwords campaigns 2

Facebook ads

Also, a few more extra links as resources:

Google Adpreview video:

Winning results with Google Adwords (book) on Amazon (affiliate link)

Download this week’s lesson:

lesson 5 seo

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

This is an example of where to see the Title tag on your website.

This is an example of where the Meta Description displays to the search engines. Here’s what it looks like on a search result.

This is an example of anchor text links.

Cory Huff runs TheAbundantArtist.com, where he teaches artists how to sell art online.

The HTML for this example looks like this:

<a href=”http://theabundantartist.com>how to sell art online</a>.

How to see your backlinks

Go to Yahoo.com and type:

Link:http://www.yourdomain.com

This same command works on Google, but you won’t get as complete a list as you will with Yahoo. Neither search engine will show a complete list since they want to protect how their engines work.

Further SEO resources

Aaron Wall’s post on SEO for Artists. Aaron is probably the most well-known and well respected SEO professional in the world. He charges corporations $5000 for single consultation. His advice is golden.

SEOmoz – With some few people dissenting, SEOmoz offers some of the best training on the planet. Some of it is highly technical and difficult to follow. Ignore that stuff. Watch for the Whiteboard Friday stuff and their lists of easy tactics. The blog is free. They also have an expensive training program – don’t worry about that. It’s mostly for SEO professionals.

Matt Richards Interview

This is a big file folks, so be sure you have a minute to download it. It’s a 23 minute video interview.

Matt has offered to do a live Q&A with members of the community if you all are interested. Let me know in the comments.

This Week’s Audio download (it clocks in at a hefty 44 minutes – tons of content):

Week 4 Social Media and Blogging

Resources discussed in this episode:

Google Alerts – use this to monitor the web for your name and your competitor’s names.

Search.Twitter.com – monitor Twitter for your name or competitor’s names. This is real time and Google Alerts often will not catch everything here.

Hootsuite – this is my favorite way to manage all of my social media accounts. They have advanced paid plans, but you’ll only need the free version.

LinkedIn Answers - answer questions that professionals have in your areas of expertise.

Twellow.com – Twitter yellow pages.

Facebook Like Button – This is Facebook’s quick & easy code generator for a single page on your website. If you want a dynamic code that will automatically generate a Like button for each page of your website, then you’ll need something more advanced. Try this post on HigherEdWebTech.

Alternately, if you are using WordPress, there are a host of WordPress Like Buttons. I have implemented a couple and like this one.

Homework:

Get your Facebook Fan Page created. Send me the link or post it here in the comments.

Add a Facebook Like Button to your Website.

Set up an account with Hootsuite to manage your social media accounts.

Here’s this week’s recording. It’s a little bit longer, with more content and more to do.

Group Coaching April 2010 Week 3

This week’s recording took a bit of an interesting turn. In the middle of this recording some of the artists that I was working with asked some very interesting questions and I decided to leave them in the recording, so you’ll hear some voices from more than just me. Great questions that brought up some interesting discussions.

Resources mentioned in this recording:

Not a ton of resources mentioned here today, just a lot of principles and how-to advice.

Mailchimp.com – the mail management service that I use for TheAbundant Artist. It’s free if your list is under 500, and very inexpensive thereafter. It grows with you!

ConstantContact.com – An older mail management program, but a good one. More sophisticated and corporate looking.

Google Analytics – a free service used for tracking website traffic.

Statcounter.com – another free tracking service.