Blog

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, then you win."  While it is not clear who first uttered these famous words, they're often attributed to Gandhi.  [11]   I've been reminded of Gandhi's quote recently due to being forwarded two highly derogatory and misleading emails [reprinted below] that were sent to a FASO member by one of our competitors. The emails disappoint me greatly because   they were penned by a competitor who I've always highly respected and, at times, recommended.  In fact, I've always mentioned them when I've been interviewed in national art magazines as a good option for artist [...]

  An artist wrote me and said, "I do painting for the love, as I just explained to someone this morning, while defending all the money spent versus nothing sold.   I've never approached the easel with $$ in mind."   Unfortunately in our money-driven, ROI-focused society, many people don't get it.  After all, why would this artist continue to "waste" money on her craft if nothing is selling?  It's tragic that she feels forced to defend her decision to spend money on the thing she enjoys most in her life.   I, however, completely "get it."  It's really very simple.  She enjoys "The Maker's High" from painting, [...]

Focus.   What do you focus on?   The things we focus on get bigger and more important in our lives, as if they gain energy from the attention we give them.  Those are the things we think about.  The things we fix.  The things we worry about.  The things we improve.   I ask again, what are you focusing on?   Are you focusing on your search engine ranking?  Or are you focusing on how to be a better artist?   Do you focus on how much "traffic" your website gets?  Or, do you focus on how to improve your relationship with those two dozen people who already love your [...]

Regular readers know that I constantly beat the drum telling artists to "send regular email newsletters."   But a common objection I often hear from artists is that they don't have an email newsletter list so who, exactly, are they supposed to send the email newsletters to?     Many artists are simply convinced they don't have anyone to send to.   But I don't think that's true.  Nearly everyone has more contacts than they think.  I read recently that the average number of friends a user has on Facebook is somewhere between 245 - 359.  For some quick anecdotal evidence, I went through a bunch of [...]

  Image courtesy Hugh MacLeod, gapingvoid.com     If you read advice about improving your online marketing, you'll inevitably come across the advice to "spend time crafting the best possible headline".  The common wisdom states that the headline is the most important attention-grabbing part of a post [1].   You're here reading this post because the title "Did I Just Solve Your Art Marketing Woes?" grabbed your attention, did it not?   Unfortunately, the answer is to the question posed in the title is "no", this blog post is not the answer to all your art marketing woes.  Sorry.   I used a cheap old tabloid trick:  Take an outrageous, even [...]

Did you know that google provides a way for you to tell Googlebot about every page on your website?  It is called an “XML Sitemap.”   Although there is some debate about just how important an xml sitemap is, many search engine specialists consider having an up-to-date xml sitemap to be an SEO “best practice.” [1]    If your artist website doesn’t have an xml sitemap, and you want one, the first thing you have to do is create one.  The technical specification of the xml sitemap is pretty complicated and looks like so:         Fortunately, you don't have to create your sitemap by hand.  Many website [...]

    My dad, Mike Watson, turns 67 this week.  Seems like a good occasion to look back and reflect upon some of the "life lessons" my dad taught me.  These are qualities where he is the master and I am his padawan.   If you're reading this in FineArtViews, the actual birthday has already happened, but no matter, the lessons are timeless.  And if you're reading this, Dad, Happy Birthday!         1.  Devotion   In my whole life, I've never seen two people more devoted to each other than my parents.  You can tell by the way they look at each other that the spark always has [...]

On a recent vacation, we decided to simply look for a cruise that went somewhere we'd never been and that was cheap.   Like Obama checking his poll ratings, we checked the cruise sites daily.  And lo and behold, we found a Panama canal cruise that seemed too good to be true.  So your editor's wife booked it.  We figured if it was cheap, perhaps that meant the ship wasn't full and we hoped we'd be upgraded to larger cabin.   A week before, we received an email from Celebrity.  Apparently we were celebrities and we were upgraded.  Not only to a suite, but to the 3rd largest suite [...]

  Sure, it's easy to be creative and productive once you reach that elusive state of inspired flow.    But what separates the "Joes" from the Pros is what you do when your not in that state.   Even when you're uninspired, you still have to plug away, day-in day out.     While it may be an apples to oranges comparison, when I am coding a project and just can't get into "the zone."  I force myself every single day to do the smallest amount possible to keep that project moving forward.     I recently had a project that required updating 30 html files with some new code.  No [...]