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Clint,
What about using something like MailChimp to organize mailing lists? Do you feel that the blog on FASO websites is all that is needed to gather and pursue info for sending newsletters? I started a wordpress blog. As far as time-wasting, am I better off limiting my blog activity to the FASO blog on my site? (still adding images etc to site but functioning) Wordpress is a bit of a pain. Any reason to stay there? Some say yes but I'd rather take any advice you give. ps: I loathe facebook.

This posts mirrors some of the conversations I've had lately about making art, selling art and what defines a person's success. (Mine and that of others.) Interesting...
I wonder how many people evaluate their own ratio of extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation ... and I wonder if it matters at all.

Lee - Well, Cory is a smart guy and I respect him. He does sell WP sites, of course. However, I'm not exactly bias-free since I sell something that sort-of competes with wordpress.

My analysis will explain this more but I am NOT anti-wordpress. In fact, I am on the board and the lead investor in a Wordpress hosting company, so I've put my money (literally) where my mouth is in supporting the Wordpress ecosystem. (That company is http://zippykid.com and they have a free tier and their customer support is 100 percent better than wordpress.com).

Having said that, I feel as you do about WP for artists. My experience for SEO and Wordpress is exactly opposite. WP has awful SEO out of the box. There are themes you can add that fix the SEO, in fact, it's so bad that an entire industry has sprung up of people selling "SEO Themes" for Wordpress.

As far as using WP for the art portfolio itself, even Cory agrees with me on that point that "most WP Portfolios aren't very good. The ones that are tend to be expensive" https://twitter.com/AGoodHusband/status/245921180849156096

I'm doing all this investigation into Wordpress with the idea of providing 1 of 2 things, either:

1. a FASO Wordpress plugin that fixes it's deficiencies OR

2. a new open-source project designed SPECIFICALLY for art websites

We would love for you to simply use the FASO blog, it's pretty simply and integrates right with everything else, but, if you can get past the pain points, WP is a great blogging solution, I just think it sucks for the rest of an art site, so if you're only using it for blogging no problem.

There is another SEO problem though if you use FASO for your site and WP for your blog. You have to host your WP site on a different domain, thus splitting all the juice from your links. If you use the FASO blog, it's all built in on the same domain and your blog just lives at yourdomain.com/blog



RE: artful mail - you can't use it yet, but you can see it if you sign up for my newsletter from the link on this blog. I use it when I send a newsletter about 3 times a week. I'm using it myself to work the kinks out. Within about a month, we'll open it to early beta testers who are existing FASO members. Once it passes that, we'll open it to all of FASO. And eventually, (probably) release it as a stand-alone solution for non-faso members who just want mail. It is designed to be easy to use, produce clean, beautiful "artful" emails, and, most importantly, to be much simpler than mailchimp. It will have far fewer features than mailchimp, but those are features most artists don't need anyway. Those that DO need them can always switch to mailchimp.


I am glad/sorry you had to do the hospice job. How/where were you selling the 4K in art and what changed?

Hi again,
I will check out the link you sent re wordpress things you are working on. Thanks. I will see if it makes things easier for this ditz to still use wordpress.
When I was selling at 4k a month, I was doing a lot of commissioned art plus selling on ebay. All originals or very high quality (pro done, not homemade) giclee repros of the aceo (art card) originals I was selling. I was selling my original tiny paintings for as high as 300.00. Those were 2.5" x 3.5" It was a great market til ebay destroyed USA original-art-sellers with their change in policy about things, which translates to China import mass art sales and the fact that unsophisticated buyers do not know the difference between 10 artists sitting in a row in China doing stages of a painting, and one American artist taking the process from beginning to end and putting some actual heart into the work. I can't blame them however, for not understanding. Not when there are brilliant individual Chinese artists working today as well, who are not part of the mass marketing at all.
The economics in this country changed right around the same time as those ebay changes. No matter what anyone says about blaming the economy or not, it is reality that at the same time I lost all equity in my home and my Obama refi was a disappointment, made my mortgage upside down and made me lose my home entirely. But, the gallery in which I have my art, Goldenstein Art in Sedona, is a fine one and I have the occasional sale of larger originals from them, so they are a remaining high spot, bad economy or not.
Lee

I pretty much stumbled into selling on ebay. I would never say it was my favorite format, having always just dealt one on one with clients over the years. But it was exciting to sell like hotcakes.
Etsy is lovely for the hand-crafter. But I don't see the type of Fine Art there that I move at galleries and my eyes won't let me do little art cards anymore.
Your suggestions about personal contact, snail mail of photos, phone calls, etc, that was how I ran my art business before ebay. I am going to go back in that direction, with the bonus of having a good website and blog and email list.
I signed on at Zippy so I will be seeing if I can feel more confident about wordpress. Hey! I want to invest too, when I can! Awesome idea for a service to provide.
You are the best ~
Lee

I am looking at your chart and am a bit puzzled.
What does the line represent?
Is your chart labeled incorrectly?

Shouldn't the LINE be the "Success of the Artist"

And the axis that you label "Success of the Artist" shouldn't it be something like "Amount of $$$ earned" or something quantifiable?

Charles, it's a curve.

Success of artist is the y-axis
time on social media is the x-axis

As time spend on social media goes up (moving to the left) success of artist goes down (the curve moves lower on the y-axis).

It's a classic inverse relationship curve.

I already know you don't agree with the premise as I think you responded to one of my original tweets on this subject.

But anyway, that's what the curve represents.

By the way, on the other post you mentioned about zippykid - the $25 being awfully high - they have since launched a free plan for wordpress hosting.

So from your text ("Successful artist = Professional artist who makes a very good or great full-time living from the sales of his or her art.")
one could replace "Success of Artist" on the y-axis with "Art Sales Revenue".

So using the plot of your chart, as art revenue increases, the amount of time spent on social media decreases...as depicted by the "Success of Artist" curve.

Your chart works for other things, too. The "Time Spent on Social Media" axis could be replaced with something such as "Time spent not creating and selling Art".
Any time away from creating art, for whatever reason - job, family, school or social media, will most likely cut back the amount of success one has with their art.

---------------

I responded on Twitter to this "time spent on social media" notion saying one could use automated services to cut down time spent on social media to a fraction of the manual method. One can schedule a whole month of Tweets in minutes.

"Social media is just very insidious more so than many other activities since we programmers have specifically built social media to trigger the same areas of the brain that addicts people to slot machines."
Clint, thank you for elucidating that. Somehow, I had a feeling that social media (in particular Facebook) was a black hole that sucked you in. I've escaped from its clutches meanwhile, but what I don't understand is why we would need automated tools or hire out to someone else to do updates on social media for us. Why not just let it go altogether? In my experience, social media correlates to success (as you define it) exactly as your chart shows. Then why bother? You pay for it one way or another, in time or in money. If neither is getting you the results you want, then I don't see the point in continuing.

@ Lee: have you considered Daily Paintworks? Perhaps it's not in your league price-wise, but at least it's an auction venue for fine arts only, a good alternative to E-Bay or Etsy.

And the irony is that all those here complaining/discussing about why one shouldn't use social media are here using social media!

Successful artists don't even come to this blog or subscribe to the author's e-mail newsletter!

;-)

Mineke - do you get a reasonable number of bids/sales on DPW? I looked at a few pieces and didn't see any bids, although that doesn't mean it was a representative sample.

I don't know much about DPW although I know of it.

Clint - DPW has been slow for me in recent months, but overall I've had more sales there (mostly small, relatively inexpensive pieces) than I've had directly from my blog and FB combined in the same time period since I started listing with DPW. I've also had some repeat buyers there, which is encouraging.

Clint - It used to be by invitation, but now anyone can join. It's $12.95 per month and 3 percent commission on sold works.

http://help.dailypaintworks.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=22

It's only 3 percent on the auctions.

Clint - there is no obligation to post - or to paint - every day.

You authorize DPW to deduct the $12.95 from your Paypal account. If you sell by auction, the commission is deducted monthly as well.

As Marian pointed out, the 3 percent only applies to auctions. Sorry I didn't make that clear. So, if you sell via email or blog, you don't owe a commission, and you pay only $12.95 per month.

I was curious about DPW partially because I've wondered about their structure for years and partially because FASO actually has something a tad similar the "FASO Daily Art Show", although ours is simply a daily show of new work by FASO members and does not include any auctions, buy buttons etc We simply send any traffic directly over to the artist's website:

http://dailyartshow.faso.com

We've toyed with the idea of opening our Daily Art Show to non FASO members for some sort of fee in the future...perhaps, although we want to grow it more first.

Clint - not from personal experience, but I believe this is the original daily painting site. You have to be juried in and I think you have to be an (almost) daily painter to qualify.

Marian - you are right that DPW is another thing to keep up with, but in my experience the return on your time invested is better than with social media.

Mineke, Marian - is it really a lot to keep up with (DPW)? Their site indicates that they'll automatically pull works from your blog. What's involved with "keeping up" with it?

My last comment disappeared - a technical glitch? In any case, like Marian, I also don't have my blogposts pulled to DPW automatically. If you do, the work involved would be minimal, but there are reasons for managing your blog and DPW separately. For example, I post older works to DPW sometimes and don't want to have to re-blog those. Similarly, I post things on my blog (like announcements of shows etc.) that would not make sense on DPW, because they're not about works that are for sale.

Comparatively, the time invested in DPW, even if you do it manually, is not that much compared to social media. The return for your time is much better in my experience, for what it's worth.

Clint, Of course at first glance, I intuitively agree with you...But when I pause to reflect, I wonder...
The artists that appear to be successful, also appear most frequently on the internet...Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, the old Masters, the new Wonders, all seem to share frequent mentions on all networks, social or otherwise...
I am reminded that artists who are successful also seem to be good at marketing themselves...Is it really true that these artists spend less time on the internet? I am not sure...perhaps they are at such a high level that their presence is not quite as personal as Facebook updates or Twitter tweets or a Pinterest upload...But are the successful ones really internet Amish hermits?
I am not sure...I get your point...I know for myself I use the internet to avoid "working"...But there are times when I am working, while at the same time being on the net...
We are looking at a new paradigm...Many of the "successful" artists out there are from another generation...The net comes naturally to younger people...They tend to be less successful, mainly from lack of experience...In time that will change...
I think we will see these newer artists grow, and they will all be internet savvy...
In some ways, what you are saying is that artists who maybe spend much time writing press releases, putting together advertising campaigns, publishing catalogues, are less successful than those who don't...Yes, sometimes, those who focus more on the business rather than on the art, are less good at the art...I agree...On the other hand, those who are good at business, tend to be good at earning money...I often see the business ones doing better than the good artists...(moneywise)...
But it is food for thought...I also wonder if I have not shot myself in the foot by providing so much free content online...Why buy my catalogue if you can read it online for free?
Ok...I guess I better get some work done this month...before I turn into a pumpkin...probably a good blog post for me at this timewasting time of the year, thanks...Sari

Sari - you wrote, "are the successful ones really internet Amish hermits?"

I need to clarify, I've never said that an artist needs to be a hermit.

I said most of the successful ones I know don't seem to waste much time on *social media* (Facebook/Twitter).

Social Media does not equal "the internet"

Most of the successful artists I'm thinking DO have and extensively utilize a website, email, blogs and other online channels that are productive and effective. But, if they do use social media, it is used sparingly and primarily to support the other channels.

There are, always, of course, exceptions.