Thinking about a new artist website? Two weeks ago 1stwebdesigner featured a great article titled, “Six Solid Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress”. We think that’s a great message and its just as true (if not more so) for artist websites as it is for the Joe Schmo small business.

Lets start with 1stwebdesigners 6 Reason Titles and we’ll add our 2c worth on why WordPress makes SO MUCH sense for artists! Oh – and just to be clear we’re talking here about the version of WordPress you host yourself (wordpress.org), not the hosted version (wordpress.com).

Here goes…

Flexible Open Source

In a nutshell this means that it uses a flexible open platform and that there are literally thousands of developers all over the world constantly making improvements and extensions which benefit you. It’s happening while you sleep! The framework is also free – you can put up a WordPress website with a number of different themes all by yourself at no cost. A designer can also develop a fully customized site with unique design aesthetic for you too – but still based on the WordPress engine for ease of updating and simplicity. Many of the customized sites we build at Beautiful Artist Websites are just so.

Great Content Management System

To understand this think simply as follows – you can change your own content – images, text, create new pages, create blog posts, add YouTube videos etc, all by yourself. This is really important because you need to update your website content regularly to keep visitors interested and coming back. And in our experience designing artist websites – if its not easy to make the changes it ain’t going to happen! (Not so often anyway)

Search Engine Optimization Friendly

This is really BIG. We wrote a whole book about search engine optimization for artist websites – and we just released a rewrite for WordPress. WordPress is great for SEO because it comes out of the box with a structure and page naming (permalink) methodology that is very simply understood and indexed by search engines. The ease of updating and adding new content is also important because search engines like sites that are active and adding new content regularly. Finally, there are some excellent plugins (extensions) that push the SEO envelope further – such as the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin and The All In One SEO Pack. That gets you at least a third of the way to great search engine results and that’s priceless.

Media Support

WordPress makes it very easy to add images, videos (e.g. a video artist statement), audio, maps, slideshows, google docs, google maps, etc. Adding appropriate media content can make your site really interesting and engaging – and a superior art marketing magnet. Not only that but it actually makes it fun for you the artist and website owner to experiment with new ways of promoting.

Extended Plugins

This is another big one and comes back to the Open Source pint above. There really are literally thousands of plugins (extensions) available for the WordPress Platform. You can check them out on the Plugin Directory. Most times you can find a plugin to do almost anything. Examples: Want to add a Facebook “Like” button to your pages and posts? There’s several plugins for that. Want to check how your Mailchimp email campaigns are affecting your Google Analytics results? There’s a really nice plugin for that. Want to automatically ping Facebook and Twitter every time you add a new blog post? There’s a plugin for that. There are plugins for almost everything and nearly all of them are free, gratis, – a gift for you from some unknown developer somewhere in the Cyberverse!

Easy To Use

The back-end user interface is extremely simple and requires no programming skills at all. You can setup an administrator level account for yourself for use when you need to make design or extension changes, AND you can also setup an editor-level account if you are just wanting to add or change content. The editor level account is really simple to use. You can also setup editor or author level accounts for other artists so that they can post in your blog.  The WordPress Forums also provide fairly good support – in our experience you will get a response within a few hours in most cases. And in several years of developing sites we can count the number of times we’ve needed support on one hand!

Conclusion

That’s the scoop. Think about WordPress seriously when contemplating a new artist website. We’ve tried a bunch of platforms over the years and WordPress gets our thumbs up for artist websites.

Also, this week we are having our annual “SEO For A Song” 30%-off sale which we’re extending to both the General and WordPress editions of our Artist SEO Success System. Enter Coupon Code SUCCESSFULARTIST in your shopping cart and click “Update” to grab the discount. It goes away for another year after Saturday October 15 so grab it while you can!

Andy Warhol was a 1960s pop icon famous for his extravagant persona and attention grabbing artworks such as his famous Campbell’s Soup painting. Warhol was one of the central players in a powerful wave of art and music that swept over our planet in the 1960s and 70s – looking into his life gives a fascinating snapshot of this period.

Warhol in Heliczer's 1966 underground film, "Joan Of Arc"

1. Andy Warhol’s birth name was Andrew Warhola. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928, his parents, Ondrej and Julia were immigrants from Miková in northeastern Slovakia.
2. His very first movie was called ‘Sleep’ and it was 6 hour long never ending masterpiece of his friend sleeping. Nine people attended premiere. Seven of them stayed and watched the movie. Two of them left within the first hour. He created at least 60 movies including Kiss, Blowjob, Eat, Shoulder, Couch, Face, Kitchen, Horse, Suicide, Drink, Closet, Sunset, and Bitch.
3. Andy almost died when he was shot three times in the chest by Valerie Solanis. Valerie was an ardent feminist and one of many who thought Warhol was abusive and controlling. She thought that he deserved to die. Warhol was at one point pronounced dead, but was revived and slowly recovered. Valerie was a founder of club called SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) and she was the only member of the group.
4. He died in hospital on February 22nd, 1987 from a heart attack because hospital stuff overloaded him with fluids after his routine gallbladder surgery. Warhol is buried at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After his death the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was founded.
5. Andy was the producer of the first record album by The Velvet Underground . He also painted the cover of their first album, entitled ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico’. Many of the songs were considered daring, shocking, and kinky.
6. In 1957 Warhol won the prestigious Art Director’s Club Medal for a shoe advertisement. Warhol went to New York City after earning a BFA degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, in 1949. He began designing in advertisements and went on to specialize in illustrating shoes.
7. Although he worked in a number of media his most famous works were created using silkscreen and lithography. When he had achieved some fame, Andy began to use silkscreen to create his art and to mass-produce images. His 1973 portrait of Mao is one of the best known examples of his use of this process.
8. After Warhol’s death a music album was made titled, “Songs for Drella”. This was a nickname coined by his music friends which was a combination of Dracula and Cinderella. After Andy’s death, Lou Reed’s band dedicated the “Songs for Drella” album to Andy, that he would never be forgotten. Bob Dylan’s song, “Like a Rolling Stone” is reputed to have been about Andy. Dylan blamed Warhol for drug use by Edie Sedgewicks, a love interest of Dylan’s at the time.
9. Andy would claim, “If you want to know all about me, just look at the surface of my paintings and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”
10. In addition to creating art, Warhol started Interview magazine, opened a night club and created two cable TV shows-Andy Warhol’s TV and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes- for MTV.
11. Warhol had an interesting sense of style; he wore silver wigs and eventually dyed his hair silver. After having been told he had lazy eyes, he wore opaque glasses that had a tiny pinhole for him to see through.
12. In high school, the art club excluded Warhol because he was better than the other members.

Editor’s Note:

This article was researched from a number of online resources. If you would like to learn more about the chronology and details of Andy Warhol’s life there is a fantastic resource at warholstars.org. Flipping through this gave me a great background on some of the 60′s and 70′s art and music legends and how their lives intersected.

Zachary Sosa from Boerne Texas posed a great question to Ask Art Marketing Secrets this week – one that troubles artists in every country on the planet and in every stage of their careers. Zachary writes:

How can I increase traffic to my website? Everyone I have asked have said that they think my art is really good. I just need someone to give me a chance.

You’re in great company Zachary – most artists start marketing online with a dream of a great website that will attract many visitors who buy buy buy! The reality mostly ends up a little differently – their beautiful website typically sits online with only a handful of visits from people – many of whom are not even particularly interested in art. Family and friends visit for a while to offer support – but they aren’t buying and after a while even they lose interest. Yikes!

What to do? Here are 6 proven tips which will help you bring quality visitors to your artist website…

Focus On Attracting Quality Visitors: After being in the online art and art marketing business for several years now I can tell you something really important! I would rather have 5 visits a month to my artist website from seriously interested potential buyers than 50,000 visits from any old “traffic”. Now to be fair this advice also depends on whether you are wanting to build relationships and sell higher-value artworks – or whether you want to sell low cost reproductions to the gift market. If you focus on low-price work you might actually like those 50,000 visitors because that could translate into a consistent revenue stream.

Integrate Your Artist Website With Your Art Career Strategy: Don’t underestimate the importance of physical shows in your local community. Host an open studio, group show, or solo show in your community regularly – at least 6 times per year. Have show visitors sign up for your mailing list and email them regularly about new work, upcoming shows, etc. Be sure to regularly update your website with the same information – upcoming shows, latest work, etc and include links in your emails so that people can click through to the pages which tell them about the new work or events. This way, you are training your art community to visit your website regularly to see what’s new. We have a great article series called “How To Stage A Successful Artist Open Studio” which will help you with setting up for regular local shows.

Optimize Your Website For Search Engines: Search Engines, like Google and Bing can help a lot to bring new potential buyers to your artist website. This is especially true if you sell lower cost small artworks or reproductions in the $50 – $200 range which can attract gift and tourist-market buyers. Example: Mary and her husband just came back from a great vacation in the Caribbean. After a week or so, Mary is pining for the Caribbean and decides to buy a piece of art as a reminder. How might she find such art? An obvious way would be to google “Caribbean Art” or “Caribbean Paintings”. If you paint Caribbean scenes and your site shows up on page 1 of the Google results you may have a potential customer. You can read more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in our article series, “SEO For Artists: Share Google’s Love For Art”. If you’re really inspired you can also check out our “Artist SEO Success System”.

Use Social Networking To Increase Visits: There are a myriad of social networking sites online today. In our experience focus first on building a presence on facebook. Setup a Facebook page for your art business – this needs to be in addition to your personal Facebook page. Post your latest artworks and updates there regularly. Invite others to visit your website. Twitter is also very useful however in our experience a much larger number of potential buyers are using Facebook. Lori McNee and Tara Reed are great resources for using Social Networking to build your online art presence.

Join Free Or Low Cost Online Galleries: Your own artist website should always be the place where you bring people to see your work. This is because it is here that you have the most control over the presentation and information flow. That said, online galleries can be a great way to get your flag out in places that people can find you. The most important point is to ALWAYS include links back to your own artist website so that visitors have the option to visit your artist website. This strategy has the added benefit that it can help you with search engine rankings by building incoming links to your artist website. Moshe Mikanovsky has a great article listing some of these gallery and resource sites.

Personal Networking: This is the most powerful way to do anything but it’s also the one many of us seem to avoid the most. Here is a simple start: Go to a local art event – a gallery opening or show, or talk at least once every month (preferably every week). Make a point of talking with 5 new people each time and “be the artist”. Share your business card (which must have your website URL on it). Nurture the relationships and friendships that develop with artists and arts professionals.

These simple tips will take some effort! But everything good in life requires us to exercise and grow – that’s the point really. One final point:

Consistency Is King

It is much better to do a little consistently every week that to do a handful of mad-dash all-inclusive efforts each year. Rome wasn’t built in a day – it was build brick by brick. So it is with your art career!

This last week I received an email from a visitor at Beautiful Artist Websites. We get many emails asking questions about marketing and selling art online and offline, but this particular message got my attention. Let me quote:

Hello. I am from a little town in Wyoming and I am wanting to ask a pretty simple question, Well my wife is a painter/sculptor. She is the best I have seen in my eyes but not only mine, my family, her family all our friends – and she has won art shows throughout Wyoming. She moved to California and tried the art program there but she had no luck. I am contacting all art areas to ask how I can get her work out there to be seen/ sold/ and admired by a massive verity. I know she has a chance at success but she has not taken the steps. If there is a chance you can e-mail me back to let me know I would be so thankful.

A couple of things struck me about this message. Firstly the love that this man has for his wife and her talent – this kind of moral support from friends and family is just priceless as one navigates the often challenging path to commercial success as a professional artist. In most cases it is a marathon run and your warm circle of friends cheer-leading you on may be the one thing that pushes you over the finish line.

The second thing that got my attention was how well this email describes the real challenges of how to get started. There is SO much advice around in many great books, blogs, forums, etc, but if you’re really starting out with art marketing what do you do first?

When I answered this email I pointed the gentleman to a number of articles on our site, in particular a collection of our best art marketing articles from 2009 which covers some important bases. But several days later his email was really bothering me because I didn’t feel I had addressed the core question.

Here’s what I honestly think – there is enough information online today for anyone to research any art marketing question that they could possibly think of between now and the year 5,000. A lack of information isn’t the challenge. What is typically lacking is an understanding of the overall process or a system to implement it. But there is something way more fundamental that this:

To sell art you need a market to sell to. To some extent there is an existing art market that can be tapped by emerging artists – but probably the bigger piece is the art market that you create yourself. And how do you do that?

A few years back while driving from New York to Los Angeles I listened to a truly fabulous audio book called “The Ultimate Anti Career Guide” by Rick Jarow. I won’t digress into its message here except to say that this book is a great inspiration with some very practical tools to help you find your life’s work. The reason I bring it up is because Rick mentioned something very powerful which hit me like a bolt of lightning. Here is what he said:

Another name for a Community is a Market

Sounds simple right? But think about the power of this statement. What Rick was referring to was that when you build a community around being yourself and doing the work that inspires you, that community can become the market that finances and fuels your ongoing career growth – a true symbiotic relationship in its most positive sense.

So, in  practical sense what does this mean for you, the artist seeking artistic and commercial success? It means to take the regular steps to nurture and build a community around the art that you create. One way I really encourage artists to get started with this is to have monthly open studios. One of my favorite articles on this subject is a 3-part series that I wrote myself called “How to Stage A Successful Artist Open Studio“. Encourage friends to come along – even if they’re not excited about art. Ask them to bring friends and send out postcards and written invitations regularly to galleries and other arts professionals.

What you’re doing is watering the little plant which is your art community and f you do this consistently every month it will grow into a big tree and eventually it may become a mighty oak. This is your art community AND your art market. When you have this foundation in place, all the other marketing steps and tools, and systems fall into place because you’re applying them to your known and trusted market.

I’m big on building strong foundations for success because to reach your objective may take every ounce of inspiration and energy you can muster for a long time. If you build those foundations strongly you’ll make life much easier for yourself in the future – and have a more meaningful and fun time of it. Your art community is a BIG foundation!

Happy New Year from Art Marketing Secrets, Beautiful Artist Websites, and Espresso Artist Websites! We hope that 2011 is a big year for you, your loved ones, and your art career.

To give you a GIANT boost we’re offering $287 in extras FREE when you order one of our Espresso Artist Websites this week. That’s right – Order an Espresso Artist Website by January 7 and you’ll bag these great presentation and marketing features completely GRATIS!

- Home Page Slide Show (Normally $95)
- Email Management System (Normally $95 Setup Charge)
- The Artist SEO Success System (Normally $97)

That’s $287 in free bonuses not to be repeated after January 7. Simply place your order and we’ll include these bonus features.

Why Espresso Artist Websites?

Selling Art is a system and many artists don’t succeed because they only stab at isolated parts of the process instead of consistently working the full system. If you want to understand what we’re talking about, grab our free report, “7 Steps To Sell Your Art Online”

We created Espresso Artist Websites to actively support you through the three critical aspects of selling art:

• Attracting New Buyers
• Impressing them with your beautifully showcased art
• Building relationships with them that lead to sales

We do this with powerful search engine features, fully integrated blogging and email marketing, Social Media Marketing, and, of course, our trademark beautiful showcasing. All of these wrap together into a solution that we call our “21st Century Art Marketing Machines”!

So – here is your one-time chance to grab one of these fully featured websites with $287 in bonus features at no additional charge. Order by January 7th to receive this special offer. Simply place your order and we’ll include the bonus features for you.

Happy 2011 from all of us here at AMS, BAW, and Espresso. Now go get those art collectors!

Have a great art marketing question that has been perplexing you or holding you back from that stellar success you dream of? Now is your chance to ask! Our new department, Ask Art Marketing Secrets is now open for business and we’re looking forward to answering your questions.

Do you have questions or concerns about artist websites, email marketing, search engines for artists, social networking for artists, hosting open studios, building relationships with collectors online or offline, closing sales, selling art online, or any other art marketing, art business or art sales topic? Now is your chance to ask.

In most cases we’ll be able to give you some great guidance based on our own experiences selling art and working with clients at Art Marketing Secrets and Beautiful Artist Websites. If we don’t have an answer, we’ll do our very best to find someone who does.

If we think your question will help a group of artists we will post an answer it in our Ask Art Marketing Secrets Section and we’ll link back to your artist website, if you have one.

To ask your questions, simply visit our Ask Art Marketing Secrets page, fill in the form, and submit. Easy!

Note: We don’t guarantee that all questions will be answered. Our focus is on topics that will benefit artists who are serious about building art business success!

That is the message that greeted me in an email I received earlier this week. It was 6am and I had just made myself a cup of green tea and was starting my day in an exuberant mood as I reviewed emails. The cause of this this terse little response was an email we sent out promoting the smARTist Telesummit. This is an event which we really believe in and in 2011 we are invited Keynote speakers.

I’m normally fairly thick skinned on the odd occasion someone unsubscribes from one of our email lists – but this time I felt different. This was a person who had received some really great free information from us that would really help them to promote their art career if they actually used it. I wouldn’t have minded if they had simply clicked the “unsubscribe” button displayed visibly in the email – but to go the extra step of adding a rude little snipe like that really surprised me.

This got me wondering – do some artists really think that they should get everything free? Is it really too offensive to them that amongst all the free articles and information we and many other great art marketing and art career websites publish that we occasionally promote something we believe in that has a price tag? Surely not! But apparently so!

So, just for the record, here are a few thoughts from me on this topic. In a perfect world I would probably spend a good part of my weeks writing art marketing articles and books and teaching art marketing seminars. I have a genuine interest in helping artists bridge the gap that often exists between art and business and helping them to bring more beauty and creativity into the world. This is a world that really needs it!

That said, I and all the other art marketing writers out there run businesses – not charities. We have to run our businesses successfully because we need to eat and support our loved ones and communities. Money may not buy happiness but you can’t do a whole lot in this world without it. And I for one am several decades past being able to sleep on the sofa at my Mum and Dad’s place!

So, amongst all the volumes of free information we and many others provide, occasionally we promote products and services we believe in that are not free – and we make no apologies. If you as an artist are offended by a commercial offer then by all means feel free to unsubscribe. But before you do, think about what this might be telling you about your own relationship with art career success – because if you are uncomfortable with receiving an occasional promotion from us, how are you going to feel comfortable about asking for the sale with a new art collector? And you most certainly will have to do that!

Money is not a god to be worshiped but it is a big part of the world we live in. If you are uncomfortable with it, then it it will almost certainly feel uncomfortable with you. Think about that!

The Lovers (Section) ~ Paul Gauguin 1902

In Part 1 we explained why Search Engines are important for artists and the role they play in the “Attraction phase” of your online art marketing. In this post we’ll look more closely at strategies to be successful with search engines.

Most artist’s websites (most websites in general in fact) rank poorly in search engine results. If your website doesn’t show up on the first page you’re missing opportunities. If it’s not on the second page you’re basically wasting your time with search engines.

So, how do you rank highly? Here’s what we’ve learned in our 6 years of designing artist websites:

The Major Search Engine Traffic Success Elements

Here are the three major keys to ranking highly in search engine results:

Optimized Website Structure: Your website must be built and structured such that search engine robots can easily find and index the information on the site. Basically it must be easy to read and understand and should where possible avoid elements that are invisible to search engines. Simple also works much better for human visitors – the worst artist websites from a human perspective are almost always the ones which are overly complex or clever rather than simple and visual!

Optimized Keyword Selection: Your website must include the appropriate words and phrases to describe you and your style of art. These “keywords” and “Keyword phrases” need to be placed in the most powerful sections of your site. In addition, it’s important to ensure that the keywords you use to describe your art are the same as those being used by people searching for your style of art in search engines. There is no point in optimizing your website for terms that no one is searching on – that is like advertising beef in a town of vegetarians!

While we are on this keyword topic it is relevant and important to mention niches. At the core of SEO and of any serious marketing effort lies the concept of your niche. It is very difficult to be commercially successful as an artist if you simply describe yourself as an “Artist”. On the other hand, if you can tightly define exactly what sort of artist you are and the style of work you create it will help you significantly. It helps because your message stands out to buyers who have an interest in your style of work. The saying, “Get rich in a niche” is just as true for art as it is for any other business and you need to embrace it and use it in all your art marketing activities. Being able to describe your niche is central to success with choosing SEO keywords.

Optimized PageRank: Search engines must decide that your website has a high “Relevance” to the search term. To a large extent this is a measure of the quantity and quality of incoming links (from other websites) to your website. Just as in human social situations our importance is judged by the number of our friends and their degree of social power, so too is your website ranked by the company it keeps!

These three factors  work together to create a “sweet spot” of maximum search engine rankings. Think of it as a recipe for a cake with 3 ingredients. If you have all three in place and bake at the right temperature for a sufficient time you can be fairly confident of a superb afternoon tea! If on the other hand you miss an ingredient the cake may not rise or it maybe it will taste really bad – not so good for business.

What we have noticed with SEO is that various websites will come and go from the page 1 search engine results. The sites that stay there invariably have all three foundations solidly in place so it really is worthwhile to do it properly if you want consistent results.

Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? The truth is that it is quite simple, but it does take commitment on the part of the artist to do the research work and get the website optimization done. But then commitment and effort are what separates commercially successful artists from the rest.

If you are one of those seriously committed to success you have some options with how to implement SEO. You can research your own plan and spend thousands of dollars of your valuable studio time and you might be on the right path. You could also consider our Artist SEO Success System, a 21 day program which takes the guess-work out of exactly what to do and can get you solidly on the path to search engine ranking success. At $97 it really is unbelievably good value and we have a bunch of very happy artist customers who say so. Here are just a couple:

Daniel – Thank-you for your Artist SEO guide and workbook. I have spent a small fortune learning SEO from various experts. Your book does an excellent job of distilling the most important parts down to step by step actionable tasks. Wish I had found you first, it would have saved me thousands. Awesome value. Tim ONeill, Nebraska

As an creator of educational materials and online courses (in my day job, I have a Masters in Instructional Design) I am totally impressed with the guide and workbook. It is so well written and thought out and CLEAR! I can tell you guys did a ton of work… Bravo! …. Kristen Hoard, California

Thanks for taking the time to read and absorb this series on SEO. There is never enough great art visible in the world and I hope that you will make use of some of these concepts to improve your marketing and get your art out there where it belongs – seen and sold!

Lovers ~ Pablo Picasso

If you’ve been reading recent art marketing articles regularly over the last year you may have noticed an occasional minor clash of ideas on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Artists. I confess to being one of the culprits in these sparring matches!

My experience from working with clients at Beautiful Artist Websites is that SEO IS very important for artists – just as it is similarly important for any modern business wanting to increase its exposure to potential buyers. It is also a topic that is not well understood by artists and this is why I took several months out of my schedule to write The Artist SEO Success System.

In this post I’ll explain why SEO is important for artists and precisely where it delivers its true value. In Part 2, I’ll give you a brief introduction to the three foundations of SEO so that you can get started on optimizing your own artist website.

So why is SEO so important for artists?

First of all, lets demolish a myth or two.

Many artists say that SEO is a waste of time because Word-of-Mouth marketing is more powerful. Let me say that from my experience nothing else compares with word-of-mouth – a referral from a happy client or partner is undoubtedly the “gold standard” in marketing. It comes with an instant level of trust and positions you much closer to closing a sale.

But if that is the case why do other businesses engage in so much extra marketing and advertising activity? Why would they do that if word-of-mouth is so powerful?

The answer is because they want to grow their business as much as possible (as should you) and they recognize that if they only use word-of-mouth they are missing many potential clients. Do you want to miss out on clients?

Search Engine Marketing is part of what we call the “marketing attraction phase”. This is where you attract potential clients who generally don’t know about you at all. They don’t know your name – they only know that they are looking for art of a certain style. They could be individuals or they could be art dealers or art licensing reps. The point is – they want what you have but they aren’t connected to anyone who knows you so they will never hear about you through word-of-mouth.

The “attraction phase” can include a number of different marketing methods including SEO, Social Networking, Snail Mail marketing to galleries and dealers, networking with local arts organizations, galleries, etc. The optimum mix depends on your art and personality.

You should also be clear that the main goal of any attraction-phase marketing technique, including SEO, is not to create an instant sale. This is where artists often get confused and disappointed. Instant sales do happen, especially in the lower price-points – but what you really want is to lead them into the next phases of your art marketing process where you build relationships and create a customer for life. That is what you should be aiming for!

Just for your reference, the phases of our art marketing model are:

1. The Attraction Phase
2. The WOW Phase
3. The Relationship-building Phase
4. The Sales-Close Phase

You can read more about these phases in our free report, “7 Steps To Sell Art Online“.

But lets get back to SEO and some hypothetical examples of how it might help an artist commercially:

Gillian is an oil painter who lives in Northern New Mexico and paints landscapes, many of which are focused close to the town of Abiquiu. (Note: If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit this town you should mark it on your list of places to go – it is right near Ghost Ranch and Georgia O’keeffe’s desert home – just gorgeous landscape!)

Gillian has a website which she has optimized for search engines. During that process she discovered that many people google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” and so she optimized her artist website to rank highly for those phrases.

Gillian has opened the door to several big potential opportunities:

- A gallery director scouting for new work of Gillian’s style and subject matter may very likely google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” as part of their search strategy. When Gillian’s website ranks on Page 1, it means they can find her and look at her work. If Gillian’s work is great and her website does its job she may get a call from the gallery director. This is priceless attraction-marketing for free!

- Similarly, an art licensing rep may be looking for work similar to Gillian’s for a new line of home decorations at Target Stores. Search engines would be part of their strategy.

- Finally, tourists who have visited the area and fallen in love with it often get home and realize that they really want a piece of art to remind them of their experience at Ghost Ranch. What do you think might be one strategy they might use? Search engines – of course!

Now, as I mentioned above, search engines are just one of several attraction-phase marketing techniques you can use – but they are very powerful. So why would you want to miss out on the potential business with a website that doesn’t rank highly for the phrases applicable to your work that are heavily searched? Why would you risk missing out on a serious percentage of your potential new visitors?

You wouldn’t right? That would be plain crazy! But that is exactly what MOST artists are doing with their websites! And the most insane part of this is that SEO is not really that difficult to master, IF you know what to do.

Today I’ve covered WHY search engines are an important marketing tool for artists and WHERE they deliver they strength. In Part 2 we’ll discuss the 3 foundations of Search Engine Optimization to get you started.

If you’re serious about more success with your website you can also check out our “Artist SEO Success System” – a Complete 21 day program to comprehensively SEO your artist website. Created exclusively for artists it lays out a complete plan and can save you $thousands in lost time.

Editors Note: This article (written by us) was first published in Fine Art Views in October 2010.

Artists can learn a lot from the life story of the great Tibetan Saint Milarepa. Do you know his story?

I first became aware of Jetsun Milarepa when I read The Golden Dream, a fictionalized account of his life story by Heather Hughes Calero. It is a fantastic read although I believe the book is out of print. I thoroughly recommend it.

The start of Milarepa’s life story goes like this (borrowing from Wikipedia):

Milarepa was born in the village of Kya Ngatsa – also known as Tsa – in Gungthang province of western Tibet to a prosperous family. He was named Mila Thöpaga (Thos-pa-dga’), which means “A joy to hear.”

When his father died, Milarepa’s uncle and aunt took all of the family’s wealth. At his mother’s request, Milarepa left home and studied sorcery. While his aunt and uncle were having a party to celebrate the impending marriage of their son, he took his revenge by summoning a giant hail storm to demolish their house, killing 35 people, although the uncle and aunt are supposed to have survived. The villagers were angry and set off to look for Milarepa, but his mother got word to him and he sent a hailstorm to destroy their crops.

So, as you can see, Milarepa was off to something of a bad start in his life! But he was aware enough to know that he needed to take responsibility for his misdeeds and make amends. How did he do this? In the story as told by Hughes-Calero, Milarepa set out to find a spiritual teacher and eventually found himself under the tutelage of the lama Marpa.

Marpa was a tough teacher and focused Milarepa’s training on building houses made with large stones. This was heavy exhausting work, especially for one man and especially given the harsh tibetan weather. Marpa was relentless! – but he also didn’t give up on Milarepa.

All told, Milarepa had to build 13 houses with his bare hands, collecting all the materials himself. Marpa would look at each one and find something that wasn’t right and then Milarepa would have to start all over again. Many times he was so proud of his latest building achievement and the lessons he had learned. But Marpa would again tell him that it wasn’t right and to start again. How incredibly frustrating! Can you imagine how he felt?

Eventually Milarepa did learn the lesson that Marpa was determined to teach him and the last house was completed! There are a number of opinions on how this happened but a general consensus is that Milarepa had surrendered his ego and balanced the karma he had created in the earlier part of his life. He had now achieved an elevated state of enlightenment. Some say that he is the only Tibetan Lama to have achieved this in a single lifetime of training.

Milarepa went on to become one of Tibet’s most famous Yogis and poets and he is revered by thousands today.

So – what can an artist or an art marketeer learn from the life of Milarepa? Here are 5 things that come to mind:

1. There is a good chance that your life is a lot easier than Milarepa’s – so feel happy and celebrate what you have!
2. Realize that you have to take responsibility for your life and your art career success.
3. Find yourself a good art marketing coach – a “Marpa of Art Marketing!” – someone who can demonstrate the kind of mastery you want to achieve. Do what they say.
4. When you’re feeling tired and can’t go on, ask yourself: “Do I feel like I’ve completed 13 houses yet?” If not, keep going – Milarepa did and he achieved something truly great – and so can you!
5. Surrender your ego. If something isn’t working don’t hang on to it. Let it go and start again. Start again 13 times if you need to. Just do it, learn what does work, and do more of that.

You will then have achieved Art Marketing Enlightenment!