[Hidden-tech] monetizing Wordpress

[Maria Korolov]

I also recommended Fine Art America (http://fineartamerica.com/). You just
upload your image -- as high res as possible -- and they print it on a
variety of surfaces, frame it, and ship it, and take their cut.

Now, I don't know what kind of traffic she's been getting to her site so
far, but, given that she hasn't had any way to purchase art before, I'm
going to guess that her current audience is NOT corporate art buyers.

If her medium is drawings on paper, she is going to have an extremely hard
time getting a gallery to carry her work, and, if she has a show, she will
probably have to pay for it -- without much in return at the end.

She needs to come up with a creative development plan.

Here's one.

(Based on my experience growing up in a family of creative -- but poor --
artists and musicians -- and then writing hundreds of business articles
about artists and other creative types, some successful and others not so.
And twenty years of covering business in general.)

STEP 1. Develop a unique visual signature. If people see it from a
distance, they should be able to say, "Hey, that looks like so-and-so's
work."

Look through your previous work, identify trends and patterns, pick one,
and go deep. Think of it as your own personal "Blue Period."

This is also a good time to pick a cool artistic name and a tragic back
story. Remember that the artist's persona is just another creation.

STEP 2: Get your now-recognizable works out in front of as many people as
possible. Most won't care, a few will actively dislike it, and some will
say, "I gotta get me some of that." Ideally, pick an audience where at
least some of the people will be corporate buyers picking up things for
offices, hotel rooms, and building lobbies. Negotiate for links back to
your page on Fine Art America or whatever platform you choose to use.

Okay, that's pretty much it for my plan. It was a short one.

But you might say: but getting your stuff in front of people is the hardest
part! Well, not these days. Here, you've got millions of tactics to choose
from.

For example, my personal background is in business journalism. And I've
noticed that business magazines love to run original abstract pieces of art
to illustrate articles. It can really jazz up a boring accounting story!

Some editors (that includes me) will go to Flickr and look for Creative
Commons-licensed content with particular tags. Like "money" or "criminal"
or "law" or "meeting" -- whatever it is that we're looking for. And, of
course, with abstract art, you can put any tags or description on it that
you want.

Now, the site that I pick the illustrations for is small -- a quarter
million visitors a year -- but some of the publications I contribute to get
millions of readers per article.

Those larger sites work with artists directly, and pay extra for exclusive
rights to their work -- they don't want to see the same illustration
popping up in a competitor's magazine! But they don't mind if you also sell
through non-competing channels, like online art galleries.

You can work your way up from smaller to larger publications, and, in fact,
for some artists, commissioned work for large business magazines is an
adequate living in and of itself.

But I'm only suggesting this particular tactic because it happens to
related to what I do, so I'm familiar with it. I'm sure other folks can
suggest a million other approaches. I know that Shel here has written
several books on low-cost marketing, for example.

Best,



-- Maria

___________________________________________________________________
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On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 7:55 PM, ussailis at shaysnet.com <ussailis at shaysnet.com
> wrote:

>
>
>
> I deleted past emails, so I hope this gets to the right person...
>
> I just checked with my daughter. She is a competent photographer & has sold
> some. She is into still life, mostly.
>
> Her comment of the whole web thing is in essence, 'forgetaboutit.' There
> are too many sites out there that cost and don't deliver much. You can be
> into one site, perhaps paying a fee and see nothing for a long time. I
> think one that she mentioned is FineArtAmerica (probably .com).
>
> Her suggestion is go around to the galleries in the local area. They will
> give advice on what to charge, and perhaps where to go.
>
> Yes, we live in a wondrous place for art. Galleries abound.
>
> I also know that some of the local fairs have booths (often share-a-booth
> if you have a buddy or two). Even one of my grandchildren has sold stuff &
> made a profit at the Ashfield Fair.
>
>
> Jim Ussailis
>
> Original email:
> -----------------
> From: Bruce Hooke bghooke at att.net
> Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2015 16:54:30 -0500
> To: tech at nottooloud.com, hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
> Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] monetizing Wordpress
>
>
>
>
>
> It seems to me that "pay what you like" changes everything as I'd think it
> would be pretty hard to find a stock ecommerce solution that will allow the
> buyer to set the price.
>
> This may be another reason to look at Annamarie's solution, or a variation
> on that which would be to add a generic PayPal "donation" button and just
> tell people to specify which day's drawing they want to buy (or they could
> just make a donation without buying a drawing). If we're talking about
> sales
> of one or two drawings a month it's not worth putting a lot of work into
> the
> system, or much money, and it's easy enough to handle making manual updates
> to say that a given drawing has been sold.
>
> The part about scanning and printing at Pivot fits with what I said: it's
> not cheap in either time or money to create good reproductions.
>
> Bruce
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net
> [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Dan
> Richardson (t)
> Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2015 3:56 PM
> To: 'Hidden-Tech Tech'
> Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] monetizing Wordpress
>
>
>
>
> On 1/6/15 3:13 PM, Bruce Hooke wrote:
> > Each new drawing will be a single, unique "product,"
> > which will need to have some sort of name or ID so when an order comes
> > in she knows which drawing has been ordered.
>
> Each one is named by the date it was drawn, so that part's easy.
>
> > And it sounded like there
> > might be some variation in price too from one drawing to the next,
> > again requiring that each drawing be uniquely identified in the system.
>
> She's thinking "pay what you like" w/ a $20 or so minimum, so, still easy.
>
> > As an artist I can quite understand not wanting to get into printing
> > multiples. It's far from easy or cheap to accurately reproduce a work
> > of art, especially at larger than letter size. It takes quite a bit of
> > work
>
> She's had some of them scanned and printed at Pivot. They do beautiful
> work,
> and she thinks their prints look better than her originals.
> Unfortunately, that costs her way more than she wants to sell them for.
> Affordability, accessibility, and just getting them out there are at the
> top
> of her list of goals. I think she'd be happy to sell one a month.
>
> Dan
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