Comments on: What other artists think about blogging

By: Katherine

Katherine — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:50:57 +0000

Kirsty - I absolutely agree a blog should be for yourself. I personally am less on reading ‘commercial’ blogs where people are blogging for a business which is not their own or because they think it’s ‘what you have to do’ to sell art. These blogs often seem to run out of steam after a bit.

Blogs which just present work for sale (as one e-bay) are fine by me - but IMO they work so much better with a few details about why the artist chose to paint the picture.

I think the comments you higlighted above were just a very small part of what I’ve learned about blogging. Two of the comments (1 and 3) were ones I wished I’d read early on and the second comment about co-operative endeavour is one which I’ve grown to understand and appreciate the more I’ve blogged.

Here’s some other good reasons for artists to blog - which I personally find are huge benefits for me!
* I’ve got a record of my travels with a sketchbook as a result of my blog - it’s wonderful to turn back to when I think about turning sketches into ‘proper’ works.
* I also use my blog projects to learn. This primarily for me but if other people want to join in or learn something as a result that’s great too. I find the process of writing down what I’ve found out for a blog post to be very helpful to embedding that learning in my brain.

Re. last comment, here’s my observation. The people who appear to sell consistently using their blogs as part of their marketing are those who do good quality work. (By which I mean good quality work will find a buyer if you market effectively). What a blog maybe does for them is speed up the process of increasing awareness - and then once you’ve attracted people who like watching what you produce then you have a ready market of people who are more likely to buy.

By: Sheree Rensel

Sheree Rensel — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:05:32 +0000

I totally agree with comments presented. I too realize that blogging is very beneficial for aspects related to motivation and building an audience. However, I want to know how blogging has helped your INCOME. How has blogging increased your sales or increased the money you get to support your art?
That is the topic for which I am REALLY interested.
Sheree Rensel
http://www.shereerensel.blogspot.com/

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:57:49 +0000

Thanks Tina, that’s very interesting and helpful. I’m already busy over on StumbleUpon (I’m going to be writing about it soon once I understand it better), so perhaps I’ll mirror the blog over there instead.

What’s your Stumble name? I’ll friend you.

By: Tina Mammoser

Tina Mammoser — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:17:19 +0000

Kirsty, I don’t really see any visitor numbers coming from MySpace. When I started there I simply decided to post reguarly and have continued; it seems to be mostly other artists reading my MySpace whereas I have had past buyers and new ones comment on my Blogger. A few people I know (like my mom, a very important blog reader of mine) are blocked from Blogger on their work computers so having several mirror sites also helps some people have an alternative place to access it.

For what it’s worth I’ve recently started copying the blog a 3rd time onto StumbleUpon and that does seem to be bringing me new visitors. My logic in copying the blog several places is that each attracts a different type of population so in theory it could reach new folk who may not necessarily be Blogger browsers.