Sheree Rensel commented on this post:

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: Blue

Ah Sheree, the answer to that would be ‘not at all’ since I’m not currently set up to make money off my art. I am slowly coming to terms with the idea that maybe I should try to make some money from my work but it’s something that I’m still internally struggling with. For a long time I believed that my work was completely unsaleable because of the fragile and often temporary nature of the things that I made. That’s no longer as true as it once was but I’m still trying to reprogramme my brain on this issue. I plan to write more about the issue of money and artists in the future.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that I’m probably not the best person to answer your question!

Fortunately, Katherine from Making A Mark left a long and detailed comment, some of which addressed this issue. I’m reprinting the relevant bits here:

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…

…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.

I would agree with this, personally I prefer blogs where the artist is not solely focused on selling, although I have no objections to being gently reminded that they’ve updated their Etsy shop or that a particular piece is available in a commercial gallery. In fact, I definitely think that artists should do that, where applicable.

However, the artists who seem to have the most success online usually seem to take the long view. For example, Camilla Engman is an artist who’s had a lot of success online and she seems to have built up her sales in a gentle and organic way. She cultivates an audience for her work by having relationships with the readers of her chatty and informal blog and maintaining an active Flickr presence including starting a new group called Organised Collection recently. And of course, she makes excellent and consistent work that she offers at a range of prices from affordable calendars and prints to the more expensive original paintings.

Camilla Engman: Collection 2

Engman is a lovely example of how to operate as an artist in the offline world too. We had a show of her work at the Here Gallery and she included a couple of packs of her little prints as a thank-you gift for those of us who’d helped with the show. She’s the only artist I can recall who did something like this and it was certainly appreciated by those of us who unpacked and hung her show, since we were all volunteers and none of us were getting paid. Getting curators and gallery people on your side never hurts!

Paul Catanese, Assistant Professor of New Media at San Francisco State University kindly sent me info about a panel on art blogging that he’s chairing at the College Art Association Conference in Dallas in February 2008.

He brings up some interesting questions in the panel blurb:

An explosion of new blogs from artists, collectors, galleries, residency programs and museums are reshaping notions of professional practice within the arts. Though promotion is certainly a major driver in this arena, sites such as Art.Blogging.LA, Walker Blogs, Art Fever and PORT are especially good at projecting a local arts scene into a broader context. Other models investigate blog as sketchbook, establishing a new format for the open atelier. Does art blogging indicate the emergence of a dislocated, yet thoroughly local arts scene? Can blogs shift the space of studio practice while retaining its capability to be unstructured? Is the quest for site traffic inherently at odds with healthy periods of gestation and dormancy? What models exist for balancing these forces? What are the implications for establishing or maintaining an art practice for those who remain virtually present, yet physically distant?

This jumped out at me: Is the quest for site traffic inherently at odds with healthy periods of gestation and dormancy? This is a particularly interesting question to me right now since I’m currently not at my best health-wise and I’m trying to balance regular updating here with a need for large amounts of sleep and cold medicine (could make for some funky blogging this week!) It’s great to see someone recognising that art practice does require these dormant periods where you’re cooking up new work and aren’t ready to talk about it yet and I can certainly see how that could make keeping a sketchbook type blog difficult. Indeed, I’ve noticed that it’s not uncommon for artists who’re doing a blog that’s focused on their own work to go a bit quiet on occasion.

Anyway, if you’re interested, Paul’s currently looking for panel members and the deadline for abstracts is the November 9, 2007.

I promised a round-up of the comments that other artists have left about their experiences with blogging and here it is, although much later than I’d planned…

Usiku from Writer’s Whirlpool writes:

Blogging has allowed me to reach and meet people that possess a range and depth of human experience, yet it reminds me there is a sameness to us all.

What a lovely sentiment, Usiku. One of the things I love most about blogging is the way it can encourage people reach out and help each other - I’ve seen everything from people offering words of sympathy to people giving real life support such as organising online baby showers, paying medical bills for ill bloggers, supporting families through bereavement or other difficult times, raising funds for charities or coming together to sponsor art projects.

I get so fed up of all the negative portrayals of the internet because it just doesn’t reflect my online experience. Blogging is frequently portrayed as a selfish and egotistical thing to do but I’ve often seen it used as a powerful and meaningful way to connect with other people.

Michelle from Pencil Portraits brings up a point I hadn’t considered:

Another benefit to blogging (for me anyway) is that when I am focussed on updating my blog regularly I am more productive in my art, because I can’t wait to post it. But I have noticed a definite correlation in lower productivity when I get slack about updating my blog, so even though it takes a bit of time to post, it is definitely worth it for so many reasons.

I love the idea of using a blog as a way of giving yourself motivation - great idea, Michelle!

Mark from Graf Nature Photography: Notes From The Woods writes:

I use my own blog for connecting with viewers of my own work, as well as exploration of my own feelings and analysis of why I do what I do. Turns out, a lot of readers often wonder the same about their own work. Sometimes it helps just to write things down to work out what you are thinking.

Oh, I couldn’t agree more, Mark. I’ve always used writing, and indeed, making my art, as a way to work out what I’m really thinking and feeling. I’ve always written about my work a lot so writing on a blog wasn’t that big a step for me. I think that so many artists work in isolation and having that link with viewers and other artists can be so helpful - just to get an extra set of eyes on the work, if nothing else. One of the reasons I like exhibiting is because of the dialogue and additional perspective that you can get on the work - I guess you can think of blogging as an informal sort of exhibiting process.

That leads us neatly onto Katherine from Making A Mark, who makes a similar point:

1) Blogging can also be thought of as the virtual equivalent of the ‘private view’. Thinking of it like that helps people to pitch their remarks - one to one, helpful, informative - but also professional.

2) I like supporting galleries, exhibitions and other artists on my blog - and they come back and tell me they’ve sold work as a result. More co-operative support for one another would give a nice artistic twist to “the wisdom of crowds”

3) It should never be under-estimated how much slog blogging can feel like at the beginning - but it is habit-forming and it does get easier the more you do it and the more frequently you post. The growth in visitors is also exponential - my second tranche of 50,000 visitors arrived a lot more quickly than the first 50,000!

Woah Katherine - 50,000 visitors! I can’t even imagine that yet but maybe I’ll get there one day. I do agree that blogging is habit-forming although I think a lot of bloggers get dispirited at the initial ‘writing in a vacuum’ feeling. I think you’ve got to be writing for yourself as well as an audience - if you’re getting some personal reward that isn’t dependant on other people reading or commenting then it’s a lot easier to continue. In that respect it’s a lot like making art.

Tina from The Cycling Artist blog brings up the importance of regular blogging:

I’ve been blogging a while but only recently made a pact with myself to do it *every day*. Strangely enough it gets easier. I used to wonder what to blog about, what was interesting enough to write and direct my fans, collectors and other artists too that wasn’t just a rambling self-journal. I didn’t want it to be for artists only, so had to find a happy balance. Sometimes I get on a bit of a soapbox but hopefully not too often.

It’s about 20 minutes each day typing up, copying into two blogs (I duplicate my tina-m.blogspot.com blog over to my MySpace account too). It’s a nice start to the day actually. And I’ve just recently found out about RSS feeds and used feedburner.com to set them up - in case any other artists are as mystified about it as I was!

Tina, I’m interested in the fact that you duplicate your blog over at MySpace - do you find using MySpace works in terms of visitor numbers? I’ve been wondering about setting up an ‘outpost’ over in MySpace but I don’t want to commit to something that’s going to take lots of time.

Lisa Lam, who runs U-Handbag has just started a new blog called Craft Boom, which is all about marketing for craft businesses. There’s some great stuff over there that ties in nicely with what I’ve been writing in my Artists Online series. I spotted Lisa’s announcement over on Flickr - yet another confirmation that Flickr really can help artists publicise themselves and their projects.

9 Reasons Why Every Artist Should Have Their Own Art Blog - a good article from the Empty Easel blog that covers all the bases. Link found on the always excellent ArtBizBlog. I hadn’t come across the Empty Easel site before, I’m looking forward to reading the archives, it looks like there’s lots of well thought-out stuff on there - I’m currently engrossed in the many articles about selling online.