Come up to the lab and seeeeeee what’s on the slab.

So. With my usual inimitable flair I appear to have accidentally launched another new service mere days before I disappear off into the wilds of Scotland for a week. If you’ve read my Resources page but you’re still floundering and you’d like some individual one-on-one help, you can now buy 30 minutes of my undivided attention. Also, there are biscuits.

Behold, my beautiful creature…

I’m Selling This:

Internet Hand-hol…
$50.00

Internet Hand-holding

Now, this isn’t quite as daft as it sounds (OK, the ‘just before a holiday’ part is pretty stupid). I’ve always been drawn to the idea of consulting and coaching and I’d been making tentative plans in this direction for several months after a very thought-provoking Awesomeness Check-up session with the lovely Catherine Caine.

So when John T. Unger asked for willing volunteers to test out Bixbe on Wordpress, I did the ‘closing my eyes and jumping’ thing again.

As a way of launching this and also celebrating the 3 year anniversary of this blog, I’m offering 15 free sessions. If you’re interested, please comment below before Wednesday 7th July (the blog’s official birthday, we shall have cake). If I get masses of people, I’ll pick names out of a hat to make it fairer because I know that not everyone is online at the same time. Please note, the free sessions won’t be happening until at least the second week of July because of the whole holiday thing.

Oh and while I’m shamelessly self promoting, I updated my shop, which is now called Drawings And Delights. I added an ‘about me’ page, some shop policies and more drawings. If I get time later today, I may add a few ACEO’s that I’ve drawn recently.

By the way, would it be helpful to any of you if I did a couple of video tutorials about my experiences setting up Big Cartel and Bixbe?

Gossiping Ducks by foxypar4

Sometimes I have to slide sideways into things. Or trick myself into starting by making projects smaller than they truly are.

I am cursed with perfectionism, so often the only way forward is to just close my eyes and jump.

Which is how I found myself opening an online shop for my art. Without branding. Without a big launch. Without having all my drawings scanned and ready to go. Without enough mounts or packaging materials. With all my ducks decidedly not in anything even vaguely resembling a row. In fact, I’m not entirely sure where my pond is and it’s quite likely that all my ducks have flown off in a huff.

But I started anyway.

There’s not much in my shop yet (see aforementioned lack of ducks) but I’m adding things as I go along. It’s also possible that my pricing is entirely wrong but I decided that fear of pricing was a lousy reason not to start something.

And I have no idea if this is going to work.

I’ve already sold two envelopes (yay!) but maybe no one else will ever buy anything. You’d think that this would be a source of stress, that I would be filled with the fear of rejection. But weirdly, it doesn’t seem to matter and that’s because I just jumped. Without too much preparation or angst or investment of time, energy, money or emotion.

Sure, it would be fabulous if I make a gazillion pounds selling art online – don’t get me wrong, I absolutely want this to succeed – but I’m also very clear that it’s a test piece, a maquette, an experiment.

See, that’s the great thing about the internet – the cost of entry is low. I don’t have to spend lots of money ‘setting up a business’, I can just say, ‘hey, let’s throw a few quid at an online store for six months and see if it works?’ If it doesn’t, well, no harm, no foul and I’ll have learnt some useful stuff. I’m hugely interested in trying new things online. At the moment it still feels as though there’s a lot of freedom on the web; that maybe I can do things in my own strange, messed up way and still make a go of it. That maybe all those ducks aren’t quite as important as people tell you.

Our local synchronized swimming team by Eric Bégin

Because I think I can do this, but not if I have to get my ducks in order first. My ducks are recalcitrant, they fly away when they’re told to line up, they quack in a rebellious manner, they flaunt their sassy little ducktails like 50’s rockers. And when I wring my hands about business-type things, they make rude and unhelpful Donald Duck noises. My ducks have ATTITUDE.

In the Swim by StarrGazr

Now I’m not saying that you should make a half-arsed job of things. If you’re the sort of person who can easily organise your ducks, that’s absolutely great – you’ve got a huge advantage and you should use it to the full. What I am saying is that for perfectionists, the perceived need to get all our ducks in a row before we start anything can be a very effective stalling technique. It can be an excuse. And sometimes you have to be braver than that.

So I’ve learnt to pointedly ignore my ducks and then quietly organise them into rows when they’re not looking.

How do you deal with your ducks? Let me know in the comments…

I don’t know about you, but I regularly get email invites to join art sites. It can be daunting working out if they’re worth your time and energy. I can’t make those decisions for you but I’ve written this general guide to help you assess this sort of opportunity.

1) Do You Like The Other Art?
People judge your work by the company it keeps. If you’d be embarrassed to be shown on the same gallery wall, then don’t place your art in the same online space. The exception to this is when it’s an enormous site like Saatchi Online, where there’s a huge selection of work in a wide range of styles.

Submitting your work to a curated site can be more work but that ‘gatekeeper’ aspect often results in a site with a higher quality of art. That exclusivity can also appeal to visitors who may take your work more seriously because it’s been vetted.

2) Does It Match Your Values?
Do you like the aesthetics of the site? Does the site have an ethos with which you strongly agree or disagree? How much control do you have over what appears on your page? Are there adverts? In short, does the site chime with your values, both moral and aesthetic?

One important point you must always check is whether the site retains any rights over your images. I know it’s a nuisance but you need to read the Terms Of Service (often abbreviated to TOS). These are always available when you sign up to a site – you’ll probably have to check a box to say that you’ve read them – or you can also usually find a link to them at the bottom of the site or in the FAQ.

3) Do They Charge?
Ooh, the big one!

I have no objection to spending money online but I do think that a lot of art sites prey on the desperate and inexperienced. There are many excellent free art sites that offer just as much exposure.

There definitely are good subscription sites out there. Even though I’ve still not got round to applying, I’ve long considered AXIS to be worthwhile, especially for UK artists. They’re a long-established site with a solid reputation and they provide a lot of ‘added value’ such as job opportunities, forums, high Google ranking and access to curators. Personally, I’d be incredibly wary of newer sites who want payment without having that sort of proven track record.

However, different rules apply if the site is specifically for artists in your area. These can be very worthwhile. I’m a member of Bristol Creatives and Textile Forum South West. Both charge a small annual membership but they’re worth it because they connect me to other local artists, give me access to pertinent news & exhibition opportunities and organise regular offline events that are close enough for me to actually attend. Consequently both sites have a far greater practical value to me than many free national or international sites. Similarly, as a UK artist I wouldn’t dream of letting my annual subscription to a-n lapse. An artist at a recent networking event I attended described it as “like Equity for artists”. There are masses of benefits but frankly, it’s worth it for the free public liability insurance alone.

There’s also usually at least one professional organisation specifically for artists using your particular material and many of these now have websites where you can add a profile. Even if their website doesn’t give you space for a profile of your own, you’ll get access to high quality information that is specific to your field.

So I’m not saying that you shouldn’t join websites that charge but you need to research them thoroughly, find out if they’re as effective at promoting artists as they claim and and know exactly what you’re getting for your money. In my opinion, you should definitely spend your money on your relevant professional organisations and local networks first.

4) How Effective Is It?
Randomly pick a few of their artists (not the ones that show up on the main page) and type their names into Google. How highly do those site profiles rank? If their site profile doesn’t come up on the first couple of pages, it may not be worth your time.

Do be aware that if that particular artist already has a broad and effective internet presence that will skew the results. I’m all over the net like a cheap rash, so any site I’m on has to compete with all the other places where I’m active online. But if you check several of their artists and none of their profile pages rank highly, then that site probably isn’t promoting its artists very effectively.

The second way to judge whether a site is worth your time is by checking their stats. Diane Gilliland has put together an excellent short video demonstrating how to do this. Her video is specifically about judging other blogs but most of the information still applies.

5) How Much Work Is It?
Is participation necessary or is it a ’set it and forget it’ kind of place?

A lot of sites strongly encourage artists to maintain blogs on their sites. In my experience, there’s a limit to how much blogging a single artist can do well. Remember that Google punishes duplicate content – it regards it as spam – so simply writing one blog post and plastering it over loads of art sites is counter-productive. I do allow occasional republishing of relevant blog posts from this blog on a few select sites but I would never republish every single post because that would definitely hurt my Google ranking. Many sites also contain forums where regular participation can gain you valuable contacts and further exposure on the site. However, be aware that forums are a notorious time suck.

If you’re spending a lot of time on an art site but not getting many visitors to your site, you should question whether it’s a good use of your time and energy. Marketing bods call this ROI – ‘return on investment’. There’s a wealth of information about your visitor numbers and behaviour in Google Analytics. If you’ve not already got Google Analytics on your website, you absolutely must because you need to know that information.

Now there could be strategic reasons to spend time on a site that’s not bringing many visitors to your main site – perhaps it contains lots of people you’re trying to get to know or it may just be fun – however, if it doesn’t fulfil the criteria you’ve set, reconsider your participation.

6) Will You Be Seen?
Will your work be lost in the crowd? The smaller, more intimate sites can often be a more effective way of promoting your work than the huge sites. However, if a site has sufficiently huge traffic, you may garner significant eyeballs just by chance.

Are there opportunities to feature in newsletters, on the front page of the site or otherwise be brought to people’s attention? I enjoy Central Station, partly because it’s a fun place with interesting people but also because they regularly showcase my work. Because it’s not a huge site, it’s quite easy to stand out there with very little actual effort. In places that showcase new work, it’s smart not to upload all your photos at once but to stagger them over a couple of weeks – you’re more likely to get featured that way.

7) Who Are Their Audience?
Will your work be seen by the people who matter to you? If you’re selling work, are new customers likely to find that site? If you’re more interested in coming to the attention of curators, is there any indication that they browse the site? Does the site contain a lot of artists who you’d like to get to know?

If you’re marketing your work to a specific niche, consider participating in non-art sites where your customers are likely to congregate. For example, if you paint racehorses, being active on a respected racing forum might be beneficial. Obviously you don’t want to spam people but many forums allow you to have a short signature when you post, so you can subtly let people know what you do. Plus, you’re presumably painting racehorses because you’re interested in them.

Conclusion

If the site is free, matches your values and joining it won’t take too much time, then you might as well go ahead and whack up a couple of images and a profile. After all, you don’t know exactly who their audience are and you’ve got nothing to lose. However, if a site charges or requires far greater time participation such as using forums or blogging then you need to carefully weigh up the costs against the benefits.

_____________________________

I’d love to hear how you decided which sites to join. I’m planning on a follow-up post detailing some of the sites individual artists use, if you’d like to be included with a link to your site, please comment below or get in touch on Twitter.

1. I CAN’T AFFORD IT

Websites used to be an expensive proposition but the costs have dropped considerably over the last few years. Excluding any intial design costs, the annual fees for a self-hosted website should be about £60-£80. If you really can’t afford that, there are other options for setting up a simple online portfolio.

a) A free Blogger or Wordpress blog and a Flickr account can be set up in a couple of hours and are a surprisingly effective combination.

b) If you don’t want a blog, Flickr can be used on its own as a basic art portfolio.

c) Many art sites will host portfolios for you and some of them are quite sophisticated. There are too many to link to but type the words ‘free artist portfolio’ into Google and you can research the many options available. Do check that their artists rate highly in Google and choose a site that gives you a short URL so you can easily add it to your email signature and put it on business cards.

d) A Facebook fan page is a fourth option. Most artists use Facebook fan pages as a subsidiary to their main site but at a pinch you could use it as your sole online portfolio. However, this is not something I’d recommend as a longterm option because they’re overly fond of suddenly changing things around and there’s some debate over how much control they have over any images you post there.

Any free site will have limitations but if it’s a choice between whacking up something free now or waiting until you can afford something better, go with the free option. You can always move to your own site later if you want to. But get something. Hell, use MySpace if you have to! And I say that as someone who hates MySpace and thinks it should be your last port of call unless you’re a musician.

2. I DON’T HAVE TIME

I won’t lie to you, setting up a full website like mine is not an instant process. My site took about 6 months from start to finish and was a lot of work for both myself and my web designer. Even if you work with a designer, there’s still blurb to write, design decisions to be made and photos to edit. In addition, all websites need low levels of ongoing maintenance. Blogging is an even bigger commitment and ideally needs to be done at least once a week to be effective.

However, setting up a simple portfolio site in the ways detailed above is relatively quick. If you’ve already got edited photographs of your work and a reasonable artists’ statement, you could do it this weekend.

If you’re serious about your art career then you must make time to get some sort of website up and running. Take a good hard look at what you’re currently doing and what your priorities are. Can you let go of any commitments? Are you using your time wisely? As Gary Vaynerchuk says, quit watching Lost!

If you definitely don’t have time to commit to a large website project right now, free up a weekend and put up a quick free version for now.

If you decide you do want something a bit more swanky, you can gradually start working towards your permanent website by doing preliminary things like researching designs and deciding what you want. Start a digital scrapbook of other artists’ sites that you like – a site like Evernote is good for saving this sort of research. If you look right at the bottom of the page it will usually say which templates or designers they used. Equally importantly take note of what you don’t like. Now look at your work and think about what sort of presentation would suit it. Do you want quirky or classic? Colourful or monochrome?

Laying the foundations like this will shorten the time taken by the final design process and if you do decide to pay a designer, you’ll save money if you’re clear on your design brief from the beginning. Although I changed my mind about plenty of things during the design process, I was very consistent about the basic parameters of the brief. I knew I wanted something elegant, simple and easy to navigate in neutral colours that would subtly compliment my often monochrome or pale work.

3. I CAN’T CODE OR DESIGN

Then pay someone who can!

Artists are absolute buggers for believing they have to do absolutely everything themselves. I understand the reasoning: money is often tight and even when it’s not, that starving artist mentality is tenacious. I tried to put together my own site 4 or 5 times over the space of a decade. I taught myself HTML at least twice! Finally I had to admit that while I was perfectly capable of learning to code, I was monumentally shitty at the design side.

If you’ve got a good grasp of design but no coding skills, there are masses of customisable templates out there. If you’re willing to pay for a premium Wordpress template, I hear very good things about both Thesis and Headway. There are also lots of cheaper and free templates available: type ‘free Wordpress themes’ into Google.

4. MY GALLERY PUT UP A PAGE FOR ME, SO I DON’T NEED A SITE OF MY OWN

Oh really? And how much say do you have over how that page looks? Do you plan to be with that gallery forever? What happens if they drop you or go bust?

Please don’t give your power away like this: ceding control of your career is never smart. There’s nothing wrong with having a page on your gallery’s website but it shouldn’t be your only online presence.

5. MY FRIEND SAID THEY’D MAKE ME ONE

This is one I hear surprisingly often.

Unless your friend is a professional web designer, you may be waiting a long time for what turns out to be a sub-standard site. Are you willing to put such an important part of your promotion in the hands of a untrained mate who probably has better things to do with their time? Even if your friend does know what they’re doing, the process can be fraught with problems. What if you don’t like their work? Are you going to fire your friend? What if working together sours your friendship?

I’m being slightly hypocritical here since my site was designed by a friend. However, he is a professional web designer and we were both very clear that I was employing him but we wouldn’t let it get in the way of our friendship. We worked hard to keep the boundaries firm and managed to come through mostly unscathed. I’m quite certain that I was far more annoying during the process than he was but thankfully he still talks to me!

6. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT

Yep, that’s going to make life difficult!

Start mindmapping what you do want. Follow the steps mentioned in Excuse 2 and Excuse 7. Again, if you recognise that this is going to be a long process for you, slap up something quick and cheap like a simple Flickr portfolio now (are you sensing a theme yet?)

And remember that the website you have now doesn’t have to be the website that you have forever. Websites are not static things. If you make a mistake or your needs change, you can always redesign the site. Even though the basic design template for this site has stayed the same since we launched three and half years ago, I’ve changed multiple things since then. Things change. You can change too. Website nirvana does not exist and perfectionism is just another excuse.

7. I JUST DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START

I’m always sympathetic to cases of overwhelm because it’s something I’m extremely prone to. But you don’t have to conquer the internet instantly. Break it down into small manageable chunks.

If a full website is too overwhelming for you to consider right now, there’s absolutely no shame in going with any of the other options I’ve discussed. It’s OK to just set up a Flickr account, whack some photos on there and a bit of blurb about your practice and then stop. It won’t be the absolute ‘best’ website option but it’s far better than being so frozen by indecision and fear that you wind up doing nothing at all.

If you do decide that you want a ‘proper’ website, your first step should be deciding what you want that website to achieve. Do you plan to sell from your site? Is it a virtual portfolio/business card? Are you planning to drive traffic to your site with a blog? Do you want to deepen your relationship with existing collectors?

Your second step is to decide on your professional name. If you’ve got an unusual name you’ve got an instant advantage. Artists with more common names may need to be more inventive.

Your third step is to buy that domain name. It’ll cost you less than £10 for a year.

There you go, you’ve made a good start towards having a website and you’ve only spent a couple of quid!

8. I DON’T BELIEVE I NEED TO BE ONLINE

Don’t be daft! As I hope I’ve demonstrated, you don’t need a fancy website hosted on your own domain but you need something. If you don’t want to deal with any of this stuff yourself, hire someone who’s willing to take over the whole process for you.

I personally believe that a well designed website hosted on your own domain name is the ideal option but you can still have an effective and beautiful online presence by using one of the simpler methods detailed above. What won’t work is sticking your head in the sand and hoping all this crazy internet stuff will go away. It won’t.

……………………………………..

Well, I hope that was helpful. What website solutions do you use? Please join the conversation by commenting below or tweeting the article.

This is a very quick update because I’m meant to be packing. My son and I are heading up to Scotland this evening to visit my folks.

Firstly, the talk went well on Thursday. I was quite pleased with the Powerpoint that I put together – only having a week to master the software made for a bit of a steep learning curve and a lot of late nights but I managed to put a simple presentation together. The talk itself was very well attended & the organiser said there was a good response to it. I think that I did OK, although my mouth was so dry from nerves that I got through two bottles of water in quick succession! But apparently I didn’t look or sound too nervous, which was good. I had practised at home a lot, which definitely helped. I also watched this long but fantastic video by Garr Reynolds on how to structure Powerpoint & do presentations, which helped immensely. If you’ve got a talk coming up, I thoroughly recommend watching it – it’ll be time well spent.

There was so much that I wanted to put in but had to leave out – 20-30 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to give a good overview of blogging – so I may do some basic intro posts about the subject in the next week or two.

Secondly, I’m taking my laptop up to Scotland with the aim of writing 5 blog posts. I want to take my blogging up to the next level this year and my first priority is increasing the frequency of my blogging. I’ve been blogging ‘hand to mouth’ for far too long. I need to get a good backlog of posts written so that my blogging is not dependant on my dodgy health. So, if you’ve got any burning issues that you’d like to see me address, please let me know and I’ll try to write about it. On a related note, if there’s anything that drives you nuts about my site, please do let me know and I’ll see if it can be fixed.

Lastly, congratulations to Gwen from Murphy Grace Home who won the Gary Vaynerchuk Crush It! giveaway. Thanks to everyone who commented. I wish you could all have won.

Right, I must go and pack, I’m just procrastinating now!

Edited to add:
Oops, I forgot this bit of news. I’ve changed a whole bunch of my photos over to the Creative Commons license. I’m retaining full copyright on my art photos but the more documentary ones are now available to use. The only restriction is that you can’t take them and sell them. I would appreciate a Flickr comment if you do use them but it’s not obligatory.

I am not an entrepreneur, in fact, having spent the last seven years pretty much failing to make any money at my art, I’m kind of the opposite of an entrepreneur! Yet I loved Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk.

I’ll say upfront that I’m a fan of Vaynerchuk – I find his enthusiasm completely infectious – and I liked this book. He is someone who tends to divide opinion but even if you normally find him a bit ‘over the top’, I’d recommend giving this book a go because his natural exuberance is somewhat restrained in print format. You could also read this without having a clue who he is and still get lots from it because it’s a punchy, concise, funny and inspiring book that’s packed full of great stuff.

Basically the book is about how he used social media to successfully build a huge business. He briefly tells his own story and then explains how he did it and how you could use the same methods. I liked that he’s very upfront about the need for you to take your own journey, rather than trying to slavishly follow him. He explains several times that this is just what worked for him and that you could decide to follow a different route and still be successful. He’s also very clear that his method a) won’t suit everyone and b) is dependant on vast amounts of sheer hard work.

There’s also a strong moral core to the book that I found very admirable – this isn’t a book about marketing sleaze and manipulation; his central message is one of caring about others and doing what you love with integrity and passion.

I found this an inspiring book that left me hugely excited about the vast potential of the internet to revolutionise many aspects of our lives, including our businesses. That said, I struggled to see how some of the ‘monetizing’ methods mentioned in Chapter 11 could be applied to the art world because the economy of the arts is so deeply weird. Normal business rules often don’t apply in the arts – in particular, open ‘monetizing’ is hugely frowned on in many art circles, so artists may need to approach things like accepting external advertising with extreme caution. However, artists could certainly use his techniques to help build their online profiles, which I believe is vital for artists to do.

This is a book that could be read by someone at any level of internet experience. I’ve been online since Usenet and dial-up modems, so I’m very comfortable with the net and its culture. Yet I still got masses of ideas from this book. I’ve read the book through twice (it’s short!) and both times I made tons of notes, many of which I’ve already acted upon. However, I’m sure an internet newbie could also read this book and wind up with a coherent understanding of how to successfully market themselves online. Even if you’re not running your own business and have no desire to do so, it’s still a useful read because he delves into the way the world is changing and talks about things like how the traditional resume is becoming increasingly irrelevant to a lot of businesses.

This book won’t be for everyone – no book ever is – but if you’re interested in the business side of art or you’re ready to learn more about the power of social media, then I’d strongly recommend it. Even if you think you know it all, I think this book will spark new ideas or expose an angle that you hadn’t considered before.

If you want to find out more about it, the book has a FAQ. If you’re in the UK, Amazon.co.uk doesn’t have it yet but The Book Depository seem to have it in stock.

And now for something completely new. Following Vaynerchuk’s example, I decided to give video blogging a go and bought a Flip Cam. I’ve have been having a blast taping stuff, including this short review of the book, which is worth watching just for the last few seconds!

Disclaimer: I got this book as a free review copy after I rather cheekily emailed Gary and asked him for one! Gary Vaynerchuk and HarperCollins had no influence on the contents of this review, all opinions are my own.

I’ve got one free copy of this e-book to give away – scroll down to the bottom of the review to find out more!

Creating A Blog Audience is the newest e-book by Diane Gilleland, familiar to many of us as Sister Diane from Craftypod.

Very reasonably priced at $13.50, this 62 page booklet and accompanying 8 page worksheet is aimed at craft bloggers wishing to develop their blog audience through ‘engagement marketing’. Although the guide is targeted specifically at craft bloggers, don’t let this put you off: while there are a couple of parts that specifically mention craft resources, most of the information in this book is applicable to any kind of blogging.

Diane is well aware that many creative people run screaming at the thought of traditional marketing and her solution is to stay well away from old-fashioned aggressive techniques and ‘marketing speak’ like ‘Unique Selling Points’. Instead she offers a more gentle, organic and community-based way to build up a fan base. This is marketing without marketing – what Seth Goldin calls ‘permission marketing’. In essence, the idea is that instead of talking AT people, you talk WITH them. But of course there’s more to it than that and Diane guides you through the ins and outs with humour and skill.

If you’re au fait with Web 2.0 then much of this will be familiar but even an old hand like myself learnt some new tips and tricks. I found Chapter 4: Putting It All Together to be the most useful in this regard but I also had little ‘ah-ha’ moments throughout the whole book.

Where this e-book really stands out though, is in how useful it would be for beginners. If you’ve just started your blog or your visitor numbers are languishing and you don’t know why, then I think you’ll find this an excellent resource. A lot of people come to my blog looking for advice on blogging – my articles on that subject are perennially popular – I would absolutely recommend this book to them and the next time I update my recommended resources list, I’ll be adding this book to it.

The book is well written, in a relaxed, accessible style that will appeal to even the most intimidated new blogger. Diane is a confident writer who explains the issues with ease and the book is split into easily digested sections with occasional diagrams and photographs to break things up a little. There are also clickable links to useful resources, including a dedicated page on her blog. Frankly, I enjoyed the writing so much that even though I’ve been blogging successfully for years, as soon as I’d finished this book, I was immediately seized with a desire to read her earlier guide, Making a Great Blog.

If you’d like to know more, visit the book’s webpage or read these reviews from PlanetJune and Dude Craft.

To conclude: if you’re new to blogging or not quite on board with Web 2.0, then this book is an absolute must-have but even if you’re more experienced, you’ll probably find it valuable.

Diane has very kindly agreed to do a giveaway. In proof that her techniques work, I simply emailed her to say I was doing a review and asked if she’d consider giving away a copy and she kindly said yes. So I have one free, personalised e-book available (I’m dying to know how you personalise an e-book btw!)

If you’d like a chance at winning the book, please leave a comment on this post telling me what you hate about marketing, either doing it or being on the receiving end of it. If you’ve not commented here before, your comment will be held in moderation but I’ll approve it as soon as I can.

I’ll do a blind draw on Tuesday 15th September and announce the winner next Wednesday.

Standard disclaimer: I consider Diane to be an online friend – we comment on each other’s blogs & tweets and she interviewed me for Craftypod – however, I bought my copy of her e-book and she hasn’t influenced this review in any way.

You know that internet joke that goes:
1. Set up online business
2. ???
3. Profit!

Um yeah, that kind of IS my business plan!

I mean, it’s slightly more sophisticated than that. It actually goes:
1. Make lots of work
2. Show work online and in exhibitions
3. Build up reputation
4. ???
5. Make lots of money, er well, some money anyway

Seven years after graduating, I have come to the conclusion that it’s not the world’s most efficient business plan. Steps 1 to 3 are coming along nicely but unsurprisingly, steps 4 and 5 continue to elude me.

I have been struggling a lot with the money thing lately, most particularly with how it relates to my art. Recently I came to the conclusion that I’m just not comfortable with money.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem spending it – although actually I’m usually pretty sensible with that side of things. My problem is more with the concept of getting paid for what I do.

I think on some level my image of myself just doesn’t include the idea, ‘earns lots of money’. Certainly I’m much more mentally comfortable in the voluntary/low income sector. I have no idea why this is. Some misplaced notion of bohemianism, perhaps? Some basic insecurity or lack of self belief? I suspect both these things come into play but looking back, I can see that I’ve never been motivated by money. I don’t care about status symbols like fancy cars and designer clothes and as long as I have enough money to get by, I’m perfectly content.

My motivation has always been internal rather than external. I had a hard time when I was at school because I hated what I saw as all the ‘jumping through hoops’. I’ve become somewhat better at that over the years but I’m still the sort of person who will work my fingers to the bone if I’m interested in something but if I’m not interested then it’s like pulling teeth, no matter how much money you offer me.

Naturally I understand that everyone has to do things that they dislike and I’m not so spoilt that I’ll refuse to do boring things. I’ve done my share of mind-numbing paid jobs in the past and if my health was better, I probably still would be. There are also plenty of art tasks that don’t fill me with joy: I dislike documenting my work, writing exhibition proposals and doing graphics for posters but I crack on and do them because they are part of being an artist. However, I’m doing these things because getting my work out there matters to me; again it’s self motivation rather than the external motivation of money. I don’t want to get the work out there to make money, I want to get the work out there so that the work is out there. I find this makes quite a fundamental difference when it comes to the ‘getting paid’ part of the equation.

One of the most obvious ways that my conflicted relationship with money manifests is the difficulty I have with the idea of selling my art. I have wavered back and forth on this for years. There are some real practical issues – most of what I make doesn’t lend itself easily to selling. For example, because of the length of time my work takes, most of it would not be economically viable unless I charged astronomical prices.

However, I’ve noticed that I’m also extraordinarily resistant to the thought of selling my drawings, even though they’re a much easier and more realistic prospect. Oh sure, I have a ton of excuses for that one – “they’re not good enough”, “I don’t know how to sell”, “I just don’t feel ready” and “I don’t like putting a value on things that I make” – but I can see that it all comes down to my fundamental unease with money.

Another example: before today, it had never once occurred to me that my photographs might have a market. Because I don’t think of them as ‘art’, attempting to sell them had never even crossed my mind. And now that I have thought about it, I want to run away really fast! I am formulating new excuses in my head already. It’s abundantly clear that the true problem is not with the kind of work I make; it’s with the very idea of selling.

It often feels as though money is a strange language that I don’t speak. In fact, it’s as though my brain is wired in such a way that it doesn’t even recognise that it IS a language. I think I have ‘earning money blindness’, in the same way as I have ‘pass blindness’ – you could be showing very obvious interest in buying my work and I simply wouldn’t notice. Yes, this has actually happened to me – the person in question had to spell it out to me and when she did, I was completely floored and didn’t know what to do.

You see the problem – I truly suck at this stuff. Plus I clearly have ISSUES.

Expect more posts on this subject, as I work my way through this money thing. Yes, internet, you are my therapy. Aren’t you lucky!

Ah, the dreaded tax return… thankfully, the problem I mentioned with my password was not a permanent one and I got my taxes in on time. I managed to do it in the early hours of last Friday morning; it turns out that if you wait until after midnight then the Inland Revenue website works just fine. Apparently my password wasn’t a problem at all, the website had simply fallen down from exhaustion earlier that day. And really, who can blame it? I know from past experience that I am certainly not the only person who does my taxes right at the last minute.

According to the Inland Revenue’s own figures, they hit peak numbers on Friday 30th January with 390,000 of us filing our taxes only a day before the deadline. It’s a bad habit and I plan to be more organised about it next time around… but then I always say that and I bet those other 389,999 people do as well!

Seriously though, my current accounts are a bit of a shambles and I need to get my art assistant, The Wonderful Zoë, to sort me out. She’s been self-employed for years and rolls her eyes at the organised chaos of my accounting ’system’.

I do keep all my receipts (ordered by month in small plastic folders) and all my bank statements (ordered by tax year) but I don’t do two things that I should – I don’t have a separate bank account for my art business (which makes doing my incomings an absolute nightmare) and I don’t keep an accounts book. Both those things have always seemed like just too much of a bother when I rarely make any money at my art but I have decided that this year, it’s time to tackle them for three reasons. Firstly, if I start making money in the future then it will be vital to have solid accounting practices already in place. Secondly, if I’m ever investigated by the Inland Revenue, my current practices might look suspicious when really it’s just incompetence! And thirdly, it will make doing my taxes a whole lot easier and anything that stops me having a nervous breakdown at tax time is obviously A Very Good Thing: I know that my long-suffering family would certainly be grateful!

The current plan is that Zoë is going to bring one of her account books over for me to have a look at and then talk me through it and then I’m going to open a new bank account, move everything to where it should be and buy and start using an accounts book. Simple, no? My deadline for this is April, so that I can start the next tax year properly with all my new systems in place.

What sort of state are your accounts in? Do you do everything you ’should’? Finances can be a difficult and emotionally tense area for a lot of people and although I believe that artists are generally far more practical and grounded than most people give us credit for, we’re certainly not immune to Head-In-The-Sand Syndrome when it comes to our accounts.

It’s about time I got back to some of my more serious articles, so I’m starting a new series about how the internet is changing the economic aspects of the arts.

THE NEW CREATIVE ECONOMY: PART 1
Don’t Sue Your Customers!

The internet has undoubtedly changed how we engage with the arts, particularly in relation to music but also in other forms of creative expression. There’s no question that many sectors of the arts need a new funding model – but suing your customers isn’t it!

Ongoing battles between the entertainment industry and illegal downloaders are contributing to a damaging fall in consumer trust, according to new research from the PR agency Edelman. The number of UK consumers who said they trusted the industry fell from 47% in 2007 to 31% this year, with confidence disturbed by moves by the music industry to track down and punish illegal music copying, and high-profile scandals in broadcasting.
All quotes are from this article in The Guardian by Jemima Kiss.

Ah, the sweet sound of chickens coming home to roost!

The internet can be a disaster or a boon to the arts, it depends on how willing you are to embrace change. If you can see the potential and are willing to engage with your audience online, you can do well. If you resist the online changes and particularly if you treat your customers badly – as the mainstream music companies have been doing for several years now – your customers will return the favour.

Surveying younger consumers aged 18-34, Edelman found that 55% would take “direct action” against a company if they objected to its practices, 53% would share negative opinions with friends and 46% would ignore a firm’s marketing and advertising. Even more damning, a further 39% said they would not invest in those companies.

I’ve been predicting this for years – anyone with half a brain can see what’s happening, except the entrenched and outdated big music companies apparently. If they don’t change, they will die. The only reason they’ve survived as long as they have is that musicians and music consumers didn’t have a choice before but conditions have changed. Musicians are no longer so reliant on record companies to fund, distribute and promote their music; computers and the internet make it cheap and easy to produce and then promote your own music online. In addition, there are now there are new online music companies who use different financial models and who treat both customers and musicians much better:

Magnatune is an ethical record label based on downloading MP3’s. You choose the amount you want to pay and the artists get 50% of the price. You can then legally share your download with three of your friends. This article by John Buckman about why he started Magnatune is well worth reading because it exposes the problems with the traditional record companies.

The Podsafe Music Network is a promotion network that allows podcasters to download music that they can play on their shows for free without restrictive licensing agreements. Links back to the musicians from the podcasts allow listeners to buy music that they hear on podcasts; I’ve done this several times when I’ve heard something that I love.

Independent online record store, CD Baby only sell CD’s that come directly from the artists, who receive a large percentage of the cover price. I recently bought two Amy Steinberg CD’s from them after hearing one of her tracks on a podcast. My CD’s cost about £7, allowing me to return to joy of buying albums on spec, something I used to do a lot as a teenager when music was a more reasonable price than it was in the 90’s. In addition, the emails I got from the company were charming and funny and the CD’s arrived quickly from the States. I’m hugely resistant to buying music from the mainstream record companies because of the way they behave but I’d definitely buy from CD Baby again because they’re cute, well organised and they treat musicians well.

Although prices of CD’s have dropped recently for several reasons, musicians signed to major labels still only get a tiny fraction of the profits and may even lose money on record deals. The mainstream record companies still rip off both customers and musicians and then have the nerve to constantly bitch in the media and sue people. As is now becoming ever more apparent, this is a bad long term strategy.

The question I’ve been asking myself lately is “if I’m willing to buy Fairtrade to ensure producers in the third world are treated fairly, why am I supporting unethical music companies who mistreat musicians by underpaying them and trapping them into restrictive contracts where they often lose the rights to their own music?”

My solution has been to boycott the major record labels whenever possible and buy the music they produce secondhand but this means that the musicians don’t get anything at all, which I’m not happy about. There has to be a better way and hopefully some of these new online music businesses will provide a way forward where everyone is treated fairly, especially the people who make the music in the first place.

Let’s end on a positive note:

…the survey showed 56% of young UK consumers would rather buy legal content, if it was at a reduced price, than download illegally. That compared well with the 27% who refused to pay for content, and the 17% who said they might pay, but could continue to download illegal content as well. Much piracy, this would suggest, is fed by the lack of a legal online alternative.

If the mainstream music companies start treating their artists fairly, stop suing schoolkids, adapt to the changing conditions of their industry and do a lot of grovelling, then they may have a chance to survive. If they don’t, they’re history…

Maybe you’re asking yourself what this has to do with the visual arts, but as my dad says, “everyone’s useful, if nothing else they can always serve as a bad example!”