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From: Manifest
Date: 26 Jun 2004
Time: 19:33:24 -0500
Remote Name: 216.192.12.4
Hi Danielle ~ I followed your link and looked at your site again. I agree with Pen about commenting on someone elses choice of passions or artist sensibilities. Actually putting your artwork out for public viewing is hard enough, without having people start to judge the emotions you have captured and given form to. So my comments are more aimed at the "marketing and selling" aspect. I appreciate the way you designed your site to make it easy to follow the categories and the breadth of items you offer (within as well as across categories). If you are looking for advice on how to market your business, my advice varies depending on what you want to do with your business. Are you looking to sell just a few prints or do this full time or something in between? I could offer you some suggestions for improving your site (add an artists statement, follow Pens advice about adding a bio for each image/piece, and consider having a way for customers to find the image they like and then look at what items you sell with it on it). But these wont bring new customers to your site. So it all depends on what your target is - do you want more web site hits, higher sales, or to grow a full time business. (These may sound the same but are actually very different goals with a different path to each of them.) - - - - I do agree with Pen that a good place for you to start is in doing some fundamental thinking about "why" any artist is successful in selling. Looked at through a business perspective - people pay to have their problems solved, their issues addressed and their needs met. I think that this is one of the things that makes selling art so challenging. Why? Because as Pen relayed, art embodies a very personal connection between what the artist expresses and what the buyer wants from acquiring the art - to feel something, to remember something, to express something about themselves. It is much more than just which item has the most features or fits your price range. Greeting cards are one example. There is a reason we do not just send each other folded bits of blank paper - but instead spend hours picking out just the right card (aka just the right image). At the heart of it is "why" they buy one card over another, and "why" they buy your card instead of one from Hallmark. I think people BUY CARDS to let the images express things they cant, or not as well. I think they buy them from YOU because your images express what they want to say. So that is where I would recommend you start - thinking about the "why" behind someone buying your art and the item it appears on, as well as the "why" you are selling it to them. Hope this helps. And please ignore this advice if it does not help you. Only you know what fits your artistic vision and business goals. ~ Manifest