First things first: set up Google Reader

If you are serious about selling art online you need to get to the important information others share about the topic.  One of the most useful tools to accomplish this is a feed/rss reader. It lets you subscribe to your favorite blogs so you don’t have to actually go to the site all the time to check for new content. Instead you get an account at Google Reader and let it deliver all new posts to your reader inbox. It actually works quite similar to an email account.

Here is a quick video on how it works:

And here are two nifty little tools I recommend to use with Google Reader:

Subscribe Bookmarklet: Open Google Reader and go to “manage subscriptions ” in the left bottom corner of your screen. This opens up your settings. Find the “Goodies” tab. Now you can add Reader to your phone, to iGoogle and do other useful stuff. What I want you to do is to scroll down to “subscribe as you surf” and drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar (the one below your search box).  Next time you like a blog, just click on the “subscribe’ bookmarklet to add the blog to your Reader.

Google Reader Watcher Firefox add-on: If you don’t have Firefox, get it now! I promise , you will never regret it. Then install Google Reader Watcher. All you have to do is click a button. It will now show you how many new posts are waiting to be read in your browser bottom bar.

.

Blogs for Creative Entrepreneurs:

1 Empty Easel:

Empty Easel is an online art magazine with practical advice, tips, and tutorials for creating and selling art. Especially the business advice section includes articles on the following topics: marketing tips, selling art online, seo for artists, online advertising and more

2 ArtBizCoach:

Alison B. Stanfield started out in the art museum business and now runs ArtBizCoach. Her services are especially geared towards artists and helps them  to learn about promotin, marketing and business. She also wrote a book: I’d Rather Be in the Studio! ( ArtBiz Coach was suggested by  Robin Maria Pedrero)

3 Photopreneur:

A photopreneur is anyone who wants to earn income from their photography, whether as a full-time professional or as an occasional photographer. It’s anyone who can turn their skills behind the lens into cash.  If this is you, go subscribe to Photopreneur.

4 Design Sponge – Biz Ladies:

Design*Sponge is a daily website dedicated to home and product design run by Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney. Biz Ladies is a weekly column on Design sponge every Tuesday. Interviews with and tips by successful creative entrepreneurs.

5 The Creative Entrepreneur:

The Creative Entrepreneur is a visual, results-oriented, step-by-step method of business development for creatives from all walks of life who want to turn their passions into viable business opportunities. Lisa Sonora Beam is an artist herself , wrote The Creative Entrepreneur book , runs online workshops and doesn’t believe in starving artists.

6 New Media Photographer:

The New Media Photographer blog is run by Rosh Sillars and is the place where he combines his two passions social media and photography.

7 Prosperous Artists Academy:

The Prosperous Artists community memebership site is designed to support the creative spirit as well as develop the skills and knowledge to build the creative life of your dreams. They have a free weekly podcast designed to support your growth as a creative person.

8 Right-Brain Business Plan:

After 10 years in Corporate America  Jennifer Lee made the leap from  a change management consulting career to finally pursuing full-time her passions around coaching, creativity and living in alignment with her values. If you want to learn how to make a business plan that is also a bracelet, you should definitely subscribe to her two blogs: Right-Brain Business Plan and Life Unfolds

9 IttyBiz:

As independent artists we all also have to take care of the business side. That’s where IttyBiz comes in. It’s a place to get tips, advice, motivation, and support for your very small business (read you and your laptop). If you think business is boring, check out IttyBiz and laugh your ass of while learning how to become an artist entrepreneur.

10 Bakery:

You won’t find any bread here, because this Bakery bakes businesses. I just discovered this blog, so I don’t know to much about it, but they have their own Etsy shop, seem to work with a lot of artists and their categories are Blogging, Business, Getting Started, and Social Networking.

11 Rise of the Innerpreneur:

Tara Joyce says that an Innerpreneur is someone who has realized their purpose/life work and started a business to pursue it and also has the creativity to see the world in unique ways and an impulse to make things different. Her blog Rise of the Innerpreneur will help you  with ideas to grow your business and your mind.

12 Ancient Artist:

Ancient Artist is a blog about creating art in Oregon, starting a second career instead of retiring, developing a marketing strategy, and philosophical discussions about art.

13 EBSQ:

EBSQ is a creative space that provides art marketing tools and serves as a hub for the self rep and indie artist community. Their blog has an extra category on Art Biz.

14 The Storque  – Indipreneur:

The Storque is the blog that belongs to Etsy, the social shopping site where you can buy all things handmade. They frequently post about all things Indipreneur which also includes interviews with people that quit their day job because now they are earning enough with their art, design or crafts. Other topics include promotion, marketing, cooperative advertising and much  more.

15 Zazzle, Imagekind, RedBubble, Deviant Art:

all of these are online communities that let artists sell  prints, posters, cards, shirts, shoes, skateboards, mugs, aprons etc.  If you are a member, make sure to follow their blogs, so you are always up to date on new opportunities and tools.

16 The Art List:

Since 2003, TheArtList has been the leading online resource for visual artists and photographers looking for income and exhibition opportunities to enter.

17 Seth Godin:

Marketing guru Seth Godin is the bestselling author of more than seven books. He writes about marketing and the spread of idea. His books have been read by Obama’s campaign advisors. You should read his blog and his books too, because they will teach you how to create a remarkable business for your art. You can get his books for free here.

18 Mashable:

The famous social media blog is a must read for all Indipreneurs. Why? Because being up to date on all things social media is essential to selling art online. You need to know your tools and Mashable will help with that.

19 Problogger:

Problogger is a blog about making money with your blog. It is not specifically geared towards artists, but there is a LOT to learn here.  Advertising, Affiliate Programs, SEO . If you don’t know what I’m talking about – go subscribe to Problogger. Currently he is holding a free 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge you can still sign up for.

20 Zen Habits:

Zen Habits, simpl productivity is one of the top blogs on the internet and covers achieving goals, productivity, being organized, GTD, motivation, eliminating debt, saving,  happiness, and successfully implementing good habits.

21  Creative Web Biz:If you liked this post, please also subscribe to  Creative Web Biz (see top of sidebar) as I will be posting more tips and tricks for artists, designers, musicians, crafters, photographers and all other Creative Entrepreneurs .

.

Update: I knew I forgot a blog but luckily I was reminded. So here it is:

22 Artdictive Habits:

Have a look at ARTDICTIVE My amazingly creative  and productive friend Webgrrl knows all about Zazzle, Red Bubble, Imagekind, CafePress, Blurb and all the other sites that let you print your art on prints, posters, cards, mugs, shirts , books etc.

.

Do you know of any other blogs that might be useful for independent artists ? Please  share them in the comments, so we can all start living our dream!

.

Creative Web Biz - the art of creating an online business

Some days ago I found a post in my Google Reader by Duct Tape Marketing‘s John Jantsch in which he explains his social media system.The next day he started asking other social media experts to share their routines and although I’m certainly not an internet guru I still wanted to add my two cents.

Most of you do not only have a website or a blog to maintain but are also members of several social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Delicious and others. We use these sites either in a personal way or also more and more to promote and market our business. But keeping up with all the adding, following, messaging and posting takes up a lot of time and you can easily get lost and spend days in front of your screen without doing anything else (believe me I ‘ve been there).

So developing a system might be a very good idea and here is mine:

Usally the first thing I do after getting up is sitting down in front of my PC (still saving for a MacBookPro) and check email, rss feeds, blog comments and messages from my social networks. To make this easier I use Digsby which keeps me up to date on IM, email and social networks messages in my browser status bar. Then I write my blog post (which will  happen more frequently in 2009) and when I am done with all of this I open up Tweetdeck. If I did that before doing any of the other stuff  I’d be lost because Twitter is a true time killer. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Twitter and I have learned more from people on Twitter than I have learned during my entire school years (or at least more useful stuff) but following all the links people post can easily take up hours on end and I have always been the kind of person to do chores first and have fun afterwards (I’m not sure my mom would agree with this though).

There is also something else you should consider to help you with getting the word out about your blog, your art, music or whatever it is you want people to see. After posting a blog post, you want it to go out to your social networks, but doing this manually will consume a lot of time. That is where Friendfeed comes in. If you let Friendfeed import your blog, Twitter, Linkedin etc. you can then let it tweet your updates and also bring it into Facebook with the Friendfeed app available there. If you don’t have a Friendfeed account you can also just use the import service Facebook offers for your Youtube, Picasa, Flickr and some other services.  Then you can sign up for Twitterfeed and let them tweet any rss feed you specify, i.e your Delicious links feed, your MySpace blog posts and of course your blog feed.

To finish this up I have one more tip for you. Try Flock. Never heard about it? Well, it’s a browser, based on Mozilla (just like Firefox), but especially built with social networks in mind. It has a people bar in which you can follow your friends from across several networks, you can upload images to Flickr, Facebook and Myspace by drag and drop and it has a built in option to subscribe to people’s media streams from Flickr, Youtube and other sites and view them in a media stream. You can do all of this from inside the browser without having to find and add different add-ons like in Firefox (although most Firefox plugins also work well in Flock). These are just some of the features, so it might be something you want to check out.

If you have any more tips on how to manage your online social life please share with us in the comments.

Creative Web Biz - the art of creating an online business

When I started showing my art on the web I set up a free website at freewebs.com. But after a while I realized that making constant updates to a traditional website is just too much work. And so I looked around for a better solution. It didn’t take long to find out that a blogging system was really what I was looking for. It is designed to be updated frequently and has over the years developed into a tool which is being used by hundreds of millions of people to let others know what’s going on in their personal lives, their companies or where they share their holiday pictures and videos or the latest news on government policies. So why not use it to share my art ?

After I decided to start a blog I pretty soon found out about WordPress, a  blogging software that anyone can use for free. You even have two choices: you can go to wordpress.com where you just have to create a free  account to start blogging right away without having to worry about hosting or coding or web rankings or anything else than the content for your blog. Just choose one of about thirty themes and a few widgets and you are ready to go using the most advanced blogging software available with all it’s benefits but without the hustle of hosting and maintaining it yourself.

Or you go to wordpress.org where you can download the software and then upload it onto your own server. A self-hosted blog gives you the choice of about 700 themes in the themes directory plus tens of thousands of themes on other sites. They range from simple one column old-fashioned blog templates to magazine style and photo blogs to full-fearured video sites for vloggers.  There are also about 3500 plugins available from the plugins directory and many, many more out on the web. Plugins can help you with event calendars, galleries,  shops,  mailing lists and even search engine optimization and web security. New themes and plugins come out every day and can transform your blog into a content management system (cms) that lets you use it as a blog, a  portfolio, a gallery and a shop to show your art, write about it, discuss it with others and sell it. But that’s not all. If you connect it to your social networks like RedBubble, Zazzle, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter you can make it a very powerful promotion and marketing tool for your own art business. If you are sick of waiting for some gallery or agent to “discover” and “push” you to the realization of your dreams, which I’m sure includes making a living of your art, you might as well try something new and just do it yourself. With a little knowledge about web 2.0 and social networking sites you have more than a chance to start living your dream and earn a living while doing it.

I started my blog about a year ago and I have learned quite a bit along the way and so from now on I will be sharing my experiences with you. This post is the first in my new “Web2.0 for Artists” category. I will be writing about wordpress, social networks for artists and how to use web 2.0 to get your art biz going.

And the first step I recommend is setting up a blog at wordpress. If you have never hosted a site yourself you might wanna start by setting up your blog on wordpress.com. Get your account, start blogging and don’t worry about any tech details. If you want to expand later on you can do so very easily. Get a web host, download the software from wordpress.org  and import your old posts from wordpress.com.

I skipped that part and got myself a host and so next time we will discuss which plugins and themes are best suited for art blogs.

.

Creative Web Biz - the art of creating an online business

Spider Woman, as known by some Native-American tribes, is the goddess that sits at the center of the galaxy and spins the web of life. Her web is the matrix of our reality as we know it and connects us to everybody and everything in our own and throughout all other dimensions and universes.

.

By listening to her lessons we are being enabled to perceive these other realities through psychic vision and telepathy. In a dream state we alter our consciousness and are therefore able to move along these threads of her web to faraway places while our body is safely resting at home.

.

The internet represents this web of life in our three-dimensional reality. It connects people from all over the world with each other and therefore makes boundaries in every sense pretty meaningless.

.

This is really good news for all artists, as we are now finally able to publicize, promote and sell our own art, without being dependent on others (who will only help you with these tasks if they think you will make them good money), and even without any initial investment !

.

When I discovered these possibilities for myself, I celebrated my own personal independence day. Being slightly autistic, it has always been rather hard for me to socialize with other people, which is not a very convenient treat if you try to leave the ‘starving artist’ stigma behind.

.

So here I am starting my very own WordPress blog to see if Spider Woman will bless me and help me prosper.

.

And as I know many other gifted people who sadly gave up their talents because they didn’t see the possibilities Spider Woman is offering all of us, I plan to post about web2.0 for independent artists regularly. I want all of you to be able to follow your calling, for your calling comes from the spirit world and will help transform Mother Earthinto the beautiful planet she is supposed to be !

.
image by cybershotking

Creative Web Biz - the art of creating an online business