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Shameless Self Promotion For Artists

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:38:53 +0000

Here are some ideas to increase the traffic to your website (If you don’t do it who will?)

People need to know that you actually have a website. Tell them, publish your website address on everything include adding it to the signature of all your emails. I know one gallery who’s business card has only their website address on it and nothing else. Certainly this may drive traffic to their site if only to retrieve their phone number and address. You may not want to go to that extreme but do put your website address on everything that goes out including on the back of your paintings.

An artist I know keeps prospects and clients informed of new work by creating a postcard that announces new work on her website. The postcard cover always includes her website address as well as an image of the new work. The message on the postcard back encourages her clients and prospects to visit the site. This sends the message of her continual success to her client/prospect base and brings more visitors to the site. VAAA has a great postcard printing program for their members.

Another artist client of mine includes an image of her work in all her emails. Clever girl!

Artist websites tend to be heavily weighted with images, as they should be. But search engines (Google and the like) are looking for text and will not extract text from a jpeg (just so you know). Consider writing a short statement on your gallery page that briefly outlines what that particular body of work is about.

Search also engines like new and fresh content. If you have something to say consider writing a blog. If that doesn’t appeal to you create a news page and post your upcoming events or even create links to your favorite art sites and tell us why you like them.

Links are also important especially one way links that point to your website. Try listing your site in some art directories like artistincanada.com

Submit your site using Delicious.com or Stumbleupon.com. Both of these social bookmarking and discovery sites are an excellent way to get links pointing to your site. In fact I finally did this for Artbiz and “liked” all my client sites.

Art Shippers

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:58:48 +0000

Artbiz has compiled this short list of art shippers. I have only had the experience of using Art Packed; which was a good one and can not vouch for the others on the list. If you have some experiences or know of a good shipper and want to share them with others please provide your comments below, share and share alike!

Art Packed
Art Packed is a Calgary based shipper and covers mostly western Canada but can hook you up with another shipper if you need to go across the border. I have used him and he is good. Art Packed posts a monthly updated schedule on his site

Crown Fine Art
Ships world wide – their site is easy to navigate to find the location and contact information of the office in your area. They have offices in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.

US Art
Ships world wide and is based in the US – the site isn’t clear if they pick up in Canada, you would need to contact them to inquire.

Go Navis
Navis Pack & Ship specializes in the packing, crating, and shipping of fine art and have 5 locations in Ontario.

Pacart
Pacart came recommend by one of my readers and they say with “good results”. Pacart ships across Canada and goes into the states (Chicago and New York). There is a monthly schedule posted on their site.

This list is also available on Artbiz’s links page.

Resizing Images

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:01:23 +0000

The first thing you have to do in preparation to add content to your site is to optimize your images. Optimizing is a term used to indicate a change to a photo or a graphic, to reduce it in both visual size and file size, for use in other programs. For use in an Artbiz website I ask clients to resize to no larger than 800px in any one direction and no larger than 100 to 120 kbs.

Photoshop or Photoshop Elements

Choose “File” > “Save for Web & Devices” (Photoshop)
Choose “File”>”Save for Web” (Photoshop Elements)
Use the Save For Web dialog box to preview the effects of different optimization options on a photo you want to share on the web. The process is simple: Open a photo in the Editor and choose File > Save For Web. Then choose a format from the file format menu (GIF, JPEG, PNG-8, or PNG-24) and set options as desired. (The file format menu is directly the Preset menu.) This saves a copy of your file, without overwriting the image.

Resize your images online

This is an online tool provided by shrink pictures

Browse your computer and select your image/photo to resize
Select the new size for your picture – use a preset or choose a custom size
Optionally, add an effect to your image
Select output image/picture quality Lower quality means a smaller file
Click “Resize” and wait for the processed images to be displayed

Once complete you will be prompted to download the file. I recommend that you do a “save as” and rename the file with a name that is more relevant that the name provided by the online tool.

Again here is the link: shrink pictures