Best Advice Ever Given

Someone wise once told me … If you want to be successful at something, anything:
1) Find someone else who has successfully done what you want to do.
2) Ask them how they did it.
3) Shut up and follow their instructions.

I want to make a good living selling my art online, so (1) – how do I find others who are successful?

First of all, I went to my trusted advisor, Google. I quickly found Corey Hunt’s intriguing page, The Abundant Artist (TAA), http://theabundantartist.com/.
I signed up for the email course they offer, and since I am naturally an avid researcher, I lost myself in various articles, podcasts, hyperlinks, and general feel-good inspiration and how-to's. Yes I can make money selling my art online! (Of he is also a business coach for artists.) I gave myself a goal of executing three concrete revenue generating activities everyday for my art.

So, what constitutes a revenue generating activities? It seems to me that anything that gets my art or commentary out to a larger audience.
- posting new pieces of artwork on:
Fine Art America (according to Corey, the easiest way to start selling my art online http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-carol-ann.html?tab=artwork)
or Saatchi – which I am already on (http://www.saatchiart.com/blondmonkeyart)
or Nuvango – which I am also already on (http://nuvango.com/passionart)
or Facebook – I already have a fan page (https://www.facebook.com/BlondMonkeyArt)
or etsy - which I haven't even explored, but I am hearing about more and more from artists selling lower price point products.

- Publishing a blog post - mine are on Fine Art America (or FAA), http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-carol-ann.html?tab=blog)

- Social media activity - publishing or mentioning my art, art-making or my events. My initial choice a for social media platform was FaceBook. I started my "Passion Art" fan page several years ago. I also have a "PassionArt" Google+ page. After doing some preliminary research on where artists are posting, I also decided to join:
Twitter (@PassionArt8),
Pinterest (Passion8art),
Instagram (passionart8)
and to organize my postings, Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows a free membership, but you can only watch and post to 3 social media platforms in the free version, so I am still trying to figure out the best way to use it.

- Recording & posting podcasts or videos of my art-making. Seems like a great idea, but I have yet to do it.
- Creating art
- Recording inspiration for future art (by sketching, journaling or using Instagram to capture and store inspirations for later).

So March 5th was the kickoff. I joined Fine Art America (FAA). I'm already on saatchi & nuvango, and I decided to give one more site a try. It automatically links to Facebook and Twitter and allows me to start writing this blog directly from their site, which is how I’m planning to track this social media blitz. Later if my blog actually takes off and I want to get fancy with advertising etc., it makes sense to host my own blog, but for now all I have is a shell of a website which I need to figure out what I'm going to do with. I expect that one of the essential activities over the next few weeks will be to make it real ...

And how’s it been going, you ask? Well, I had the opportunity to actively connect with people at an art and wine charity event, and exchanged social media handles like crazy. I have also been seeking out interesting artists and art communities (such as the Eastside culture crawl, culturecrawl.ca) and following them, and many of them respond favorably by following back, moreso on Twitter than on any other platform. I have also noticed that some of these artists send a “Thank you” for following them, with a link to their art retail page, which seems like a nice touch and something I'd like to do.

Since March 5th:
FB Passion Art fan page – likes up 1.2%
Twitter – I now have 39 art-only followers
Instagram – 6 followers
And only one or two additional contacts on Google+ and LinkedIn.

I am thinking that since I have already had my art online for a while, and am getting lots of great feedback but limited sales, that maybe the pricing of my artwork needs to be revised.

And that will likely be the topic for my next blog ...