20% off all products!   Sale ends tonight at midnight EST.

Return to Main Discussion Page
Discussion Quote Icon

Discussion

Main Menu | Search Discussions

Search Discussions
 
 

Kevin Schank

10 Years Ago

How To Drive Traffic To Your Faa Art With An Outside Website

Having an artist website on FAA is excellent, and if you type your name in google your artwork pops up and people can buy it. But how can you get people directed to your art work on FAA without them ever hearing of you or FAA? Starting your own website outside of FAA can help, here is why:

1. You can put an FAA shopping cart widget and other advertisements of your artwork on FAA on your site.

2. You can write articles about anything art related.
- This is imperative for search engines. People can only search in words, so articles written in words are the key. You can write an article about the relationship between Van Gogh and Gauguin for instance, and if someone was curious about that subject your article will pop up! This way you have someone who is already interested in fine art coming to your website, reading your article, then browsing through your portfolio.

3. You will become an authority on art.
- It's funny how when you publish something, whether it be a website or a book, you suddenly become a pro, and if your content is good people will look to you as an authority on the subject. You can use your unique knowledge to promote your art here, and maybe help a fellow artist. If you have found the perfect ratio of galkyd to oil paint for example, write about it! Someone undoubtedly will google "how much galkyd should I add to my oil paint?" All of a sudden, they are not only getting a free art lesson, but also are getting exposed to your great artwork.

4. You can list links to FAA on your site and get in the higher search rankings on FAA. In the control panel of FAA (behind the scenes) under the tab "Marketing" you will see a image of binoculars that say "Artwork Page Sponsorships." Check it out. Basically, you add a link to FAA from your site, and your artwork on FAA gets put in the third row for a category your art is placed under. In other words, if you make oil prints, your art will be in the third row of the search "oil prints" on FAA.

5. You can have a lot of fun with it. Having your own website is great, and it is a lot of fun. If you haven't heard of Word Press, it is a really easy site builder, and makes website building actually fun. You don't have to know anything about html code or java script. You just click buttons and copy and paste html when it comes to that.

Now all you need to do is start creating a website, if you don't already have one. Here is a great link of an article about how to get your website started, if you have never done it before

UPDATE!!!!! After receiving some comments about how hard it is to build a website, I made this quick step by step video tutorial on creating an image gallery and writing posts in word press. It is actually pretty easy nowadays, used to be a lot harder. You can see the video here!

Reply Order

Post Reply
 

Planetoday Photography

10 Years Ago

I'm on WordPress.org. Easy to manage and you don't need to be an expert and spend 24H/day to update your pages, plugin, etc.

If you find the theme too "boring" it's always possible set another one.

How much it cost? Well... it depends on the theme but most of them are free on WP. So, I just have to pay the host as my themme is free (suffusion)

To build your own site, it's not a problem. The search engine optimization (SEO) IS the bigger one and time consuming.

Please don't confuse Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org

The first is free but you don't have so many possibilities to customize the layout, slideshow, galleries, etc
The second one is like a "Lego construct game" You add or delete the plugins, widgets, social medias, videos, etc, as you want.

As an example, my own site: http://planetoday.org/


 

Michael Hoard

10 Years Ago

Hello Jeff, I had a question exactly how much is it to have that beautiful web site or is that the one from artistwebsite.com....I like the format. My site I own my doman. I have not released because I am still working on it. spent thousands of hours programing. Hope to release it soon though. Great website Jeff, Bravo. And I like that tab with Fine Art America isn't distracting but large enough to view it.....

 

Mike Savad

10 Years Ago

@to-tam, there should be some twitter stuff around. but basically you join, find people your interested in. people you think would like your stuff. and follow them. you want them to follow you back. you hit the twitter button, and add #hashtag keywords you need that symbol # in front of each word so it's searchable. and that's it.

https://twitter.com/MikeSavad

you can look at mine.


---Mike Savad

 

Wendy J St Christopher

10 Years Ago

@Kevin -- Great OP, filled with useful information!

Recently, I've renovated my blogspot.com blog; with the addition of several 'pages' (portfolio, resources, contact, etc.), it will act as my personal website and portal to all things ME on the web. Now, I just have to devote actual time to posting regularly!

@Frank -- I've neglected my Flickr account for several years. Thanks for the inspiration to get over there and do some evaluating! :-)

 

To-tam Gerwe

10 Years Ago

First I would like to thank Mike for the email about Artist Rising and Zazzle. It is so wonderful to have so many artist here in FAA to help
me out with all the questions. I have always so fear that people will laught at me about the way I am writting in English, but I am getting stronger
and just thinking about if you can write in VietNamese. English is very difficault languege, it take me many year to learn how to communicate
I am not going to stop for now so would you please tell me what is "Twitter". I am recently using Facebook a litter bit to promo my Arts and will
ing to learn how to use Twitter.
Second, Roy I am an "old dog too". I am not going to shy about my writting any more! Please HELP.

Thanks, To-Tam

 

J L Meadows

10 Years Ago

I ended my blog months ago. Between working full time and doing art, I didn't have time to keep updating it. Waste of time and money.

 

Mary Ellen Frazee

10 Years Ago

My youtube videos could be much better.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MaryEllen98?feature=mhee

 

Jason Christopher

10 Years Ago

This looks great Kevin!! Have to find out more as I've not kept up to date with so much going on, I thought Flickr was just random posts and also I just heard about tunblr... And people now seem to have confidence on pinterest on faa so I have to figure out how to set that up to.. Maybe u should set a how to do this group up Kevin? Lol , Cheers for the info!

 

Frank J Casella

10 Years Ago

Have you checked out the new Flickr? It is now the photoblog game changer. I am seriously thinking about dumping my Wordpress blog ( and going premium with mya FAA site ). Just like FAA, if you are an artists - especially a photographer - you need to be on Flickr more than ever. You're FAA site should be the embassy that all your channels refer to. For an example, check out my Flickr blog at this link: www.flickr.com/fjcps

 

Kevin Schank

10 Years Ago

I have made a step by step video on how to use word press to make an image gallery, to write posts, to link back to FAA, and to get your site indexed in google. You can see the video here!

You can see the video here!

 

Kevin Schank

10 Years Ago

Thanks Judy for the tip on my share buttons. I didn't even think about that happening on different browsers. I believe I changed the problem. It's true, making a website can be a headache at times. I will be making a quick video tutorial on how to make an artist webpage with a portfolio, blog and FAA links with word press. That might help.

 

Crystal Wightman

10 Years Ago

For some building a site is hard and not worth it...no matter how easy the template is. For some, building a site is easy. Can't force people to build their own site, if they don't want too, even if it's as easy as drag and drop, add text.

Years ago, I used to have as much control as one could possibly have when it came to websites. My husband and I (thanks to my husband's tech head), had our own web and email servers, in our home. So when you went to my site, you would be accessing it from the server in my home. Which was pretty cool. I love having the control of building my site from scratch and doing whatever on the back end. Life went on, hubby decided he didn't want to deal with the 19 servers, so now I use Wordpress. Although there is still control to build, there isn't anything like the control you have when it's all done in house.

At this point in my life, I rather just focus on photography and marketing. And only making a couple changes to my site due to marketing. I direct everyone to my site. It's easier to say, Go to my site, http://crystalwightman.com/ , (you'll remember the site, it's my name) and from there you can order prints etc.. My site is a hub directing to other sites I belong too....FAA, cafepress, facebook, twitter, blog, etc..

 

Jeffrey Kolker

10 Years Ago

I like the control I have with my own site. And once you get a site up...adding content usually isn't that hard. I guess it depends on the number of pictures needed to be added. Plus, I use an old CMS program that makes updating fairly easy. Then point to where it needs to be pointed.

http://www.kolkerart.com

 

Rich Franco

10 Years Ago

Roy,

There are some "newish" places to buy "templates" and are very easy to build and maintain. Mine is an older version and is mostly Flash, but can be seen on iPads, but not phones, according to tech support.

http://www.bludomain.com/

http://www.richfrancophotography.com/

I'll be switching over to this product: http://www.squarespace.com/pricing/

Let you know,

Rich

 

Jason Christopher

10 Years Ago

I set up a few sites, when i got to doing the programming for the databases etc and displaying it all to look good, it was just too much of a headache, like a full time job, mind u i might go back to it. but then i need to get the traffic for that site and then send people to my other site...

 

Mike Savad

10 Years Ago

it's too much of a pain to keep a site updated and running well. if it was really easy then maybe, but it takes too long to code all that. i have a website http://www.suburbanscenes.com it doesn't do much for me. it's mostly there as a central point where other stores are attached.

---Mike Savad

 

Roy Erickson

10 Years Ago

For some "old dogs" with a basic lack of computer skills - building a website is NOT fun - it's frustrating. I've bought two "websites" in the past that promised to be easy to build and run - NOT. I paid for two years on each - never got past simply owning the ability to have one.

 

Judy Kay

10 Years Ago

Great link, but one major drawback!! The share button banner completely covers up the main text and you cant even read it..

 

This discussion is closed.