|
Contact Kanika
| esentation written and delivered to the Elk Grove Artists Group By Kanika Marshall Have customers ever asked "do you have a catalog of your artwork?" Most of you are like me and create one-of-a-kind pieces of original art. Therefore, a static catalog or portfolio does not make practical business sense, for once an art work is sold, its image in the catalog/portfolio is no longer valid. But the Internet allows us to showcase our artwork on a medium that can be viewed worldwide. On a website, you can frequently change your artwork images and use your website as a marketing tool to entice galleries or art collectors around the world to view your wonderful creations. You can even make money on the Internet! I have recommended for years that all serious artists create a website to show and/or sell their work. But how do you get started? The following are some ideas for developing a website on a shoestring and selling your artwork online. For those of you who prefer paying someone hundreds of dollars to develop and keep your website updated, you may still benefit from reading the pearls of tried and true wisdom found in this article. For those of you who have a computer that has a fairly fast modem and a scanner, I encourage you to check out the following tips on building and managing your own website. NOTE: the contents of this article are NOT guarantees that the websites or prices referenced are still viable or that you will definitely make thousands of dollars in web sales; these are only ideas and starting points for you to research for yourself. Let me say at the outset that I have worked with computers since 1982 at my "day job," but I am not an expert at developing websites. However, I have been successful at making thousands of dollars from selling my artwork on the World Wide Web (www). There are basically three main steps to selling your artwork on the web that will be covered in this presentation: The following information details how I did it for my Kanika African Sculptures art business. Since many of you may be new to the Internet, and to computer technology in general, I have included in italics some vocabulary words that may be unfamiliar to you. For those vocabulary words, you should consider going to the Whatis.com website (www.whatis.techtarget.com/ ). Because I am a "Type A" control freak, though, I need to have the freedom to update my website at any time (even at midnight in my pajamas!). Waiting for a professional service to make the changes on their time schedule is NOT attractive to me! After you read this article, you might want to enroll in an inexpensive website development class from The Learning Exchange, or some other training source, to become more familiar with the terms and concepts of web design and small business management.
#1: Purchase the Equipment/SOFTWARE Purchase a computer that has at least 40 gigabytes of hard disk space (memory)
and has at least 1.2 megahertz (MHz) of speed with a readable/writable compact disc player (CD/RW) which will allow you to easily make backup copies of your precious computer files. I purchased a system with all of these above items for about $1,000. My system included the Microsoft suite of
software programs including Publisher desktop publishing, Word word processing, Excel spreadsheet, and Powerpoint presentation software, but you can purchase different brands of software to accomplish the same functions. Purchase a legal paper_sized flatbed scanner (optional). This may not be necessary for two_dimensional artists, but it works great for my small three_dimensional sculptures to make digital images of the sculptures that can be inserted into the website. Purchase a digital camera or digital camcorder to take pictures of your artwork that can easily be put onto your website and/or e-mailed to others (optional, but really nice). Otherwise, you could take photographs of your work and use the scanner to digitize the image into individually_colored pixels that the computer can read. Purchase a web development software program like DreamWeaver, Microsoft Publisher, or Microsoft FrontPage. These programs allow you to easily construct your website using a WYSIWYG method (i.e., what you see is what you get), meaning you can see exactly what your webpage will look like by placing the pictures and text on the page, instead of using the HTML, JavaScript, or the Perl language codes to program the website. Obtain an Internet Service Provider (ISP) like AT&T Broadband or Pacific Bell’s digital subscriber line (DSL) services. Or you could use a dial up service like AOL, Earthlink, or MSN (etc.) using a 56 kilobyte (KB) modem. Both DSL and AT&T Broadband’s cable modem are SOOOO much faster than the older style 56K modem. Both AT&T and Pac Bell charge around $40_$55 per month for these super fast Internet connection speeds, compared to $20_$25 for dial_ups but a fast speed is really desirable if you’re going to be managing a website that has lots of digital images of artwork. Choose a website domain name using Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com). While my web URL (web address) is much longer than I would recommend (e.g., www.kanika.us ), my preferred name of www.Kanika.com was already taken by another business so I had to come up with another domain name. Having your own domain name costs around $35 per year. You can have a .com ending to your domain name (for commercial ventures), or .net (commercial or network) or .TV (media), .edu (education), or .org (non_profit). Obtain a web host where your website will reside. For example, Earthlink.com will host your website for $20 per month, while MSN.com might charge you $30 per month. I use Yahoo.com to host my website for $15 per month. Start a business: Keep in mind that if you establish a business for your artwork, all of the above purchases are fully (or mostly) tax_deductible!!!! Take a "Starting Your Own Business" class through The Learning Exchange or speak to your accountant about the amazing $$$ benefits of implementing a business. Certainly, you should apply for a FREE resale license through the Board of Equalization so you can legally sell your artwork, but you might also consider purchasing a Business License to make your tax advantage more legitimate. As I recall, Elk Grove City charges about $125 for a three_year license. Open a business bank account: If you choose to accept credit cards (see page 5), you should also open a bank account to hold the thousands of dollars you will make from selling your art on the web! Purchase business cards which include your business name, your name, address, telephone number, e-mail and/or website address.
The following activities will help you design your website: Explore other art websites on the Internet and note which features you especially like, such as background colors, fonts, placement of items on the page, content, and general presentation. For example, I prefer a black background because it makes my ceramic sculptures really pop out. Check out the following websites (and others) for ideas on colors and layouts: Use a web development software program to develop your website. I used Microsoft Publisher to initially build my website, then revised it a few years later using Microsoft FrontPage. These programs have Wizards and templates which is a nifty prompting tool that asks you questions about what you want to do, then builds a shell of your website within a couple of minutes. The wizard asks you to: Insert digital images of your artwork into the website by using a scanner or digital camera. I recommend creating images whose file format ends in .jpg or .gif because they are sharper than bitmap formats. Instead of scanning photographs of my work, I often place a sculpture on the
scanner itself and take a digital image directly! Many of my sculptures are small enough to fit on the 8.5" x 14" scanner glass screen. This ensures that I get the truest colors and it’s EASY to do. My scanner has a built_in graphics program which allows me to easily and quickly alter the crispness and color of the scanned image. I save the image as a .jpg file and compress it down to 40_50% so it takes up less space on my hard disk. I generally try to ensure that scanned images for the website are smaller than 30 kilobytes (KB) of memory; otherwise, it takes too long for the webpage to load (appear) on the screen. A webpage that takes longer than 20 seconds to load may cause your customers who use a 56K modem or slower to leave and look for quicker_loading websites. Add a Guestbook that people can sign and provide their comments on your website (I use a guestbook from www.da_book.com). Add a Counter to count how many people visit your website (e.g., from Fast Counter at www.bcentral.com/products/fc/default.asp): Publish your website to the World Wide Web. Go to the File menu in Publisher or FrontPage, then choose Web Publish to Web, then type in the URL (i.e., name) of your website, then click on Finish to actually publish your files to the Internet. This uploading process may take up to five minutes or more depending on how big your site is and how fast your modem is. NOTE: the first time you publish your site, you will need to contact the ISP or whoever your web host is to find out what the specific procedure is.
So now that your website has been developed and published to the www, it’s time to let everyone know that it exists. To do this, you must tell various search engines about your website and link to other sites. The following are some ideas for your consideration to help you market your awesome website: Add a descriptive title to your website’s HTML code so the Internet search engines can easily find important information that categorizes your
site. For example: Add meta_tags to your website’s HTML code so the Internet search engines can index your website to the appropriate category. As
an example: Create a carefully worded description of the website that would appear on the search engine listings. As an example, the 24_word description
for my website is: Create a banner for FREE using Banner Exchange tools (www.bcentral.com/products/bn/default.asp) to create a 1" x 6" banner of your art that
can be displayed on other websites, in exchange for you having other sites’ banners on your website. An example of a banner is: Submit your site to directory services for FREE using the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org/add.htm) to submit your site to a web directory of Internet resources that many search engines use. Submit your site to search engines using a FREE program like www.jimtools.com/ or www.addurl.altavista.com/sites/addurl/newurl or www.siteowner.com/sifree.cfm . These sources will submit your website to some of the major search engines like Altavista.com and minor search engines like SearchIt.com. You will have to tell them your name, e-mail address, website URL, and site description. The downside? FREE site submittal may take weeks or months to implement and may result in your e-mail address being sold to junk mail services; if the latter occurs, you may use your e-mail program’s Message Rules in the Tools Menu to prohibit certain types of unwanted Internet messages from reaching your e-mail Inbox. Pay to submit your site to a search engine. There are many services that charge to submit your site to major search engines and directories like Yahoo, Lycos, Hot Bot, Infoseek, Web Crawler, Excite, and AOL Netfind, but I am not confident that all of the submittals are made. In order to get into the bigger directories or search engines, you may have to pay up to $299 for Yahoo and Altavista, etc. (click on http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ to link to Yahoo.com). Link to other art_related websites, like Artists of the Web, World Wide Arts Resources, the Artists’ Window, or my website. To link to other websites, go to their website and find a button that reads something like "Submit My Site" or "Link to this site" or "Add URL" then follow their instructions. Usually you have to type in your website name, your name, your web address, and a 25_word or less description of your website. Hyperlinks were used to link to those sites (i.e., select the text that describes the link, go to the Insert menu, then Hyperlink, then type the URL in the "Internet address" box). Pay a (small?) fee to be #1. Decide whether to pay for a search engine service like www.overture.com which would require you to pay a small fee
each time a prospective customer chooses your website from a key word search listing. For example, I pay $.02 each time someone clicks on my site from a listing resulting from the keyword "goddesses." Using overture.com I can control whether my site appears at the top of a search listing (the more you pay, the higher
your site is on the listing) and I can read reports which tell me how many times each month a given search word is used and how many times a prospective customer clicks on my website. Theoretically, the higher you are on a search listing, the more clicks to your website, the more sales you will have. My website is #6
out of 11015 listings for "African Tribal Masks." Use web tools to keep your website finely tuned and operating successfully. There are a plethora of free sites that offer various web tools, such
as: I have not personally used most of these web tools, but I did a web search using "website development tools" as the key words and these were the sites that appeared at the top of the search list. And that’s a perfect illustration of why it’s important to be #1, or at least high on the search listings! Accept credit cards for payment. So now that your website is up and running and has been submitted to search
engines, you want to sell your art, right??? Even though you can choose to accept personal checks, Cashier’s Checks, and Money Orders, it is almost mandatory that you be able to accept credit cards for payment, especially if you want to securely sell expensive pieces of art. You must obtain a merchant account
(e.g., from your bank). You must choose whether you will have the manual "knuckle buster" device that has been used for a million years in stores to provide an imprint of the credit card number on a sales slip (about a $25 one_time fee), or whether you’d like an electronic terminal to process credit card sales (the
latter costs about $30 to $100 per month from Wells Fargo, depending on the type of equipment you have). It is important to note that you will be charged a certain discount percentage for each transaction, based on the amount of your sales (e.g., 3% per total sale), or a minimum of $25 per month, as used to be
charged by Wells Fargo. Therefore, it could cost you $1,000 per year through a bank just to process credit cards!!! However, there are much less expensive options for accepting credit cards, such as PayPal or Costco’s merchant services. Pay for a secure Shopping Cart. I use NOVA Information Systems, through Costco’s Executive Membership services ($55 per year more than a regular membership). That way, I can accept VISA/Mastercard sales from art shows, provide a secure Shopping Cart for my customers my website, and process VISA/Mastercard sales on the Internet. Click on www.costco.com (Services button, then Merchant Credit Card Processing button) to read about these services. My shopping cart costs about $10 per month and allows customers to select which sculptures they want, then requests their personal information and credit card number. NOVA Information Systems also requires a $20 minimum in processing/discount fees each month (but this beats the $70+ I was paying each month with Wells Fargo for far fewer services!) Review who visits your website. Use a statistics management program like Site Track Is it worth the costs and time? YES!!! Consider the following options and their associated costs. Option #1: Realistically, if you want to use the Internet at all, you’re going to have to pay for a computer and ISP; that could cost from $600 or more initially for the computer plus $20 to $50 per month for the ISP. Option #2: If you just want to have a website to show your work to prospective galleries or customers, but do not want to sell or take credit cards, then the additional costs are a nominal monthly fee for web hosting ($15 to $30 per month), a possible $150 or so for web development software, and $100 to a few hundred dollars for a scanner or digital camera. Option #3: If, however, you want to sell your artwork on the web and/or accept credit cards on the web or at art shows, then there can be an additional $30 (or MUCH more) per month if you use a bank and/or rent/purchase an electronic credit card device and want a Shopping Cart for your website. Option #4: If you want to market your website with for_pay services like www.overture.com, you could pay an additional $10 to $100 per month (or more), depending on whether you want to be #1 on the search engine lists. Option #5: And if you do not feel comfortable with developing your own website, you’ll have to pay someone else hundreds of dollars to do it for you, but you’ll still have all the equipment, ISP, and web hosting costs on top of that. Remember, if you establish a bonafide business, (generally) these costs may be tax_deductible, so you’ll get a lot of the money back . . . to buy fancier computer equipment and more art supplies!!! (smile) Well my friends, that’s website development and Internet art sales in a nutshell. Good luck. Showing and selling your art on the web is fun and $$$ rewarding if you are reasonably comfortable with computer products and you like to control your ability to quickly make updates to your webpages. Otherwise, hire someone to develop and update your site. However you do it, please get your artwork on the web as soon as possible. It’s really worth it!
Kanika
|
