Ideas for promoting and selling art, music, and writing, using long tail economics, and the new internet business models available for artists, writers and musicians, from artist Paul Watson.
1. Disabling right-clicking JavaScript that disables right-clicking (to prevent people “stealing” your images) is wrong on so many levels. But it’s such a prevalent mistake that I feel the need to tell you why it’s wrong: Small screen-sized digital images of your artwork are your most…
Read the rest of “Five things not to do on your artist's website”…
Building on Chris Anderson’s article Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business I wanted to try to summarise some of the freeconomics models that have been tried out so far (if I’ve missed any, please feel free to add them in the comments). For the purposes of this summary I’m ignoring products…
Read the rest of “A Summary of Freeconomic Business Models”…
Free distribution of digital content (music, books, visual art) is embraced by—and benefits—customers because it gives them access to a much wider range of content. This is because the restrictions on the amount of content they could get—based on how much they can financially afford—is…
In every industry I’ve worked in, people have been obsessively concerned about underpricing their products. Underpricing, they say, devalues the products (because, as Chris Anderson pointed out recently, they make the mistake that “the only way to measure value is with money”). This “underpricing=bad”…
Read the rest of “Underpricing your (digital) work is good”…
The 2006 blog post Five mistakes you’re probably making with your MySpace page (on Andrew Dubber’s blog New Music Strategies) applies equally to visual artists as it does to musicians. The five mistakes (expanded on in much better detail in the blog post itself) are: Using MySpace as your…
Read the rest of “Five MySpace Mistakes for Visual Artists”…
I wanted to take a short break from writing long articles to provide a quick list of links to various sites and online tools which can help artists with selling art online. So, in no particular order, I give you: Strategies & tactics for selling art online Empty Easel – Selling Art Online:…
OK, read this blog post by Kevin Kelly first. It’s the first time (in my knowledge) that a seasoned commentator has turned their attention to how an individual artist/writer/musician can work in a long tail environment, rather than examining it from the point of view of retailers (Kevin does…
Read the rest of “How to get 1000 true fans and succeed as an artist in a long tail economy”…
1. Start with a website OK, here’s the easy-to-follow three-point guide: If you are a competent web developer then create your own site. If you have a friend who is a competent web developer then ask them to set you up free blog software (e.g. WordPress) on a web-host with your own domain…
Read the rest of “Strategies: creating a website for your art, music or writing (part 1)”…
When text on the web is free and abundant (even more so than music and images), why should a person pay for it? In other words, how can writers (and by “writers”, I’m including writers of fiction, screenplays, academic theory, graphic novels, journalism etc.—the whole kit and caboodle)…
Umair Haque just asked “Is Etsy the next Google?” due, I think, to Etsy’s ability to build a community of artists & makers alongside (inside?) a community of art-, fashion-, and craft-lovers, and facilitate their conversations (social and financial) without getting in the way…
Read the rest of “Etsy as an emerging platform for artists”…