Starting your own website

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="05bfd5a3.jpg"> <div> <B>Marketing Articles</B></div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="05cd2043.jpg"> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mike Albin.Com "><U>Mike Albin.Com </U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="wd.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Web design"><U>Web design</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="ma.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Marketing Articles"><U>Marketing Articles</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="sr.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Show Reviews"><U>Show Reviews</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="mt.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Marketing Tools"><U>Marketing Tools</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="l.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><U>Links</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#777777" TEXT="#080000"> <div> The ABC’s of starting</div> <div> your own Web site </div> <div> With travel expenses and show fees going up, we are always looking for more ways to sell our art at shows AND away from shows. The perfect low-cost solution to both is to start your own Web site. Promoting your artwork on the World Wide Web, if done properly, can help make sales at a show and long after the show is over. Be careful, though — there are plenty of places to go awry and plenty of people and companies out there promising they can help you make a fortune. Most of them will only help your wallet get much, much lighter. </div> <div> Please be aware that becoming a success on the Web takes time, years even. There are no overnight-success stories unless you have thousands of dollars to promote yourself. The sooner you start, the sooner you will reap the benefits. And once you get started, your Web address should be on your business cards, flyers, brochures and all other types of promotional material. You need to hand that material out to everyone when you do art shows. Do enough shows and hand out enough cards, and slowly but surely your Web site will start to gain momentum and you will start to sell. </div> <div> Your site should include the following:</div> <div> 1) Your bio with pictures of you in your studio or workshop, creating your art. Also include your techniques, what inspires you, the materials you use and what sets you apart from all the other painters, jewelers, potters, etc.</div> <div> 2) Pictures of your work. Keep it up to date and also include photos of pieces that have previously sold.</div> <div> 3) Your show schedule.</div> <div> 4) A contact page with your e-mail address, mailing address and phone number. Also include your cell number.</div> <div> 5) A shopping cart, so people can click a “buy now” button and order off your site. More on that later.</div> <div> 6) A page of happy customers. Show pictures of your work in homes and with the people who have purchased from you. Patty and I now take our camera to art shows and take photos of our clients holding the pieces they have just purchased.</div> <div> 7) A press page. Include any articles of you in the paper, and don’t forget to mention awards you have won and television or radio interviews you have done.</div> <div> 8) An extreme tracker. Huh? A tracker or page-hit counter tracks how many hits or visits your Web site receives. You can get an extreme tracker for free at <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.extremetracking.com</U></FONT>. It tracks all kinds of neat things about the people who visit your site, including screen resolution, operating systems, the countries they are from, the days and hours of the week they visit your site, which search engines are referring traffic to you and the search terms people are using to find you. It’s all free and very easy to set up. If you want to find out even more information, such as which pages people are clicking on the most and how long they spend on each page, get a non-public tracker for $4.95 a month. You can watch and actually see the hits on your site go up after each show! </div> <div> There are several directions you can take when starting your site. You can hire someone to do it for you, which I would highly discourage. Usually, that can be very expensive, and you have to keep paying every time you want to make a change. But if you do choose to pay someone to start your site for you, make sure you have an understanding from the start that YOU own the Web site and the name. Some companies will claim that if they make the site for you, THEY own the site and your name. These companies will have you over a barrel, and the only way to get away from them is to completely start over with a new site and name. Even if your Web site is <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.yourname.com</U></FONT>, the company that built it can claim they own the name. </div> <div> I highly recommend starting your site yourself. I know — you know nothing about doing it. The good news is there are plenty of programs you can learn in a matter of hours. Find a high school or college student (who are available at reasonable rates) or another artist to teach you, and pay him or her by the hour. More than likely, you’ll find it very rewarding and will have a lot of fun creating it and expressing yourself on the Web. And sooner or later you’ll be helping others build their sites! Seriously, can you picture yourself a year or two in the future helping someone build a Web site? Trust me, it’s not that hard! I never dreamed I’d be doing it! </div> <div> You will need the following to get started:</div> <div> 1) A computer. I know this sounds obvious, but start with a good, up-to-date computer. You’ll find it much more rewarding and have fewer problems down the line. I would suggest purchasing a good laptop. That way, you can take it with you as you travel and update your site as pieces sell. Honestly, these types of changes can be done in less than five minutes!</div> <div> 2) Internet access. Again, that’s obvious, but I’d like to suggest a high-speed connection. Images will upload in one-tenth the time of dial up.</div> <div> 3) A digital camera, nothing fancy or expensive, as there are plenty of digital cameras in the $1,000 range that take great pictures. You can also purchase photo-light sets on eBay for under $1,000. In addition, you can make a nice background by painting a piece of MDF (medium-density fiberboard), which you can find at Home Depot or Lowe’s. Remember, the better the photos of your work, the better your work will sell.</div> <div> 4) One Web-design program and one photo-editing program. There are hundreds to choose from. My suggestion is to find the person who is going to help you get started and use the programs he or she is familiar with. If you purchase the software first, then you have to find someone familiar with whatever program you picked. All Web-design software can be separated into two types. The first, which involve learning HTML codes, is much more difficult, so stay away from them! The second type is referred to as WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs. (Microsoft Front Page and Adobe Dream Weaver are among the many you can choose from.) You design your site just the way others will see it on the Web. Companies offer different ways of purchasing this software, the first being with a low monthly charge after you download it. But, remember, you’re building your Web site for the long haul, so do you really want more charges every month, forever? The second is by purchasing the software outright. If you choose to do that, Microsoft Front Page and Adobe Dream Weaver are two of your options. By purchasing a program, you’ll spend a little more up front but have no monthly charges! </div> <div> I mentioned you will also need photo-editing software, and there are even more of these than Web-design programs. The most popular is Adobe Photoshop, which has many versions. You really only need to make a few minor adjustments to each photo BEFORE you put it on the Web, and there are many programs that can accomplish this. Most digital cameras take pictures in a JPEG format and at 300 dpi. The JPEG format is good, but the 300 dpi is too large for the Web. So you need a program that can convert the 300 dpi to 72 dpi. Also, when saving your pictures, make each one no more than 150 KB in size. This way, they will load faster onto your visitor’s computer. People get impatient and won’t wait around to see pictures that load slowly. Also, the program you get should be able to adjust lighting and contrast, as that will help your pictures look better. </div> <div> 5) A domain-name company and Web-hosting company. First, you need to decide on a name (domain) for your site, such as <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.billsmith.com</U></FONT> or <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.buymyart.com</U></FONT>. It’s really cheap to secure your domain name, $9.99-$15 a year through companies such as GoDaddy.com or I-dentity.com. Go to either of those sites and search for the name you want. You should go with a .com name, but if the name you want is taken on .com, it may be available in a .net name. (In my opinion, the .net names are harder to promote, as they never really caught on.) Now that you have your name, you need a company to host your site. This is where you will upload your Web site pages to. I use I-dentity.com, as they have hosting plans that start at $4.25 a month. Hosting is something you will have to pay for, but it’s not much — and it is worth it. </div> <div> 6) A shopping cart. As I mentioned before, they’re the little “buy now” buttons you hope your visitors will click. Once your clients order what they want, they’ll be directed to a secure, encrypted Web page to enter in their credit-card info so you can get paid. How do you do that and where do you get it? Aren’t you glad you read <I><B>Sunshine Artist</B></I>, because I’m going to tell you where you get one for FREE: <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.mals-e.com</U></FONT>. If you already accept credit cards, it’s free. (Just add it to your site and run the credits cards yourself.) If you do not already accept credit cards, they will process them for you and deposit the money in your account, but there is a charge for this service. Click on their “register” button to get started; then click “support” to find out how to do it. </div> <div> I know this all sounds complicated now, but with just a little bit of effort, you can become your own Web master. I do have to warn you, though, once you get started, it becomes addictive. You’ll be searching for all kinds of gadgets and cool stuff you can add to your Web site. You’ll sit up in bed at 2 in the morning and write down that next brilliant idea for your site. And when it get’s really addictive, you’ll get up and make the change right then. Who knows, you may end up creating your own blog! When you were 15 and just learning how to drive a car, do you remember how much there was to learn? Creating your own Web site is just as easy as driving — it’s just going to take a little capital investment and effort on your part, and soon you’ll be racing down the information superhighway and selling your artwork on the Web! Ten years ago, I was about as computer illiterate as they came. Now I have three different Web sites. Check them out and see what you think: <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.albinarts.com</U></FONT>, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.photographybymikealbin.com</U></FONT> and <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.mikealbin.com</U></FONT>, where my past articles and show reviews are archived. </div> <div> There are several Web sites that have tips for getting started, such as <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.2createawebsite.com</U></FONT> and <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.thesitewizard.com</U></FONT>. If you visit the latter site, just click on the “getting started” link. But before you get too involved with these sites, find someone who will tutor you and get the ball rolling. </div> <div> If all this seems waaaay too overwhelming, one more idea is to simply start with a MySpace (<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.myspace.com</U></FONT>) or FaceBook (<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>www.facebook.com</U></FONT>) page. It’s free to sign up and get started, and you can post pictures of yourself and your work, your show schedule and biographical information. The one major drawback is you cannot sell your work from these sites. You can post your phone number and tell people to call you, though, so it can still work. </div> <div> Before I end this article, I want to warn you that there are several downsides to having your own Web site. First, we do occasionally hear show-goers say, “Oh, I’ll just order it off the Web site,” and then we never hear from them again. Patty and I think these people are usually just looking for an excuse to get out of our booth without purchasing anything. Second, people can and will copy your designs, style and even your images. I’ve been told of a painter who had several of his paintings copied, reproduced and then sold. The fact that you have “copyrighted” on your work just doesn’t mean anything to some people. However, if you are uploading your pictures in 72 dpi and small files of 150 KB or less, that does mean when people try to save or print the images, the quality will be very low. In addition, there is software to keep people from copying anything on your site. So if you are afraid of copycats, you should look into protecting your work. </div> <div> My next article, in the December issue, will discuss gaining greater exposure for your Web site by maximizing its “hits,” or the number of times it’s viewed.</div> <div> Good luck. I hope you are having a great year! E-mail me at <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="ITC-NewBaskerville" ><U>mike@mikealbin.com</U></FONT> and let me know if you start a Web site because of encouragement from this article. Send me a link!</div> <bR> <div> 6260 N.W. 19 Street, Sunrise, Fl. 33313 Toll Free 1-877-512-3333    Email: <A HREF="mailto:mike@mikealbin.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:mike@mikealbin.com"><U>mike@mikealbin.com</U></A></div> </td> </tr></table></body>