Indoor Street Art by Paul Baines

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 05:43 AM PST

Struggling Artist Van Gogh I've come across a few 'portfolio community' sites out there, the latest one to catch my eye is ArtistWebsites.com. Unlike those that have come before it this site actually offers print on demand services like Zazzle and Imagekind, however they're charging $30 a year for the privilege. I just wanted to share my views with any struggling artists out there on why they shouldn't pay up.

10 Tips For The Struggling Artist

1) The majority of the world's artists, much like actors, either earn nothing or way below minimum wage.

2) It's a tradition for middle men to fleece artists and musicians for every penny they can.

3) All P.O.D (print to order) sites are draining away your rankings and traffic.

4) All P.O.D sites offer a subdomain yet however well designed for SEO they are, they will for the main part add more to the popularity of the host site not your subdomain.

5) There is no reason why you can't host your own simple Paypal store on a free WordPress theme hosted at a free or very low cost host.

6) Portfolio sites actively market very few if any of their artists, most of these are either in their commercial opinion of the 'cream of the crop', or more likely those who have paid an extra premium for extra exposure. I have directly experienced this with Imagekind.com who after many emails stating how much they liked my art still required a payment to raise my profile.

7) If you need more free exposure for your art I run a free arts marketing ad exchange at ArtShout.net. There's no need to pay for advertising, although it may not be as targeted as some services out there I've used everything I can do get the message out there at zero cost. Be it social networking, Twitter and Facebook being the strongest contenders, or general ad exchanges like Entrecard, CMF Ads and Adgitize, or signing up at free portfolio sites and connecting with as many other artists as possible to raise your profile, it can be done, and without forking out your pennies.

The only arts communities I would bother with are specialist groups at Flickr, DeviantArt, VoodooChilli etc. If you're not a member you should join, they're very active communities and can help get your work out there.

9) All sorts of sites are offering P.O.D merch these days, I do quite well with them, even t-shirt sites like Threadless and Zazzle have branched out into print, but don't expect a living wage. I'm currently working on my new site DollsNest.com where I will be offering hand painted Russian Dolls (with a twist) by myself and others (eventually) and every one will be an original. This is really what the art buyer wants these days, high quality, decently priced, unique items by the artist. Not mass made posters. If you can't be bothered with setting up your own store then there are very few e-commerce services worth paying for and they are Etsy and BigCartel.

10) Spend money on materials, spend time on honing your skill, spend time marketing for free via social marketing and arts communities, don't spend it on a flashy portfolio subdomain with a company that simply massages your ego in order to make a few bucks.

zackis

Wednesday, February 16, 2011