internet marketing for artists

My Youtube channel has now crossed the 9,000 subscriber mark. That's up from 7,000 since my last post about Youtube.

Today, I want to talk about using Youtube and Facebook to promoting your art videos. By art videos, I'm taking about art tutorials, demonstrations, art supply reviews, speed paintings, artist interviews and basically anything that's related to art.

Youtube and Facebook are the two biggest sites today where millions of videos are watched. Facebook viewers now watch as much as 500 million videos per day. What does that mean to you as an art creator?

Let's take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of posting on both platforms.

Pros and cons of posting video on Facebook

The advantage is you get views, Likes, comments, some followers.

If your video is popular enough, Facebook does promote it and give it better exposure and reach.

The disadvantage is once your content gets pushed down, it will be lost and there's no easy way to find it. You won't be able to search for it using the search box. And if it's too far in the past, people will get tired of scrolling down and give up. Unless your video has the viral factor, it's not going to be seen again after it's being pushed down.

When you're online, any content that you create should always serve to help you into the future and in this case, your Facebook content will only be useful for a few days. That's just not optimal for the effort you put into creating your video. It's like salaried job where once you stop working, you no longer get the pay cheque.

Think about how people are going to find your page. If they don't know your name or brand, there's no way they are going to do a search on Facebook to find you. If you want new followers, you have to link to your Facebook page from your website, or hope that your Facebook page gets shared by others.

Pros and cons of posting on Youtube

You will still get views, Likes, comments and some followers.

On Youtube, you have the added advantage that there's good search functionality and if your video has a good title and description, people can search for it using the search box. This means even strangers can look for content that you have posted months ago. Your content will still be useful to you and help/entertain your audience into the future. The more videos you have, the more people you can expect to be looking for them in the future.

It's easier for people to check out your other videos because you have your own channel page and playlists.

Youtube has better analytics for video. In addition to the basic demographic stats like the age group, sex, location, you also get useful information such as the watch time, like how long people are watching your video before they stop. You can use the analytics to understand what type of content is popular.

If your content is helpful and relevant to people, your video will be ranked higher and they will be showcased in the Suggested Videos sidebar where you can expect strangers to click on them. Youtube promotes other videos at the end. You have a better chance of getting a stranger finding your video, and discover that you exist.

Youtube is a better discovery platform in the sense that people can search for content they want, and not get irrelevant content pushed to them. Because of that, the type of audience you can expect on both platform are different. You won't see people who are looking for art tutorials search for them on Facebook.

Because Youtube actively promotes related video content to audience, your content if relevant, it will get promoted. That's going to earn you extra views and extra subscribers. 30% of my views are from the Suggested Videos sidebar and that's quite significant and helpful at getting new subscribers. You can build a community a subscriber base easier on Youtube than on Facebook. That's important because people who are subscribed to you won't subscribe again, whereas strangers who are on your video page may have a chance to subscribe.

Youtube is more of a balanced playing ground compared to Facebook. While I don't have any accurate statistics to back up what I say but from what I gather online from hearsay, videos uploaded on Facebook gets a preference over videos uploaded on Youtube and linked in Facebook. Youtube is Facebook's competition and it's not surprising that Facebook would limited Youtube video's exposure.

In the long run, you'll benefit from Youtube more than with Facebook because you'll have strangers discovering your content daily, unless you're really good at creating viral video content on Facebook.

Lastly, if you're in the Youtube Partner Program, you can earn money through the ads that are run above your videos. It's not going to be significant if your videos have low view counts, but in the long run it adds up.

Recently, there was a popular video called Upside Down & Inside Out by the band OK Go. They released it initially on Facebook and received 48,000,000 views and 600,000 shares. They released it one week later on Youtube and received 600,000 views and 6,000 shares (at the time of me writing this post). Ads online cost USD $1 per thousand views. So the band left $48,000 dollars on the table by uploading the video on Facebook. Of course you can argue that you may not get as much views on Youtube, but you don't know for sure if it can't get more either. Anyway, it's important not to neglect both platforms when uploading your video.

One interesting thing about OK Go's music video is, when they posted the trailer for the video on Youtube pointing to Facebook, they received avalanche of Youtube comments asking why the video is not on Youtube. That trailer has since been deleted.

As for me, I post mostly reviews and sketching tutorials so I won't be uploading my videos on Facebook because I know nobody would be searching for them there.

In the long run, you'll get a better pay-off from Youtube.

Yes! I've now reached 280K subscribers on my Youtube channel. It was just 7,000 subscribers back in 2016 when I wrote the original article, and 4,000 subsribers on 19 Nov 2015. The journey has been long and there's still a long road ahead.

The tips and strategies below are from my personal experience and from analysing other successful Youtube art channels. I've used the same tips to grow my channel, and also started a tech channel which now has 35,000 subscribers.

Alright, the tips...

Just a few hours ago, I was at Toa Payoh Library for a talk by my friend James Leong. He talked about his crowdfunding experience with Pozible for his comic book Perfect World Saga. He launched his campaign in November 2015 and managed to reach his target of SGD $1,000 with 41 supporters.

I just want to share some details that he mentioned in the talk.

First of all, note that his target isn't a big amount, so the statistics that he shared may be skewed. I'll explain some of the numbers.

Preparation

The project started in September before the actually crowdfunding was launched in November. James had planned the launch after the 24 Hours Comics Day in Singapore so that he could market to comic creators there. It was a good move because that's marketing to relevant people. When it comes to selling stuff, especially a new product no one as seen before, it's importable to network and market to relevant people.

Kickstarter vs Indiegogo vs Pozible

There are other crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo but he eventually went with Pozible because they had a local office in Singapore. He was able to speak to someone at Pozible and get tips whenever he has any questions. Kickstarter and Indiegogo just ask you to refer to their FAQ.

Transaction fees for Pozible is at 4.58% and service fees are at 5%. Pozible was able to collect in Singapore Dollars so that meant that there would not be any loss in currency conversion. Most supports are going to be from Singapore. So if USD is set, the money would be converted to USD and back to SGD.

Who are the supporters

Here's the breakdown:

• 68% friends
• 15% Acquaintance
• 10% Family
• Strangers

It's not surprising that main bulk of support comes from friends. The thing is, when it comes to supporting such campaigns, people won't know exactly what they are buying, so essentially they are supporting the campaign because they want to support the person.

If you have a huge fan base, that's where you're going to get most of your support. Which also brings me to the next point, you should start marketing way in advance before your crowdfunding campaign. You're doing two things essentially. You're building a fan base and you're marketing your upcoming campaign.

To do all the marketing during the crowdfunding period is incredibly difficult. You're trying to convert a stranger into a fan during that period of time when he/she has neither heard of you or know what to expect from your product. Tough.

James spoke about asking family to help only when there's possibility of reaching the target. Sometimes it just needs a tiny push at the end to reach the goal.

Promoting on Facebook

Facebook contributed more links to his campaign than other platforms. Not surprising because that's the primary platform where James has an active presence.

I actually asked him to post some of his timelapse video on Youtube and share that video on Facebook. From what he gathered, videos that are uploaded natively on Facebook perform much better than those Youtube videos that are linked over. Facebook's bias towards their own video content is clear. They don't give emphasis to promoting videos from other websites like Youtube, Vimeo, which is not surprising because they are competitors. In other words, Facebook is censoring how people are consuming content on the platform but this is nothing new. Organic reach for his Facebook posts are also not very high because Facebook wants you to pay to boost the reach, otherwise they would censor your content. This is something I personally experience when sharing Parkablogs content on Facebook as well.

By the way, Youtube contribution is negligible in this campaign. Youtube is a discovery platform. When you're putting content on Youtube, you're using it more as pull advertising. With Facebook, you can choose to use it as push advertising (paying money for ads) to push ads to people who may not even want to see your content. With Youtube, you're relying on search engine traffic and your fans. If you're only starting to market your content close to your campaign, you're not going to get significant support from Youtube. However, if you have been consistently putting out content on Youtube, at least you'll have an audience to count on helping you in time of need.

Parkblog's contribution

From the slides, I saw that my blog contributed 3 pageviews.

3?!??!

LOL. Wow. Note that I have around 2,000 readers visiting the homepage daily and to have that kind of click-rate is shocking.

Which brings me to another point. You have to market to relevant people.

My blog features artbooks and art products. People who are interested in artbooks and art products may or may not be interested in comic books. Even if they are interested in comic books, it takes a lot to get them to put out money for someone they have not heard of.

That's also the reason why I seldom share comics related crowdfunding campaigns on Parkablogs. I just don't see how sharing news of an upcoming indie comics campaign is going to be relevant to my readers.

James is also part of the Urban Sketchers Singapore group. Even support from Urban Sketchers Singapore did not amount to a lot even though the group is quite large.

Content sharing

James also said that his FB posts weren't shared much.

I've read in some other article on the mentality of sharing posts. When you're sharing posts, you're also endorsing the posts. Your act of sharing also says something about you. You may not know it but people are silently judging you whenever you share something. Interestingly, someone who shared his posts and that post received more likes than Jame's own posting.

Another thing to note is having FB likes does not equate to getting their support on the project.

Conclusion

Market yourself early even if you have nothing to sell yet. When you do, at least you have people already there to sell to.

Last year while I was in Sydney on a holiday, I met up with Liz Steel and we talked for hours on blogging and social media.

Liz told me that some artists don't see how blogging can help their career as artists. Indeed, there are artists that I know and admire who don't even have a website, much less a blog, or any form of presence online.

If you're an artist and don't have a blog, you're missing out big time. There's a huge opportunity cost that you're not seeing.

Blogging is one of the most powerful tools for marketing, and with the internet it is now so affordable and accessible to any artist.

Let me give you the reasons why you should blog as an artist.

You grow with your blog

Whether or not you're a professional artist does not matter. If you're someone who's a beginner at art, it will even be more beneficial. By posting your work online, you'll be able to keep track of your progress and grow from there. It's called practice. The more you draw, the better you get. When you use the blog as a record, you can see how much you have improve and where else you can improve.

If you've afraid of posting your so called crappy work online, then join a forum where there are those work-in-progress pages where you can post your art to. Or you may want to start two blogs, one for your rough sketches (maybe on Tumblr) and one for your more professional looking work.

When others see your work, they give comments like how you can improve, or give you ideas you have never thought of. Like when I post my sketches, sometimes people ask me about my techniques, or even correct some of the things I say.

Let people know that you're still in business (aka put your art out there)

How on earth are people going to buy your art or commission you if they don't know you exist? If they don't know you exist, they won't even being to type your name in the Google search box. That's why it's important to update your blog with new artworks often.

This is how advertising works. They basically plaster print advertisements everywhere on the streets, public transports and in shopping mall, and also run online and TV campaigns. They all do these so that the more you see the ad, the more you'll remember their brand. Same applies to blogging online.

Your blog is different from your online portfolio though. The blog is meant to be like sort of a visual diary of what you're doing, basically to tell people what you're up to. You can post new artworks on your blog, but collect them into another portfolio page so that visitors can easily see your curated gallery.

A blog helps to promote and sell your art

As you post regularly, you'll build up an audience. Some of visitors might turn into leads and buy stuff from you, or commission you.

I don't know about you but for artists who I follow, whenever they release an artbook, I feel compelled to buy and support them. That's just how it works. You support the people you like.

One important thing is to make sure you say somewhere that there are things for sale. For example, Carol Marine updates her blog everyday with paintings for sale. Mattias Adolfsson would post news of his new artbooks in the posts or by the sidebar. And when Pascal Campion launched his Kickstarter campaign, he got $106,000 in terms of response (below). All these artists have build up their audience over the years by updating blog regularly and connecting with their audience. You want a good online presence, just follow what they are doing, post regularly.

Your audience want to connect with you

If your audience somehow knows that you exist, they will seek you out online. They like to know what you have been up to.

When someone follows your blog, they are actually following you, the person, because they like your character or who you are. It's actually less about the work.

Audience wants to feel connected. With a blog, they can be updated with what you do. Guess what happens when these followers find out you have a gallery opening or new book coming out? They will support you at the gallery or get your book. I have seen this been proven over and over again. See some of the comments below for Steven Reddy's first Kickstarter campaign for his book.

I hope you did not miss the part that says "I don't think I have ever been this excited about an impending credit card charge!"

If you post your artworks on the blog. That's good. If you write something about your process, about how your day when while you're sketching, that's great. Check out Shari Blaukopf's blog where she blogs daily and her audiences respond with many comments.

If you don't know, it's difficult to get people to comment online. And she has 60 comments?!?! And that's for a post where she talked about the new video course that she's doing with Craftsy. Guess how many of her audience signed up for the course. Go see.

It is SO MUCH EASIER to sell your art or whatever you're selling when you have an audience that you have been building up for years.

It's incredibly difficult to sell stuff if you don't have an online presence. If you have an artbook you want to launch in a few weeks times, do you think a lot of people will know about it if you don't promote it?

This applies to Youtube channel too. Artists like Mina Petrović, Alphonso Dunn (above) and Mark Crilley are sought by publishers to publish book because of the huge audience they have on their Youtube channels.

Speaking of Alphonso Dunn, Go check out the reviews on Amazon for his book and see how many of those got to know of the book through his Youtube page. This applies to blogs as well.

A blog gets your more web traffic

That's assuming you write something together with the art you've just uploaded. That way, Google has text to index, and when people search for that text, hopefully your website shows up in the search results.

If you just have a static website, basically an online portfolio that you update occasionally, then it would be difficult for people to see what you have updated on your website.

If you update every quarter, then people only have to visit your website 4 times a year. If you update more frequently, you give people reasons to come back and check out your stuff more frequently.

If people know that you've a static website, they may not want to come back again. After all, they have seen everything. But if your blog is constantly evolving, you can build an audience from those who keep coming back.

A blog makes you an authority

Let's say if you use markers for all your artworks, people will then start to associate you as someone who's good at Copic markers, assuming your art is decent. And guess who they will think of when they have questions relating to markers?

An authority is something that you establish over time. People start to notice the tools you use, or even stuff that you write. If you write tutorials on digital painting, then over a period of time, you'll grow into an authority on digital painting.

A blog helps you diversity your earning avenues

A blog helps you diversify your earnings avenues.

You can earn money from selling original art, prints, crafts, or even your service as an illustrator or tutor. Some websites sell T-shirts, books, mugs and other merchandise. Every little bit adds up.

You can also run some Google Adsense ads to earn some passive income. The ad revenue from Google is not going to be a lot, but after a year, it's likely you will be able to buy some art materials with the money, assuming you have been updating your blog regularly.

Or you can write sponsored posts. I know some blogs do that. Manufacturers send them art products to review. Most of these gigs aren't paid. But you get the web traffic when people look for reviews for those art materials.

My parting tips

Focus more on your blog than social media. The blog is where you have control over what your audience will see. You can even put payment plugins to automate purchases which is something that social media sites can't. Also, you don't know when social media sites will go away, or fade in importance. It's also easier for people to do a search on your blog than on social media pages.

Success comes to those who work for it. When it comes to art, there's really no such thing as overnight success, whether you're talking about techniques or creating a career.

Start a blog. Update it regularly. You can do so very easily with Bluehost web hosting (with automated blog setup) and Wordpress. Want to know how to go about starting an art blog, read this guide that I've written: https://www.parkablogs.com/picture/how-start-art-blog

Lisa Clough talks about making a living as an artist

Today's topic is on web analytics, more specifically on using Google Analytics.

What is web analytics?

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. - Wikipedia

Basically, with web analytics, you'll be able to know information like the number of visitors you have on your website, where they come from, what pages they are reading, whether they are repeat visitors, and many other types of information.

Web analytics is a very useful tool to understand your website better. It's a sort of feedback that your visitors are giving to you without any effort on their part. And with that feedback, you can use it to improve your website, and get more visitors.

What do you need?

To get web analytics data, you just need a website and a web analytics software. I hope you have a website already.

There are many web analytics software out there and one of the most popular one is Google Analytics. You'll need to sign up for an account with Google before you can access their free Google Analytics services.

Go on and sign up with Google Analytics now. I'll wait.

Okay, you're back.

Steps to installing Google Analytics into your website

Implementing analytics on your website is extremely easy. In the case of Google Analytics, you just copy and paste their programming code into your website. After that, whenever your website loads, that piece of programming code will call home to Google and submit information regarding the particular visitor visiting your site at that point in time. The data you'll get is almost real time.

After you've created a Google Analytics account, you're supposed to create a property. The property is your website. If you have many websites, you can create many properties to track all of them.

1. You can create your property under the Admin link.

2. In the drop down menu, you should see Create new property link. So just create one.

I've already created mine so you see the website name there.

After your property is created, select it, when in the menu below, look for Tracking Info, expand that menu, click Tracking Code.

3. You'll then be brought to this page below:

There are three important things on this page. Look out for your Tracking ID, Tracking code and status (of data transfer).

The Tracking ID is how Google will know that data they are receiving is from your website. Your Tracking ID will be inside the tracking code. If you're using Wordpress or some other blogging software that has a Google Analytics plugin, you can just use that plugin and paste your Tracking ID there and skip the code pasting section.

4. Copy the tracking code and paste it into the template of your blog or website. You want the tracking code to be on all the pages, and by pasting it in the template page, you ensure that the tracking code will be used in all the pages.

5. Depending on your blog software, you need to either create a widget or block first. Make sure you create your widget/block can handle Javascript & HTML code because the Google Analytics tracking code is written in Javascript language.

6. After you've pasted the tracking code into the widget/block. Save, and refresh your website. That widget/block will appear on all your pages. Visit your website and right-click to show the contextual menu, then click on 'View Page Source'. Look for the tracking code. If it's there, it means the installation is successful. Now Google Analytics will take a few hours before it starts tabulating the data.

7. If the tracking code is not that. You've either pasted your code on the widget or block, or you may have forgotten to make that widget/block accept Javascript & HTML.

8. Go back to the Google Analytics property page to check the status. If you've install the tracking code properly, the status should read "Receiving Data" which means Google has already started tracking your website traffic.

What data can you expect

I'll not be analysing the data and what they mean. That's content for another article.

I'll tell you what I look out for though.

• Which countries the visitors come from
• Which website did visitors come from, e.g. through search engine or referral links
• What pages they are visiting
• What pages are the most popular in a particular month
• How much time people are spending on a particular page
• What links people are clicking on
• What keywords people are searching for on your website

Conclusion

Web analytics is a very powerful tool you can use to improve your website and use it for internet marketing.

In a separate article, I'll analyse the data and tell you what they mean and what you can do with that information.

So your task today is to go install Google Analytics. It will take just a few minutes.