Today’s Monday Marketing Meeting addresses other areas that you as a self-representing artist may be using to help you support your art habit—affiliate marketing.

I like using affiliate marketing. If I find a good product, I want to share it with you. We’re all trying to make a living at what we love. If something makes your marketing or business admin easier, I’ll share. I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned from other artists about good products that have helped me.

Many businesses use a service like Link Share or Share a Sale as a central site for managing ads. Ad creation is easy. Active marketers are continually providing new ads and banners. That part of it is great.

However, the code generated by these sites is deprecated, filled with uppercase. Link Share still uses deprecated code that will make your site invalid. I clean up the code after I copy it, but frankly, that’s such a pain.

I try to write my sites with valid code, but I often find that it’s the code that I get from third parties that breaks it. I know, this is more of a personal gripe, but I sure would like to skip the code edit every time I go to add a banner.

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“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
-Pablo Picasso

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Today’s marketing meeting is about reaching all segments of your potential market. Perhaps many of you have felt the economic pinch of slowing art sales. We try, yet the reality looks us straight in the face.

No matter what happens, people gravitate toward pleasant images maybe even more so as a panacea for hard times. There’s no reason that someone cannot enjoy your art, even if they cannot afford the cost of an original painting.

Instead, offer your clients opportunities through secondary sales to purchase your art. Create prints or cards of your work. On your website, post links to these related items under your original art listing. Make sure the links open a new page so you can keep visitors on your site.

For me, my secondary sales were strong through the past Christmas season as well as on my affiliate sites. While I might have wished for a few more art sales, I wasn’t disappointed with secondary sales.

That’s the key. With secondary sales, you are diversifying. That’s what you as a self-representing artist must do. I tend to think the Great Recession, as it has been named, hit many of us by surprise. I think we were in shock. We didn’t believe it would happen.

The lesson to take away from this situation is to diversify your income resources. Remember that adage about eggs and a basket? Do the same with your art. Protect your art income.

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As artists, we appreciate the impact of a visual image. It is our goal, after all, to create the image that will stop a person in their tracks and make them buy your work.

Today’s Marketing Meeting is about making those images work for you. First of all, there is one thing you need to understand. If an image is on the Internet, it can be copied. Watermarks or no-right-click scripts will protect it. However, as soon as it is created, it is yours. You own the copyright.

Watch your image size.
If you have concerns about image theft, this is one step you can take which has added SEO benefit. Don’t put your best images on your website or blog. That is, take the original and reduce its size and resolution.

Your image should be 72 dpi for resolution. This low resolution, of course, makes for a so-so image if printed. The nuances of your work have not been compromised. The benefit for you is that your site will load quicker. Visitors are less likely to navigate away because of a slow-loading site. Keep images under 50k. Use your image editing software to optimize your images for the web.

Select a good name for your image.
Do not keep your cellphone or digital camera’s file name of IMG464646464.jpg. Instead, give it a meaningful name that uses the keywords you are prompting. “Red-floral-original-watercolor-painting” is more useful to crawlers and gives visitors a better idea of what you are selling.

Notice the dashes. Those older browsers are still around, like it or not. They can process file names better with dashes rather than underscores.

Don’t forget your alt text.
The alt attribute was originally an accessibility feature. Now it is expected. Think of it as another opportunity to use your keywords. Like your file name, make it meaningful and descriptive.

While you cannot control all the factors that determine your page rank, the on-page factors give you an opportunity to improve your site’s SEO. Don’t pass any chances to make your site more search engine friendly.

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"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
- Scott Adams

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