Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Putting it All Out There

Desires, wishes, wants, we have so many of them.

Yesterday, my desires were fairly simple, I wanted to go to work, and after work I wanted to come home and color my hair, and then practice painting clouds on paper until I was either happy with them, or until I became too frustrated to continue.

Well I went to work.

After work I felt really tired, and so none of the other stuff happened.  That was okay, I accomplished something else, you see, I've really been thinking about how to get my art "out there" more.  I mean, I am still learning, still improving, and I'm sure in time my art will be better and attract even more buyers, but much of my the work I've already created is perfectly saleable.  The only reason sales have dropped is that the people who are interested in buying are not seeing it.  So I've been thinking a lot about what to do about that.  Somehow I have to get my work "out there" in the right places so people who buy art will see it.

I felt that perhaps advertising would provide the answer, so on Wednesday January 7th  I started promoting listings on etsy.  Then yesterday, since the promotions had been running seven days, I decided to see what the results were, here is what I saw.  Thanks to the ads, my work had 3000 impressions on etsy, but only 14 of the 3000 impressions resulted in clicks, which ended up costing me $4.70,  and none of those clicks translated into sales.

Okay, it was only a week, but still, 3000 people saw my work, and only 14 of those 3000 were interested enough to even take a closer look, none of them were interested enough to buy.  To me that means if I am going to advertise, I need more targeted advertising, something that would be seen by the people interested in buying art.  I mean, a lot of etsy shoppers are looking for purses, hats, and things like that.  I need some way to target those who are wanting to buy art.  But what kind of advertising would do this?  I asked myself this question, and replied to myself that I really didn't have any idea.

(Yes I talk to myself, and answer myself, sometimes, I even argue with myself!)

This was all in the back of my mind as I looked at other blogs, and as if in answer to this question I ran across this video on Her Online World:



Well, in case you didn't have time to watch, the main points of the video were that the best sources of traffic had to  be paid for.  (That one I had kind of already figured out, organic reach is nice, but it is limited).  The next thing was that Facebook ads, TARGETED facebook ads and promoted posts are some of the best kinds of promotion.

So I decided to try an experiment.  My etsy ads ran for 7 days, I went ahead and stopped them.  I wrote a post on my Facebook Art Page announcing that one of paintings was now available in my etsy shop, and I linked to that listing in my shop, I targeted this promotion to people who were interested in collecting art and who had an interest in home decor, as well as the specific style of the painting shown in the listing.  I decided to run this ad for 7 days, and keep track of the results.  By results, I mean that I am going to be examining my etsy stats for shop views and listing views.  After the 7 days are up, I'll run more etsy based ads, then after 7 days of that I'll switch back to another facebook ad or promoted listing.  I'll record the results.

I printed up the following calendar to keep track of such things, as you can see, the first 6 days of the month are with no ads of any kind, I am also keeping track of what etsy calls "events" which is new listings or renewals, to see if they have any significant impact.   I'll be sure to update after completing this cycle a few times, so probably around the end of March, I'll update and blog my findings.

See the key up on the top of the calendar.



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Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.
 
My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!


3 comments:

  1. Your art is wonderful...and getting it " out there " is certainly the trick. I have struggled to make an income since dealing with cancer, and have begun to put some art out in the hopes of donations/survival income. The result? Many have told me how difficult it is to "make a living as an artist." I am not sure I believe that...but also haven't found the "trick" to surviving as one - yet. All the best in your journey, and cloud-making :)

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    1. Thank you, it is difficult to make a living as an artist, but there are a few who make it. I do have a "plan" in the works, in a few years when my kids have grown and moved out, I would like to open a public studio/gallery. I would offer my art and the art of a few other artists for sale, and I'd give classes where people could come alone, or in groups as a social outing, and get talked through how to produce a particular painting. There are already businesses around doing this, so I think it would work out. Also, I'd serve espresso, which would provide a bit of a steady income regardless of the art sales, I might also look into the legalities of serving wine at classes, not a lot, just a couple of glasses per person.

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  2. Aw, this was AWESOME post and thank you for sharing your calendar to let us see what happened. How are things coming along now with your Facebook ads? Have you restarted your campaign again? Let's hear an update!!

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