There is a great discussion on the LinkedIn Art Business forum about getting people to sign up for your email newsletter. One of the artists asked about what kind of incentives he should use to encourage people to sign up for his list.

A good, useful incentive is a great way to encourage folks who may be reluctant to get yet more email to sign up for your list. A great incentive must be something that your prospects and customers find useful and would be willing to part with their email address for. The incentive for my mailing list for this blog an MP3 audio download called “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic to Your Art Website“. The incentive for my jewelry website is exclusive jewelry articles and entry into a monthly giveaway drawing.

BUT, sometimes the problem may not be your incentive. After taking a look at the questioner’s sign up form, I realized that part of the problem may be that visitors just aren’t seeing the sign up form itself. There’s three big ways that you may be making your email list sign up form “invisible” on your website:

1. burying the form on a single web page of your website
2. burying the form on the bottom of your web page
3. not making your sign up form stand out

In order for people to sign up for your mailing list, they need to actually find the form. Some people create a “Newsletter” page on their website and they put that form only on that single page. This means that visitors have to think about clicking on that link in order to sign up for your newsletter. What’s more effective is to have your sign up form on every page of your website or blog, so no matter where your visitor is on your web page, they have a reminder to sign up for your newsletter.

You also want to place that sign up form close to the top of your web page instead of the bottom. People’s attention spans tend to get shorter the further down the go on your web page. And some visitors may never make it to the bottom of your web page. So you want to make sure that one of the first things that people see when they land on every page of your web site is your mailing list.

Another thing that will help increase the visibility of your sign up form is to add design elements like graphics, colors, and larger fonts to make your form stand out. Compare this plain form:

With this dressed up form:

Which one are you more likely to see and respond to? If you have the design skills you can dress up your form like this, but most email list services have sign up templates that can make dressing up your sign up form easy. Aweber is the service I use for my list and they have hundreds of different form templates and you can easily use their form designer to create your own.

So if you’re not getting the email subscribers that you think that you should be getting, take a look at how you’re displaying your forms and see if you can make them more visible.

If you want more information on how to either start or manage an email list and newsletter for your own art business, you can get a free copy of my ebook, “How to Plan and Start a Great Email Newsletter“. You’ll learn how to plan your newsletter, which services to use, and how to get subscribers. You can get your copy for free here.

Yesterday, I finally got the time to sit down and do a renovation of my Facebook page for my jewelry. Here’s what the front page looks like now:

My goal for my new Facebook page was to make it a place where people on Facebook could have a more engaging way to learn more about my jewelry instead of simply going directly to the page wall and seeing a steady stream of news. This way, new people to my Facebook page can now get a quick introduction to my jewelry. They can also go to individual pages to learn more about each jewelry line:

And of course visitors to my Facebook page can also sign up for my mailing list through my Aweber mailing list service:

But the change that I’m most excited about is the addition of a fully functioning mini-store…directly on my Facebook page!

One of the questions I normally get when I’m talking to artists about Facebook about how to use Facebook to increase direct sales. While Facebook is still more of a marketing tool that allows you to find new customers, engage with existing customers, and a way to get people more acquainted with you and your work, there are services and apps out there that can turn your Facebook page into a way to sell to customers directly from Facebook.

In most cases you don’t even need to have a web site. You simply set up your Facebook page, choose the appropriate service or app (short for “application”) and you’re ready to sell. Some Facebook ecommerce apps are free, other apps may charge you monthly fee, while others may charge you per transaction or every time you sell something from your store.

The ecommerce service I used for my Facebook store is called TabJuice. The service lets me setting a fully functioning ecommerce store directly on my Facebook page complete with inventory management, shipping and tax calculations, promotion codes, and multiple online payment options. They’ve even included social networking buttons on each product so that visitors can “Like” or “Recommend” individual items in the store to their friends. The service is free…at least for now…and so far it appears to be easy to set up and maintain.

There are other services and apps out there that you try out for own Facebook page:

• North Social’s Show and Sell- Allows you to create a “mini-store” of up to 10 featured items on your Facebook page. Includes Facebook social features (share and comments) for products. Buy now buttons link back to your own ecommerce store.
• LunarMods- This services helps you to build an ecommerce presence on your Facebook page. Includes customization, branding, and payment options through Amazon and PayPal. Starter plan has no monthly fee, but has a 50 item limit and charges a 5% transaction fee. Other monthly plans also available.
• Molkuo- Allows you to build a standalone Facebook store or you can use this service to link to an existing ecommerce store. Payment processing through Paypal. Has a $19 monthly fee with a free 7 day trial.
• Payvment- Allows you to create a Facebook-based or a standalone ecommerce presence. Includes unlimited products, product management, social promotion tools, sales analytics, and inclusion in the Payvment online shopping mall. Buyers can use all major credit cards, PayPal, or electronic check for purchases. Free and premium plans available.
• Ecwid- Free service that allows you to add a shopping cart system to your Facebook page or any website or blog or other social networking site. Includes storefront customization, product management, Facebook sharing, and basic affiliate tools. Use PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net or a variety of other payment processors to handle transactions.

If you’re interested in adding a mini-store with a few items or a full blown ecommerce store with a full inventory to your own Facebook page, give some of these services and apps a try!

And if you don’t have a Facebook page, now is a great time to start building one. If you need some guidance on how to build a Facebook page similar to mine, check out my training videos, “Facebook® for Small Business Marketing- Facebook® Page Secrets“. You can have your own Facebook page set up in a couple hours…even if you don’t know programming or have your own web page! Check it out here.

At a local craft show a few weekends ago, I saw a cool thing on one of the flyers of the local exhibitors:

One mistake that many artists make when they are using social media like Facebook to market their business is thinking that all of their marketing needs to be online. Nothing can be further from the truth! Remember that even if your customers are online, it doesn’t mean that that’s where they’ll meet you. If you have a Facebook page, there are plenty of places off the Internet where you can promote it. Here are a few examples:

Receipts
Invoices
Magnetic car signs
Business cards
Postcards
Flyers
Store signage
Product packaging
Shipping inserts
QR codes

The more places people can find you the more likely you’ll be found. Remember to mix things up!

Want to learn more about how to market your business with Facebook? Click here to learn more about my Facebook for Small Business Marketing training.

While I’m not typically a horror fan, one of my new favorite shows is “The Walking Dead” from AMC. What’s it about? Well…zombies. Or rather a group of survivors struggling to survive after the entire world turns into zombies. What I like about the show of course aren’t the zombies, but the survivors and the different ways they cope with having their entire world and lives turned upside down.

One of the characters that’s quickly become a favorite both of mine and of the Walking Dead fandom in general is a rugged, hunter & tracker named Daryl Dixon. When he first appeared in the show, he appeared to be a younger copy of his racist, redneck big brother Merle who was left for dead early last season. As time went on he’s proven to be a very valuable member of the group of survivors who’s able to hunt, track, and kill zombies with ease…and has a hidden spot of compassion for the members of his group.

In last week’s episode one of the children of the group when missing after an encounter with a large band of zombies. During the search the mother of the missing child started expressing doubt as to whether they would ever find her child alive and Daryl turned to her and said that they would find her and that everything will be just fine. He then turned back to the trail they were following and said, “Am I the only one who’s Zen around here?”.

After having a good chuckle about how ANYONE could possibly be zen in a world where flesh eating zombies could literally come around the corner or out of the bushes and try to eat you, I began to think about the concept of being zen when your world is much less than. As an artist trying to make a living by doing what you love, there’s plenty of things that can leave you feeling less than zen. The “zombies” we encounter aren’t the flesh eating kind, but rather the spirit and soul-eating kind. Rejection, cash flow problems, technical difficulties, and creative burnout are just a few of the spirit and soul-eatting “zombies” that artists encounter in their creative business. And they are just a part of what you will encounter when you decide to take that step into the world of creative business. It’s how you choose to fight them that can make the difference.

You can choose to let these difficulties suck your soul dry or you can refuse to like these problems get you down. It’s all a matter of choosing your attitude…choosing to be zen.

Later on that day when I was struggling with an issue that left me feeling un-zen-like, I thought about Daryl’s words and decided that if he could stay zen when the whole world has gone to hell, there’s no reason I could stay zen about a missing sale from my website I was trying to straighten out.

And that attitude has made all the difference that day…

Halloween is next week…and the holidays will be here before you know it. If you are selling your work online, the next few weeks could be very profitable for you if you know how to take advantage. Here are 5 tips that you can use to help you increase your online sales.

1. Start Getting Prepared Now- According to the National Retail Federation, the beginning of the holiday shopping season starts on November 1st. Forget about waiting until Black Friday or even Cyber Monday. If you want to take advantage of the holiday shopping season the time to start preparing is now.

You can read the rest of the article by signing up for the Crafted Webmaster Newsletter for free here: http://www.craftedweb.com/subscribe.html. If you subscribe now, you can get my free audio download, “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website” and get 10 powerful tips on how to increase traffic to your art website.

If you are a Facebook user you may have seen this rumor make the rounds this weekend:

Fortunately this rumor is NOT true. In fact this isn’t the first time that this rumor has made the rounds…it seems to appear every time Facebook makes some significant changes to how the profiles operates. Last week…yet again…Facebook made some pretty significant changes to how you can control how people can see what’s on your profile and how your News Feeds work. And whenever there are changes on Facebook, this rumor tends to pop out and circulate once more.

While there are some social networking services like LinkedIn that do charge you for premium features, there’s very little reason for Facebook to do so. Facebook makes plenty of money through ads, gaming, and by selling it’s own internal currency, “Facebook Credits”. About $1.86 billion in revenue in fact. So Facebook isn’t hurting by making it’s profiles free for users, in fact they would likely hurt their revenue if they started charging people.

So what does this mean to you?

Well, if you use Facebook, then you will be able to still do so for free…at least for the foreseeable future. But these changes to Facebook and these revenue figures mean a lot more than that if you just look past the obvious.

Out of the $1.86 billion that Facebook made in revenue, about $750 million of that came from large corporations like Coca-Cola or Procter and Gamble. This means that the big boys are taking Facebook seriously as a part of their marketing.

So if the big boys are taking Facebook seriously, are you? No, you don’t have to spend $750 million in ads to market on Facebook. In fact, in most cases you don’t have to spend a dime to market your artwork on Facebook. Here are a few ways you can get started:

1. Build a presence on Facebook- The easiest way to do this is to create your own Facebook page. This is very different than your personal profile. A Facebook page allows you to build a business presence on Facebook. You’ll be able to display your work, market your business…you can even sell from your page.

2. Build a fan base on Facebook- Once you have your page up, the next step is to build your base of customers and fans on that page. You do that by sharing content, interacting with your fans, and providing them with things that your customers find valuable.

3. Get them off of Facebook- Lots of fans on Facebook are great. Lots of Facebook fans visiting your website, online store or blog is even better. Facebook is a starting point and building your Facebook presence is all about going to where the people already are on the internet. There are over 500 million active users currently on Facebook today. Once you build that Facebook presence, your ultimate goal should be to get a fraction of those folks to visit your website, blog, or store.

So that in a nutshell is how you can started using Facebook to market your artwork. The basic strategy is pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of little details that’s important to know to market yourself effectively. On October 5th, I will be holding a 90-minute webinar training called “Facebook for Small Business Marketing- Facebook Page Secrets” where you will learn how to use Facebook effectively to promote your art business.

Whether you already have some type of presence on Facebook or if you are a total newbie, by the end of the 90 minutes of information packed training you will know how to use Facebook as a powerful marketing tool. If you have a presence on Facebook or want to learn how to build one, visit the “Facebook for Small Business Marketing ” registration page to learn more.

If you’re active on the internet whether you’re blogging, have an email account, or you have or are building your website, or you have accounts on social networking websites, chances are that you have a lot of usernames and passwords that you need to keep track of.

It’s not unusual to have up to a dozen different usernames and passwords that you need to keep track of in order to go about your usual business online, whether these be passwords to your Twitter account, your online banking account, or your email account. In order to keep up with the password overload, some folks try to simplify things by using a very easy to remember password like a pet’s name, children or spouse’s name, street address or simply using the word “password”. Using password like these are extremely bad ideas because hackers know these are the most common ways that people develop a password…and if you mention your spouse’s name, or the name of your pet, or your children’s names on your blog or on any social networking websites, then that’s the first step a hacker has in breaking into your account.

And yes, hackers also know that people often use the word “password” as a password for their accounts…along with abcd, 1234, or abcd1234.

Another way that people try to manage their passwords is by using the same login information for all of their account to make it easier to remember. This is also an extremely bad idea. Why? Well, if someone figures out the password to your Facebook account, then that also means they know the password for your email, websites, blog, or even financial accounts if you’ve used the same username and password for all of those accounts.

The best way to secure your online accounts is to create usernames and passwords that use a combination of upper and lowercase letter, numbers, and symbols like !@#% and spaces and dashes. You should also use a different username and password for every account you create online…that way you don’t give hackers the keys to the kingdom if they manage to figure out the login information to one account.

So that leaves the question…how do you manage all of this information without forgetting? An old school way of doing it is to write down all of your information and storing it in a safe place. A slightly more manageable way is to store your login information in a file or a spread sheet and keep in it a safe place like an external hard drive or thumb drive.

Both of these methods can get rather tedious though and can slow you down to look up information at each website you need to log in to. A better way is using password management software like RoboForms or Lastpass. These services allows you to store all of your passwords in one place either as software you install on your computer like RoboForms or through a plugin on your web browser like Lastpass. All of your passwords are locked by a master password, so the only thing you really need to remember is your master password…just remember to make that password a good one!

Lastpass has a both a free and a paid premium service. You can check out both here. You can also check out RoboForm here.

A few months ago in my newsletter, I talked about the mobile web and how new technology like QR codes is going to start becoming a popular way to market your business and website.

You might have already seen a QR barcode without knowing it. Basically it’s a square bar code that looks like this:

The code you see above you will take you to an older blog post called “Website Marketing: Chasing the Magic Bullet“. People can scan these codes using a mobile device that has scanning or picture taking capabilities like a mobile phone, iPhone, or iPod. Once you scan the code you can either be sent to a web page, purchase a product, get a discount on a purchase, sign up for someone’s Twitter account, or learn more information about something…all by scanning a code!

These codes are beginning to pop up everywhere…on signs, on advertisements, in stores, in magazines and as as mobile devices start getting smarter their use will increase. So now is the time to start experimenting with these codes.

Here’s a great video by Don Crowther that has 21 great ideas on how to use these codes to help build your business. See how many of these ideas you can easily implement in your own business:

Take a look at your website and ask yourself these questions:

• Have I updated or upgraded my website in the past year?
• Is it easy for me to update my own website?
• Can customers easily contact me in ways other than email or a contact form?
• Can customers easily leave feedback, reviews, testimonials, etc about my artwork?
• Can customers easily share my website with their friends on Twitter, Facebook, etc?

If you’ve answered “no” to any of these questions (or worst yet, you don’t even have a website), then you may be the owner of an “old school” website.

As early as four or five years ago, you could get away with simply put up a simple website that only included a few pictures of your artwork and some contact information and call it good. Now…not so much. Today’s visitors are expecting to do a lot more with websites than just to find out your email address or your phone number.

To be an effective marketing tool for today’s internet user, your website needs to be more than just an electronic version of a phone book listing. The way people are using the internet is changing…so your website also needs to change too.

You can read the rest of the article by signing up for the Crafted Webmaster Newsletter for free here: http://www.craftedweb.com/subscribe.html. If you subscribe now, you can get my free audio download, “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website” and get 10 powerful tips on how to increase traffic to your art website.

A couple days ago, I read an interesting article called the death of the “Forward to a Friend”. It was about the waning usefulness of the “Email to a Friend” feature in email newsletters. This particular feature was pretty standard on websites back in the early days of the Internet where you attached this button to your website so that people can “email” a page to a friend. If you’re using a email service for your mailing list like Aweber, this is also a feature that’s pretty standard in email newsletters.

So why is this article calling for the death of “Forward to a Friend”? Well, as long this feature has been around, there are pretty serious flaws with it:

• It can be a multi-step process. Forwarding to a friend requires you to click a button, add some email addresses, and then click the button again. It can be a pain.
• There’s a trust issue. Most people don’t like sharing their own email addresses, much less the addresses of their friends.

With the popularity of social networking services, another type of sharing called “Share With Your Network” is becoming more popular with not only sharing web pages, but only things like email newsletters. The benefits of sharing your newsletter on Facebook or Twitter include:

• You reach more people at a time. Instead of subscribers forwarding your newsletter to just a handful of people at a time, sharing your newsletter on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn potentially puts it in front of possibly hundreds of people.
• It’s easier to share. Sharing your newsletter on Facebook or Twitter requires you to only click on a button or two.
• It overcomes the trust issue. Since the subscriber isn’t sharing any information with anyone, then sharing your email newsletter on a social network seems “safer”.

While I don’t call for the death of the “Forward to Friend” feature on email newsletters, I do think it’s a good idea to include these features in your email newsletter and your email marketing. Even if you’re not on a social network yourself, you can still use them in order to help spread the news about your email newsletter. Here’s a few ideas:

1. Use an email service that has social networking features built in- Email list management list services like Aweber and Constant Contact gives you the ability to add social networking buttons to your email newsletters that makes it easy for your subscribers to share your newsletter on their favorite networks. If you’re trying to manage your email using a service that don’t have this feature, or even worse, you’re using your computer’s email program to manage your list, consider moving your list to one of these services.

2. Blog about your newsletter- One of the things I do to promote my newsletter is that I include an excerpt of my newsletter in a blog post. Each blog post includes buttons that allow people to tweet the post, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, or StumbleUpon. The blog post is also automatically shared on my Facebook profile and Facebook page using an app called “NetworkedBlogs“.

3. Regularly link to and tweet about your newsletter- If you are on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, be sure to link to and share your newsletter sign up page on a regular basis. This will remind your older followers that you have a newsletter and let your new followers know that they need to subscribe.

I talked about more ways to integrate social networking with your email marketing a webinar I hosted earlier this month called, “Email List Building and Marketing Secrets “. If you missed the live webinar, you can still get the replay here.

Now your turn! Do you use social networking to help promote your email list? How do you do it? Leave a comment and share your ideas!