In one of my audio downloads “How to Market Your Website Offline“, I talked about why it’s always a good idea to have your website address on your material and where you should display it prominently. But there are some cases where it’s better not to have your website address readily apparent.

If, for example, you’re doing craft shows it’s not a good idea to have your website address on your trade show signs or anywhere in your booth. Why? Because craft shows are a sales venue. You’re there strictly to sell, and you don’t want to give people any kind of excuse not to buy from you right that second. Some customers upon seeing your website address on your trade show sign or perhaps on your business cards might think, “Well, I don’t have to buy this now, I’ll just go to the website and buy it later.” , which is what you don’t want.

Instead, if people ask you if you have a website direct them to sign up for your mailing list. Incidentally, I’ve also made a practice of not having my business cards or postcards readily accessible for the same reason. When someone asks if I have a business card, I’ll tell them to join my mailing list so I can send them updates. I reserve my business cards and postcards for those customers who buy something so they can have an easy way to contact me if they have any questions.

It’s way too easy for a potential customer to lose or throw away your business card or postcard. And it’s also way to easy for them to forget your website address. If you make a practice of gathering their information, you’re more likely to keep in contact and will have the oppportunity of making them your customer in the future.

Do people object to signing up for my mailing list instead of getting a business card? Very few…I could probably count on one hand the number of people who refused to sign up on my list because they were afraid of getting spammed. On the whole, anyone who’s really interested in your work won’t have a problem with signing up for your mailing list.

PS- Make sure that your mailing list sign up sheet has a space for people to add their email address!

PSS- If you haven’t listened to my free audio download, “How to Market Your Website Offline“, you can listen to a small excerpt here:

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To listen to the full audio, click here to subscribe my free newsletter.

In a recent blog post on the Art Biz blog there was a question about whether it’s a good idea to have Google Adsense on your website or on your blog. The reader wrote about the fact that you might be able to earn some money by offering these ads, so wasn’t that a good idea?

Now, in my opinion, if you’re using your blog or website to either promote your work or yourself, introducing Google Adsense has more drawbacks than potential pluses. Here’s what they are:

1. You’re sending traffic away from your site- If you’re busting your butt trying to encourage people to visit your website in the first place, the last thing you want to do is to send them right back out again? By introducing Google Adsense to your website, you’re essentially building traffic for someone else. Not good if the goal of your site is to promote yourself or sell your work.

2. You have no real control over what kind of ads show up- While Google Adsense can be fairly good at provide ads that match whatever content that’s on your website or blog, you may still have a situation where a questionable ad shows up because of something innocent that you post on your website. Here’s an example. I know of one blogger who blogged about her sister being diagnosed with breast cancer. So guess what type of ad showed up on her blog? Ads for breast cancer information of course, but also ads for breast enhancement as well…just because the word “breast” appeared on her blog. This lady is an abstract painter…why would she want to have ads for breast enhancement on her blog?

3. Adsense can totally distract from the look of your website or your blog- If you’ve spent the time and/or money to have a nice attractive website, why muck it up with a piece of content that you don’t have much control over. Besides the fact that to many visitors, running up on a Google Adsense while looking at an artist’s online portfolio is similar to having a salesman come up to you trying to hawk timeshares while you are trying to tour a gallery. Adsense can completely distract your visitors away from the reason why they’re on your website in the first place…to look at your art.

4. You probably won’t make much money…if any at all- People do make money off of Google ads and some people can make quite a lot of money by displaying Google Adsense. But the only way to make real money by displaying ads is to design your blog or your website specifically to gather Adsense traffic and to encourage the people to click on the ads. If you do that, then you will be taking the focus off of you and your work…and if that’s the reason you have a website, that’s exactly what you don’t want.

Bottom line…if you want to make money on your blog or on your website you need to focus more on trying to get leads and trying to sell your artwork rather than trying to get money from Adsense.

During this weekend, while I’ve been experimenting with Twitter I’ve also renewed my interest in Jott because it turns out that you can send tweets through Jott as well. Now, I wrote a blog post about this a long time ago about this service. Basically, it’s a voicemail transcription service where you simply dial in to the Jott network, speak your message, and then the service transcribes it for you and sends it to your email.

But in addition to being a great reminder service and a way to send messages to Twitter, Jott also makes a pretty great blogging tool as well. Here’s how:

For some reason, I often get ideas for blog posts in my car. And when these ideas hit me, I get my cell phone and call up Jott and use it to record my idea while I’m driving. In many cases, I’m finding myself practically dictating the entire blog post. And by the time I get home, I have my blog post in my email box ready to tweak and flesh out. The cool thing is that because I can talk a whole lot faster than I can write, I can create posts even faster than if I was sitting at a computer. And you can do this anywhere as long as you have a cell phone and good reception. During a recent trip to the grocery store I actually managed to create two or three blog posts while I was traveling and shopping.

Jott also works with both Blogger and Wordpress, so if you want to skip the email box and post your message directly on your blog, you simply link your Jott account to your blog account. Then you can Jott your message to your blog.

Now, if you’re going to use Jott for blogging, here are a couple of tips:

1. Speak slowly- You need to remember to speak slowly and distinctly so that the people transcribing your message will be able to understand what you’re saying. The transcription service on Jott is very good but it’s not perfect. So be especially careful if you’re posting your message directly to your blog. And you may want to check your message on your blog once you get near a computer.

2. Make sure your cell reception is good- You also want to make sure that you have a nice clear cell phone reception. Again that will also help the people transcribing your message to transcribe it accurately.

3. Create a series of Jotts for long posts- Remember that Jott records messages for up to about 30 seconds. If you have a long blog post you probably have to dictate it through a series of Jotts instead of one long message. So you may want restrict posting directly to your blog for short messages and then email long blog posts to your email box.

So, if you don’t have a Jott account, you can sign up for a free one here and get Jotting and blogging! (and send me a tweet too!)

P.S.- I dictated this blog post using Jott

Are you having trouble keeping up with your blogging while you’re on the road?  Then something like a service like jott.com can help you keep up with your blogging while you’re on the road. I’ll discuss how you can do this in a later post. listen

Powered by Jott

Talk about serendipity! Marketing Sherpa has an article on how to use Twitter to market yourself and your company. Some the tips include:

Step #1. Observe first- Make sure you understand the way people use the site before bombarding it with messages.

Step #2. Think about the content- Think about what would be of value to your customers or what feedback you’d like to get.

Step #5. Follow those you know- A good way to begin building followers is to search for users you know.

Step #6. Follow those who follow you- It’s part of Twitter culture to follow those who follow you. It grows virally.

The articles goes on with even more tips and advice on how to use Twitter. You can check it out here, but you should check it out pretty soon…access to the article will end on May 23rd.