The video runs about 17 minutes, but there are some really neat changes to Wordpress that everyone who works with it should know about…check it out!

1. More and steadier traffic- I use Google Analytics to keep track of the traffic on all of my websites. One of the cool things about Google Analytics (other than the fact that it’s completely free) is that it allows you to compare your traffic over time, see where your traffic is coming from, and to sort your data so you’re able to really see what’s going on with your websites or blog.

One thing I noticed since starting this challenge is that I’ve had more traffic and it’s a lot steadier. All websites and blogs have days were there is more activity than others, but I’ve found that daily blogging had contributed to making those spikes and drops in traffic more even. Plus, as a result of participating in the blogging challenge, I’ve found a steady increase in traffic as the blogging challenge went on.

2. More blog post ideas- It seems to be true that the more you write, the easier it is to write. One of the things that causes people to stop blogging is that they run out of ideas on what to blog about. But since the blogging challenge forces you to write every day, you can’t use the excuse of writer’s block to get out of writing that daily blog post. And I’ve found that after a few days of powering through and just getting that blog post written that it got easier to come up with ideas. So even if you don’t post to your blog every day, writing every day seems to keep the flow of creativity going.

3. More newsletter signups- Here is one of the more important results that I’ve noticed from the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. There has been a definite increase in newsletter signups. While an increase in traffic and more blogging ideas are important, one of the most valuable things that your blog can do is to help you increase your mailing list. Since I’ve started the challenge, signups to my newsletter has doubled. This happened without any changes to blog’s design, advertising, or any changes other than the fact that I’ve posted to the blog every day. Now that’s a powerful change!

So now…there are 10 more days to go…stay tuned!

1. It’s a great way to get in the routine of blogging everyday- I’ve written about this before. The most effective way to blog is to do it on a regular basis. Even if you don’t publish a blog post everyday, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of writing everyday.

2. It’s a great way to get back on track with your blogging- I’ll be the first to admit it…blogging can be hard. The setting up of a blog isn’t hard. If you have a computer, an internet connection, and five minutes you can set up a blog. The hard part is the actual blogging part. I’ve been writing in this particular blog since 2006 and doing it on a regular basis is not easy. Work, projects, art, and life in general conspires to get in the way. And a lot of times it does. And sometimes it takes a special challenge in order to get you back on track.

3. It’s a great way to get your blogging creativity back- Yes, life can get in the way of your blogging. And sometimes the thing that gets in the way is yourself. Blogging burnout happens…you feel like you don’t have anything else to write about. This is especially true if you’ve been blogging for a long time. You feel like you’ve run out of things to write about. But a good challenge forces you to dig a bit deeper.

So…blogging challenge Day 1. Since this is the first ever blogging challenge I’ve participated in, I’ll report weekly on how this challenge effects my blogging. And if you’re interested in joining the challenge yourself, here is where you learn the rules and sign up!

1. A domain name- a domain name for your blog whether it’s a separate name from your main website or a subdomain of your website (eg: yourwebsite.com/blog) is an important part of branding your blog. Even if you are using a blogging service like Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress.com (NOT Wordpress.org…you can find out how they Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org differ here), you should still get your own domain name for your blog. It looks so much more professional than yourblog.blogspot.com.

2. A custom banner- While the generic banners you get with your blog templates work just fine, you can dramatically upgrade the look and professionalism of your blog by using a custom banner. If you’re not any great shakes with Photoshop or Gimp, then you can hire someone to do a professional banner for your blog for about $50 or less.

3. A sign up box for your mailing list- If you have a mailing list for customers or potential buyers, make it easy for them to sign up for your mailing list by putting your sign up form on the sidebar of your blog…even if you already have one on your website. If you don’t have a mailing list, you can learn to set one up by getting a FREE copy of my article series “How to Plan and Start a Great Email Newsletter “.

4. RSS subscription buttons- A lot of people like to read blogs through a feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines. Make it easy for them to keep up with your blog by putting on some RSS feed buttons or links on the sidebar of your blog. If your readers prefer email, consider using a service like Feedblitz or Aweber to deliver your blog posts via email. And please remember to offer full feeds to these folks as well.

5. Links to your website and other social networking sites- If you have a main website or an Etsy or Artfire store, you definitely need to have links to those places on your blog. If you are an Etsy user, there is a free widget that you can place on your blog that show pictures of the items that you have in your store. Be sure to add that widget to your blog. Also, if you are a Twitter user, have an account on LinkedIn, or have a Facebook fan page, you should also have links or widgets that link to those places so people can follow you or fan you.

6. Share links- Finally, make your blog easy to share by adding social networking buttons so that people can easily share your blog posts to their friends on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. You can use a service like Feedburner’s FeedFlare, AddThis, or Share This to add these buttons to your blog. Or if you’re running Wordpress on your website you can use the Sexy Bookmarks plugin.

These tips came from my free e-course “50 Blogging Tips for Artists “. To get more free blogging tips like the ones I just shared simply click here to sign up.

So your turn! What additional bits do you put on your blog to make it more effective? Leave me a comment and let me know!

The short explanation is that Wordpress.com is a blogging service, where you sign up for and account and start blogging. Wordpress.org is where you download the actual blogging software to run on your website.

But what does that mean exactly? Is one choice better than the other? Is one easier than the other? Which one is best for you? To help cut the confusion, I made a video that takes you through a tour of both Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org, points out the differences between the two, and gives you some guidelines on which to choose. You can watch the video below:

What’s the difference between the two? A full feed shows your entire blog post in your subscriber’s feed reader. So people that subscribe to your blog via a feed reader don’t have to visit your blog in order to read your blog posts.

On the other hand, a partial feed only provides an excerpt of your blog post, perhaps the first couple sentences or the first paragraph in your subscriber’s feed reader. In order to read the rest of the blog post, your subscriber then must visit your blog to read the rest of the post.

So what’s the best choice for your blog? This is a question almost as old as blogging itself. At first glance, providing a partial feed to those that subscribe to your blog through a feed reader seems like the best choice because that then makes people visit your blog.

However, most popular blogs provide full feeds instead of partial feeds. A lot of savvy blog readers HATE partial feeds. I myself don’t subscribe to blogs that provide a partial feed…unless the content is really, really, REALLY good, and I unsubscribe from those that start doing so. A lot of blog readers I know feel the same way.

Why do a lot of blog readers dislike partial feeds? Think of it this way…if I’m taking the step to subscribe to your blog feed, I’m telling you two things:

1. I’m interested in what you’re blogging about and I want to keep updated
2. I prefer to read your blog through my feed reader (because it’s convenient, it saves me time, etc)

By providing only a partial feed to your blog you’re making it inconvenient for your subscribers to read content that they’re already interested in reading in the way they choose to read it. Putting up roadblocks to reading your blog is not a way to encourage loyal readers.

Okay, so how do you encourage those who read your blog to visit your website if they’re getting your content through their feed readers?

1. Offer an email newsletter. RSS subscribers are still pretty anonymous…you don’t know who they are and you can’t contact them directly. Not so with a traditional email newsletter. If you also offer great content through email, those RSS subscribers will be happy to join your email list.

2. Give your RSS readers exclusive offers to visit your website. If you’re running Wordpress, there are several plugins you can install that allows you to attach a special signature to your blog posts that only your RSS feed subscribers you can see. This is a great way to make your RSS subscribers feel welcome and to place special offers that encourage them to visit your website. One RSS signature plugin that I’ve used with my Wordpress blogs is called “Feed Footer“. You can check it out here.

3. Give your RSS subscribers a reason to visit your website in each blog post. At the end of your blog posts, provide a “call to action” to encourage those that are reading your blog through an RSS feed reader to come visit your blog. You can invite your readers to leave comments, sign up for your mailing list, sign up for a giveaway or contest, or participate in a poll. Just because these folks prefer to get your blog content through their feed readers doesn’t mean that they won’t visit your website if there is compelling reason to do so. Provide that in as many blog posts as possible.

So what’s your opinion? Do you provide full or partial feeds for your blog? Why or why not? Leave a comment and share your opinion!

Why is resurrecting your old content a good idea? Isn’t that just being repetitive? Not really. Unless you’re just starting out and your blog only has a couple of posts to read, people aren’t going to read through every single post you write. So refreshing an old blog post is a great way fresh sets of eyes and another chance for it to be circulated to interested readers. Plus you can also encourage fresh traffic to the older parts of your blog and that’s great for readers and your search engine rankings.

Here’s three ways you can breathe life into an old blog post

1. Follow up or update- Is there an old blog post that you can follow up on or update? Maybe you wrote about some issue or a news topic in the past. If it was about an ongoing issue, you can refer to you old blog post and write an update or a follow up.

2. Expand an old post- Is there an old blog post that you wrote that you can expand upon or turn into a series? Or perhaps you can put a new spin on a topic that you wrote about already.

3. Make a collection of past related posts- Have you written a bunch of blog posts around a similar issue or topic? How about rounding up these blog posts and making them into a collection? Simply write a brief introduction, provide the links to your old blog posts and your done! The great thing about these roundups is that they often make great resources that readers love to pass along and refer to over and over again!

These suggestions came from a past show I did on Blog Talk Radio called “How to Get Out of a Blogging Slump“. If you want more tips on this, you can listen here.

Also, if you’re thinking about starting a blog or if you already have a blog and you want to be more effective, sign up for my FREE e-course “50 Blogging Tips for Artists“. Get a free tip in your email every day that will help make your blogging life easier. Sign up now!

“My Head is Exploding”

Now considering that this was a blog that was about marketing and selling handmade items, I paused to wonder what in the heck THAT title was about. If was any other blog, I would have went straight to the “Mark as Read” button (the equivalent of the delete button), but decided to take a quick peek to see what the post was all about. It turned out to be a pretty good post on what to avoid when marketing your handcrafted items.

This minor occurrence in my blog reading day points to a problem that a lot of artists inflict on their blogs and their readers. The “Mystery Meat” Blog Title. That is, a blog title that’s so obscure that you can’t tell what the rest of the blog post is about. While this type of titles might seem clever while you’re writing them, you’re actually cheating your blog out of some very real benefits.

1. You’re missing out on possible readership- I read a lot of blogs and sometimes I get backed up on my reading. So when I’m in catch up mode, I’m relying on the blog title to help me make the decision as to whether I’m going to read the rest of the post or not. In most cases, if I can’t tell by the title what the blog post is going to be about, I’ll pass it over without reading it. And there’s plenty of other readers that do the same.

If you want to make things easier on your readers and also encourage them to actually read what you write, think of post titles that give them an idea of what they’re going to read. Your blog post title is a “mini teaser”. It’s the first thing that your readers will see and it should be something that will make them want to read more.

Won’t an unusual title encourage people to read the rest of the post? Yes it can, but you have to write these very carefully. Make them too vague or unusual and busy readers won’t bother.

2. You’re missing out on SEO potential- If vague titles are confusing to your human readers, then it’s also equally confusing to your non-human readers. I’m talking about the search engine robots and spiders that visit your blog so they can index your post for search engine results. And the most important piece of information they get from your blog post is….guess what? Your blog post title.

Remember that it’s the job of search engines to find the most relevant content on the Internet and organize it in an easy to find manner so that if someone searches for “how to market handmade items” into Google or Yahoo! or Bing, then they’ll get all of the most relevant websites that discuss this topic. And to a search engine spider, “My Head is Exploding” has nothing to do with that topic. Sure you might get listed…but it won’t be on the first page of search results. And that’s the spot that you’re aiming for.

3. You’re making it harder to share- If you’re on Twitter, which of the following tweets are you more likely to click on?

“5 Ways to Improve Your Etsy Sales Now”

or

“My Head is Exploding”

If you’re like most people, you’ll probably pick the first tweet. It’s to the point and you have a good idea of what you’re going to get when you click on the link. So what does this have to do with blog post titles? If you’re including some type of sharing link like “Share This”, “Tweet This”, or “Add This” at the end of each of your blog posts, that’s great because you’re making it easier for your readers to pass your post on to other interested readers.

But! You’re tripping them up by using a mystery meat title for your blog post. Remember that most of these tools automatically uses the the title of the blog post as the basis of the tweet or message you’re sharing. So if your blog title is vague or misleading, your reader will either:

a) Share your blog post as is and the vague title will result in less clicks and less sharing, or

b) Rewrite the automatically generated message into something more appealing…which costs them a bit of time and effort

If you want people to share your blog posts, make it as easy as possible for them to simply click on “Share This” and go…without getting them to rearrange the title. And a more relevant title will encourage more people to pass the sharing along too!

So what do you think? How do you come up with your blog post titles? Leave a comment and let us know!

One of the strategies you can use in order to keep up with blogging is by writing and scheduling posts ahead of time. So if you know that you won’t be able to publish a post at your usual time because you’re busy, traveling, or that you’re going to be away from your computer, you can simply write your post and scheduled it to publish in the future.

Most blogging software allows you to do this, it’s simply a matter of setting the publish date ahead of time.

If you’re using Blogger, you can schedule your post by changing the post date, which is located under “Post Options” when you’re writing or editing a post.

Simply click on the “Post Options” link and then fill out the date and time you want your post to be published.

On older versions of Wordpress, you schedule your post by changing the “Post Timestamp“, located on the right hand side of the “Write” or “Edit” post screen.

On the latest version of Wordpress, you can schedule your post by clicking on the “Edit” link beside the “Publish Immediately” setting on the right hand side of the “Add New Post” or “Edit” screen.

Theb simply change publish date to the date and time that you want your post to be published.

Interested in more blogging tips? Sign up for my new free e-course “50 Blogging Tips for Artists “. Get a free tip in your email every day that will help make your blogging life easier. Click here to get your tips now!

If you’re not familiar with the concept of being tagged, it’s a fun little game played among bloggers. It’s a good way to for your readers to learn a little bit more about you. Plus, it’s also a fun way to introduce yourself to some of the other bloggers you admire, and maybe spread some links around.

Sorry, couldn’t resist making this into an object lesson .

To keep the tag going, here are the rules that needs to be followed.

1. You have to link to your tagger and list the rules of the tagging
2. You must share 7 facts about yourself (unusual facts are fine. how unusual and…ahem…personal you get is up to you)
3. You must tag 7 bloggers at the end of your post by leaving their names and links to their blogs
4. Inform your 7 victims…I mean 7 bloggers that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs.

Alright here comes the seven facts about myself:

1. I read a lot and I often read the books I love until they become sad little piles of tattered pages. You can usually find me by following the path of fallen pages about the house.

2. Even though I can literally read a book until it disintergrates into dust, I can’t bring myself to write in one…not even in pencil. I often back away in horror when I open a book with writing in it.

3. People seem to have a hard time figuring out my ethnicity. People have often mistaken me for Hawaiian, Filipino, Hispanic, Indian, Native American, among others. Now when people ask me I just say I’m a citizen of the world.

4. I originally went to school to be an art therapist and got as far as getting a masters degree in counseling. Doing web pages and jewelry were just hobbies since I knew I would never be able to making a living doing either one. ::eyeroll::

5. I love chocolate! Unfortunately it doesn’t love me back as I’ve recently developed an allergy that causes some pretty painful sores on my tongue after I eat it. But some things are worth suffering for.

6. I appear to have a tendency to remember useless facts. My family and friends call me Johnny Number 5 and Nikipedia.

7. I hate (translation: scared of) spiders…though I’ll leave them alone if they stay put in a corner where I can see them. If they start commuting or look as though they’ll end up on my face in the middle of the night, all bets are off.

Sooo….who’s in my blog reader?

1. Modish- A great blog about indie artists I’ve been reading since 1996. I did an interview blogger Jena Coray earlier this year.

2. Assemblog of Michael deMeng- This is Michael deMeng’s blog who is assemblage artist extraordinaire.

3. Artrepreneur; The Collision of Art and Business- This is the blog of polymer clay artist Judy Dunn. She has some great craft business tips and stories.

4. Midge’s Mind- The blog of jewelry artist Margaux Lange. She makes cool jewelry out of Barbie and Ken doll parts.

5. Heart Handmade- One of the place I like to go for see who’s who out in the world of handmade. This blog features handmade artists, handmade products, and a business tip or two.

6. Greenjeans- The blog of Brooklyn shop and gallery, Greenjeans. Their blog is a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the world of indie craft in Brooklyn, NY.

7. Gary Vaynerchuk- This is a blog I’ve recently just started following. It’s the video blog of wine enthusiast and personal branding guy Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s the man behind Wine Library TV and was featured in Seth Godin’s newest book, Tribes. He’s got some pretty interesting business building videos and speaks in this great (New York? Jersey?) accent. It’s sort of like listening to Joe Pesci wax philosophical about branding.

We’ll now return back to our regularly scheduled program.

Smashing Magazine has just posted a review of 15 desktop blogging tools. You can read the full review here.

Since I’m a Mac person, the software I use to manage my blogs is Ecto. I’ve been using it for a couple years, so I easily got my $18 worth. I just love the fact that I can manage all of my blogs in one place. I even use Ecto to store unfinished posts or ideas for new posts. If you blog a lot or if you have more than one blog, you should consider checking out one of these tools.

The Daily Blog Tips blog, has a great post called 10 Essential Legal Points for Bloggers, that gives you a brief overview on what legal points bloggers should be aware of.

I also have a previous blog post about copyright law as it pertains to bloggers and blogging, so if you’ve missed that post be sure to check that out as well.

And speaking of blogs, I’ll be talking a bit about blogs along with my friendly SEO expert Colin Martin, tonight on my first ever teleseminar. Blogs are a great way to bring traffic to a static website or online store, so Colin will be talking all about how that works tonight at 8 p.m. You can find out more about the teleseminar here.

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

Powered by Jott

If it’s possible to keep your old blog active, consider keeping it available after you’ve switched over to your new service. Why? Because if you’ve had your old blog for any length of time, it’s likely that your blog posts are already indexed in search engines. Plus, it’s also possible that someone has either bookmarked or linked to your blog posts. If you delete your blog…all of those links and search engine results will just go poof, and visitors to the old blog won’t know where to find you…which is something you don’t want.

Instead, write a note on your old blog that redirects people to your new blog…so that way when people stumble onto your old posts, they can find your new posts. An added bonus is that your old blog counts as nice external link to your new blog, which can help you in search engine results.

I’m a blog feedaholic. I just took a quiz that told me so. But, it just told me something that I already knew. I currently subscribe to about 49 feeds ranging over lot of different topics. In the past it was closer to 110 feeds. How did I keep track of it all? I tell you, it wasn’t easy. As the number of feeds grew, I had trouble keeping up with the posts it sometimes took between a 45 minutes to an hour and a half to keep up with the reading. I’ve finally got control over my feeds using some simple techniques. While you may not have 110 or even 49 feeds to read every day, if your blog reading time is limited, you can use these techniques to catch up and keep up.

1. Prune the feeds- The first step is to just cut down the sheer number of blog subscriptions. If a blog isn’t educational, informative, or entertaining you should axe it. Here’s how I decided to get rid of a blog feed:

* Blogs that posts too often- one blog actually made 15 to 20 long posts a day! Getting rid of this subscription freed up a lot of time…and I honestly didn’t miss it after it was gone.

* Blogs that posts too little- True, there wasn’t much to read, but in most cases what I did read wasn’t very compelling either

* Blogs that appeared to repeat what other blogs posted- I really only need to read it once.

2. Reorganize your reading schedule- I took the remaining feeds and set up a schedule of when I would read them.

* Daily- These blogs usually provide daily up to date information that I like to keep up with. So I read out of this category every day.

* Every Tuesday and Thursday- These are blogs that I like to check regularly, but they aren’t as urgent as the daily category. These blogs I read twice a week.

* Weekends- The rest of the feeds go here, they’re mostly blogs that only update once or twice a week. Since they contain nothing really urgent I can read them at my leisure on the weekends

Reorganizing my reading schedule cut down the time it takes me to read my feeds from an hour to fifteen minutes a day on the weekdays, and a half hour on the weekends.

3. Have a process for adding new feeds- If you’re reading blogs, you’re likely to run across more blogs that you may be interested in. Once you’ve got your reading schedule under control, you need a process in which you can check out new blogs without throwing off your reading schedule. When my blog reading was out of control, I was scared to add any new ones because I could barely keep up as it was. But now, I’ve created a label called “New Blogs” and put this label on all of the new blogs I subscribe to. I read out of the “New Blogs” category only after I’ve ready all my blogs for the day and if I have some time to spare. If after a while I like what I’m reading, I’ll categorize it under daily, tuesdays and thursdays, or weekends. If I find that it doesn’t interest me, I’ll unsubscribe. This keeps posts from new blogs I’m testing out from getting in the way of more important blogs and it.

4. Review your feeds on a regular basis- Remember that you still have to reevaluate how useful your blog subscriptions are on a regular basis. Your interests change, blogs change, the time you have to read blogs may change. I have a label called the “chopping block” if I feel that a blog is coming to the end of it’s usefulness, I put the “chopping block” label on it. If the next time I read that blog I don’t find something compelling…it gets deleted. Don’t be scared to unsubscribe from a feed. There are over 4 million blogs out on the Internet after all.

So that’s how I’ve tamed the feed beast…at least temporarily.

“You have been spending much time on blogs and I have to admit , I still don’t get it!!!!! If blogs are just to have artists spend time, a lot of time, chatting, is this really a smart use of our time/energy? I am already plenty busy DOING art, and trying to sell it , tell me again what good blogging does? I’m just not convinced that it either helps you make better art, or sell that art. If it doesn’t do those things, why are you pushing it? Just because it’s cool?”

I’m quite sure that this artist isn’t alone when it comes to her opinion of blogging…and she’s right on many points. Yes, artists are plenty busy doing art, trying to sell it and promote it and the last thing that we need is something else to do.

But blogs aren’t just some flash in the pan, gee-whiz technology that’s going to go away next week. Trust me, when major media outlets like CNN start paying attention to bloggers, it’s not something people are doing just to be cool. So for all you skeptical artists out there, here’s 9 reasons why blogs are good for you:

1. You attract more engine traffic- Search engines love content…they especially love new content. On a static web site, they’ll visit a couple times and if things on your web site don’t change much…they’ll stop visiting. If you’re updating your blog once a week, that encourages search engines to visit your site more, which makes your site more likely to show up in search engine search…which means more people will be visiting your site. You can even set your blog software up to notify search engines and blog directories automatically every time you update your blog, so search engines will visit your site more often.

2. Your customers love new content- Your current and potential customers are a lot like search engines…they love content, especially if it’s new. If you don’t have anything new on your web site, there’s really no reason for your customers to return. Give them a compelling blog to read and they’ll return again and again to see what’s new.

3. Links to your site will travel far and wide- Bloggers are a yappy bunch. If they find a newspaper article or a blog posting or a web site that they like…or dislike, they’ll blog about it because they are always trying to find something new to post about for their readers. The most popular post I’ve written for this blog “How to Change Your Email Address?Painlessly” was written back in the beginning of February and I’m still getting traffic from all over the world because of it. Several other blogs linked to that post and I’m getting a steady amount of traffic to that particular post months later…and it shows no sign of letting up. In my jewelry blog, I wrote a guide about many different types of craft shows called A Savvy Field Guide to Craft Shows and it was the shock of my life when a someone visited my booth a couple months later and said, “Hey I read that guide you wrote on your web site and showed it to my friend.” Apparently she was doing a search for craft shows, came across that particular blog posting and then looked through the rest of my web site. When she saw that I was going to be at a show in her area, she decided to stop by…and ended up buying two pairs of earrings.

*And to further proof a point, Alyson linked to the web site of the artist that sent the email, and I’ll do so as well because she does beautiful work…which may never have seen…had I not read about her in Alyson’s blog. Link

4. Blogs make you human- People love buying from artists because they are buying you as much as they are buying your work. While a static web page can be designed to reflect your artwork and your personality, a well-written blog can bring your work and web site to life through little glimpses into your life as an artist. I’m not suggesting that you blog about what you had for breakfast this morning, because your customers will probably find that as boring as you do. But there’s plenty about what you do as an artist that’s just fascinating to your customers. Your work process, how you develop new work, how you come up with ideas, news about what you’re doing next, where you or you work is going to be, and a whole range of topics. If you’re stumped for what you should write for you blog, check out Chris Garrett?s free ebook on how to create killer content for your blog.

5. Blogs are free and easy to set up- There are plenty of ways to promote yourself that costs money…but blogging isn’t one of them. You can get a free blog at Blogger or Wordpress.org and be set up and ready to blog in 10 minutes…for free. Even if you don’t know HTML, you can still easily set up a blog.

6. The people that read blogs are a good demographic for artists- In her four part series, Alyson quoted some conclusions from a 2005 survey of blog readership. In general, the folks who tend to read blogs also tend to be wealthier, tends to surf more online, and tends to buy more online. What artist wouldn’t want to tap into that demographic?

7. Blogging is only as time consuming as you make it- Some people spend 10 minutes a week updating their blog while others spend hours. How often you update your blog and how long you spend on it is entirely up to you. While posting to your blog once every couple of months is not a good idea, once a every couple of week is a good starting point…once a week is even better. If you get into a time crunch and have to put posting to your blog off for a couple of week, you can easily get back on track when you have the time.

8. Building a blog is cheaper and easier than building a web site- Want a web site without the hassle of building one? Want a web site but don’t know the first thing about how to do it? Build a blog instead! Blog services and blog software makes it easy for an artist to start building a presence on the web without having prior knowledge of web design or HTML. If you want to test out the web for selling your work, do what many other artists are doing. Get a free blog from a service like Blogger and then open and account on eBay or Etsy for selling your work. You can start to get the hang of this web thing without forking over a lot of money and without a lot of expertise. Once you start becoming more knowledgeable about the web, you can transition your blog into a full blown web site if you wish.

9. Blogging makes you smarter, more creative, and better looking- Okay, so the better looking part isn’t true, but a side benefit of blogging is often more knowledge and creativity. I read Luann Udell’s blog on a regular basis and I recently interviewed her for my upcoming podcast. When I asked her about her blog, she said that she found that it sometimes helped her solve out creative issues in her work and her business. I find myself reading more blogs and finding out things that I would not have otherwise found had I not been blogging and exploring other people’s blogs such as news about new shows, new galleries, exhibitions, new products, and all kinds of information. And remember that blogging is not a one-way street. If you allow people to leave comments, you may find that some of your visitors may have useful things to add to your posts.

I’m sure that there’s plenty of benefits that I’ve missed, but 9 is a good start. Now you shouldn’t get the impression that if you build a blog it means that an army of paying customers are going to beat a virtual path to your web site…although that’s isn’t entirely impossible. Blogs are just one of many tools that artists can use to promote themselves and their work and there are many potential benefits. If you don’t have a blog already, you should take some time to check it out.

I just stumbled across a business blog for crafters by way of a new artist’s blog I that I stumbled on at the Art Biz Blog.

Egads! That was confusing, but that’s just an example of the blogosphere in action.

Anyhoo… Make It is a business blog for crafters that has articles on self promotion, marketing, and interviews with other craft entrepreneurs. The latest post is about branding your business cards. Give it a read at the Make It blog.

Thanks to artist Deanna Wood for posting this link in her blog Artist, Emerging. Deanna’s blog is a chronicle of her journey as an emerging artist.

And thanks to Alyson Stanfield for posting the link to Deanna’s blog on the Art Biz blog.

Thanks to Steve Rubel for posting about Stephanie’s article on his blog.