If you’ve started your art or craft blog on a blogging service and you’re switching either to another service or you’re switching your blog to your own website…don’t erase your old blog!

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.

78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

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.

I just read today’s post on the Art Biz Blog and Alyson was sharing an email that she received concerning her recent four-part series on the benefits of blogging for artists. This particular artist was stating her skepticism of about how blogging could benefit her art…

“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.

If you are considering using Moveable Type to create your blog, check out the blog Learning Moveable Type. Here you can learn the basics of building, managing, and promoting your Moveable Type blog. Although this blog concentrates on the Moveable Type blog software, many of the tips can relate to managing and promoting any kind of blog.

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.