I’ve finished my first 5-week course on how to build a website using Wordpress a couple weeks ago and had a blast. The students were incredible, they asked a lot of really great questions and I can’t wait to see their finished websites. One of the things that made the class fun is the segment that I did on website marketing. Now why did I include marketing in what’s supposed to be a website building class? Well, thinking about how you’re going to market your website is one of the things in which it’s better to plan earlier when you’re planning your website rather than later. Because then it’s easier to design your site with the marketing aspects in mind instead of trying to tack them on later.

I had guest marketing expert, Donna Blevins lead the segment on marketing, and she returned on the following lesson Q & A session to answer student questions. Donna had a lot of really great things to say, but one segment that I found really useful to me is her response to a student question about how to market yourself if you’re not a natural extrovert. For many artists, the difficult thing about learning to market themselves is that they may not like the whole concept of going out and tooting their own horn and prefer to concentrate on just creating artwork. As Donna points out in the following segment, the Internet gives a lot of introverts a prime opportunity to allow themselves to shine. Here’s an excerpt from the replay of that Q & A session…take a look:

I’ll be starting up my next Wordpress course on September 15th. Because there’s so much to go over, I’m expanding it from 5 weeks to 6 six weeks. If you’re interested, you can watch the replay of a webinar I did that shows you how easy it is to set up your own website using Wordpress. It’s free and contains about 1 hour and 20 minutes of Wordpress goodness. So click here to check it out.

When you’re first setting up your Twitter account or any other social networking account, one of the things that you need to figure out pretty early on is what picture you’re going to use for your profile or avatar. If you’re using the account strictly for personal reasons what photo you choose just a matter of personal choice. But if you’re using the account for business, you need to be a bit more thoughtful the photo you choose.

Your profile or avatar picture is one of the first things that potential customers see when they visit your Facebook page or Twitter account, so it needs to be something that give them a good impression. So therein lies the dilemma…what should that image be? A picture of your artwork? A picture of yourself? A picture of your company logo? All of these choices have their own benefits:

• a picture of yourself- shows that you’re a real person and allows people to connect with you on a personal level
• a picture of your artwork- gives people a taste of what you create and can stir interest in your artwork
• a picture of your logo- can make you look more professional and can make your account consistent with your brand

What you choose for your photo depends on what kind of impression you want to give to the customers. For example, I have separate Twitter accounts for this blog, my freelance business, and my jewelry business and I use all three methods. The Twitter avatar for this blog is a picture of myself because I want my followers to see me as a real person, while the Twitter avatar for my freelance business is my company logo because I wanted potential clients to see me as a professional business. Finally, I use a photo of my jewelry for the Twitter account I have for my jewelry because I want people to be interested in my jewelry.

So what do you think? What photos do you use for your social networking avatars? And why did you choose it? Leave a comment and let me know!

I read a wonderful post by marketing genius, Seth Godin called “Hope and the Magic Lottery” that addresses the hope that all business owners, entrepreneurial types, and creatives have. The hope that someone, the big publishing house, the big venture capitalist, or Oprah even, will discover them and take them out of obscurity into success and riches. The big dream of the overnight success.

As artists, we all have that dream as well and we’re always hoping that perhaps the next media mention, the next open studio, the next art show, or the next sale on our website will be the one that catapults us into recognition and success. The same kind of thinking applies to your website and/or blog. People are always looking for the next new technique, the next great tool, or the next magic “thing” that they can do to their websites to bring a ton of traffic and sales.

But things don’t often work that way. Very few people tweet their way to fame and riches. Success doesn’t usually come to those with the most Facebook friends and the money doesn’t come rolling in because you have the coolest website. The successful website or blog is built one visitor, one sale, one customer at a time. Even those that are “overnight” successes are usually the result of years of hard, steady work. And while the cool techniques and tools like advertising, social media, and SEO does help, often it’s the hard stuff like always answering emails and phone calls, responding to customer feedback, consistent and systematic followup, a steady stream of new products that customers want, and plain old fashioned hard work that leads to success.

Be sure to check out Seth’s post here. Bookmark it…and the next time you feel the need to find that “one thing” that’s going to make you a success, read it.

Another lively topic on the Etsy message boards is the subject of how many products list on your online store. Many newbie shop owners usually border on too many or too few. Shops that have too few items look bare and uninteresting and people will leave because they feel like there’s nothing to buy. Shops that have too many items are overwhelming and people may leave because they can’t make a decision on what to buy.

So this begs the golden question…how many items should you put in your online store or shop? Some artists say that you should have a least 20 items in your online store…others say at least 50…others swear that you must have a 100 or more. So who’s right?

Well, like many things…it depends.

1. What kind of items are you selling? If you’re selling paintings, then it’s a bit difficult and overwhelming to have over 100 paintings to sort through online. Not to mention that it wouldn’t be too feasible to have that many paintings in inventory. So you’ll probably want to be on the 20 item side of the equation. But what if you’re selling something like jewelry or wearable accessories? In that case, people do expect to have a wide range in choice, so you’ll probably lean toward the 30 to 50 item range.

2. How complex is your work?- If your work is very complex and your customer has to take their time in order to appreciate each piece, you can get away with having 25 or fewer items in your store. On the other hand, if people can peruse through your work fairly quickly, then you can comfortably have online inventory in the 30 to 75 item range.

3. How fast is your turnover? if you’re lucky enough to have a very active online store where you sell your items fairly quickly, you want to make sure that you have enough items so that your shop doesn’t look bare after a couple days. However, if you don’t get a lot of turnover in your store, you may want to be strategic about how many items you put out at a time so that you can regularly rotate out older items for newer inventory.

4. How fast can customers see all that you have to offer? Customers that are really into your work should be able to see what’s in your store in a reasonable amount of time. You don’t want your customers to stop looking halfway through your shop because you have too much to look at. And on the other hand you don’t want your customers to be done with your store in 30 seconds either. Generally you want customer to spend between 5 to 10 minutes going through the inventory in your online store.

5. Test it! Of course all of these things are just suggestions. The best way to figure out the right balance in your shop is to test it yourself. Add more items to your store and see how well you do. If you have a lot, trim your inventory and see what happens. A great way to measure this is to actually have a friend or customer sit down and go through your store and time how long it takes them to view the items in your store. If they’re doing in less than 2 minutes, you should think about adding more items. If they look tired before they’re done, you should really consider scaling back.

So your turn…how many items do you have on average in your shop and how did you arrive at that number? How well is this working for you?

I like to drop in and participate in some of the discussions that go on in the Etsy forums as they are a great way to network and get some advice on how to improve your sales. One topic that’s always seem to be a popular one is, “Do I need to be on Facebook/Twitter to sell?” Answers usually fall in one of two camps. Camp A: no…social networking is just a waste of time. Camp B: yes…they’re a great way to get more traffic to your store. So which camp do I fall into? I fall into Camp C: It depends.

What does it depend on? Mostly it depends on your attitude. If new technology interests you, if you like to play around with different things to see what works, and if you don’t mind being on the computer, then social networking will probably work for you. If on the other hand you’d rather get a root canal than send out a tweet, set up a Facebook page, or blog on a regular basis…stay away. Because your attitude will show loud and clear that you’re only doing this because you were told you “should”.

I’m an advocate of giving new things at least an honest try. What do I mean by an “honest try”? It means putting forth a good amount of effort for a period time to see if something will work. Opening up a Twitter account and sending out a tweet or two every couple weeks for a month or so is not an “honest try” because everything takes some time and work to be effective.

On the other hand, if you put in the time and effort to market yourself regularly on social networks, put in the time to make friends, followers, and connections, and have done it for a period of more than a few months and finally come to the conclusion that social networking isn’t for you…then by all means, move on to something else. Because there’s no reason to keep up with something that doesn’t give you results.

Bottom line? Can you get along without social networking? If you can’t make it work for you, sure you can…artists have been doing it before. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, home shows, advertising, blogging, or word of mouth…all of these things are just tools. But keep your mind open to trying new things. And make the “honest effort” to see if they’ll work for you. And then choose the tools that work best for you.