Here’s a great application of an artist using online video. Polymer clay artist Judy Dunn has created these great videos on how she makes her polymer clay origami cranes and put them on YouTube.

The videos has been up since March 30th, and they have had over 4,000 views, plus was featured on the Craftzine blog. That’s a whole load of people who have been exposed to Judy’s work through watching the video.

Now while the videos are already great as they stand, here are a few ideas on how she can leverage them further:

1. Show the website URL throughout the entire video. I already do this on the instructional videos I’ve been doing. If you look on the lower right hand corner of the video, you’ll see the address to my blog showing throughout the entire video. This is called a watermark. If you’re using something like iMovie, Final Cut Express, or Vegas Video to edit your videos, you should be able to do this fairly easily. She has the web address to her blog showing at the end of the video, but having it show throughout the whole video will make it more prominent and can lead more people to her website.

2. Put the video on her website & blog. Judy has a blog and whole page on her website dedicated to her polymer peace cranes and the story behind it. The video will make the page even more interesting and will encourage people to stay on the page at least long enough to watch the video. Since the video is on YouTube, it would be amazingly easy to add it to that page. She simply needs to copy the embed code provided by YouTube (that code highlighted in light yellow in the picture below) and paste it on her web page or blog post.

3. Try not to have a multi-part part video. The instructional video is divided up into a part 1 and part 2 which makes it a little disjointed for the viewers. Plus your viewers might not make it to the second video (note that part 2 of Judy’s videos have had significantly less views than part 1). The original video was 16 minutes long according to Judy, but because YouTube has a 10 minute time limit, she had to edit the video into two parts. When you’re planning out your videos, know the limitations and requirements of the video sites that you’re going to post the video on such as:

• how long (in minutes) your video can be
• how large of a file size (in megabytes) you video can be
• any kind of limits as far as content (some video sites don’t allow videos with websites or videos that are like commercials)
• which video format you can submit (such as Quicktime, Windows Media, or AVI)

4. Post in multiple video sharing sites. One immediate solution for the multi-part video problems is that Judy can also post it to another video sharing site that has a longer time limit. Daily Motion has a 20 minute time limit and blip.tv only has a file size limit of 1GB. Don’t be scared to post your video on more than one video website. That’s another audience that you can introduce your work to. Remember that not everyone is on YouTube and some of the alternative sites also may have features that make it easier to share your video. My favorite video sharing site right now is blip.tv. I find that the video player looks a little more elegant than YouTube’s. Plus it has a great feature where you can also hook your video account up to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, iTunes, Flickr, or to your own blog so that every time you upload a new video, it also posts links to your video to those sites as well.

So…what do you think of Judy’s videos? Go visit her website at http://www.moms-studio.com or visit her blog at http://judydunn.blogspot.com and let her know!

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:

RSS Users Click Here

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

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.

…while we’re on the subject of domain names, be sure that you check any name that you’re planning on registering thoroughly for misspellings or some potentially embarrassing misinterpretations. If you’re not careful, your innocent art website could be mistaken for something else.

Check out this article with some examples of perfectly innocent websites with perfectly terrible looking (or sounding) domain names.

A couple of days ago I got this question from Heather:

I’m thinking about getting a domain name for my website. The .com is taken, but the .net and the .org is available. How important is it really to have a .com for your website? Can’t I just register the .net instead of the .com?

This appears to be a fairly common question, so I thought that I would share the reply that I gave Heather:

Hi Heather:

Good domain names, especially those that end with a “.com” are getting harder and harder to find these days. You can make do with a .net or a .org for your website, but really try to get a “.com” if you can, even if this means that you have to go for a slightly different domain name.

Why? Because “.com” is the domain name TLD (a TLD, short for top level domain is the domain name extension that follows after the “.”) is the one that is most well-known and well-publicized. Just about everyone has heard of the “dot-com boom”, the “dot-com economy”, and of course “the dot-com bust”. Most people when they are typing in a web address will naturally assume that it’s a “dot-com”. If they are not sure about your domain name, they’ll type in “.com” first before they try out the “.net”, “.org”, or “.info”. Some people might not even go as far as trying another TLD, they may just give up if they don’t reach your website after a couple tries.

Because “.com” is so entrenched in people’s minds, that’s makes it a lot more valuable than other domains that end in “.net” or some other TLD. Which also explains why it’s getting harder to find a good “.com” domain. In the future, other TLDs may start to get more familiar in the minds of people on average, but “.com” will probably be king of the Internet mountain for a while to come. So get that “.com” if you can.

If you have question about websites or promoting yourself online, click on the “Ask a Question” tab at the top of the page and send me your question. I’ll send you an answer to your question personally.