There has been a discussion going on for a while on Etsy they could can improve its coverage of art. The basic premise is that when Etsy refers to art it ignores much of what is on the site, favouring twee or quirky illustrations and reproduction prints when selecting for its front page or in other promotional activity
The thread starts here:
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7714/ideas/discuss/9472004/page/1/
As part of the discussion and in order to widen the scope we are having a 24 hr round the world tweetathon using the Twitter hashtag #etsyandart.
Please join in with ideas, links or anything else that seems relevant.
I'm not looking for comments to this post for once (although if you can contribute no other way please feel free to do so) so if you want to join in the discussion go the thread above and/or join in on Twitter.
It is common for artists to be told of the importance of developing a consistent and coherent style. Galleries of course like this since it makes marketing so much easier if an artist can be nicely packaged up. I've never been entirely convinced of this - at least from the creative perspective. In a comment on this I said:
I regularly see advice to 'develop a consistent style', but I still don't see the benefit to me as an artist. If I have to keep rehashing the same old thing to please buyers I stop developing and stop growing as an artist. I make art because I am driven to do it. If I have to make art to please other people then I'm not making art, I'm running a production line. I'll leave that to the Chinese...
I raised this issue on Etsy, provoking this response from artist Victoria Webb:
Ian, I'm with you on the idea of experimenting as an artist. While some of that article by Ms. Woodward has good advice, the notion that to get 'seen' by gallerists or collectors requires a stand out 'style' is just nonsense. The best artists change all the time, and that includes giants like Picasso.
This conflict between artistic creativity and the demands of the gallery system has affected some major artists.
It wouldn’t be too far off the mark to say that pretty much every professional relationship that I had cultivated throughout the 1990s collapsed as a result of what happened to my work in Mayo. When people looked at the paintings their jaws dropped. It was as if I’d betrayed them. How dare I take another path?
Stuart Shils about the problems he had when his style changed following a visit to Ireland in 1998.
The artist Patrick Heron had similar problems after a change of direction.
[The gallery director] wrote to Heron complaining that he was just beginning to find a market for his still lives and now Patrick had to hit him with this. Most artists have to put up with gallery owners who would like them to stick to the latest selling line…
Patrick Heron by Michael McNay, Tate Publishing
The problem with selling art online is that we have to find a form of words that others will use when looking for art, that match up to the work we are selling and still relate to our own personal take on it. The problem here is that the obvious keywords like 'art' or 'print' are so vague that any search will return far too many results to be of any use. Art on its own for example brought up just short of 5,000,000,000 results in a Google search. For artist printmakers the search process is further corrupted by the indiscriminate use of the word print to mean anything from a page torn out of a magazine to a woodcut by Thomas Bewick. More specific terms, like collagraph or linocut on the other hand may accurately describe the process but are low traffic. According to the Google keywords tool searches made in a month using those terms number only in the thousands world wide.
The problem then is getting yourself placed highly in Google search results on more general searches. This is something I'm still considering, but there is another tactic that could be useful for artists given the low traffic levels I cited, that is to boost your NAME, not your work. So if you have a shop on Etsy you should call it by your real name or a consistent 'work name'. You should then use that same name on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else on line. Obviously this includes relevant on line forums but also use it in other areas you are active in.
An example - I'm hoping at some time to buy an astronomical telescope so that I can take photos of galaxies, the surface of the moon etc. and use those photographs as inspiration for artwork. When I do, perhaps even before I do, I will probably join some on-line groups related to astronomy. When I do, I will add my website to my signature on the forum and include a link to the site in my profile. The object is NOT to spam these groups, simply to identify myself as an artist with these other interests. Any posts should always relate to the forum topic.
A significant proportion of visits to this site already come on my real name. My online activity under that name already places me high in any search. I usually have most of the first two pages even though there are several others who share my name, including one working for a very large media company.
This blog is also a part of that strategy in that as I write on art related topics my name is further associated with being an artist.
You will still need to work on SEO and all the other aspects of building an online presence, but your name is your brand and should be marketed in its own right.
For the next week, starting Monday, ONE item in the shop will be discounted by 15%. I'm not saying which one it is, because I want to encourage visitors to browse. So you have 7 days to find it!
I am giving away a free print to the 3rd, 9th, 14th, 17th and 24th people to comment on the blog after this post appears.
Conditions
* The comment can be on any post, but no drive bys! Comments must engage with the substance of the post - on which my decision is final.
* I can't imagine any ties, but if that happens I'll toss a coin!
* Only one print per person - if your name comes up twice I will choose the next one after your second comment.
* You obviously need to provide an e-mail address for me to contact you. DO NOT provide any other contact details like location or 'phone number in your comment. If you do that comment will be deleted and you are out of the running.
The print will be approximately 10"x8" , unmounted and unframed, printed with pigment inks on acid free paper.
You can choose from any photograph or open edition print in the shop, or if you see nothing there you can browse my flickr stream or check out my ArtFire shop. I can't guarantee everything on the flickr stream is available as a print, but I'll do my best.
