Wholesale Matters

Top 10 elements for artists' websites

Alison Stanfiel brings us this helpful list of 10 essential elements of an artist web site, via Clint Watson's  www.fineartviews.com.

One of the key elements of any website today is incorporating RSS feeds (#10 on the list), or Really Simple Sindication.  This is a technology that allows you to essentially use your website as a broadcasting tool.  Website visitors can use "feed readers" which take RSS feeds and display them to the user. 

The advantage of this, from a user's perspective, is being able to see what's new on a number of different websites without having to visit each one individually.  The advantage for the artist is that as people subscribe to your website, you will gain a loyal following (provided you update your site often enough to keep them subscribed). 

A good explanation of RSS can be found at Wikipedia. 

Incorporating RSS can be easy if you have a good content management system that allows this.  Otherwise, you might need to work with a professional. 

A Hot Topic

The response to the most recent installment of Market Insider has been fantastic!  In case you missed it, we launched the first of a three-part series on why artists need to blog (in fact, it's entitled "Why Every Artist Needs a Blog." 

At the end of the article, we asked artists to tell about their experiences blogging.  So far, we have 16 comments, and links to a lot of blogs that are new (to us).  Go and read the comments, check out how other artists are blogging, and tell us about your own blog (or ideas for one).

Next month's installment will focus on in-depth tactics for marketing your work and your blog.  Stay tuned!

Blogs and more Blogs

We're putting the finishing touches on the November edition of Market Insider (to be posted very soon), but we wanted to give you a little sneak preview!

This month kicks off a three-part series on blogging.  This month, we’re focusing on the basics of blogging—what they are, how to start one and why you need it. Next month, we’ll discuss more in-depth tactics for marketing your work and your blog. The final part of the series will explore some artist blogs, and some common mistakes that bloggers (those who maintain a blog) experience.

For now, we'd like to use this post to learn about some other artist blogs out there.  Post a link to your blog in the comments section so we can check you out!

 

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