Entries from April 2008 ↓

If you are interested in becoming part of this blogging community, please send an email to me at chris@onlineartsmarketing.com. I’ll get you set up with an account as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: There are exceptions to most rules.

1. We make money by selling something. This something might be a product, it might be a service, or it may only be an idea. Replace selling with exchanging energy.

2. We make money by exchanging energy. If you sell a natural resource, something that you did not have to expend energy to create, you still expend energy collecting and distributing that resource. If you sell a product, you use resources and expend energy to create and distribute that product. If you sell a service, you are selling your energy. Even if you write an ebook on your computer and sell that online, you have expended energy. Ebooks are information products and the resources used to build it are ideas and knowledge.

3. To simplify things, you make money either by selling a product or selling a service. Think in these terms and apply it to what you know.

Here is an example of how a friend of mine will be able to switch from selling products in a store to selling online. She currently runs a small store where she sells beads and other jewelry-making products along with some cool clothes, cards, incense, and other similar items. She wants to work from home and move her store online. Should she just sell the same products through an online store or is there a better way? The problem is one of competition. There is relatively little competition in the small town where her store is located, plus it is a college town which increases the percentage of potential customers (college kids tend to like these kinds of stores). Going online, she suddenly is competing with thousands of other online stores selling similar items. How does she stand out or compete?

One of the best things she can do is shift to a main product line that has less competition. In her case, her skill and knowledge lies in creating jewelry. She can put together kits from the resources she already has and include instructions in both written and video formats. She is shifting from selling simple resources (the beads, wire, tools, etc.) to selling a product in which she has added considerable value by using her skill and knowledge. If she then leverages all the ways to connect with customers through online social networking, she can compete against the huge online stores that sell hundreds of varieties of beads and other jewelry-making resources.

This article is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise on how to make money, rather it is meant to show how simple the basic ideas really are and how you can apply them to your own situation. Can you take some less expensive resources, add your own energy, skill, and knowledge, and create a product that will sell for more money?

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
YourArtMarketing.com
CreativeTribe.TV

There is an article on doshdosh.com called “Social Media Networking and ROI: How to Maximize Value and Minimize Cost“. For those of us who want to sell our work online, it is important to understand how the online world works these days. In the last couple of years and especially in the last few months, social media networking has become a valuable tool to help us connect with people and sell our work. But online social networking is much more than just a tool to sell more art. Think of offline social networking and how that works. When you go to an event where you know other artists and gallery owners are going to be present, do you come barging into the room and start handing out your business cards and telling everyone what you have for sale? Of course not. You know that it is about building relationships.

Read this article and help yourself reach a better understanding of what the online world is really like and how you should be involved.

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Chris O’Byrne
www.OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.YourArtMarketing.com
www.CreativeTribe.TV

I don’t often cross-post, but I just felt I needed to share this. Part of this post is based on a comment I made on Connie Rose’s blog. I also posted this on my newest site, CreativeTribe.TV. Here it is:

I have tried to keep up with all of the information flowing into my world through the internet. I subscribe to more blogs and podcasts than I can count, receive dozens of emails, and watch the Twitter updates flow by in an endless procession. I have tried to keep up with all of it and drink every drop of the stream. I cannot. I try to cut back to just a few blogs and a a couple of podcasts, but those only reproduce again and soon my inboxes are all filled up. Do I give up completely? Throw my MacBook in the dumpster? Stick to my moleskine and the post office?

Yesterday I gave up. I gave up trying to answer every email and read every blog and listen to every podcast. Instead of unplugging, I gave in to the flow. I let it wash over me and I did not try to drink in every drop. And amazingly enough, I felt free. I was free to dip my cup in and take a sip whenever I wanted without drowning in all of that information. Since there is so much to choose from, I can have the most delicious and tasty sips and let the rest just flow by. What a wonderful feeling! Now I want to do this with the rest of my life. I do not need to see every rare bird that comes along or learn every song that touches me. There are more wonderful people than I can ever know well enough to truly call them my friends, but I can have dozens of acquaintances that enrich me with the brief contact I have with their amazing energy. What an incredible gift, this revelation.

Chris O’Byrne