Website Do's & Dont's: Boost Your Online Presence for Artists & Idealists

1. Introduction: Get Ready to Boost Your Online Presence and Enhance Your Website: Hey there. If you want to have more of a say in how you're perceived online and offline, then you do need to care about your personal brand. And I would argue having a beautiful website that can help shape your personal brand and push out all the wonderful things that you do to the larger world. Having a strong website speaks volumes for you. It makes you more credible, it makes you more professional. And it, it puts them at ease because they feel like, okay, if they have this beautiful, well organized website with high quality content, beautiful imagery, and they're responsive, they're answering my questions, and just basically everything's working perfectly. They're going to have more confidence in you and whatever it is that you do, especially if you're an introver or someone that's like a little bit shy, It's really useful to have a strong online presence to kind of back you up when you're feeling a bit socially awkward at that next cocktail party, like I always do. So back in the olden days of the early 2000, I started teaching web design when web design was still fairly new. You really had to know how to do coding, you had to know about special tools in software, and the only way you could have a website was either you became a web designer or you hired a web designer for thousands and thousands of dollars. However, have you noticed? I've noticed that things have changed quite a lot since then. And you don't really need to go into a whole full on web design career to design a website. There are so many amazing tools and technologies, and platforms, some being invented as we speak. So I'm here to take you by the hand and gently but effectively walk you through the process of creating a strong, powerful, timeless website. We're going to go over the things that do not change in two weeks when the next tools and platforms and software comes out. We're going to focus on your content, your text content, your imagery videos and all of that good stuff. We're going to talk about user friendly features and having a website that's easy to navigate, that makes sense. That is just a pleasure to be on and that answers your users and visitors questions. This course was designed specifically for artists, but any kind of creative, but also educators, coaches, wellness practitioners, healthcare workers, humanitarians, and anyone who wants to make positive social change or has a heart centered business. You are my people. This course is also for beginners, for novices, for people that fight with technology. Or maybe you have gaps in their knowledge and you maybe don't know where to start. I am so looking forward to working with you. I know that you're going to have a breakthrough at some point in the first 10 minutes or so. Give me 15 minutes, but let's get started. I will see you inside. Take care. 2. How To Get Your Website, Social Media Pages, & Mailing List to Work for You 24/7: Hi, welcome to this lesson. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the relationship between your website, your social media channels, and your mailing list. In this particular course, we are focusing on your fabulous website. Whether you're an artist, an idealist, an educator, a small business owner, an individual, or an organization, they all need to have the same important things. So what purpose does each serve? So your website is where people go and they're looking for you. And it should be able to be a wonderful digital representation of you and your business or your service, 2047, even while you're sleeping. And the very first thing that people should find when they get to your website is who you are, what you do, and why they should care. Aka how can you help them, whether you're a business or a individual, it's all pretty much the same. There should be easy ways to contact and find you. There should be more information about you, your history, your mission, preferably, why you do what you do. This should all load rather quickly and be available in about 7 seconds or less. Part of the reason is because people have very short attention spans. If it takes so long for your stuff to load or it's not readily apparent whose website this even is and what you do, then they're going to just click on and go somewhere else. We're completely bombarded with information. There's many, many, many things competing for our attention. So you want to make sure you capture your audience in those first 7 seconds or less, so that they know who you are. Okay? So most people, they're going to go to your website and it might be because they're already looking for something and most of the time they're not going to go visit your website on a daily basis the same way that they would use social media. Usually, your website is where you send people when you want them to complete some particular action. So you could want them to buy a product, look at some art, sign up for a course, join an event, sign a petition, whatever it is. Okay? So you're usually sending people to your website to do this thing, use your website to follow you on social media. That's how you're going to connect with people and remind them that you exist on a daily and weekly basis. And if you can get them to subscribe to your mailing list so that you can keep in touch with them through e mail, usually on a weekly or monthly level. You don't actually need a gigantic website with all the whistles and bells. I recommend just have one really good page with all of your important information on letting people know how they can contact you, how they can buy stuff from you. More about you, that can just be one landing page. All right. So social media. Social media is where on your website you send people to follow you on social media so that you can remind them that you exist. It's where you build relationships and share more of what you do. It could be behind the scenes in your studio. Could be a funny thing that happened to you. Could be work in progress stories about you and your practice or your product or your service. And try to post to social media at least once a day, if possible. You'd be amazed how your engagement will grow. That's a whole other course and topic, but just to show you that it works together with your website. So from social media you might send people back to your website to look at something or buy something. But then from your website you want to send people to social media to invite them to connect with you and basically be aware of you more often. Then finally, your mailing list is a list of E mails that you own. What do I mean by that? Well, let's say I've got 23,000 Twitter followers or X followers, that's great. But if Twitter crashes and burns tomorrow or X, then I lose all of those followers. I don't know how to contact them anymore. Whoop gone. But with the mailing list, if people have given me their E mail address, I'm able to connect with them. I have some mailing lists, some subscribers to mailing lists that are over 15 years and they're still connecting with me. So it's a great way to build relationships, to let people check in with what you do by sharing a newsletter. Occasionally, not all the time, Maybe like 5% of the time, you might show that you're having a sale if you sell things or a special, or a special discount just for people on your mailing list. So it's a wonderful way to connect with people and make them feel special and loved by you, giving them extra opportunities that they wouldn't find on social media or your website alone. You nurse those relationships. You make fans. You get your audience to take actions and guess what? In my mailing list, I also send people to my website to complete an action. You might want them to buy something to donate, apply to something, attend an event, vote, whatever. This builds trust also from your mailing list. Usually on the bottom, I have my little social media icons, again, asking people to follow me on social media. In a perfect world, you have all three of these things working together in harmony so that they all support and nurture each other. All right, I hope you found this helpful and let's dive in a bit further in a future lesson. I'll see you there. 3. Make Sure Your Website's Homepage Has These Essential Features (Case Study): In this lesson, I want to share with you some important features that every good home page has, whether you're an artist or an idealist. Just very quickly going to reiterate some of the decisions that I made on my home page. My name, my tag lines, my call to action, very visual, very little text. And notice that all of this happens within the first screen full. This is important because most people want to tell their whole life story on the first page. And they want to do it with a lot of text, but we don't have a lot of time and we're bombarded with so much information and everybody's information that we only have a chance to really look at things visually and glance, and get a sense of what it's all about. So that's why we try to keep it as simple as possible. I'm also trying to communicate in a visual language of color that is true to the kind of work that I do. And I'm also a big fan of color psychology, so I was going with a very sort of like relaxing, yet energetic, light green color with some pops of orange for energy and creativity. I'm also a big fan of dark blues because that's the best color to wear to a job interview. It denotes loyalty, trust, it's a great color for your website. And then of course all the main information on a white background because white is neutral. So yeah, basically below that first screen full, if you go down, it just I start to get into some of the clients that I've had either recently or over the years. I recommend that if you were interviewed by Time Magazine, then you could put as seen in Time Magazine or as discussed on, and then boom, boom, boom, or any clients that you had, any recommendations that you got, you can be really creative with this section. You don't have to have a section like this. But I mean, if you were interviewed in a local newspaper or something, you could actually link to that here. This again, is for social proof along with testimonials. When other people like your work and like working with you or have worked with you, it sends a strong signal to people who might want to work with you in the future. I am reiterating artist, professor, and consultant in these three little blurbs. I also have some featured projects. Some of these decisions I made just based on the template that I was using. I have a dive is my theme on Wordpress and then I also added some testimonials here. So if you have some kind words that people have said about you and your work or your organization or business, you should definitely consider sprinkling them throughout your website because that again, builds trust and makes people want to work with you. And then finally, I am just ending with a call to action. Check my availability, Contact me, it could be. So now donate, now learn more, book an appointment. There are many different ways you can use a call to action. Very last thing, my footer, which I had to remember to update every time the year changes, you got to change your date. So it looks like somebody's home and a way to follow my social media pages. All right, so that's my home page. Let's look at some other artists home pages. 4. How to Use Images Online the Right Way: In this lesson, I just wanted to give you a friendly neighborhood reminder that obviously any images that you post on social media, it is best practice that it's your own photo that you took, it's your own original artwork or it's from a royalty free website. What is a royalty free website? There are loads of them and you could also using an app or a tool like Canva, or in video or other free places where you're able to create content. They'll actually give you an image library of royalty free content. Royalty free content are basically images that you are allowed to use for free. So just to give an example, let's say I'm going to use my son as an example. He has a report due on apples of the world. He goes and does a Google search for apples, and all of a sudden, images of apples come up from everywhere. He's got so many to choose from, he decides to use one of those in his report and he presents it to his teacher. Now you can do that if whatever it is that you're presenting is only in an academic setting, it's only in a classroom. But if he wants to, for example, make artwork with that Apple photograph, change it in any way, or publish a book that has Apple as an illustration, he cannot use that. Just grabbing an image off of Google is not a good thing to do. It could even get you sued or in trouble in some way. So the very next best thing to that, sort of like having your cake and eating it too, is go to a royalty free image site and do a search and you'll be able to find images that you can use for free. Usually, sometimes for noncommercial use, sometimes for commercial use. I'm going to give you a whole big list of places that you can get free images. For example, if I needed an image of a lion, I could go out into the bush with my camera and a steak and see if I can lure some lions over so I can get their pictures. And then it's my own original photograph. But chances are that's very dangerous. And I should instead go to a royalty free image site like the ones here. So I'm giving you just on the screen here, three of my favorite ones. Pexels.com is really great for all kinds of photos you can search and they'll give you royalty free images that you can use for free and all of your projects without worry of copyright infringement. Pixabay is especially nice because not only does it have all kinds of photos, but you can also search illustrations and icons, and graphics and vector images, logos, things like that. So if you're looking for that sort of thing, that's a really good option. And then I personally have always loved Gratisography.com because the guy who runs that one takes really funny, sort of unusual whimsical pictures. So if you want something that feels a little bit different and silly, then you could go there as well. But like I said, you could also go to Canva. And when you're searching for images to put in your templates, they'll actually give you within the app itself all the royalty free images you can use. There are also paid sites as well like stock and a bunch of other ones, but unless you're like a professional graphic designer and you have no professional photographer to work with and you're in a pinch, I don't think you really need those paid image services when you have so many great free options. The other option, and it's in my photo here, is you can make your own image. So, when I was giving my talk at the British High Commission, I was trying to look for images around the house that I could take, you know, objects. But I was also looking in Pixabay and Pexels for things that said Malawi and the UK together. And I found some things, but they're really generic and lame. So I decided in the end to just make a screenshot of the British High Commission's website on my laptop. Put it on my desk and get some Malawian Chtenji placements and baskets and you know, like beads and different things and just kind of place it around. So I basically created my own image from objects. So we're always often so fixated on getting people, people, people, mountain, mountain, mountain, sunset, sunset, sunset. But you can also use objects, and for those of you that are shy, also just about appearing in pictures, this is great for you as well. So you could take a picture of your studio if you're an artist. And that could be a kind of self portrait. Or sometimes when I'm giving this course live, I'll ask a student like dump out your bag and the objects in their bag could be a portrait. So you can also create those options as well. Basically take a bunch of objects and that could be your image. It would be original anyway. So try to think outside the box, even though the expression thinking outside the box is not really thinking outside the box. But I digress, just try to be original. Try to think differently and just don't do what everyone else is doing. All right? I hope this was helpful I see. In the next lesson. 5. How to Make Your About & Contact Pages Shine. Best Practices (Case Study): Hey, all right, and this lesson, let's talk a little bit more about your about page or about section. When people come to your website, whether you're an idealist or an artist, they want to know more about you. What is your story? Why do you do what you do? Why should they care? So I'm going to start with an idealists website from La Longue, Malawi, which is our LSPCA, an animal shelter and veterinary clinic. And just before I dive into the about Us section, they have very good similar features on their home page that are similar to what we were talking about in artists websites. Not a lot of text, not too many navigation items, a clear logo and purpose. You know, the moment you land on this website, what it is that they do hopefully will find out when you click on About us, why they do what they do. All right. The about page has just a little bit of text. Mostly visual La Longue Society for the Protection and Care of Animals was set up in 2008. They have a short description about their history and they also talk about why they do what they do. They're dedicated to veterinary care and animal welfare, building compassion for animals in Malawi through public awareness campaigns, humane education, veterinary support, and by promoting the enforcement of the Animal Protection Act. So making people adhere to the law of the land. I love them. My cats don't love them, but I love them. All right, so anyway, under about us, notice that there's more than one category who we are. Mission and vision. Board of trustees, meet the team partners and sponsors. So depending on what kind of individual or organization you are, you may actually need to have multiple pages to talk about us. I know about me page, I have other links that go to my CV that maybe go to the kind of projects I do in Malawi, for example. So you'll decide what you do. Definitely have a clear area for about us. I'm just going to click on mission and vision. Okay, so their mission page goes a little bit more into it. But notice again, not too much text. You could write a whole manifesto, but nobody's going to read all of that. Especially if you try to put it all on one page. You could for example, like notice their mission is just one paragraph and their vision is just one sentence. Amazing. I'm guessing that there are documents on here. If I wanted to find out more, I could probably download a PDF and learn more. Vision. We aspire to live in a world where animals in Malawi are treated with respect, care, and compassion. Who? Beautiful, short but sweet. Okay, so just take some inspiration, not just from this page, but from any group that's similar to your group, similar to your organization, other artists, if you're an artist, other humanitarians. If you're a humanitarian, please just have a look around. Try to figure out from others what it is that you want to aspire to. If someone's done a really amazing about page, you can definitely draw inspiration from that. Finally, there's many other categories that you could delve into. Let's just have a quick look at the contact page as well. All right. So a good contact page has a way for people to ding, ding, ding, contact you. This could be through telephone. For an organization like this, telephone is imperative. We have to be able to contact them, especially if we're having a pet emergency or animal emergency. They also have a Google map, which is absolutely fundamental where I live in the world because who you can get lost really easily in Malawi, but anywhere you have other ways to contact them, you could send them a message. So that's there as well. And most of the most good contact pages also have a way that we can follow you on social media. So give people a choice. Make sure that your about page and your contact page are always up to date. If you finally get your website up and running, make sure to check those pages once, twice a couple times a year. And don't be like some organizations here in Malawi where they move location, but their website still shows the old location. I've literally driven across town to the wrong location because people did not update their website. Definitely, I was not happy. So if you want your viewers, and customers, and clients to be happy, please make sure that your info is up to date. All right. I hope this was helpful and I will see you in the next Listen. Bye. 6. Case Study: Three Kinds of Websites. Which is Best For YOU?: Hey, welcome back. All right, in this lesson I want to talk a little bit about the importance of knowing what your personal goals are with your website and knowing exactly who your audience is. So for most of us, we're only going to have one website. And preferably at least just one good page, one good page that says right away who you are, what you do and how you can help people, or why should they care. And an easy way to find out more about you, your history, your mission. If you sell something, is it easy to figure out how to actually buy something, put it in a car, or to contact you? And then most importantly, your contact information. So all of that most important information needs to be on your website. Most websites have multiple pages. You can have multiple pages. Some websites have hundreds of pages. I recommend just try to keep it simple, clear, and to the point as possible. Which is why for some people, one page is going to do the job. Whereas for most artists, just a simple website with a home page, maybe an about a shop, a blog, and a contact page would be all you need, et cetera, et cetera. If you're an idealist, an organization, you are going to have similar elements on your page. Now that I've said all of that, that you only need one website and even just one web page on your website. Now I'm going to freak you out with my three websites, but don't worry, they're actually all meant to be one website. How on earth did I end up with three websites? Okay. Well, I'm going to start from the beginning, but don't worry, I won't be long winded, I promise. Okay. So first I'm going to take you to my very first website. This is what I call my main website. I have the domain name Plano dot.com I used to have plan, I tried to get Polana.com but apparently it's a tiny industrial city in Siberia, Russia. So I don't have access to Polana.com I went with Polana.com This is my main website. It's the same website that I've had since I was a graduate student or even a college student making my first website. And what's happened is every year or every, you know, a couple times a year, I go in and I update it. I may move things around. I may delete or retire old pages. And I always rethink like, what is my purpose? What do I want people to do when they come to this website? Is because I do so many freaking things. Sorry for my language. But because I do so many things, I tried to make it really clear. Obviously, putting my name was a good move on my part. So you should, you'd be surprised how many artists and organizations will have a website and whoops, they didn't put their name on it. Nobody knows who the heck it is right away at first glance. Don't make your audience work too hard. Remember, you only have them for about 7 seconds or less before they get Nancy. If they don't know what's going on, they're just going to click away and go somewhere else. So I have your name, have a by line. So if you're an artist, you could say a landscape artist specializing in Montana mountain ranges or whatever it is. Okay. I'm a culinary artist specializing in desserts. Mm. That makes me hungry. Whatever kind of idealist or artist you are, make sure it's really clear right away. I actually just went with three little dots. Artist Professor Consultant. I also have a little by line here in case it's not clear enough. My name again, an American, Portuguese, multi disciplinary artist based in Malawi. The reason that I put my nationalities and my location is because a lot of times people want to know where are you? Are you in their city? Are you in their country? And if not, where the heck are you that's there? I have a about section and a contact section. And then I also have an area where people can sign up for my newsletter. You want to keep it really as simple as possible, so if you can go with like five, an odd number is usually best, but it doesn't really matter. Five main categories. As you see, I've got subcategories, but you won't see those right away. I have it set up where I have my about and contact over here. But in general, I recommend you just have about contact, portfolio, blog and shop or whatever your fifth one is. Okay. But this is how I've managed to wrestle the giant smelly alligator of my big unruly website. So this is my main website, and I'm not going to go through the whole thing. Obviously that would take too long. But just FYI, I've got kind of like a big visual area here. And these images try to reflect what I am artist educator consultant. So those are all images. And then I also thought to myself, well, what do I want people to do most when they come to my website? And for most people it's, I want them to go to my shop or my gallery. So I've put a button here and that takes them to the shop section. All right. So that is my main website and what do I mean? I have three websites. Well, and then I have originally I just wanted a shop website to add to my main website, but in fact, it's its own self contained thing. So what I've done is, and I'll take you there now. Click So it has its own domain name, Makalulu Studio. And if anyone were to just land on it, it's actually its own website. But as you can see, I've mixed it together with my main website in terms of the fonts that I'm using, the colors and everything else. So this is a website that I created about a little over 2.5 years ago now with art store fronts, which they're really all about, e commerce websites for artists. And I also recommend Faso, F, A, S, O is a very cost effective alternative to art store fronts. So I recommend you check them out as well, if this is the kind of thing that you're looking for. But yeah, so this is my home page and you notice there's not a lot of text on it. Again, it's just very simple art by Kristin Polana Makalulu Studio. And then I have shop, which has my subcategories about frequently asked questions, blog contact, and commissions. And actually I need to move commissions over. I usually like to end with contact. I didn't even realize that was there, so I'll have to maybe play around with that. But here I've created like a little by line art for the world we want to create. And if you scroll down, you'll see there's different categories of artworks. There's no more than six because I didn't want it to be too crazy. Best sellers, gift shop, energy healing, and manifestations, animal spirits from the vault are like older things that I don't really want people to see right away. And originals, the reason I put originals last is because those are quite a lot more expensive. Because they're the original paintings and drawings. As opposed to art prints, which range from like 40 something dollar to $2,000 And actually, as you would have it, my most popular category after best sellers, which are best selling art prints, is the gift shop, where the lower priced items start around $5 So if you think about every art museum is going to have items in their gift shop. It's also a good idea if you're an artist looking to have an e commerce website. I highly encourage that you think about different price points. So have your originals, which are going to be the higher ticket items. Then you have that mid ticket item section of art prints on various mediums at different sizes. And then a gift shop where someone could buy a postcard, a greeting card, a sticker, a puzzle, a mug, a T shirt, whatever it is. Okay? So you don't want to necessarily lock someone out of enjoying and experiencing your artwork because of the price. And a lot of times people who buy a lower priced item initially will come back in a year or two and get something. Either get more of similar items or they'll finally get that bigger ticket item because they are a fan of your work and they've been looking at it every day when they drink their coffee. When we go to my main website, you'll actually see it here. It's the shop button. It'll take you to Macalulutudio.com And then I've also as subcategories, just put some of the different categories in case people want to go right to the originals, the art prints or the gift shop. I'm trying to anticipate what people might be looking for when they come to my website. My main website is, of course, my shop is there. And it's about my art and it's about my portfolio. But a lot of times people come to my main website because they're looking for either live in person courses, mentorship, or my online courses. I have that under educator. Under services, I have my commissions and my custom art and design that I make for people. I have master classes that I create and I have my mentorship programs. And then I have a blog which is sort of like, you know, behind the scenes stuff. All right. So those are things you'll find in the main website. And then finally a third website. Oh, yes. Believe it or not, here is my third website. And why a third website? Let me explain. Let me explain. There's a good reason I found over the past 2.5 years that I am sometimes applying for fellowships, for grants, for shows. And the juries of these shows need to be able to find what they're looking for and then get out again. Because maybe they're looking at 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 Other applicants for this grant or fellowship. I created a simplified version of my main website. You notice it's actually on the same, it's the same Wordpress hosted website with the same domain, but I've put it in its own little section. And you can't actually find my simplified website from my main website unless you really know where to look. They are actually connected, but only if you're like really paying attention. So when I send someone to this website, this is the home page that they're going to see. You see that the menu items are more simplified. Artist statement, artist resume, a portfolio, and a blog. This is the landing page which has a snippet of my artists statement. It has a couple of examples of my work. There's a little bio here that is written in the first person. Usually when you're applying to grants and fellowships and shows your bio as an artist needs to be in the third person. Kristen Polana is a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But on your website, just like with the linked in profile, you want to be a little bit more friendly than that. So it's okay to switch it over to the first person. I am an American, Portuguese, blah, blah, blah. So it's like you're talking to your visitor. So I've got a little blurb there, notice it's not too much text, mostly pictures, just two paragraphs. Then there are a couple of call to actions, the subscribe to my mailing list and then a way to contact me. At the bottom you will see my follow me on social media stuff, but otherwise that's my landing page. And then a lot of times for the grants and fellowships they want to see my artists statement that's here, that's just a few paragraphs. There's an artist's resume which should not be more than four pages long. And these are things like your awards. And it could be shows that if you've been in a lot of shows. And I've been an animator for like 20 years before I went back to fine art. So I've got a lot of film festivals, which some of those I did include in here. Basically, I have embedded this into my website, but it can also be downloaded as a PDF file, and then I have a way for people can get back to the main home page. An artist's resume is usually about four pages long at the most, and it just has your relevant experience that galleries would especially be interested in. My portfolio is a simplified portfolio. You saw my portfolio on my main site had illustrations, drawings, and paintings. Animation, graphic design. Wow, so many things. This is just mixed media drawings from my Sacred Geometry series of which I have 11. At this time I'm working on my 12th ones behind me. But anyway, so those are all here. And it looks funny with 11, but that's okay. But when I click on one of these, it just kind of pops, open a new window. There's all the relevant information. The reason I did this too, originally I had it going to my shop website, but it was so salesy. It had like the price and bye, bye, bye. So that's why I made a simplified portfolio so that when grants and fellowships and jurors are looking at my stuff, they're not distracted by all the salesiness that you would find on the E Commerce website that I have where I do want people to buy stuff. So if you want to buy something, you go over there. All right. And then I did actually link over to the plug on my main website. However, I actually made you see how it says blog two. Here I have my main blog and I did that so that this particular blog page has the same menu items. So it doesn't necessarily dump you back into my main website, but these blog posts come from my main website. And in fact, if I click on, if I click on one of these, you'll notice it actually takes us now to my main website. So you see the menu change, but I don't think I really care at this point. If people go in there and end up on my main website, they probably aren't going to notice. If they're in my blog, it means they're looking for other things anyway. Not necessarily just the things that I've spelled out over here. Also, my contact page is here. That's also on my main website. Everything is set up. Those are my three main websites. I hope it makes sense why I have three websites and you see how they actually all work together to act as one website. It's just that, it's almost like there are three different wings. I show you this not to confuse you, but to just give you a sense of like my thinking and how you might proceed moving forward. In any case, if you have no website, just make one same thing with a home. If you start out with a really small house and then later, oops, our family is growing, let's build an addition. You might do the same with your website. All right, I hope this is helpful and I will see you in the next lesson. Bye. 7. Which Website Builder Should You Use? Here Are My Recommendations (11 Options!): Hey, Hey, welcome back. All right, In this lesson, I want to talk about some of the tools and platforms, and techniques that you might be using for your website. I have a Wordpress website myself, and I'm also using a tool called Tech Matics which hosts my website. But then I also have my mailing list and social media planner, and online courses, and everything under one umbrella in there. I highly recommend because I've been able to cancel a bunch of my other subscriptions, but my main website is a Wordpress website. If you don't have any website at all, I recommend, maybe don't start with a word, press one unless you know that it's going to be a big website and you're going to use it for many different things. I find that a typical artist, creative person, or small business owner can do really well with a Wicks website, which is much easier to set up and manage. Wicks is a great option. Square space is another good option. If you're an artist, I recommend Faso. I don't know what the Faso stands for. I'll put it in the notes in this lesson once I figure it out. But it's probably something about fine art. Something, something. Anyway, it's a really nice, I believe it's free or inexpensive, website builder where you can actually put your artwork in there and sell it from their platform. I also have an art store fronts website for my shop, so that's another option if you're an artist and you want to have a really nice shop with many options for printing and shipping. And just have it all set up in one e commerce location. Some people use Shopify, and if you do have a Wordpress website, there are all kinds of little plug ins that you can use together with your Wordpress website. Woo Commerce is another one. I believe there are options with Adobe. If you happen to have Adobe Creative Cloud, they have an option for making your portfolio there. Hans is another one tied to Adobe where you might want to put your portfolio up. I mean, in general, if you just did a search right now for best free website builder or best inexpensive website builder, easy dragon drop kind of thing, you're going to find new tools being invented by the day, by the week, They're always changing. I think that out of all of them having worked with a bunch of different people, I would say Wicks is a really great option for getting started, whether you're an artist or a small business. If you're specifically an artist, I have worked with other artists who use Faso F A S O, which looks absolutely amazing. I like my store fronts website, but if I had known about Faso, maybe I would have started with them instead. Because it does a lot of the same things, but it's more cost effective. All right, I'm going to attach some resources to this lesson just to get you started thinking about what tools you might use. Just a friendly neighborhood reminder that this course doesn't focus on specific tools because there are so many of them and everybody's using different things. And on top of that, they're changing every day and being updated whatever, going bankrupt or being invented. This course is focusing on the dos and don'ts of good website that do not change with time or with new tools being invented. But I did definitely wanted to make this lesson to give you ideas as to how you might start building your website. If you're going to do it yourself, I do recommend faso wicks. I think web is another one square space. These are the ones that are easiest for beginners to use because they have templates and you can just use one of their templates and then swap in your text, your images, your links. They also have options that somebody can help you with that. They even have options where AI can set up the initial website for you and then you go in and tweak it. There are so many amazing options. I know my web design students from years ago, when I was first teaching it in 2000, 2001, could only have dreamed of having this kind of help. Back in the olden days, you had to really learn web design to make it happen. Now you can just use templates, so that's awesome. So good luck. I hope you choose something that makes your work look amazing. And if you have any questions, ask me. I will see in the next lesson. Bye. 8. Website Best Practices- Let's Look at 4 Artist Websites on Different Platforms: So first up is one of my favorite artists. Her name is Cynthia Christensen, She's from Vermont, and she makes the most beautiful artwork. When I loaded this, let me just load it again. So when it loads, you actually get her pop up, which invites you to join her newsletter. And the incentive is that you would save 20% on your first order. I know that she has an art store fronts website, and that's how I know her from being part of that community. Art store fronts is really big on having this pop open. Join my mailing list thing right at the beginning. And statistically, that is proven to grow your E mail list the fastest. Sometimes I've felt a bit resistant to having that, but I tend to have it on most of my pages, but not all, so she has that there. They also have this little ticker at the top in case you're having a sale or some kind of announcement. I use mine as well, but I don't think I have a I'm not using it in exactly the same way as she has. You noticed that she has a few more categories of artwork than I do on my shop site. But anyway, when we go down here, there's a message from her. And then there's also some more information here. Now, a couple things that she might want to think about moving forward is just updating her copyright right here. That's the number one thing that people forget to do, and I mean, I forget myself, but it's always nice to have that up to date because it sort of implies that you're there updating things all the time. But yeah, so she has her other menu items there. I'm trying to find her. Okay, I see. So she has her other menu items on the left here and that's okay. It's just that your users might be searching for those things and it might take them a little while to find it if it's not already there at the top. All right. So, so you can see how beautiful her artwork is. When I click on it, you see wow, this is so cool. So she's using a feature that I'm not using. She's got different colors, subjects, there's all these little filters here, which is kind of cool. If I click on one of her artworks, it takes me to her page where we can get this artwork at different sizes on different medium. So I could get it on metal and it's going to change the price and then I have to select my size. She's got different sizes here and different styles. I recommend if you end up getting a website like this, not to give people too many options. Because believe it or not, less is more. The more options you give people, the more confused they get and the more likely they are to go away again. So I've chosen a larger size that's going to update the price. And then she has a thing where you can choose the styles, like the back if you want it to hang, et cetera, et cetera. So she has all these really nice, fancy features that art store fronts gives you to make it easy to buy artwork. They also have this augmented reality component that allows people to actually preview what the artwork is going to look like in a room, in their home. It's almost like a blending, a mixed reality kind of thing. And art store fronts also has like this 360 art viewing tool, so you could see like what it looks like. So in this case, I think I got metal, right? So you can see like what the back would look like, et cetera, all kinds of cool, fancy tools. That's just one way to do an artist's website. I have a friend. Here's another artists website. This is Bench. He's from Southeastern Massachusetts. We actually went to high school together and he's blossoming as this emerging artist right now and is just set up in E commerce, sell his artwork website. I know that. I think he just started this a week ago. Now you can see what someone's been working on over a couple of days time. So he, first and foremost, got beautiful professional photographs of his artwork. He put them on the site, he's listed them for sale. You'll see some things already selling, which is fantastic. It's clean, it's simple. I can kind of just like scroll through and look at the different styles. And then if there's something that I like click, it will take me to it. I can see it at a larger size. I can add it to my car. It makes it very easy for me to buy this artwork. And these are originals. There's also related products. I did notice that this is a Shopify website. I'm not quite sure how he set this up, but this is a Shopify website. I was just giving some feedback the other day. I think it's beautiful and easy. The only thing I wish it had was some more information about him, the artist. I know where he's from, I know where this is, but someone landing on his page might not know. Maybe like about. And it could even just be like a little paragraph here on the home page. And then giving us a separate page where we can learn more about the artist, a way to contact him, maybe a little bit of insight into his process. So maybe like a blog if he ever wants to add a blog. Shows if he's going to have shows, those kind of things. So that's just something to think about for him moving forward. But ding, ding, ding. He's got all the E Commerce stuff going on there and it looks absolutely amazing. The other recommendation I would have for Ben is that he's listing original images right now. However, not everybody, even though his prices are great, it's a good idea to have higher and lower price points on your website. So he might have larger works and he might price them a bit more like between $400 and $2,000 for example. For something large is pretty reasonable within the art world, and people who are used to buying art are used to paying that kind of money. So that could be something for smaller works. 100 things that are about yea big or even smaller, $100 is okay, 200. He could probably even get away with raising his prices as he does this more and more in the future, but this is great for right now. But I would just suggest that if he's able to do it either through a printing place that he does it on his own or some other feature is maybe consider adding art print reproductions that would sell between $40 and whatever, depending on how big it is. He might also consider having a gift shop section where some of his artwork are on postcards, are on mugs or on T shirts. Case in point, this image that he's sold right here, that's the Braga Bridge in Fall River, Massachusetts, the city where I was born and I've had a show there the last two summers when I went to the US. I've noticed the last two years. Every time I've made an artwork, whether it's small or whatever, that had anything to do with Massachusetts or Fall River, or anything from the region, Boom, sold right away. So even if people from Fall River and Swansea in that area like to goof on Fall River or say they don't like it, you guys like it because you keep buying artwork from there and you know, it's actually a massively underrated city. It's awesome. I love Fall River. Believe it or not, Ben could possibly in the future take the same image that he sold the original of cause he has the digital right here. And maybe he could make some different sized prints, some postcards, a wall calendar. I don't know. But I think that they would he could continue to get life out of this image from people who connect with this image. It's a beautiful image. I'm ready to buy something from him myself. All right. So anyway, those are a couple of suggestions, and then I want to take you over to my Boston artist friend, Stacy Powinsky. She does textiles and fiber arts. This is her home page. I know she mentioned a few months ago that she was going to be updating this, so I'm just showing you what there is today. But it's a great artists website for applying to shows, fellowships and grants. As I was talking about earlier. You notice she doesn't have too many things here. Just about her artwork and contact. Boom, Very simple. She has her artists statement here, notice it's not too long, only two paragraphs. Her artists resume is also here. And again, it's not too long. You can download the whole thing here as well, which is great. She has some different works here, and if I click on them, it'll actually take me to these different series. And if I click, it'll take me through the series. This is really well organized. She has all the important information for each piece here. Awesome. And I think if I click contact, okay. Actually Stacy's website is a perfect example of a one page website. Even though there are these different categories here, they're not necessarily taking me to another page. They're just taking me to a different section of her one page website. This is thank you Stacy for having a good example that I can share with other people. There's an easy way to contact her and we can follow her on social media. She has all the things going on here. If I had a suggestion for Stacy, it might be that if I saw one of her art works on this website and I click on it, I would want to know how can I buy that? Is it even available? I don't know necessarily from this website. So I could contact her and ask, but maybe she could also consider either making another page that has available artwork with the prices and all the information or just thinking about that a little bit more. Oh. If somebody wants to buy that, how can I make it as easy as possible for people to buy? Is it available? All right. And then finally, Brandy Cormier is a Canadian artist, and I meant to actually take you to her home page. Here's her home page. All right. So Brandy Cormier, Fine Art. We could tell immediately that this is an artist's website. Her categories are art about newsletter and events. She has a couple of subcategories as well. We immediately get a sense of her style from the image that she has here. She has a testimonial from someone and you can find more stuff about her over here. We have a way to easily follow her on social media. She is using Faso Faso is I think it's free. If it's not free, it's really inexpensive. But it's like a great alternative to art store fronts. If I were starting all over again from scratch, I probably might go with a Faso website. Even though I love my art store fronts website, I really am impressed with these Faso websites because they really are created for artists and they have templates, they're easy to use like a dragon drop. All right, so we can go in, we can look at her art. There's different collections of her work. We know immediately if it's available or not. And if I scroll over it, it's going to give me a price. So I'm going to go in here and it's going to tell me how big is it, how much is it? If I want to buy this, I click on More Info. I'm thinking it'll take me to a shopping cart. Let's see. All right. We can look at it larger and we can add it to cart. Yeah. All right. Good job. Brandy All right. And there's also this like, way to get back up the top here so I could go through lots and lots of artists websites. I just wanted to show you a few. The best thing for you to do for your website, if you're an artist or an idealist, is just look at other people. What are they doing? What do you like that they're doing? What could they do better? Try to see if you can find someone. You're not going to copy them, but you could certainly get ideas for how to put things, how to organize things. Just see what you like. So try to find some inspiration and I'll see you in the next lesson. Bye. 9. Why You Should Start Your Mailing List Today! (For Real!): Hey, how's it going? All right, in this lesson we are going to finally, I hope, start to understand and utilize the power of a mailing list. I know a lot of people avoid getting or having a mailing list for as long as possible. I certainly did. I used to use a mailing list with my archived website, Shouse.com many, many years ago when I was crowdfunding using my website before. The crowdfunding websites that everyone uses now existed. And it's funny because I still do 1-3 charitable projects throughout the year. And I still have my mailing list from, I don't know, 2004. And every time I E mail the people on that mailing list, that's super old, I get loads of donations because people have come to know and trust me and my projects. They see that every time I raise money. I then, you know, show the receipts. I show them what was bought, everything's accounted for over years and years and years. And keeping people up to date, you know, even if it's just every couple of months or so, that builds trust. So you can imagine if you have a business, or if you're an idealist, an artist, and you start collecting e mails from people who love and follow your work. And over time, say every week or every month, you send them an e mail. And you're showing them what you're doing in your studio or what you're doing in your organization, beneficiaries that you've helped, whatever. Then you can definitely see how you can grow trust over time. So a mailing list is incredibly important for building trust with your fans and followers, Especially the ones that you make on social media or anyone who's bought your art or been a client of your business, a beneficiary to your organization, whatever it is that you do, it's a great idea to, if you can get the e mail addresses of the people who care about what you do the most and stay in touch with them. And over time, it's not necessarily a sales thing or a donation thing, but just by staying in touch with them over the course of a year or more, suddenly people are going to be more likely to buy something or support you, whatever it is. Because they'll feel like they know you and they know that you've been keeping in touch with them. So most people, everybody starts an email list with nobody. Go call your mom, go call your dad, Go call your best friend. Right now, you could probably start your list. Actually you should start your email list with friends and family first. Just, you know, you could even go on Facebook or social media platform of choice and say that you're starting a mailing list so that people can get occasional, not hourly, updates from you and see if you can get, you know, a handful of people. I bet if you really put your mind to it, by the end of today, you could have at least ten people on your mailing list, maybe even 100 people. So don't let the humble beginning stop you from getting started. Most people go to a mailing list, platform, or website. A very popular one is called mail chimp. I believe as of today's recording, everything's always changing. But as of today's recording, I believe the first 500 subscribers to your E mail list are completely free. So if you want to start with them, you absolutely can. I use them for years and years and years. I used them way back in like 2003. So mail chimp is a great option for getting started. I used them for many years and the only reason I stopped using them is because their prices have gone up and up and up. Because after I went over 2000 email subscribers and now I have over 4,000 the price was going really high. So I did my research I like and tried and have been using for about half a year now, e mail octopus. So I'm going to show you e mail octopus. It doesn't mean you have to use e mail octopus. In fact, I'm just about to switch again because now I'm using another tool from my own online school membership program that has the whole e mail thing built into it that's called Tech Matics, which is a fabulous tool that you should definitely check out as well. So in any case, it doesn't matter what mailing lists, website or platform you use, and there could be new ones being invented right now as I'm recording this video, just do a search. Best mailing list, platform or website, they all do the same things, the same kinds of things. So let me just show you. So I'm going to give you a little tour of my e mail octopus. 10. Let's Take a Tour of a Mailing List Platform -Email Octopus Crash Course: Don't worry. It sends more than eight E mails. Get it? All right. I know that was lame. All right, Here's my dashboard. You see that I've got over 4,000 subscribers. That's actually about to go down because I'm going to do something called cleaning my E mail list, which means you just remove people that haven't been active or opening your e mails for the last year or so. I know I'll probably get rid of a few hundred people that way. Why do I do that? It actually increases your deliverability. Makes you look better in the eyes of Google and Yahoo, and all the other e mail platforms. And if you're paying per number of people subscribe to your list, you're not paying for people who don't open your e mails. But that's another lesson. Anyway, here is my dashboard. It shows that I have, I'll just very quickly give you the world's quickest tour. You see actually the S house mailing list that I was telling you about. I still have after like 20 years. It's very modest. Actually, it's only like 354 subscribers. But every time I e mail this list, if I have a charitable project running through a nonprofit organization, I always get a few hundred dollar in donations to that project. So definitely they're worth hanging on to. They're wonderful list. I have another list that I just use, it's just like for testing. And then this is my main list which is for my art business. Actually, I plan to segment that even further to kind of keep the courses and the art business stuff a little bit more separate than they are right now, but that's another thing. Anyway, so my lists are here just to share with you. When you have a website, you can, if you want to, using one of these platforms, it allows you to create a little form that is attached to your website. So here's mine that's on my website. Let me just show you what it looks like. All right. So when people go to my main website and they click on newsletter, they come, they go to this page which opens up in a separate window. And this is just an easy way for people to join my mailing list from my website. So one thing you should think about when you start a mailing list is definitely tell people about it, because they're not going to magically know that you have a mailing list and that you want people to join. So I have the form here, first name, e mail address. I wouldn't put more than that because the more things people have to fill in, the less likely they are to sign up. It's also a great idea if you're asking for someone's e mail, give them something back in return. In my case, I have a discount from my shop on art prints and gifts. And I also do, as you know from another lesson, my art monthly giveaway, people are entered. Anyway, this is my form and it also has a way for people to follow me on social media. So that's great. I'm going to close this. All right. Also I just I'm going to send one today to clean my mailing list I'm sending. So basically these are my campaigns that I've sent. And when I do, I did one yesterday and I sent it to 4,532 people. 17.98% have opened it as of almost 24 hours later, which is pretty good. The reason that a mailing list is so awesome, you may say, well, only 17% But if you make a Facebook post, how much of a percentage of your followers do you think actually see your post, unless you pay Facebook to run an ad? So I think Facebook, it's like 5% or 3% Yeah. So social media is great, but not everybody sees what you post every day. But when you send an e mail out, many more people are going to open up and click on things. So these are just my little stats. Why does it say romances? I'm not trying to pick up chicks, pick up dudes. Romance post is when you're just sharing something about your life. I think yesterday I talked about a mistake that I made in a drawing. I talked about an online course that's coming up on social media that I'm doing live. And I reminded people to enter my art print giveaway. It's basically a romance. E mail is a non salesy post to your audience. Just kind of checking in, sharing something that you're doing. It could be behind the scenes, could be new work that you're working on, a new project that you're doing. Whatever it is, you can kind of see that I have these different campaigns. And actually what I do when I make a new one, usually once I have one set up is I can just duplicate it. And then when I go to edit it, I can just swap out the images, swap out the text, et cetera. That's pretty much how it works. Let me just show you, I'll show you the e mail that I sent yesterday. All right, so this is what it looks like, the subject line, can you spot the mistake? In my new drawing and then just some work in progress, it says I messed up. I did that. So that people might be curious, like what can I spot the mistake? I mean, you have to sometimes be a bit creative because if you don't have a good e mail subject line, then people won't click on it. But first name is a little code here that will grab from my database their first name. And so it'll be personalized. So when people get it, it says Hi Kristin or Hi John or whatever your name is and it will show up there. And then just I have a little bit about my new work. I try not to make it too wordy, try to break things up like in a magazine with like little subheads to just make it scannable. I have a Youtube video in here, then I'm talking about a course that I have coming up, try to make it visual, not too much text. Then I also just happened to update in the news section on my website just to let people know in case they wanted to read recent articles or listen to a podcast that I was interviewed on over the past few months. And that's it. And then PS, did you already enter to win a free art print, bubble enter and win free art print? And then I always, at the end, usually just direct people to a couple of sections on my website, Best sellers, animal spirits, manifestations, and gift shop. And then I end with you receive this e mail because you subscribe to our list. You can unsubscribe at any time. A good email list program will allow people to unsubscribe easily. In fact, I think you get in trouble with Google and the others if you don't have something like that. Make sure you're user friendly. You let people unsubscribe if they don't want to be there, if they don't want to be on your email list, it's okay. It's nothing against you. Just people don't like a lot of e mails. Then I usually ask people to follow me on social media, that is what the e mail looks like. But I also get a report which shows how many people opened it, how many people click, seven people unsubscribed. But that's okay because honestly you don't want to have people on there that don't want to be there. I always think of it not like I'm losing subscribers, but that I'm swapping people out that actually want to be there, okay? All of this is pretty normal. The majority of people open it the moment it goes out and then it gradually goes down over time. It shows me the links that were clicked and yeah, so basically I get a little report which I like and it's in Re. Okay, Anyway, so I refresh this page and it just shows me the activity which is great. If I want to go under campaigns here and not duplicate what I've already done. I can also just click Create. So it's a pretty simple stuff, intuitive. Every mailing list program is going to be slightly different but also the same. So there's a place where you give it a title, your name, your e mail, the subject line, which you know list you're sending to all of these things. And then save it next. And then you start designing your e mail. It could just be text, you could just write an e mail And that's it. And then I'll just go back to my previous campaign. Actually I have one going out today and I can just take you in there. I'll unschedule it so we can go in and edit it. It, okay, so I'm doing like a, I'm trying to re engage before I unsubscribe people. My preview text is if you want to stop getting e mails from me, please unsubscribe below. I'm actually sending this to my newsletter subscribers who haven't opened anything from me in the last three months. That's it. You do that and then save, and next. And then that takes you to the part where you actually put the content in. I have very little content in this one, but you see that I can put headlines, text, logo, image, video button, social media, follow, divider, and code. Very simple, straight to the point I have my logo. When I click on it, it allows me to give it a link. It allows me to change how big or how small it is. I've got my text with a little code that allows putting in the first name of the person. I just have a button so I have like a little sale going on. I don't normally do sales, but I just figured if I'm get rid of people from my e mail list, at least give them one more chance to buy something from my website. And then I just put one image in here. When you put the image in here, you can change it. There's all kinds of things that is just basically very simple. I can go under the preview and test tab to see what it will look like when it goes out. I can also send a test to myself, my hotmail, which I know dates me. But the first E mail I ever had, I just can't seem to throw it away. That's it. When you're happy with that, then you do saving Next, then I will ask, do you want to send it immediately or at a specific time? I want to send it at a specific time because the majority of my audience is in the US and Malawi is 7 hours ahead. So I'm going to tell it to send today Eastern Standard Time, 09:30 A.M. Perfect. That's it. Schedule. All right, and if I go to my campaigns now, I'll see that this one is scheduled to go out today. And that's basically it. It's going to go out to all the people on my list. What else did I want to share with you? Most e mail programs have an automation. I have one set up when people subscribe to my list from that landing page form that I showed you earlier, that people automatically get thank you. E mail. Mine is really simple, but some people go crazy with the automations. I recommend just start a mailing list and get some people on it and send an e mail to start. And then you can kind of fuss around with the whistles and bells. There's also some template options. When I go under templates, it gives me a couple already which I would then populate with my own content. Again, I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details, but just so you know that's there, that is your big basic crash course on how a mailing list, program page system works. Your next step would be A, decide to have a mailing list. B, do some research. Pick a platform or a host E mail. Octopus is really great. I like it a lot. Mail chimp could be another option. Tech Matics is another one. Just do a Google search and you'll find the perfect one for you. And then just start setting things up in there. There will be guides and help and videos and everything to help you get started if you get lost and that's it. And then hopefully the next step after that is just getting in the habit of collecting e mail addresses with people's permission, letting them know that they can join and then connecting with them every week, if possible, but at least every month. All right, I hope this was helpful and I will see you in the next lesson. Bye. 11. All About SEO: The Basics for Better Reach and Driving More Traffic to Your Site: Hey, welcome back. All right, in this lesson, let's talk about something that I get asked about all the time, which is SEO, Search engine optimization. How much should you care about it and what to do about it? Okay, well the first thing that you need to know is that SEO is important for your website. However, it's not the kind of thing that if you spend all day or even all week working on it, you'll actually see any results within the next couple of days. It's one of those things that you should definitely work on. But I would work on it kind of like when you do your taxes or you stock the shelves when business is slow. So I usually work on my SEO during slower times of the year or just at any time that I'm adding new work to my website. So don't let it hang over your head like a big worry. But at the same time, let me show you how it works. And then the next time you have a chance, you can maybe start playing around a little bit with the search engine optimization on your site. And that will help your website overall be found in the big search engines CO is when you put specific keywords and information within your blog posts or website. And then that then makes your website and those pages discoverable by Google and other bots, search engines, et cetera. The bots then rank the pages. When people type in a particular keyword, your website will either show up at the beginning or after pages and pages and pages. The good news is that most people don't do their SEO. Even if you just spend a little bit of time on this, you're going to find that over the course of the next few months to the next year or so, suddenly you're going to be getting more visitors and more traffic to your website thanks to having the right keywords and people just stumbling across you. I'm going to show you how to do it right now, if you don't mind, let's go to my main website. And I'm in a blog post, and so this is what it looks like on the front end. Just a new blog post from yesterday doesn't look very interesting. But if I were to go in the back end and edit the post, remember this is a Wordpress website. Then you can see the post on the back end. And we're just going to scroll down past all the stuff you can see. Actually, I have a plug in on Wordpress called Yost SEO and it says that my readability is good and my search engine optimization analysis is good. Wherever possible, try to get the green smiley face and not the red sad face. It's pretty good rule for life in general. All right, so I'm just going to go all the way down. We. All right, here's the plug in. If you don't have a Wordpress website, don't worry. I'm just showing you this very quickly. Seo is pretty much the same on all websites regardless of which platform you're using. I'm just going to show you very quickly. Here's my plug in. It allows me to put in a key phrase, in this case, lessons in leadership and mentorship. Then it allows me to put in the SEO title, I am repeating some of the words in my key phrase so that they show up here. This is the actual web address that people click on, that helps a lot. That's usually the SEO item that people think about the least. Then also you have your meta description. This is the little description that Google search engine looks for to get a little blurb about your page or your post in your metadscription. You should also have similar words, similar to your key phrase or keywords which I have. It shouldn't be too long. That's pretty much it. You see actually I'm just using the free SEO Yoast plug in because there's other features here. But as long as I get that green happy face, I'm OK with that. That's my blog post from yesterday. Let me show you another page. This is from my Makallu Studio E Commerce website where I have some artwork and some art prints on here. I just went in advance to a page that has an artwork on it and I'm going to show you the same page on the back end. This is what it looks like in art store fronts. I think this particular platform shows SEO a little bit more clearly, especially if you're a beginner when I'm in the back end here, it gives me options to put the name of the artwork, my name, some search keywords that are only for searching the website. This is not the SEO keywords which I'll share with you in a moment. And then also a short and long description. Even though we're not specifically doing the keywords just yet, all of these factors will come into play for your SEO rankings. So definitely you want to make sure your page has content on it and pay attention to the words that you're using to describe what's going on in your life or to describe the artwork that you're selling. In my short description, I have different words like sacred geometry, spiral, et cetera. And then also in the long description, I am talking a bit more about the significance of the spiral. In sacred geometry anyway. So you want to make sure that you have all of those things, right. Your title of your blog post or web page, your descriptions, your paragraphs, your actual content. The other thing I want to mention just before I click on this nice little SEO Options tab is make sure if you have any images on your site that you give them alternate text and that those text items go with your desired SEO keyword or key phrase. In my other blog post it was lessons in Leadership and mentorship. And I actually literally just copied, and for every image on my page, lessons in leadership and mentorship. Okay, so you want to make sure to also use your images and you can put your name as well. All right, now I'm going to click on the SEO options. I like this because it's just right in your face here. Okay? You have several things here. You have your SEO title. This, it gives you a little warning here. You don't want to use the exact same title as another page on your site. I know it's tempting to copy paste. Copy paste, but you do want to make sure that your SEO is different for each page. I just gave it a title. Now your SEO title should be kind of like a sentence practically and it can be a bit longer than you would otherwise have. Nobody's going to actually see this. This isn't the same as the title on your web page. This is a behind the scenes title that search engines will grab and use to rank and find your pages. In this one I have spiral, golden Mean Sacred Geometry art drawing by Kristen Polana. I recommend if you can, wherever possible, put your name in there as well, that will also help you in your SEO rankings. Then we have the meta description which you also saw in my Wordpress website. It's the same thing, it's just a little description of your page. I recommend, try not to make it more than say, four lines or so. I think if I were to stretch it out a little bit, it's just short. It should just be maybe one or two sentences long. In this version, you're just trying to, again, just make sure that there's a description there and try to use words that you think people might be searching for. Again, for this particular artwork, it's spiral and sacred geometry. Then over here, you have meta keywords. Now these are actual keywords and key phrases that people who you want to land on your page might be looking for. I have Fibonacci, which is a kind of spiral, spiral, golden mean, drawing, multicultural, et cetera, et cetera. I won't read all my keywords, but yeah, you want to have a good number of them in there. Put your name in there, and try to put a couple of phrases as well as single keywords. Think about what keywords people might be searching, that they're going to find your page. And one way to also do this is ask chat GPT or go to Google and ask for keywords for it. You can use some different online tools to get some ideas for that. Then finally, the Smart URL is the actual address of your page. It's the actual address of your page. It, one big line, almost like a sentence, but every word should be separated by a hyphen. I have Fibonacci spiral sequence Sacred geometry drawing by Kristin Plana. Boom, and that's it. If you do this on your pages, then you will find that after sometimes it takes up to a year, but about at least six months, you'll start to see that you're getting more and more traffic on your website. The other thing I wanted to mention, and I apologize, it's starting to rain and I'm hoping that I don't have too much background noise in the background here. But just to finish my sentence in this lesson, if you're doing this and you have hundreds of pages or just so many pages to do this on, I recommend do it for your home page. Do it for your about me, page contact and all your most important pages first. You can always go back in later. Like in my case, I did all my most important pages first and then I went in and did my most popular artworks, because they each have a page. And now when I upload a new artwork, I make sure to do it as I'm setting it up for the first time. So once you get a bunch of these done, it gets easier and easier. And then just try to maybe add a few of these a week. You could even set aside maybe 20 minutes a week just to work on this. Do one or two pages a week and you'll notice a big difference over time. All right, I hope this was helpful, seeing the next lesson. 12. Tips for Better Daily Time Managment: Balancing What You Love With Online Tasks: How's it going. All right, in this lesson I'm going to share a neat little graphic that I use daily and has made such a difference in the past year in terms of my own art practice and my art business and how I focus my limited time. So I'm going to thank you to my display here. So basically I'm going to focus on the question, where do I focus my limited time. Now this graphic comes from John Lechner. He's a photographer in Australia and he also runs several art businesses that are very successful. He's been my mentor, one of my mentors for the last year and a half. And this is his graphic, so I take no credit for his graphic, but I'm sharing it with you a because he has some free resources online, which I'll put in the resources section. But also because I found this to be so incredibly helpful and it's just really simple. Sometimes the most powerful actions you can take are also the most simple. So he's made this little where to focus your limited time graphic. It specifically targets artists. However, I also have shown this graphic to business owners and individuals and non profits. It doesn't really matter, to be honest. But the only thing about this graphic, it's kind of like the opposite. If you're an American and you're used to the US food pyramid, usually they put the thing on the top that you're supposed to do the least. And the thing on the bottom is what you're supposed to do the most of like, I think it's G grains and cereals, and then on the top is like lollipops and candy. So just ignore that and invert it, and that's how we can get started. In John's graphic here, he's saying, the most important thing you should do when you're an artist, and maybe you've finished working in your studio and now you're turning your attention to your art business for the day or your marketing efforts or whatever industry you're in. The number one thing you should do before you do anything else and should be your top priority, is reply to any E mails that you may have gotten. Either from someone commenting on something that like your newsletter, maybe somebody responded, or maybe someone's inquiring about your hours or a product or how to buy something. So that should be your number one priority, replying to any E mails that come your way. Number two, and if you don't have a mailing list yet, then that's okay. But the next most important thing is to prioritize writing and sending a weekly E mail to your audience. In Malawi and in Myanmar. Actually where I've lived before, most businesses don't really have a mailing list. They'll have a Whatsapp broadcast list. It depends where you are in the world. But I find that the Whatsapp broadcast list almost serves the purpose of the mailing list. In that you've got a bunch of people's phone numbers. You're sending them a week, hopefully not daily, hopefully not hourly message, just to engage with your audience. I have recommended, even for businesses in Malawi that have their Whatsapp broadcast message list, that they also start a mailing list. If you don't have one yet, that's okay. But if you do have one, try to get in the habit of sending a weekly E mail to the people who follow you. And if that seems like too much to start, then just start with once a month or bi weekly until it becomes a habit. And then you'll actually believe it or not, enjoy making them and sending them out and then hearing back from your followers. So that's the first two things. The next most important thing according to John's list is scheduling daily Facebook posts. He in particular prefers Facebook to Instagram. Other entities that I work with are much more into Instagram than Facebook. It really depends on you and your audience, where your audience hangs out. So if I were trying to engage with 12 year olds, I should be on Tiktok. If I want to engage with, I don't know, women ages 35 plus, who are doing some kind of do it yourself project or a big event. Then I would go to Pinterest. My husband, for example, he is with a big UN organization. He's on linked in. So it just depends. But for me and for John, Facebook is kind of like where most of the magic happens in second place, distant second place is Instagram. So making sure that you're posting at least once a day and you're not always selling to your audience. That's a no, no. You want to be building relationships, telling stories. I know we talk about what to post in another lesson, so I won't get into that too deeply here. Okay, so you have replied to any E mails. You've started planning your weekly newsletter. You've done your daily Facebook post, or you've scheduled it. So the next thing you can do down on the list here is scheduling other social posts. So if you also use Twitter, X linked in Pinterest, Youtube, whatever it is, Instagram. I usually prioritize Instagram next, then Twitter then linked in everything else. Pinterest, I have, but I don't post to as often as the other ones. Linked in, only post maybe twice a week. Youtube maybe like once every once in a while. But anyway, we'll talk about those later. So if you have Instagram, you want to make sure that you're also posting daily or every couple of days, finally. And this is the one that sometimes people get sucked in and they end up spending way too much time on. And then it is replying to social comments from fans. So if you are on Facebook and you've posted an artwork, for example, if you are an artist and someone says, who I love that, that is so beautiful. I would love to have that right now. You can reply. Thanks so much. I'm so glad it resonates with you. It's also available link to your website. If the links not already there don't constantly be selling in your posts. That should be like maybe 5% of the time, 95% of the time should be building relationships. But just be careful, you don't get sucked into, you know, if one of your reels, for example, on Instagram, goes viral and you get like 1,000 comments, you're going to spend like the whole day just replying. Try to keep it simple like thanks or like an emoji or something. But every time that you comment on those, on their comments, it actually boosts your engagement in the social media algorithms. So if it's Facebook or Instagram, every time you like someone's comment, and preferably with a heart or a wow as opposed to just a thumbs up. Thumbs up is okay, but the stronger emotions actually help the social media algorithms and push your content out further so that more people will see it. And just make sure to always comment, even if it's just an emoji, Even if it's just thank you, even if you're being redundant. But if you can keep the conversation going like, oh, thank you, what did you like about it? Ask them a question and then they're going to have to reply to you. And again, social media algorithms love keeping the conversation going. It then pushes your content out to even more people that otherwise wouldn't have seen your content, okay? And then finally he says doing other shiny marketing stuff. So shiny marketing stuff, according to John Lechner of Australia, who's amazing is like that new fancy thing that you heard about for artists. It could be like, oh, I'm going to finally experiment with NFT's or I'm going to play around with AI, or I don't know, my cousins, brothers, sisters, girlfriends, cats, dog recommends, and then bla bla. So you can do that, but don't do it unless you've done all the other things. And if you do it, just pick one shiny new thing to experiment with, experiment with it, and then either continue or move on to something else. So this is something that I've found personally, really helpful for me, especially in the last year and a half. And I love to share it. And as I share it, all credit goes to John Lechner. And I will also put some resources where you might follow him on social media. He has a lot of free tips especially for artists, but useful for anyone. All right, thanks so much. I will see you in the next lesson. 13. Thank You for Taking This Course & How to Keep Reaching Your Goals: Hey, did you make it this far? Good job. I'm so proud of you. It's not easy and we're all so busy. So I really appreciate that you've been on this journey with me. I hope that you have a much better idea of what to do with your website at this point. And if you are still confused or you have any questions, please please do not hesitate to drop me a message, start a discussion, make a request for more lessons, or even other courses. So I am like a J. I do take requests. I hope that you found everything in this course helpful. Please note that this is just one of the many things that I teach related to these topics. Please have a look at my other courses. I know that I can help you reach your goals, whatever they may be. I hope that we can connect on social media. And if you want to join my mailing list, I also give away free art prints on high quality fine art watercolor paper almost every month, usually every month. And when you join my mailing list, you are automatically entered in the drawing. And you just happen to get awesome updates as well. Usually weekly and special discounts and stuff like that. Like basically the first crack at new courses and everything else. So wherever you might be in the world, I so look forward to seeing you again sometime in the future. Do not be a stranger and I will see you next time wherever that might be. Alright, take care. Bye.