This article is for artists setting up their online web presence.
What’s more important than a website?
An email list.
If someone visits your site, and they love your work, they should have a way that allows them to stay in touch with you. Email does this. Social media does this too, but Facebook only shows your updates to a small percentage of people. You’ll need to buy ads to allow your fans to see important updates by “boosting” your post. Email is still king.
How to setup an email list
You can setup a WordPress or Tumblr blog (your-name.tumblr.com/rss) with a feed that connects to a Mailchimp account (google “mailchimp RSS”) and when you post new artwork you can have an email go out once or twice a week (if there have been any new posts published). Mailchimp has a free option for under a certain amount of subscribers. We also like Constant Contact. It’s more expensive but a little easier.
People should be able to signup for your email list and like your social media pages from your website.
Your Website
A website at your own domain (yourname.com) would be great.
Do you want to sell your art online or do you want to go the traditional gallery route?
For online stores we like: Shopify (medium), Squarespace (easy), or WooCommerce (a bit harder, it requires WordPress).
Preferably if you go with WordPress it’s on something called managed hosting. Squarespace is great if you aren’t a web person and don’t have the budget to get one.
Remember, when people visit your site, they should be able to like your social media pages, and sign up for your email list.
If you want to just stick with Facebook, that’s okay, we’ve seen businesses do great with this option. It’s best to stick with the options that you will keep up to date and use. I’ll try to answer any questions if you need help.
For websites we recommend your own installation of WordPress or Squarespace.