First you’ll need to purchase a domain name which is about $10 a year. You will also need to get web hosting which can be $6 to $15 a month depending on the hosting company and the plan you choose. I believe these expenses are investments in your art career and well worth the cost in order to promote you and your work. But I also know that for some artists just starting out these are expenses they simply can not afford.

If you are looking to create a web presence without spending a dime I recommend starting with WordPress.com. This is a completely free blog service that offers plenty of great features and customization all within a community of other users who are there to help you when you need it. You could head over to WordPress.com right now and have a website/blog up and running in less than 15 minutes without ever having to break out the credit card. This option takes away any excuse you may have for not having your own artist website.

The great thing about starting with WordPress.com as your website service is that the content you create on your site is easily transferred to a WordPress.org site when you’re ready for an up grade. Also WordPress.com offers paid upgrade options as well to improve your site without ever having to move it. Any time and effort you invest in WordPress.com is not wasted due to this ease of upgrade that is built in.

WordPress.com Vs. WordPress.org

If you are not familiar with WordPress you might be a bit confused at this point by the mention of WordPress.com and WordPress.org. They are two different blogging solutions. Simply put the .com version is a blog service and the .org version is a blog software.

WordPress.com hosts your blog or site on their servers for free and your domain name is something like artpalaver.wordpress.com.

WordPress.org offers software that you install on your own server you’ve rented from a hosting company and is then connected to your own domain name. It is what I use here on artpalaver.com.

WordPress.org is super flexible and can be customized in just about anyway you can imagine to just about whatever you need it to do. Right out the box it is very search engine friendly. There are countless themes and plugins available for free that help you change the look and function of the your site. And there is a large community of avid users found on blogs and forums around the web that will help you when you need it. Those are just some of the reasons I think WordPress.org is a great solution for a do it yourself” web presence. But I do understand that the approximate $120 a year price tag can be too much for the emerging artist.

Start with the completely free option and eventually move to the better self hosted .org option.

If you do start off on WordPress.com though one small expense you might consider is buying yourself a domain name. Scrape together the $8.88 needed to secure the name for a year and then have it forward to your WordPress.com site. myart.com is better than myart.wordpress.com.

Any questions?

WordPress For Artists | Create A Free Artist Website With WordPress.com is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.

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Yes I said illegal. You see when you send out an email like that 9 out of 10 times it does not conform to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The biggest reason for non compliance is there is no easy way to opt out of the emailings. To comply with the CAN-SPAM act the professional artist will turn to an email service to handle their mass mailings.

There are a few to choose from but only 1 that I know of that lets you run a list of under 500 addresses for free, that service is MailChimp. I’ve been using MailChimp for six months now and I highly recommend it to any artist looking to have an easy to use professional email service.

That’s really all I got for you today. If you’ve been thinking about using email to market your work start with MailChimp.

Cost Effective Email Marketing For Artists is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.

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Welcome to WordPress For Artists!

This series is just getting off the ground so I thought I would start with some of the basics by answering the most common questions I get about WP.

Who do you recommend for a host of my WordPress site? I use and recommend Site5 for any of your hosting needs. Because I work with artists developing their sites I have experience with a broad selection of internet host providers and I have found Site5 to be the most reliable and offer the highest level of customer service. Site5 offers “one click” install of WP which is the easiest way to get started.

What theme do you recommend? A theme is the foundation of your WP site. It defines not only the look of your site but also the function of your site. As well as helping or hurting your chance to be found by search engines. I have experience with countless themes because of all the sites I have built over the years. It is important to pick a theme that suits your unique needs and one that you are comfortable working with. But I have landed on Headway as a theme that I have been using on almost every site I’ve built recently. It is a “premium” theme so it will set you back $87 but it can easily be customized without knowing any code and also has great support from the developer, so you’ll get the money you spend back in the time you save.

But there are thousands of themes out there. You can either search for one directly through your WP dashboard, on the WordPress site, or by doing a Google search. There is usually a bit of trial and error when picking themes so be ready to invest some time in the process. But once you have your theme set it will most likely last you a long time.

What are some good places to look for information on WordPress? Art Palaver of course. But I realize the WordPress information on this site is just getting started so I need to point out some other good sources. When you are new to blogging and WordPress the best place to go is Lorelle on WordPress. Or if you want to cut right to source The WordPress Codex is also good. Feeling stuck and need to ask someone a question? Head over to the WordPress support forums. Chances are someone already asked your question and someone else already answered, so do a search for you problem. Finally if you really want to tap into the vein of all things WordPress subscribe to the WordPress developers blog.

I have found that WordPress has an amazing community of people who are willing to help and share information when you need it. One of the best ways to find answers is to enter your WP question in a Google search. 9 out of 10 times you’ll find what you are looking for.

WordPress For Artists | Getting Started is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.

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