Created by makingamark (contact me)
I'm an artist who enjoys sharing information about art on my blog Making A Mark and my website and my travel sketchbook blog as well as my squidoo len... (more...)
An Introduction to Blogging For Artists
Are you an artist and want a blog? Or maybe an artist who wants to work on improving your blog?
If you are then read on - you'll find links on this site to sources of advice, information, and all other matters which are relevant to blogging for artists and blogging by artists.
It focuses first on blogging basics, then on blogging for artists. Finally it covers some problems encountered by artists who blog and how to deal with them
Bookmark and Share: Use icons in right hand column to create a bookmark or link to be able to check back to this site and/or e-mail this site to a friend who is interested in blogging for artists.
Notes:
1. The authors of all images and text in all links posted here own the copyright.
2. The advertisements are not of my choosing - see modules below for my own comments
You can find out about..............
............just click a link to go straight to a topic
- Why artists should blog
- POLL: Which is the most popular blogging platform for art blogs?
- Blogging Webware and choosing a blog platform
- BOOKS: All about blogging and how to blog
- How to improve your art blog
- Why content is so important - and how to improve it
- Theft of blog content and what to do about it
- Tools, tips and techniques
- BOOKS: Social marketing
- How to increase your subscribers and get your content to them
- Feed readers - for reading other blogs and feeds
- Statistics for your blog
- BOOKS: By Seth Godin
- Blogs which provide useful tips about blogging
- New GapingVoid Cartoons
- Blogging Art - A Review
- Blogging and a painting a day
- Slideshows for your blog
- Online storage and management of images
- Computer software for manipulating images
- SOFTWARE: Adobe Photoshop Elements
- SOFTWARE: Adobe Photoshop
- What's this 'long tail' and why is it relevant to selling art?
- Making A Mark
- Blogging sidelines and esoterica
- Comments and Suggestions
Why artists should blog
- Making a Mark: Why artists should blog
- Some statistics and other information to help you think about why artists should have a blog
- 9 Reasons Why Every Artist Should Have Their Own Art Blog
- Are you an artist? Do you have an art blog yet? If not, you should. Here's a list of nine reasons why every artist should have their own art blog. And if you think blogging is still diaries and journals, well, a lot's changed over the past few years.
- Life Plein Air: Why Artists Should Blog
- Why Artists Should Blog
...to get more "Google Juice", I thought I'd try blogging. So yes, dear reader, I first started my blog for the money. In the end, I do (over a year later now) for the passion. The fact is, in order to write something worth reading nearly daily, you have to have the passion. Sure, there are bloggers who write daily for the money (they used to call them journalists), but that's not my story. If you're a lurker and considering blogging, consider this........ - Kirsty Hall - Why Artists Should Blog
- Blogging can be a very useful promotional tool for artists. It's not a substitute for having a good online portfolio or for doing lots of offline work on your career but it can be a useful addition. Not convinced? Here are my reasons:
- Kirsty Hall - WHY ARTISTS NEED TO BE ONLINE
- Things have changed in the art world: I believe that curators increasingly expect to be able to find information about artists online.
By being visible online (under your professional name, of course), you allow other people to do your promotion for you. This works largely through the medium of blogging, although occasionally artists are picked up by the larger mainstream media because a story about them has appeared online. - Rose's Art Lines: Why You Should Have An Art Blog - Part 1
- Why You Should Have An Art Blog - Part 1 - which is about what her blog has done for Rose Welty's art
- Rose's Art Lines: Why You Should Have an Art Blog - Part 2
- Why You Should Have an Art Blog - Part 2 - which is about what a blog can do for you as an artist
- Rose's Art Lines: Why You Should Have an Art Blog - Part 3
- Why You Should Have an Art Blog - Part 3 - which is about the difficulties you can face while blogging and what you can to do to address them
POLL: Which is the most popular blogging platform for art blogs?
This poll explores which is the most popular blogging platform for art blogs.
All the various blogging platforms have their pros and cons - and these can vary depending on the type of blog you have. You can read more about this in the Blogging webware module below. In the meantime, if you have a blog - why not vote?
Blogging Webware and choosing a blog platform
Time to check out which is the right webware for you
- Problogger - Choosing a Blog Platform
- Darren Rowse writes about choosing a Blog Platform and identifies some things to think about including:
* blogging goals
* budget
* technical capability
* what are other people using
* hosted versus standalone - Weblog software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Weblog software (also called blog software or blogware) is a category of software which consists of a specialized form of Content Management Systems specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs.
- Blogger (service) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Blogger on Wikipedia
- Blogger
- Blogging software - owned by Google
Used by a lot of Bloggers - Blogging Software, Business Blogs & Blog Services at TypePad.com
- TypePad is the premier blogging service for professionals and small businesses. TypePad hosts many popular blogs and small business websites.
- TypePad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- TypePad is a blogging service from company Six Apart Ltd, and the largest paid blogging service in the world. [citation needed] Originally launched in ...
- WordPress - About
- WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers ...
- Build a Website - Create a Blog - Squarespace
- Squarespace is a stylish, streamlined way to build and manage a website, create a blog, and publish just about anything else on the web.
- About LiveJournal
- LiveJournal is an online community, a social network, and a place for self-expression. We strive to create an environment where you can connect with others, ...
BOOKS: All about blogging and how to blog
books about blogging on Amazon
This is for those who prefer to curl up with a hot drink and the instructions before they get down to blogging business
How to improve your art blog
Read about how to improve your art blog
- Making a Mark: How to improve your art blog
- A year ago I wrote a couple of posts about why artists should blog. A year later this post is about how to improve your art blog.
Recently I gave some advice to a successful artist who wanted to use her blog as part of her marketing of her art but wondered why she wasn't getting much of an audience for her blog. For those of you who would also like to improve your blog profile and traffic and/or use it to market your art, you'll find that this post develops the themes in some of the advice I offered. Some of my advice comes from having managed a major marketing operation in the past and the rest comes from having blogged most days for the last 20 months!
If you're blogging just for the fun of it - that's great too. If you'd like more readers and more people to comment on your blog you may also find some of the following comments to be useful pointers - The 12 Biggest Problems With Your Blogs « Lorelle on WordPress
- Lorelle on WordPress - Helping you learn more about how to blog
- Making a Mark: Advertising your work on your blog - the design essentials
- You want to create the right impression with your website or blog - so should you use advertising? Or should you just use the design lessons from advertising? One of the questions which perplexes me is whether or not a case can be made for using advertising on an artist's blog or website. However when it comes to lessons to be learned from advertising about design effectiveness I'm not in the least bit confused. The answer is clear - there's lots to learn and use - whether or not you use adverts!
- How To Write Great Blog Content - The Pillar Article » Entrepreneurs-Journey.com - by Yaro Starak
- Online marketing advice and how-to guides by Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia.
A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice.
Why content is so important - and how to improve it
- How to Create Cornerstone Content That Google Loves | Copyblogger
- When trying to rank well for the one or two topics that your entire site is built around, creating flagship content is your best bet.
- Blog Pulling Power - Creating Flagship Content | Performancing.com
- Blog Pulling Power - Creating Flagship Content
"Flagship content" is an effective way of creating a blog using a core of content that you build around. The post, series or "message" is added to and referred to repeatedly over time, increasing the original value and relevance and also keeping it fresh. While the main benefit is branding and educational value, there are other benefits I will describe later. - How To Write Great Blog Content - The Pillar Article » Entrepreneurs-Journey.com - by Yaro Starak
- Online marketing advice and how-to guides by Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia.
A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. - 10 Journalism Tips For Bloggers, Podcasters & Other E-Writers
- Blogs, podcast & e-newsletters make it easy for anyone to be a journalist. Here are some tips on how to do it well.
Theft of blog content and what to do about it
- Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content « Lorelle on WordPress
- Last week, an article I wrote for the Blog Herald, "Blogging Outside of Your Community By Not Blogging in Your Native Tongue", caught the attention of more than just the readers. It caught the attention of the staff of the Blog Herald by attracting a very unusual trackback from a new kind of copyright violating splogger.
- Plagiarism Today
- A Site About Plagiarism, Content Theftand Copyright Issues Online Plagiarism Today on the WordPress Podcast
- What to do When Someone Steals Your Blog's Content - Blog Plagiarism
- What to do When Someone Steals Your Blog Content - Blog Plagiarism
An old post but still a good one - Google Ad Sense - Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Google AdSense
Where to go if the splog taking your content/infringing your copyright is also hosting Google Ad Sense advertisments - 5 Content Theft Myths and Why They Are False : The Blog Herald
- Content Theft Myths and Why They Are False
November 19, 2007 | By Jonathan Bailey
When it comes to content theft, there is a great deal of confusion.
Not only is copyright law almost impossible to understand, even by most lawyers' standards, but the technology used to steal content on the Web is often confusing in and of itself.
This confusion has given rise to a series of myths and misunderstandings about content theft, many of which have very negative implications for Webmasters concerned with the rising tide of scraping and plagiarism.
Tools, tips and techniques
- Making a Mark: New Blogger Update #3: Labels in Blogger
- With the switch to New Blogger I get to use the new labels function. Which is both a plus and a minus
- Making a Mark: Why it's a good idea to use labels in Blogger
- the aim of this post is to help people to understand better:
* why using labels is a good idea
* how to choose labels to use
* some things to think about before using Labels in Blogger - Making a Mark: 29th July 2007: Who's made a mark this week?
- Includes an item on Websites and blogging - keyword analysis
- Making a Mark: Blogging - an update on rights, liabilities and spam attacks
- Every so often I have a good look round at what's being posted about blogging and using the internet and in particular anything of that ilk which relates to art and being an artist. I'm posting some links and snippets on the weekly "who's made a mark this week" post most Sundays - but every so often I feel the need to do a bit more - if only to make sure I've got a post that I can bookmark and refer to from time to time!!!
So this is a blogging update for us all - lots of things to read and do if you are looking for ways to avoid Christmas shopping in your spare time! ;) - Known Issues for the New Blogger
- Known Issues for the New Blogger
The latest on what's still a problem, what's getting fixed, and what's been taken care of, direct from the Blogger team.
BOOKS: Social marketing
books on Amazon
How to increase your subscribers and get your content to them
People wonder why they don't have subscribers. It's generally because they've neglected to include a bit of webware which registers subscriptions and then makes sure that people get your content every time you post - via RSS feed and feedreader or via e-mail direct to the inbox
- Making a Mark: Blog feeds - and how to set up a Feedburner subscription facility on your blog
- If you want people to visit your blog you need to help them.
* First of all you need to activate a feed for your blog.
* Then you need to offer your visitors a subscription facility - so they can remember where to find you again and/or get your content sent to them every day.
Below I look at how you help people subscribe to your blog and analyse your blog traffic., but first some context........ - FeedBurner
- FeedBurner delivers content and feed subscriptions to subscribers using feedreaders and e-mail
- FeedBurner - FeedBurner Email Overview and FAQ
- FeedBurner Email ad FeedBurner email is a service that allows publishers to deliver their feed content to subscribers via email. ...
- Google has acquired FeedBurner
- A: FeedBurner is a Chicago-based company that provides media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Its Web-based tools, ...
- FeedBurner | Webware100 : Cool Web apps for everyone
- An opinion about FeedBurner (a service for blog or Web site owners to keep track of who is subscribing to their RSS feeds.)
- FeedBlitz - The Leading RSS and Blog to Email Service
- FeedBlitz provides RSS and blog email subscription services. Offering RSS by email provides greater reach for feed publishers, and gives easy RSS ...
- Art Biz Blog: Resources for your artist mailing list
- Art business blog for marketing, promotions, and general business help for artists. From Alyson B. Stanfield.
Feed readers - for reading other blogs and feeds
- Aggregator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Such applications are also referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, ... As a solution, many feed readers allow users to tag each feed with one or more ...
- Google Reader
- Get all your news and blogs in one place with Google Reader. With Google Reader, keeping up with your favorite websites is as easy as checking your email. ...
Google Reader is FREE - Bloglines
- Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install -- simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing your account any time, from any computer or mobile device. And it's FREE!
- FeedDemon - RSS News Feed Reader Review - About Email
- FeedDemon is a clean and well thought-out approach to reading RSS feeds. Easy to configure and use, FeedDemon still has a comprehensive feature set.
- Technorati: Front Page
- As a member you can claim your blogs, and create a personal Technorati profile!
- BlogPulse Analysis | Top Blogs
- BlogPulse is a window into the blogosphere. Open it daily to discover the people, issues, blogs, posts, commentaries, tidbits and news that bloggers are ...
- GreatNews: The Intelligent RSS Reader
- GreatNews claims that it "is extremely fast. Even with hundreds of rss feed subscriptions, GreatNews's response is always instantaneous. "
Statistics for your blog
- StatCounter Free invisible Web tracker, Hit counter and Web stats
- Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able ... Accurate real-time website statistics with detailed visitor tracking and ...
- Site Meter - Counter and Statistics Tracker
- A fast, free Web counter that features custom counters styles. Site Meter creates dynamic 3D charts showing visitors, page views, country maps, ...
- ClustrMaps - Hit counter map widget and MySpace tracker shows ...
- Thumbnail hit counter map widget and MySpace tracker shows locations of all visitors to any site - free.
- MapStats - Blog Flux MapStats
- Blog Flux MapStats is the coolest way of tracking your website visitors. Not only does it provide the normal statistics and graphs, we have incorporated the ...
- Blog Statistics with Performancing Metrics
- Performancing has been on a roll lately. First, a blogging tool for Firefox and now, Performancing Metrics has been launched, ...
- WhoLinksToMe.com - proud home of Blog Stats Checkers Anonymous
- WhoLinksToMe.com checks to see who links to you so you don't have to.
- Google Analytics
- Google Analytics has been re-designed to help you learn even more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site. ...
- Google Analytics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a ...
- Mint: A Fresh Look at your Site
- The original Mint. Mint is the only self-hosted, real-time, extensible web stats app. Satisfy your sweet tooth for site stats with Mint!
Fee-based - Making a Mark: Exploring Web Analytics #1
- Web analytics is the study of the behaviour of visitors to websites/blogs. This post looks at the definitions of the technical terms used in web analytics.
BOOKS: By Seth Godin
books on Amazon
Blogs which provide useful tips about blogging
- Lorelle on WordPress
- Lorelle on WordPress - Helping you learn about blogging and to do more with WordPress
- Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - ProBlogger
- ProBlogger Blog Tips
Tends to be rather commercial and money oriented but also provides lots of good tips for bloggers of every persuasion - Kirsty Hall - Articles for artists who want to be online
- Kirsty is writing a series of articles on her blog about how artists can use the internet for promotion. The series is ongoing and will be covering topics like blogging and social networking in the futurel
- Art Biz Blog: Web Sites, Blogs, and Technology for Artists
- Art business blog for marketing, promotions, and general business help for artists. From Alyson B. Stanfield.
Articles about websites, blogs and technology for artists - Pro-Blogger - Blog Tools
- Darren Rowse's list of Blog Tools
New GapingVoid Cartoons
Blogging Art - A Review
- Making a Mark: Blogging Art in 2007 - A Review (Part 1)
- This post is the beginning of my Review of Blogging Art in 2007
Part 1 (this post) is about the blogging practices of artists and illustrators in 2007 - in other words blogging art from the perspective of the individual blogger. - Making a Mark: Blogging Art in 2007 - A Review (Part 2)
- This is Part 2 of my review of blogging art in 2007. In part 2 I'm looking at the wider context for blogging and blogging art , communities of interest in a web 2.0 world and the sphere of influence for art and illustrated blogs.
View "The Bigger Picture" - an effort at trying to describe what is happening to art, artists and the art economy within the context of a web 2.0 world. - Making a Mark: Blogging Art in 2006 - A Review (Part 2)
- This is Part 2 of my review of blogging art in 2006.
It looks at the influence of art and illustrated blogs - blogs vs websites, blogging communities and the role of blogs in marketing artwork. I was also going to try and identify the influential blogs.......of which more later. - Making a Mark: Blogging Art in 2006 - A Review (Part 1)
- Yesterday my blog celebrated its first birthday - it made me think about what I knew when I started, what I know now and how blogging has changed in the last year in the art and illustrated blogs world.
So - for anybody who's interested - here are some of my observations after a year of blogging amongst art and illustrated blogs. So much has occurred to me while writing this, that this post has become Part 1 and Part 2 will follow next week.
Blogging and a painting a day
- Making a Mark: Will you be a success if you blog your paintings daily?
- Yet more coverage yesterday for blogs which feature "a painting a day". This is the link to the New York Times article "Everyday scenes painted every day" in the New York Times on 31st August.
This time the reporter from the New York Times is asking "Will the painting-a-day frenzy last? Or is it merely the fleeting symptom of a new Internet trend?"
Read on..... - Making a Mark: Daily painters, paintings and paintworks - and where you can see them
- The daily painting movement has seen more than a few sites come and go in the last 18 months or so - but I was extremely pleased yesterday to see the announcement of a new site - Daily Paintworks. This new site includes some of my favourite female artists who paint every day - Karin Jurick, Carol Marine, Sarah Wimperis and Belinda del Pesco - as well as a number of other names who will be well known to the daily painting fraternity.
For today's post, I've decided to place this new site in the context of all the other daily painting sites that I know of and to check out the current state of play as we near the end of 2007. - Making a Mark: The "stickability' factor
- Yesterday, in my post "Will you be a success if you blog your paintings daily?" I suggested a number of factors which I think help artists to sell their work on-line - independently of 0n-line galleries or auction type websites.
Today, I want to emphasise one more factor - the "stickability" factor.
The reason for emphasising it is I think maybe too little attention has been paid to the fact that a lot of the people who are now enjoying success with sales associated with their daily painting blogs - or other art projects - didn't necessarily achieve success straight away. - Problogger: Blogging vs Social Networking
- People debate the value of different social media channels for promoting their art - particularly daily paintings.
Blogging vs Social Networking - here's Darren Rowse's take on what other people are saying about the pros and cons of blogging and social networking and the future of both
Slideshows for your blog
- SlideShare - share powerpoint presentations online
- SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web. And it's free.
Slide shows, download presentations, widgets, MySpace codes
SlideShare now has private sharing!
You control what, where and how to share! Keep it private, share with contacts, send business presentations to clients/colleagues, embed on company intranets etc - Art Biz Blog: Get a slideshow of your art online
- SlideShare is a cool FREE site where you can upload your slides from PowerPoint or PDF file so they can be viewed online.
Online storage and management of images
- Flickr: Photos from everyone in Flickr
- Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Show off your favorite photos to the world, securely and ...
- Picasa
- Picasa is free photo software from Google. This version is Linux compatible. Picasa won't delete your pictures or put them online without your permission. ...
- Register for free at Photobucket.com
- Start publishing and sharing your online photos and videos by registering at Photobucket.com.
Computer software for manipulating images
- Photoshop Elements Techniques - Learning Center
- Elements Logo Welcome to Photoshop Elements Techniques exclusive in-depth look at Adobe's just announced new version of Photoshop Elements 6.0. ...
- Photoshop vs. Elements
- Photoshop verses Elements ... which is better, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements ... Richard Lynch and DTG investigate the differences in the Photoshop ...
SOFTWARE: Adobe Photoshop Elements
software on Amazon
SOFTWARE: Adobe Photoshop
software on Amazon
What's this 'long tail' and why is it relevant to selling art?
Knowing what is happening in other markets can can be helpful to how you use your blog in relation to other distribution channels for art with many items and 'clout' - such as e-bay, etsy and other online gallery sites or community listings
- The Long Tail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article[1] to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. Businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of otherwise hard-to-find items at small volumes than of popular items at large volumes.
Beginning in a series of speeches in early 2004 and culminating with the publication of a Wired magazine article in October 2004, Anderson described the effects of the long tail on current and future business models. Anderson later extended it into the book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (2006).
Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. - Wired 12.10: "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson
- This is the original blog post about The Long Tail - subsequently turned into a book. It relates to completely different areas of business (notably the music business) but essentially is about why the future is about selling less to more.
"Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream."
So why's that relevant to artists? Everybody has a market - you just need to find it and find out how to tap into it. Read this to understand how some of the mechanics work. - "The Long Tail" Blog
- A public diary on themes around a book
Read about the strategies being pursued for marketing items other than art and identify what's useful and what's not.
Making A Mark
Katherine Tyrrell writing about: - Making marks with pastels, pencils and pen and ink - Creating new drawings and paintings - Influences on developing both artwork and art careers - Interviews with artists - Information about resources for artists and art lovers ....and best viewed in Firefox
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byBlogging sidelines and esoterica
Links that aren't about artists
- The world's 50 most powerful blogs | Technology | The Observer
- Any time you get aspirations for your blog ;) check out why these blogs do well.
Comments and Suggestions
Let me know what you think - but please do not spam!
Anybody can comment and feedback is always welcome - including suggestions for how you think this lens could be improved
BUT
please note that:
* All comments are moderated before publication - and I do check all the links
* All html is stripped out of comments. Spam is not published.
* All suggestions about the inclusion of any websites and blogs will be reviewed but will only be published if the website is added.
* Please do not ask me to rate your lens (see Squidoo FAQs)
Well done, this is a well thought out site.
I have a artist blogging resource site as well - it's just a casual thing I used for students at a blogging workshop. I am growing it slowly as I feel the need.
http://artproofer.blogspot.com/
Posted April 23, 2008
Wow! What a great source of suggestions. Thanks for putting this here. It looks like it will be very helpful to me as a developing artist.
http://artwithinme.blogspot.com/
Posted March 19, 2008
| gabriellejc
Thanks a bunch for this lens. Helpful info. I'll let you know when I start mine - been putting it off for over a year. eeesshhhh. Posted February 23, 2008 |
|
EditionH
Hi Katherine, Posted December 19, 2007 |

















![Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 (Mac) [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5104XD4ZYTL._SL75_.jpg)

