How to get your universal avatar

Gravatars are the small photos you see next to people’s comments on Art Biz Blog and many other blogging sites. This short post shows you where you can get a universal avatar for free and also gives you a link for adding gravatars to your own blog. [...]

Give to Get on Your Blog

One reason that blogs are so powerful is that they can establish you as an expert. Give information freely on your artist blog! Just because you give away free information doesn’t mean that people won’t pay for the same information in a different format [...]

The Cost of Social Media Marketing (+Giveaway!)

Rebecca Colmean

Being an artist is tough. Not only do you have to create your work, but, in order to be successful and make a living, you have to market and sell it. Integrating social media into your marketing plan is an investment well worth your time. [...]

Blog class “patients” check out with improved blogs

The Blog Triage class ended and a lot of hard-working artists have much better blogs to show for their efforts. They tweaked their sidebars, About pages, writing, linking, and design. They also made sure they had their feeds straight so people can easily follow them. [...]

Write a better blog post

Someone–perhaps I–told you to get a blog. And you did it. Now, you aren’t feeling the love. Your traffic is almost nonexistent, and your posts are boring even you.  If you’re intent on building traffic for your blog, here are some tips for you.

1. Write with respect for your readers. You can write anything you want in your private journal, but if you want traffic to your blog, you can’t forget your readers (or potential readers!). If you want to write about what you had for breakfast, make it the best darned post about breakfast food in the history of posts about breakfast food.

In my experience, people spend time on blogs and Web sites for one of three reasons. They want to be (1) informed (2) entertained, or (3) inspired. Cross-check each post against this list to ensure you’re hitting one of these reasons.

Laura Lynn Lewis,Up to My Ears. [...]