This website has been a number of different things over the years. It has been a blog site, a place to share my thoughts on a variety of subjects. It has also been a place to update those who follow my blog, with what is happening in my art, because I originally developed this site for sharing my art, even though the blog has been the most consistent thing.

When I started this site, I paid around $400/year to maintain it as a storefront. I had art and different products for sale as well as the blog. I noticed a huge uptick in hits from China and some other Asian countries whenever I added art, and one day, a friend told me that people from those countries were using AI to steal peoples art. I decided to put it to the test and took all my art for sale off this website. Interestingly enough, I now have 0 hits ever from China and some of those other countries.

The other thing was, I didn’t sell a lot of art from the website. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about all this, so last year I decided to try Etsy. I had read online about how much Etsy takes from the profit margin, but when I started researching, I realized they take barely a fraction of what a local gallery takes on any given sale, so I loaded some art and tried it.

What am I learning? That if you don’t know how to market very well, it doesn’t matter where you put your product. I have been learning so much about marketing, and am realizing that regardless of the platform, Google, Etsy, Pinterest, Art Store Fronts, etc. (and that’s all any of these online markets are), every single business, especially small, new businesses, are a drop in the ocean of online businesses. Etsy does make a small effort to push new products forward for a few days to collect analytics on them, but then they get pushed to the bottom of the ranking.

Most businesses also tend to have a presence on multiple channels as well, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Etsy, (those are the ones I have), Pinterest, Twitter, as well as many others. Large businesses have people who do that kind of thing for them, not me, nor a lot of other small businesses that I know of. Some of those businesses have ways to post to multiple accounts with one click, some you have to do individually. I find it time consuming and I really don’t like being on social media that much.

You can also advertise on all of these sites, separately of course, as well as just general advertising on Google. This has been a thorn in my side to have all of these various places to update, advertise on, answer questions from, get tons of spam coming in from all directions, etc. All of this adds up to time. So then, the question, where do I want to spend my time.

So I have decided to make some changes here on this website. A bunch of the reading and classes I have taken have stated that if you have a password protected site, meaning each person has to log in to view the art, the AI doesn’t have as easy access to it. The little internet bots that peruse each site (which helps with search inquiries) don’t go beyond the password protection. This gives an added level of security, but on the flip side, less searchable results because the bots don’t have access to what’s there.

The work around for that is advertising. Advertising the website, advertising certain pieces of art and different products. As well as letting people know they have to subscribe to a free membership to view the art, etc. I’m not exactly sure how this will end up looking, and if it will even work. But the least I can do is give it a try.

My blog will not be password protect. This will enable anyone to read it, as well as the bots to utilize the information for better searchability. This will also allow me to put information in my blogs about all the art and products available with the free subscription and add information about new releases of artwork and products. As I do this, I will be watching my stats to see where my site is accessed around the world and what pages are being accessed.

We use the internet every single day, I wonder if the younger generations could get along without the internet. If it ceased to exist when we woke up in the morning, what would people do. I guess I would have more time on my hands and less worry about advertising! But, I would miss the simple, easy communication with family and friends. Everything has its silver lining. Anyway, as things start to change in the next few months, don’t be surprised. If you find anything not working correctly, please let me know.