Sunday, June 29, 2008

New Blog and Stuff

I've no paintings to show but wanted to give an update on ebay selling and some new directions. June is coming to a close and ending a 30 day long selling spree on ebay. A spree is defined by a whopping three sales! I can finally retire and move to the South of France!

I really did have a very fruitful month in as far as I learned a great deal about ebay, and computer things that are going to be very beneficial. I was glad to sell some paintings and cover all my ebay and paypal fees and still make a little. Baby steps -I always tell myself. The free ebay store that was set up for June I'll be closing tonight and from now on I'll just list independent auctions. I find no advantage at this point to pay the $15/month for the official "store".

What I've done instead is create a new blog site to operate as an on-line studio or gallery. I'll post the same work as on my regular blog but without all the commentary. Persons can purchase from that site directly using PayPal or a painting may be directly linked to an ebay auction. The new site is much more "customer" friendly and provides a place to view all the paintings in gallery fashion. I need to learn how to list them by categories instead of date, but changes come with my slow learning curve. I still haven't discovered how to connect my site to my PayPal account to allow sales through them. That is a must and I've failed so far. Help ! anyone.

I like the idea of having one blog for fellow artists, family and friends and another site for selling. I can direct potential customers who visit an auction on ebay to visit my on-line gallery to see more work for sale. I didn't feel that my existing blog was a site that would appeal to shoppers- thus the new site. Maybe I should have an official Web page, but that is over my head for now and I think there is cost involved. I think this will work! Just got to connect to PayPal!

I only produced 5 paintings in June due to all this business related work. I'm finding that I'm not able to work with my right brain and left brain at the same time. Business things really stifle the muse so I sure hope that July will be more artistically productive. I've got some paintings planned and am looking forward to getting back in the groove.

So check out my new "studio" by clicking on the link in the left column and please give any suggestions or comments. All is welcome.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

go to paypal
merchant services
buy button now
copy text
go to your blog
go to posting
edit html
paste
when this doesn't work call paypal

Anonymous said...

You know the labels that you put on your blog posts? Like you have 'tea pot, still life' and so on.

Well, that is how you can sort your paintings by category. On blogs, those labels are used to make categories. So you could mark the posts 'sold paintings' or 'landscapes, or things like that, and then add the Category list to the side navigation bar on your blog (in your settings), and you are done!

One thing you do need to do though is to separate your tags with commas. If you put your mouse over them, you will see that the tags currently are one long link, which means that whole thing is one tag. So instead of 'tea pot still life', you would want 'tea pot, still life' for it to work properly.

You are going to want to limit your labels to the few categories you want to use for the paintings. You would not need to bother with things like your name or 'original art' or else every painting will be under that category. On places like Flickr, people can search through everyone's photos with that tag, so those tags are good to use there, but not really needed on the blog.

(My blog tags are things like 'painting, sewing, cooking' but on Flickr I will also have things like 'blue', 'acrylic' and other details)

Hope all that made sense, I'm all over the place. Feel free to email me!

And Rick is right about adding Paypal on your blog. Go to "Merchant Services", then "Buy Now Buttons" and you type in the information about your painting and pick the button you want. Copy & paste the html into your blog (do you know how to do that part?) and it should work.

Marilyn M. King said...

Wow, your guys are great with all the info, looks like I have a bit more time working it all out but with directions it will all go smoother!! Thanks and more thanks!

Marilyn M. King said...

Whew! It's Tuesday night and I just finished setting up the studio blog to handle purchasing.

Rick, PayPal was not offering the options that I wanted with "buy now" buttons. I've elected to go with the "buy through email invoicing" method. I'll just create a n invoice per sale that will have the unique shipping and pricing for each painting. I sure didn't want to have to hyper link each painting to pay pal, that would have taken for ever. I'd still like to post the PayPal Logo (non functioning) on my site. I'll look into that.

Tiffany, the label listing worked great! I think "browsing" will be easier for shoppers this way.
As I list items on ebay, I'll remove the email purchasing info from that painting and add the link to ebay. Yeh, Maybe now I'll get back to painting!

Anonymous said...

Three sales may not seem like a lot but from what I have heard/read, it takes a while to get going, gain a presence, etc. on Ebay. I think your one month track record is excellent! Congrats!

Marilyn M. King said...

Thanks for the encouraging words, Jennifer!