Are you frustrated because nobody is visiting your artist’s website? Are you spending too much time on social media, and art sales are still nonexistent? In this post, I am going to talk about 7 effective website-generating tips for visual artists so you can start to see your website traffic increase.
Effective Website Traffic Generating Tips
The number one challenge for emerging artists who are just starting to sell their artwork online is learning how to drive traffic to their websites.
They become frustrated because they see so many artists thriving online and they can not seem to catch a break.
The good news is that you can get traffic to your artist website, and it is not difficult to do, but it will take time and commitment.
Website Traffic is a must if you want people to see and purchase your art online.
How can you sell your art if nobody sees it?
You can’t.
You need to put your art in front of a lot of people, and the tips outlined below will help you to do just that.
There is no magic potion that will help you to get visitors to your website. But with patience, hard work, and determination, your site can generate over 100,000 page views a month, just like mine.
I do want to mention that extra traffic does not guarantee you will land more sales.
To sell original art online, you will have to promote your art to the right people, and your target audience (people who are interested in your artistic style).
Artists who sell original art online have learned how to drive quality traffic to their sites.
Quality traffic will be the people who are interested in what you have to offer.
For example, I would not do well marketing to people who love vibrant colors because I am graphite, pastel, and pyrographic artist. My artwork would not be something they would purchase for their home.
In order for me to land sales, I have to find and market to people who have a passion for grayscale and pyrographic art.
Before you can start promoting your art to your target audience, you will have to determine what your niche is.
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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website
Many artists do not have a background in marketing. Most artists hate the word marketing.
I can understand this, but I want to tell you marketing is not as hard as you might think.
For you to build an online presence, you will have to concentrate on a couple of things.
First, you will need to upload images of your art to a platform where people can visit and make a purchase.
For more information on where you can get started selling your art visit 15 Places to Sell Art Online and Make Money
Second, you will have to start a blog and develop a Digital Content Marketing strategy designed to attract your target audience and drive them to your site.
If you want to speed up the growth of your blog take the 28 Day Blogging Challenge for Visual artists.
If you have not started a blog yet you can easily do so by purchasing hosting and a domain name from BlueHost.
BlueHost provides hosting and domain names at affordable costs, and you can have your WordPress site up in just a couple of clicks.
You can even set up an eCommerce platform free with WooCommerce on your WordPress blog.
For more help on how to build a professional artist website, visit the posts below:
- How To Add WooCommerce WordPress Categories
- How To Install WooCommerce On A WordPress Artist Website
- Why Artist Websites Should Be Built On WordPress
- Social Warfare Review – The Ultimate Social Sharing WordPress Plugin
- WordPress SEO Basics
- WordPress Dashboard Guide
- WordPress Categories And Tags
- WordPress SEO Plugins
- WordPress Visibility Settings
- WordPress Themes
- How To Manage Plugins In WordPress
- How To Manage Menus In WordPress
- How To Manage Widgets On WordPress
- How To Insert Links On WordPress Blog Posts
- How To Manage Comments On WordPress
- How To Embed YouTube Videos On WordPress
- How To Upload And Install Media On WordPress
- How To Create A WordPress Category
- WordPress Permalink Settings
I told you it was easy. Start a blog, build a professional art website, upload images of your art and drive people to your site so they can make a purchase.
Before I talk about some effective website traffic-generating tips, I want to disclose that building an audience takes work and will not happen overnight.
Successful artists you see online have become masters at online marketing. They have put in the time to learn and execute different strategies.
Remember that they all started where you are, right from the beginning, not knowing anything about marketing online.
You can do it. You just have to be willing to take the time to learn.
If you want to learn how to build an audience and learn strategies that drive traffic to your artist website I strongly recommend learning from the best. Neil Patel has become a master of digital marketing and shares his tips on his online video course Driving Traffic to Your Online Business.
Neil's advice and strategies have helped me grow my business faster than I could have imagined.
Plan For Success
Everything starts with a plan.
For you to see your traffic grow, you will want to know what type of traffic you would like to attract, where your target audience hangs out, and how you can grab their attention.
You will hear me talking a lot about "your target audience" in upcoming posts. Your target audience is the people who have an interest in your artistic style and message.
Those are the people you want to market to.
Like I said earlier, I do not want to waste my time marketing to people who like vibrant colors.
I want to find people with a passion for graphite art to showcase my work to them.
Let me give you an example.
If your target audience is people passionate about nautical decor, you will not want to target people who love winter sports.
You will be wasting your time.
Instead, focus on your niche. Those are the people you will be able to convert into buyers.
Online Marketing Strategies
Below are 7 strategies you can start working on today to help you increase the traffic of your website.
#1 PPC ads - Of course, not all PPC ad campaigns generate targeted traffic.
You have to study your prospects and design keyword-specific ads that send traffic to a web page related to the ad.
For a website about buying paintings, you do not want to have ads for art. That is too broad. You want to target your niche. If your niche is still-life oil paintings, you will want to advertise still-life oil paintings. If your keywords are too broad in your ad, you will be throwing your money away.
Research the best PPC strategies before you invest in PPC.
#2 Classified advertisements - Use the same advice and strategy as with PPC ads above.
#3 A squeeze page - opt-in list and targeted email messages.
A squeeze page is essentially a way to capture the email addresses of people interested in receiving your information. True, they may be after your giveaway, but that’s okay - they’re still qualified prospects.
Once you have their email address, you can begin sending them informative, entertaining, and slightly promotional messages, which are designed to send them directly to your website – targeted website traffic.
An email list is one of your most beneficial lists to build your business.
OptinMonster is a great opt-in plugin for WordPress.
#4 Article Marketing - Article marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate targeted website traffic. When you publish quality content, and it gets published online on article directories and republished on other websites, you’re reaching a wider audience. The link(s) in your article and your bio box can all send targeted traffic right back to your website. The more articles you publish, the more targeted traffic you generate.
#5 Blog and guest blogging - Use the same advice and strategy as with article marketing above.
#6 Social Networking - Social networking can send tons of traffic to your art website simply because people are curious about you and your art. However, if you’re strategic about your social networking strategy, you will occasionally include links to your website with attention-grabbing posts or headlines. The result: targeted traffic. Be careful not to just post selling ads on social media. That could give you a negative outcome.
7 REASONS TO START YOUR FACEBOOK ARTIST PAGE
10 REASONS TO HAVE YOUR ART BUSINESS ON TWITTER
#7 Comment on blogs and forums - On most forums and blogs when you participate and comment you can post a link to your website in your signature. This does generate curious folks who just want to know “who said that?!” However, when you participate in forums and blogs that are relevant to your website and industry niche, you’re sending targeted traffic to your site.
Get Traffic To Your Website Free
The strategies above are common practices by businesses, large and small.
However, the most successful businesses online take advantage of a free strategy, and that is blogging.
They write content that helps their audience solve a problem, which drives a tremendous amount of traffic to their site.
Learning how to drive massive traffic to your website is easy. The hard part is executing the strategy on a consistent schedule.
For tips on how to make the most of your time blogging, visit Best Art Blog Traffic Tips. Over 30 valuable articles I have written will help you build a successful art blog.
How To Get Traffic To Your Website Fast
I have been selling art online before Facebook even existed.
There is one crucial thing that I have learned over the years, and that is that there is no secret formula that drives traffic to websites.
They are lying if anyone is trying to sell you that it is easy to drive traffic to your website.
As I have said before, building an online following takes a lot of hard work and dedication.
If you are willing to put in the work, you will be very successful.
Conclusion
At first, you will have difficulty generating traffic because your sites will not be ranked in the search engines.
To speed up the process, you might want to consider purchasing ads and spending a lot of time promoting your art on social media sites.
The longer you have your artist blog and art website up, the easier it will be to generate traffic.
In time, Google, Bing, and other search engines will start to see you as an authority in your niche and will rank you higher in the search.
Always remember that there is no instant website traffic magic pill.
It takes hard work and patience. Everything you do today will help you sell more art in the future.
Check website ranking regularly with Google Analytics and continue adjusting your strategy until it produces the results you are hoping for.
