by Linda | Apr 26, 2012 | my creative journal
Last week, I talked about my newsletter blues and since then I’ve quickly realized that it’s more of a cleanse. It’s a good thing to clear out the air and really connect to those who resonate with you, instead of speaking to people who have their backs turned. In a way, I’m looking forward to unsubscribes from uninterested people.
I think of it as the socially responsible thing to do as well. I know from statistics that many people aren’t even opening my emails. I really would like to decrease digital pollution. It’s a waste of energy, space and money for everyone. So do yourself and others a favor today, go and unsubscribe from stuff you aren’t interested in anymore. Every once in a while, unsubscribe in your spam folders too… instead of letting that pile up… cleanse! On the other hand, if you really want to get my weekly emails of thoughts along with a new illustrated girl – sign up here.
In other creative business news, I’ve been mulling over my about me page and trying to rewrite it. It’s not even linked up on this blog anymore, because I don’t feel like it reflects who I am. Everyone talks about how that page is the most visited by new readers… but I can’t seem to present myself properly. It’s always difficult for me to write up an all encompassing blurb, when at times, I still feel pretty confused about things. I realize that life is ever changing, so there is no such thing as a “done” about me page. But I need to get something done…
Today, I also received a bunch of new books in the mail – yay! Although I have a kindle, I still want the physical printed book at times. I’m excited to dive in although I have so many different books in progress right now. It’s good chaos I suppose, just like inside my head! I have an “active bookshelf” where I keep books that are in progress or frequently flipped through. If you are interested, here are the latest books I bought (Amazon links below)
by Linda | Mar 8, 2012 | my creative journal
This past week, I’ve been following along the Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit and realizing I need more foundation. Although it’s not good to be stuck in the stage of forever planning or analysis paralysis – when diving into action we inevitably will reach a point of needing more direction, just the same.
I can be an impatient person, jumping into something to follow my inspiration and spark of energy. But we all know that those spurts can’t be sustained without a bigger plan. At least, that is how I feel right now. I go through cycles of high productivity mode to the slump, confusion, and crisis mode. It’s not a good cycle. I want more tranquility in my life and although it’s impossible to have complete balance, I would like to reach some kind of… equilibrium that I’m happy with.
I’ve realized that my left-brain ways of planning can only take me so far… why am I not using my right-brain skills, as well? I’m sure there’s something that can help me with building my business as an artist and illustrator – duh!? We usually think of business and marketing as left-brain skills, but maybe that is narrow minded. I can’t really explain it, but I just connected and felt that I needed to go down this path. I have heard of Jennifer Lee’s book, The Right-Brain Business Plan (Amazon link) before, but had the impression that it was the easy way out for those who didn’t want to do a real business plan. Now that I’ve learned more about it, I realize my error. It is a detailed book with a whole lot of information – simply presented differently. I finally ordered it and can’t wait to get started.
Realizing how my perspective changed for this specific thing, suddenly made me wonder if I’m blocking myself out of a whole lot of things in life and business. We all make assumptions and generalizations. Is it blinding us from seeing, accepting, or considering those things that might help us out? I truly mean no offense, but I used to think yoga and zen stuff was all hokey and weird. Oh, I’m not into that stuff, I thought. I’m practical and grounded. I suppose the only way to explain it… is that we fear the unknown.
Although I don’t run out with open arms to every single new thing out there, I do feel much more open-minded nowadays. In fact, I try really hard to remind myself, that whatever I feel, it is just the first impression. And we know how our impressions of things change dramatically over time.
So all this to say, this week, I’ve been in a soul searching type of mood. I’m making plans, organizing and cleaning up my space. I’m making room for the work I need to do.
If you want different results, then you have to change the way you are doing things, right? Do you have a business plan? Have you assessed your progress and adjusted your course along the way? Perhaps you need to open your mind to new things?
BTW, happy International Woman’s Day, festa della donna here in Italy. It’s our day. Let’s do something awesome!
by Linda | Jan 31, 2012 | my creative journal
When you need to check yourself and really get planning and organized, use a weekly planner printable page to start.
I’m sitting in my room and it’s the last day of January 2012. I try to ignore the feeling, but now and again I get that numbness of realizing how old I am, how much time has passed already, and how little time there is left. Yes, I know it’s a bit morbid, but those thoughts pop up every now and again.
Download Cute Bird Weekly Planner Page PDF
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I would like to blame it on the snow outside and how everyone is grumbling about the troubles of bad weather. I would blame it on hormones and some kind of biological funk I can’t control. Maybe it’s the winter blues? I could blame it on something, but what’s the point? I realize that it’s totally okay to freak out a bit and worry about things. The bright side is that it means I’m alive and thirsting for more. There’s energy, perhaps misdirected, but it’s there.
Last year I started blogging creative business 101 posts, sharing my progress of building a profitable business. I was happy with the general progress, the accountability, the momentum of it all. Unfortunately, I fell off the wagon when the holidays rolled around. I totally lost my momentum and it’s the last day of the first month of the following year now. Jeepers.
I’ve been watching videos, reading blogs and listening to podcasts (all under the guise of researching) and slowly, but surely, realizing that I am failing myself. It wasn’t a dramatic or sudden epiphany – it was a bonk on the head in slow motion, because it took me so long to maybe, perhaps, snap out of it.
I have been avoiding those reality checks and simply brushing the surface with others, in attempts to avoid the truth. Total FAIL. This is when the Ice Cube song suddenly started to play in the soundtrack of my life, Check Yo Self.
No matter what the circumstances are in life, no matter what crazy huge mistakes I might have made, I always have the opportunity to check myself. That ultimately means I can change course and move forward in the right direction. And if you think about this rocky road of life, we always have to change course. Change with the times, because we never can predict how things will go.
The worse thing is stagnation and inaction. That’s how I’ve been feeling and it sucks. It’s about time to check myself out of this situation.
I’ll be taking some time to re-align, formulate a plan and actually use the resources that I have at hand.
Do you need to check yourself about something? I hope that by sharing the free printable, it might help spur some action in you as well. Sometimes you need someone to shake you to your senses, but sometimes it’s just a very slow and gradual realization. All that matters is that you want to move forward…
by Linda | Aug 4, 2011 | my creative journal
Do you want to share your passions, products and services with potential customers out there? I’ve come across many creatives who do not setup a newsletter or mailing list, because they feel it’s too early. They worry about not having content to send out…or that only a few people will sign up. What?! It is never too early to start and having a few dedicated fans is the beginning of something beautiful!
Email marketing is so powerful, because it is permission based. It gives you direct access to your fans and supporters and gives them an easy way to just reply and make contact with you in return. Your email listees are asking you to keep them updated…that’s why it’s called permission marketing. Realize what a huge opportunity it is for any business, but especially creatives and indie entrepreneurs. In fact, email marketing is considered one of the most important tools to drive sales. You know how often people check email right? 🙂
Sign-Up For An Email Marketing Service
There are many companies out there that do the job of collecting contact info and storing it into lists, keeping everything organized in a database. The service will ensure you abide by laws, have the unsubscribe links as necessary…all the boring stuff. I do recommend doing a bit of research to ensure you choose a service that makes the most sense for your business…because sometimes it can be a pain to transfer all your contacts into a new provider. Just take a look at the options and choose – many companies offer free service up to a certain number of subscribers and messages before pricing kicks in for high volume users. I personally use MailChimp and love it…but there’s also AWeber and Constant Contact to name just a few others. There’s no excuse not to set something up when your email list is so important and there are so many free options out there.
Tell Everyone About It
Once you have a list setup, not only do you have to put a sign-up box on your website and/or blog, but also ask people to sign up! There are so many opportunities to do so, in social media, online profiles, business cards, advertisements and during day to day interactions with customers. For example, I always send my Etsy buyers a post-sale message that provides them with direct links to Etsy feedback and my newsletter sign-up. It’s a natural progression and you need to make it easier for people to follow you and keep updated. They’ve already bought something from you, so chances are…they love your already! Don’t forget to include in email communications or mentioning it every so often. You do have to ask people to sign-up, because some people don’t pay attention to sidebars. There are interested people out there, they just might happen to be busy the first time you told them about it…so make it an option every so often.
Set Up Your First Message
It’s important to set up a template for your email communications, so that your messages look professional. Some businesses go for the minimal all-text messages, whereas visual artists usually opt for something more designed to show off their work as part of the email. Thankfully, there are many ready-to-go templates that can be selected once you sign up for a service. These days, it’s pretty darn easy to create newsletters with the tools available online.
Test, Manage and Plan
Remember to always send test messages, so you can check out how it looks and check all the links before sending it out. A no-brainer, but mistakes happen all the time and it can be quite annoying to find a broken link or typos here and there. Once you get the hang of it, sending our emails will be a snap and you can manage your statistics as well as plan out a schedule that works with your business within the service provider you have chosen. In my opinion, you don’t need to send messages all the time, but I would say at least every quarter at the least. You can to keep things fresh and alive in the mind of customers…but you must have something worth it to send at the same time. That’s why I don’t like having a forced schedule – although it really depends on your business. Here are some ideas and it’s probably not that difficult to come up with pertinent news to share once you get into it:
- New work! Your fans will definitely want to know about new products and services being offered.
- Offer a discount, sale or limited time offer…maybe for the holidays or a certain celebration.
- In the press – have you been published or interviewed somewhere?
- Show openings, marketplaces and such events to announce?
- Tutorial, tips, fabulous links to share to your audience?
- Class schedules, traveling/show plans?
- Offering your products in other shops? Licensed artwork? In a shop?
- Announcing something newsworthy?
Remember the Ultimate Goal
In the end, never forget that you are communicating with your fans. You should be providing them with something useful – something they would like to see in their inboxes. So don’t forget your audience and the ultimate goal of your email list. It’s a service you are providing to your fans, because they want to stay updated on you and your work. You never want to be forced to just go through the motions though… we are all busy people and no one wants to receive a robot message.
So are you ready? I hope you are inspired to go set up your email list right now. And if you already have one, I hope there’s some good information here for your email marketing effort in general. In the coming weeks, I’ll be delving into specific topics about getting the most out of your email marketing. Please let me know what you think and if you have any other tips to share below in the comments – ciao ciao!
by Linda | May 19, 2011 | my creative journal
I don’t know why, but especially those of us into the DIY mindset, often feel as if we MUST do it all ourselves. This is the case in many areas of our lives, whether it’s learning something new or baking that new recipe. Doing it from scratch or doing it all by your lonesome self is often a premise we set for ourselves. We often refuse help even when it is offered, pushing away others and totally getting lost in our own little bubble of a world. Does the lonesome journey somehow make your efforts more worthy of results? Or would you only be proud of your successes if you built them from the ground up with you bare hands? I understand the romanticism in those scenarios and we are often serenaded by other peoples’ stories of that effect. Someone who created a great thing from nothing and how it became a huge success, blah blah. It’s all fine and dandy, but I’ve come to learn it’s a bit of a fantasy.
Of course, we often accomplish things from start to finish without issue. We’ve built upon what we’ve learned from others – our influences and past learnings. We stand on the shoulder of giants, right? We’ve all had many teachers who have contributed to our life skills and there are books to refer to…and now the Internet! Sure, one could spontaneously come up with bright and creative ideas seemingly without “help” – a big EUREKA! But I think it’s a culmination of many influences and learnings from beforehand. Everything we do is a big mix of everything we have experienced…and every mix is unique, so that’s why we can create unique and interesting stuff…regardless of if we’ve learned from the same people or sources. Pretty cool, if you think about that!
So I’ve learned to stop feeling like I need to do things from scratch and more importantly that I need to figure it all out myself. Sometimes we need help. Yes, we need education, support…a helping hand! I still feel hesitant at times to ask for help or seek it out…somehow we feel ashamed. But those feelings are just not warranted. I just need to learn something new or a bit of a push in the right direction…what is so shameful about that? Ultimately, we are seeking something positive. I think that’s a good thing, darn it! Thus far in my creative business 101 journey, I’ve been able to build up a plan, based on my dreams with full confidence. I moved on to build a website with my own skills, writing as best I can for my marketing materials and making good progress. Now I’ve hit a big bump in the road…this marketing stuff is just throwing me for a loop. I know certain things, but just can’t get it all into a plan of action. It’s new to me and honestly, I’m a bit scared and just been flailing around lately.
I’ve wallowed a bit, tried to initiate some things here and there…like getting linked up with ArtsyShark “Links to Art We Love” page… but I’m seriously blocked and just spending my time reading books, doodling and painting away…as you can see from the photos. Good things to do creatively, but not so good if you are trying to build a business. I know I need to get myself out there and market my work, direct things towards my goals. It’s fine and dandy to be creatively fulfilled, but we’ve all got to eat and pay the bills, too. I sort of know the things I should be doing, but reluctant and not sure how to approach it all.
Thursday should be my marketing effort day, yet I was painting all morning and forgot about what I was going to do…echk. I started surfing the Internet again and finally decided to invest in my education and creative business by purchasing I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion by Alyson Stanfield. It’s been on my list for a while, as the new edition just came out in 2011, but I’m always hesitant to spend more money on things when I’m not exactly making the money. It can be difficult to sort out what is really worth it and I’ve often purchased things and regretted…not because of the products themselves, but because I was snatching at random things. In this case, it is not even a big investment and I got the ebook, so it’s instant and I can start diving in right away. However, more than the monetary value, it’s about making a commitment to yourself to tackling the issue – self-promotion in this case – and getting the help I need. So, I don’t have to know how to do it myself, by myself…I’m turning to resources that I can reach out to…we’ll see what happens.
