Tips to Promote Your Art & Design Business Online FREE! - Part 2 : Guest Post on Complimentary Blogs

Guest Post By Marie Nicole

Last week we talked about how you can promote your art and design business online for FREE by posting your blog regularly and how your blogs can help you increase your online presence.

Today our discussion is about Guest postings on other complimentary blogs and how you can promote your art and design business via others' business blog.

There are a number of ways to get involve with guest posting. Below are some suggestions that you might find useful:

• Get in touch with the blog owners and ask whether you can write a guest post for their blogs.
• You can find these compliment blog owners via social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and many more. It can also be on those favourite blogs that you have been following for some time already.
• Look for the following blog owners; artists, designers, art suppliers, business coaches in the creative industry or any blog owners who need your expertise in art & design. For example, real estate companies who need regular guest posts on artwork for homes or advise about interior design tips for modern apartment etc.
•  Your guest post should also include a summary about you and your business, and a link back to your website is a must.
• Plan out your guest post carefully. Write blogs that add creditability to your work and blogs that demonstrate your creative flair and expertise. Make sure that your blogs add value to the blog owners' blog.

Most blog owners are very welcoming to receive guest posts because it adds value to their own blog. Particularly if the blog owners have a large readership following which means you will gain great exposure to a huge audience that you have not reached and at the same time you also get great traffic back to your own site. Guest posting will definitely add to your credibility as an artist or a designer.

And it's totally free! You just need to invest the time to connect with complimentary blog owners.

If you are keen to start contributing your blog, you can submit a guest article to ArtSHINE’s blog. Also, you can contact myself direct  to Vinh@artSHINE.com.au if you would like to experiment with guest posting on ArtSHINE's blog just like Artist & Designer Marie Nicole who is an ArtSHINE associate and  regularly contributes her articles to ArtSHINE's blog monthly.

Next week we will talk about Self publishing your eBook and how it can promote your Art & Design business online for FREE.

Thanks for dropping by and looking forward to see you again next week.

Want to learn more about how to gain your online presence?

It’s as simple as 1... 2... 3...

1: Like  ArtSHINE's Facebook page

2: send us an email to Onlinepresence@quantumcompass.com.au

3: Contact Vinh for a no cost, no obligation coaching session on 8060 9321, or 0410 636 138.

FREE COACHING SESSION:

Click here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ArtShineDiscovery

Related posts:

Tips to Promote Your Art & Design Business Online... FREE!

• Part 1: Blog Posting 
• Part 2: Guest Posting on complimentary Blogs
• Part 3: Self Publishing Ebook 
• Part 4: Online Community
• Part 5: Article Submission
• Part 6: Joint Venture or collaborating with compliment businesses

Tips To Help You Cut Down Your Business Expenses

When you’re running an art and design business, expenses can stack up quickly. And we know that paying yourself is the last item on the list. 

So it is important for you to control your expense and understand where you have spent all your funds. This is particularly critical when you are a new start up, by going overboard on expenses, particularly before you’ve built up your income stream for your business, can put your business in a financially stressful position

If you are an existing business controlling your expenses is even more critical. 

To build a sustainable art and design business, every decision you make will change how you manage your business.

Below are ten ways you can apply to help you control and reduce expenses in your art and design practice:

• Bartering: Barter is the method of trading goods or services,   for other goods or services. If your business offers a product or service that another business owner may need, offering a barter exchange is the way to go without hurting your wallet. Here is an example, if you are a graphic designer, you might barter with a web designer who can develop a website for you, and in exchange he might want you to design his business cards etc. Barters are typically considered to be taxable based on their value, so be sure to collect any necessary tax reports on any barter transactions for your tax returns. You should see your accountant for advice on this process.
• Contra: on the other hand is when you have a receivable account to offset a payable account with the same vendor. For instance if you are an interior designer and you have completed a design job for your accountant’s new office for $2000 and instead of getting paid for the job you can offset this bill with an outstanding bill that you have yet to pay your accountant. This contra would only work if both parties have a mutual agreement. The contra deal still needs to be carried out like a standard invoice.
• Review costing:  Do a revision on your costings, and carefully research prices when you sign a contract with vendors. Make sure you are not over paying for a standard service. You can always do online searches and compare prices. Pay attention to contracts such as web hosting, merchant services, mobile phone contract contracts etc. Avoid any long term contracts. So shop around to get the best deal.
• Data storage:  Thanks to modern technology, you no longer need to buy costly servers to store your business data. Have you heard of "Cloud"? You can now store your data online in a cloud based server.  Instead of paying for the server, you only have to pay a low monthly fee, based on the amount of server space your business is using. For many creative businesses, using this approach could save hundreds of dollars each month. Would it be better for your business that you save money and you can also access your data anywhere.
• Save our planet by saving power: Review how you use energy in your business by having a commitment like turning off lights & devices before leaving your studio or office. Although this commitment may not make a big difference in savings on a day to day basis, however, in the long run it will save you hundreds of dollars.
•  Equipment and furniture: When you are starting out, you don't have to buy everything new, like purchasing equipment; desks, office chairs, and computers. It can be extremely costly and it could blow out your budget too. You can make a huge saving by purchasing second hand  items or  look for sales or specials. Look out for furniture liquidation sales or closing down sales that are selling their assets, and look for manufactures who sell direct to customers. If you are looking for used furniture you can search on Gum Tree or even E bay where you can make an offer to the dealer for the best offer.
• Use Virtual Support: Take advantage of this service. Instead of employing a full-time worker to handle office work, you may be able to save money by outsourcing office chores to a virtual assistant (VA). This type of service is mostly based overseas in countries with lower costs of living, so your expenses are likely to be much lower than hiring someone on a payroll.
• Review your stock inventory: Reduce your stock on hand, get rid of any slow sellers. If you run a wholesale, retail or online business keep your stock level to a minimum. By buying too much inventory at once can be costly, and you need to find space to store the stock which could add another cost to your business. To order the stock wisely you need to track your sales activities for a few months and work on the minimum & maximum on your inventory.
• Downsize your working space: The rental of your business space is the largest  expense in any business. If you’re spending more than you can afford, consider moving to a smaller space or you could work from home or share your work space with another complimentary business owner. You could also encourage some of your team members to work from home so that you won’t require as much working space or equipment.
• Focus online marketing: Change the way you promote your business from the past such as flyers and catalogues to email, e-newsletters, blogs and take advantage of the social media networks. All these online marketing are low costs and some are even free. You will save lot of money from printing and shipping cost.
• Business Trips: Plan your business trip wisely by highlighting all that you must do on each trip. Can you stay with friends or family instead of staying in a hotel? Book online such as wotif.com  and take advantage on airline specials.  More importantly, take the time to weigh up whether a business trip is really necessary: Instead of travelling overseas to see suppliers perhaps you could do the business using video conference chat on Skype to your supplier.

So the next time you are setting or reviewing your expense budget, do consider the above tips as it could only help you save money and spend on what makes a big difference to your bottom line.

Inspirational Quote of the Week

Happy Easter Monday

"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later" 

                      

 -Og Mandino

Remembering Good Friday.

"Wishing You All of  God's Blessing This Good Friday"

Image Source:

http://www.punjabigraphics.com/good-friday-greetings/

Happy Easter !

"Have an awesome Easter.

Have fun Easter egg hunting 

and hanging out with family."




Best Wishes


Vinh & Stuart

Tips to Promote Your Art & Design Business Online... FREE!- Part 1: Blog

Would you like to learn different ways to promote your art & design business online?

For FREE! …you don't have to spend a dime?

Free you ask?

Yes, it’s absolutely free!

All you have to do is to think creatively and think outside the square!

There are many ways you can promote your art & design business for free, and there is one aspect you need to consider and it will make all the difference. 

And that's you. You are the face and the brand behind your Art & Design.

You are an artist, a designer, and an expert in Art & Design. SO we want you to be the leader in your creative filed. Who you are and how you express your Art & Design business will also make you stand out from the other artists and designers online.

We want you to learn and leverage your expertise when promoting your Art & Design business. As you already know, the internet world is enormous to manage! There are billions of users out there and that's why it's hard to target everybody! What we want you to do is to focus on online marketing and  your ideal audience.  This means you are not after billions of people but just 1% of those billion users which is sufficient for you to start marketing your business on line.to.

SO learn more about your ideal audience:

Where do they hangout?

What do they do?

What do they like?

How do they buy online and offline?

The more you understand your ideal audience the easier for you to promote your business online.

Below are 6 no cost marketing strategies you can apply to your business online:

1. Blogs
2. Guest posting on other complimentary blogs
3. Self publishing an E book
4. Online community forums  
5. Article submissions
6. Joint ventures with complimentary businesses

This week we’ll talk about blog posting and how your business can gain great exposure online.

1. Blogging

The first thing we do as coaches is that we encourage our clients to have their say by posting blogs regularly. Blogging is a great starting platform for you to learn and have a taste of online marketing. This is the reason why we want you to be authentic and use your expertise in your field to attract your ideal audience.  Blog about things your audience care about, and offer tips that they can apply to their personal and business life.

You may have come across people saying how easy it is to market online. The truth is that it’s not as easy as it may have actually sounded. Although the marketing strategies we are going to share with you will not wear out your wallet, however it does cost you your time. So allocating sufficient time to work on your business online presence is critical to you and your art & design practice

You are already aware that your website plays a major role as a business card these days, having all the necessary information about you, what you do and how people can contact you. You just can’t stop there and expect people to find you online. You still need to work hard to drive traffic to your site and the challenging steps are…how do you talk directly to your ideal audience and attract them to your site?

Have you ever wondered why your website has low incoming traffic or no traffic at all?

Have you also wondered why other artists' websites drive huge traffic and achieve great readership and sales?

It doesn't matter if you have the best website in the universe. If no one knew you existed then no one will find you online. The only time people do know you exist is when you start actively promoting your website regularly. This is how blog posting can help you get discovered for your website.  Blogs can help you with Google ranking and can get you to the top of the Google page. To build up organically you need to blog regularly, ideally you should post one blog per week. 

I remember in my infancy stage of blogging I started to blog once a month and learnt and enjoyed the blogging process until I built my confidence with blogging. After three months I started to post 2 blogs per month, then 4 per month and now in my fourth year of blogging, I regularly post 5 posts per week. I now have over 500 blogs and have gained a readership of over ten thousand readers per month. What I have done here is to grow my online presence organically and made it search engine friendly for Google and other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing.

Before you start to blog, define your purpose. Why do you want to blog and what are the benefits for you and your audience? Ask yourself these questions:

• What can I offer to an online audience?
• What can I share?
• Why should my online audience come to my website?

If you need help on how to start writing a successful blog, below are some of my previous posts that can help you  understand the process of posting a blog and what type of articles to write.

• How to post a successful blog
• How your blog can help your Business LifeStyle
• To Share or not to Share in your Art & Design Blogs (Part 1)
• To Share or not to Share in your Art & Design Blogs (Part 2)

Next week part 2, we will talk about how guest posting can help your online presence.

Want to learn more about how to gain your online presence?

It’s as simple as 1... 2... 3...

1: Like  ArtSHINE's Facebook page

2: send us an email to Onlinepresence@quantumcompass.com.au

3: Contact Vinh for a no cost, no obligation coaching session on 8060 9321, or 0410 636 138.

FREE COACHING SESSION:

Click here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ArtShineDiscovery

Related posts:

Tips to Promote Your Art & Design Business Online... FREE!

• Part 1: Blog Posting 
• Part 2: Guest Posting on complimentary Blogs
• Part 3: Self Publishing Ebook 
• Part 4: Online Community
• Part 5: Article Submission
• Part 6: Joint Venture or collaborating with compliment businesses

Do You Feel Successful in Your Art & Design Business?

Do you feel Successful?

As Business Coaches we talk to many artists and designers there’s a common theme we’ve discovered...

We all start out with a dream or an idea. A dream for what we'd like our business to be. An idea for what our lifestyle should become.

So why do some of us feel less successful than others?

And why do we feel less that successful even when we may have already achieved so much?

In our experience working with creative clients like you we’ve found four common reasons why people feel unsuccessful or unfulfilled..

1. Unclear Goals or Objectives:

We work with our clients to get very specific with objectives.

Be very clear on what it is that you want.

Visualise what it is that you’re aiming for. And remember to write your goals in the present tense as if you have already achieved them too.

Understand your DPP (Desire, Passion, and Purpose)

2.Planning Steps: No clear measure of success.

If you haven’t sat down and really planned where you’re going in your business, it’s hard to know when you’ve “got there”.

Many people have vague ideas of what “successful” means to them - ‘being rich’, ‘having time to do what I want’, or ‘being the best in my work'.

You need to define what success means to you and what that success would look and feel like for you too. 

It’s this feeling that will empower you to reach your goals.

Think about all the steps you need to take to make your goals a reality. Again, it’s about being specific. What resources will you need, and how will you best use them? Write each action step in sequential order.

If your goal is broad, make sure you break down the task into small little steps, and celebrate them when you attain them.

It’s no fun feeling like you’re not “successful” - That’s why it’s so important to have measurable, realistic, and achievable goals.

3. Your external & Internal  World are not aligned:

Your external world is not aligned with your internal world.