Must I do my own marketing or is the site being actively promoted to bring in new customers?
I think DPWs does a fair amount of marketing, mainly the daily emailing of new work everyday. Also they promote on Facebook. But it never hurt do some self promoting. I try to promote interest by using Facebook, google+, pinterest, and doing some blogging. When you add a painting to DPWs take a few minutes and share it on social media, it really does help. Oh and donāt forget about instagram that is a great site to also post to.
Iām not sure what David and his team are doing for promotion, but I do know that Iāve gotten several very GOOD leads and a few excellent buyers over the last 5 years that Iāve been on DPW. I also promote myself and my art on social media, as Mary Schiros suggests; heavily on Facebook, and on Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, my Google blog, and my FASO website. But Iām aware of at least a handful of major buyers who Iām pretty sure came directly from DPW first. Honestly, you just never know. Trying this and as much other marketing as you can possibly handle is much better than not doing anything. Also, ANY kind of social media marketing, including DPW, is most effective when you are posting DAILY, or at least very frequently! Iāve averaged about 12-17 posts each month for the last 5 years and itās really paid off for me! 
Good luck!
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Thank you for your response. I needed to hear a positive result that had details on what you did to get that result.
Looks like I had better step up my self promotion.
One can not envy the results until one envies the effort.
Mary Ellen
In the past, we have spend thousands of dollars each month advertising, alternatively, in art collector magazines, on high traffic interior design blogs, and on Facebook. Through it all, we found such advertising to unfortunately be completely ineffective. Instead, we have found the most effective way to attract new buyers is by positive word of mouth generated by working hard to have DPW be the best we came make it and through all of the thousands of click backs created around the web when members post links to their work on their blogs and websites.
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I wanted to add that Google says DPW has over 460,000 links from other websites with over half being from links to work on our memberās blogs. Pinterest has over 20,000 links to DPW. For some reason Facebook is not included in the statistics, however there should be many, many Facebook links to DPW, as well. All these links are very effective at pulling in visitors and promoting DPW.
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Reading that kinda threw me for a loop, considering how many times Iāve heard art-marketing gurus insist on its effectiveness. Looks like once again the conventional wisdom leaves a lot to be desired.
Times they are a changināā¦and will continue to change and evolve. Remember the days pre-internet??
Yeah, I do remember. I miss those days. Simpler days.
I miss those days too.
The days when, according to Robert Genn in The Painterās Keys, (and every classic artist biography I ever read) the galleries would take care of all the business and you would focus on nothing but creating. Now, the artist is expected to do everything on the business end as well, including the marketing, which is strange, seeing as how we didnāt major in marketing or business. Makes no sense.
Itās true, but when you sell online and do the biz stuff yourself you get to keep your money.
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But lose my time and energy doing something I know nothing about (marketing etc.). That was the point of the 50/50 split of profits: you do half the work (create), they do the other half (sell). And you each take half the money. Made sense, the idea of everyone doing the thing they were good at.
Anyhow, it blows me away, what David said, about none of the advertising making any difference. I wonder, too, if Instagram, Facebook, etc., are equally ineffective. Iāve been suspecting for a long while now that the āexpertsā who write blog posts at the usual sites about this stuff are simply full of it.
And youāll notice, too, that Expert A quotes Expert B, and then on Expert Bās blog, they write a post quoting Expert A. Itās an echo chamber of conventional wisdom.
I think social media is effective. I do a fair amount of āmarketingā (just posting new work and putting some personality on there), that people do get to know me and will like my work. Also, my posts will be seen by a lot of people. So, doubling the posts up by posting on DPW & Facebook seems to be working for me.
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I want to clarify that it was paid online advertising that we didnāt find effective. On the other hand, we have found a good and consistent social media presence to be very valuable advertising.
Thatās useful to knowā¦
On a personal note, I donāt understand anything about social media. And Iām still young enough (GenX) that I should be able to understand it and embrace it. But itās all Greek to meā¦ And the idea of purposely sharing so much and connecting in those ways is justā¦ horrifying.
I donāt share that much. I share about my art, the process and my dog. No horror.
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People who like to share about the process that way should, but I canāt. Every time Iāve attempted to do so thru social media, Iāve felt like I betrayed somethingā¦
You donāt have to be so vulnerable and tell your deepest secrets. A post could be just- why you did something in a painting or why you titled your painting āImagine Furtherā for instance. It would tell a viewer just a little something extra about you that one painting might notā¦are you a poetic person? āI loved the movement of light and showed that with the marks I made, indicating the promise that would reveal itself if I focused on that certain spotā¦ā
Are you an analytic person? I used complimentary colors, and red under the green to give it depth of field, etc.
Deep thinker? "I was thinking of John Lennon todayā¦ Several poems from Yoko Onoās 1964 book Grapefruit inspired Lennon to write the lyrics for āImagineāāin particular, one which Capitol Records reproduced on the back cover of the original Imagine LP titled āCloud Pieceā, reads: āImagine the clouds dripping, dig a hole in your garden to put them in.ā
Or just say something funny, if thatās you. You donāt have to be super social-you can sit at the keyboard and socialize just a little here and there. And over the body of work and the little things you say here and there add up and before you know it, you are marketing AND making more friends.
Youāve done it already thru your posts here on Art Talk. We all know you just a bit better now!
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Thank you Sunny. I found your post inspiring.
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