Happy Birthday One Year Old Artpromotivate – A Look Back

It’s been one full year since the first post was published at Artpromotivate. Artpromotivate’s birthday is coming up on Dec. 17th (just six days after my own birthday on Dec. 11th) What a ride this has been! I have been writing for a full year on a topic I love and meeting talented artists throughout the world.

When I first began Artpromotivate, I set three main goals for myself. The first was to publish a post every single day. The second goal was to achieve over 1000 blog subscribers. I am thrilled to announce that I have surpassed the first two goals. Artpromotivate is nearing a 400 post count and the number of subscribers is around 1100. I have to admit that writing a post to publish every single day was not an easy feat. Some of these articles took me a full day to research and write! I also have to give credit to the guest authors and artists who applied for the artist spotlight. I probably would have not achieved the post a day goal if it weren’t for their help!

 

The final goal was to provide everything I know completely free. I realize that not all artists can afford to pay for an art consultant, buy art promotion books or hire someone to create a website. Of course, I am not trying to diminish the value of these services. These services are there for a reason. In many ways you will learn much more than you could at any blog by reading through a good art marketing book, such as I’d Rather be in the Studio or The Goal Wheel for Artists.

 

Why did I start this Art Promotion blog?

Please visit the About page to read my story. I’ve actually been planning this website in the back of my mind for years, but wasn’t in a place in my own life for such a massive undertaking.

This art promotion blog is an off-shoot of my art blog Graham Matthews Art. Around last November, I began writing several articles related to art promotion (relating to Facebook and Google+), mixed with articles about my art. The idea was to attract more visitors to my art site. It certainly worked, but I discovered one thing. People rarely responded to posts about my artwork, even though I spent a lot of time writing them. But, they did respond to the art promotion articles. They had the most comments I ever had on any of my art blog posts.

 

The image above displays blog subscribers (green) and reach (blue). As you can see, subscribers have a consistent increase. This could not have been achieved without our post a day goal. 

 

I knew I had so much to share on the subject, so I decided to create an entirely different blog. My first task was to come up with a name. I wanted something simple, but unique, so I began experimenting with word combinations based on the main topics of my new blog – art promotion and motivation. This is where the word Artpromotivate came from. I knew it was a previously unheard of word because I searched on Google and came up with 0 results. A search for Artpromotivate today yields over 21000 search results!!

 

Another awesome achievement! In just a year, over 1800 people like us at our Facebook page! We LIKE you TOO!

For the first two months, I decided to commit to writing as much as I could. Many days I would publish two posts! After this rapid influx of content to Artpromotivate, I committed to posting just once a day. This allowed me to write longer, better quality articles. I did have a lot of time on my hands, since I was laid off from my seasonal job in a fish plant at the time. In May, I found out that the fish plant was not opening this year (though it later did for one week in July). So, I continued “working” at Artpromotivate, which by now I considered my new job (along with being an artist).

 

 

In the past year, I feel I have barely touched on what it takes to promote art on the internet.

I am definitely not stuck for blog topics. In the coming months I will be exploring several new avenues for promoting art online.

Soon, I will be giving instructions on how anyone can create a blog like this one, on any topic of your choosing – and sharing how you can make it successful.

I will also be sharing plans for Artpromotivate for the new year. I have some very exciting things to announce, and who knows, I may have some new goals.

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