Siopa Eile

Blogs make it as easy as possible for a person with no technical skills to publish on the web. To see how easy, check out the video above. You don’t have to ask a web developer to upload your content and you don’t have to learn HTML.

You might point out that blogs don’t allow you to build a shopping-cart to sell your art. To work around this, a lot of artist and craft bloggers are now using free services like Etsy to sell their work. (check out UK based Bouf.com and Australian based Mintd.com for interesting alternatives to Etsy). Etsy charge you a small commission on what you sell. A bit like Ebay, but dedicated solely to artisan products. These bloggers simply link to their Etsy Store from their blog. Note, that the Etsy store can be set up at no cost to the artist. The Etsy-blog combination is an ideal way for artists to get an online presence, without having to fork our lots of money on buying a shopping cart enabled website. Its a no risk situation.

I asked Melisa Haedike, a very successful Artist blogger, whether she would go for a blog or a website, if she were an artist contemplating setting up an online presence. Her response was clear:

A blog definitely!

They are so easy to build and personalize yourself. Most of them are
free.And technically it is very easy to update. You can be “live” in
5minutes and then add as little or as much content as you like. It’s
all up to you!

While blogging makes publishing to the web very easy, making a blog a success in terms of readership depends on the quality of your content and the work you put into promoting it.

That said, I would say, that because of the networked nature of the blogosphere, it is far easier to market your blog then it would be to market a website.

Blogging is a type of social networking. While the video below is aimed at social network sites like myspace and bebo and not blogging per se, it does give you a good idea of the mechanics of social networking and how it opens up a new world of connectivity and possibilities.

Click To Play

YouTube - Social Networking in Plain English

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technorati tags:video, artisan blogging

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