96 – The 5-Minute Mentor: How Do I Develop My Artist Website

In this episode, I take the time to answer a question from one of my listeners, Beth, on the best way to approach developing a website for her art. The process doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and help is out there from folks who know just what artists need.

If you are in the market for someone to help with your website, I have two great folks to recommend for you. 

If you’re ready to get serious about designing and developing your artist website, work on branding, or help with setting up your own eCommerce, then my friend Tasha Glover is the person you want to talk with.

And for help driving traffic to your website, you’re going to want to talk to my friend Jeremy Ashburn of Pushleads.

Finally, if you are more of a DIYer, then I’ve put together a great mini-course that helps get you started and headed in the right direction. Click Here to learn more about my $39 Developing Your Artist Website mini-course.

Some of the links from above are affiliate links, meaning I could potentially get paid if you click on them and buy something. Keep in mind, the reason I'm an affiliate is because I believe in what they are offering.  

Got Questions? -We’ve Got Answers!

I’ll be answering a new question every Friday so if you have a question you'd like me to answer on an upcoming episode; I need to hear from you.  

Click Here, and you can Record your message below and who knows, we just might feature it on an upcoming episode!

Connect with Matt online at www.MattTommeyMentoring.com or on Instagram and Facebook @thethrivingchristianartist

Get encouraged and connect with other artists on the Thriving Christian Artist Facebook Page  https://www.facebook.com/thethrivingchristianartist/

Please Note: The registration for the conference mentioned in this episode is closed. You can find all of our current resources at: https://www.matttommeymentoring.com/resources.html

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Do you ever get frustrated with the amount of technology required nowadays just to be an artist and get your work out there to the world, especially when it comes to designing your own website? Well, we're going to cover some of the really important things, ways and resources of how to do that today on 5-Minute Mentoring and also give you a really great resource that will help you take your website to the next level. If you ever wanted to have someone in your life who you could ask real questions about your art, your business, and even your walk with the Lord, well, that's exactly what we do every Friday here on 5-Minute Mentoring, where I answer one question from one of my awesome podcast listeners in order to help you start really thriving as the artist you know God created you to be. Well, hey, everybody. I'm so glad that you're with me on this Friday. Happy Friday! All right. We're going to have a great time today. You know, technology... is one of those things that I have always loved to do, I guess because I started kind of cutting my teeth in marketing back in the day as a graphic designer and, you know, have been designing websites for a long time. But I know for many of you that that side of things can really, really be a frustration. And obviously today, having a website is a big, big, big part of getting your work out there and letting folks know what you do creatively. It's a frustration. And today's question on 5-Minute Mentoring is from an artist, Beth Davis, who was asking one of those questions about technology and about the importance of websites. Here's Beth.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35

Hi, my name is Beth Davis. I live in Florence, Alabama. I'm a collage and assemblage artist. My question is, how do most other artists learn to set up and maintain a website? Do they stumble around hitting or missing, or do they use online tutorials or hire someone? Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:56

Well, Beth, thank you for your question. And hey, if you're sitting out there going, gosh, I would love Matt to answer one of my questions, all you got to do is go to matttommymentoring.com forward slash podcast. And you'll notice that when you go there, there's a little voice recorder. It's just like leaving a voicemail. You just click on that, record your message on there, keep it to, you know, 30 to 45 seconds or so, and really make it succinct so I can answer it quickly. And I go through those every week and choose some of the best ones to feature right here on 5-Minute Mentoring each week. So do that and who knows, maybe I'll be featuring one of your questions coming up real soon. Now, Beth, you know, it's a great question. You're asking, what do I do about my website? You know, lots and lots of people struggle with that. So yeah, you know, a lot of artists nowadays, because you've got great tools out there like Weebly, like Wix, like Squarespace, like WordPress, many artists are choosing to do their own website themselves. In fact, that's one of the big modules that we teach inside the mentoring program is, you know, how to do that, walking you through everything from planning out your website to, you know, planning out all of your content, your pictures, pictures, even talking about search engine optimization. Because, you know, just because you've got a website doesn't mean anybody's coming to it. You know, obviously you want to not just have a pretty brochure out there, but you want to have a website that converts, all right, that brings people to your website. Then you have a clear path for them to follow once they're there. Now, honestly, for many people, that can be a really overwhelming task. And, you know, in the telling people, listen, you want to do the things that make sense for you to be doing and other things that don't make sense for you to be doing. It often makes sense for you to hire that out. And so a lot of artists do use web designers. All right. Now, typically when you're using a web designer on the very low end, you're going to be paying anywhere from$500 to$750. On the average end, I would say you're going to be in the$1,500 to$3,000 range for a custom website and anywhere in between, depending on what you are willing to do. But here's the good thing. When you treat your art business as a business, you realize that all of that money is an expense that you can write off at the end of the year. So why would you worry, all right, about investing in your business in that way? You definitely, if it's something that you're like, you know what, I know that I'm I'm never gonna be able to or have the interest in learning how to develop my own website. It just makes sense, I'm gonna hire somebody. Definitely don't feel bad about it as, oh gosh, I'm spending this money and I should know how to do this. No, you focus on making art, all right? Invest the money into your website with somebody that knows what they're doing so that you can get on to doing the things that you wanna do. Now, for those of you that are interested in doing your own website, And Beth, if this is you, Making sure that you have planned that out well is one of the best things that you can do in order to save time and money. And I always tell people, you know, get a grid out and lay out or a big piece of poster board or whatever and lay out like in an organizational diagram what you want your website to look like. Your homepage at the top, then have little lines coming off of it and say, hey, here's my about page, here's my gallery page, here's my how to contact me page, you know, whatever you want to have on there and lay it all out. And even down to, all right, what content you want to have on those pages, what you want people to do when they're on those pages, what pictures you're going to have on those pages, and really connect that up from a search engine optimization standpoint as well so that the keywords that you're wanting to feature on your website are all integrated in your page titles in your alt tags, in the content of your website, so that you make sure, again, you're not just having a website that looks pretty, but it's actually out there working for you. All right. The other thing you always want to make sure that you have on your website is a way to get people's emails so that when they're coming to your website, you make sure that you're offering them something, a free download, a PDF, a free piece of digital artwork, whatever it might be. you want to give them something to incentivize them in order for them to give you their email address so that you can stay in contact with them on a regular basis and start building connection. Because again, remember, nobody buys art because they need it. They buy because of connection. So really, Beth, either way, whether you're building your own website using one of the tools that I mentioned or using somebody to to actually build your website. Either way, you're gonna be in a good situation. Just realize you're either gonna pay somebody or you're gonna pay through time and energy and learning to do it yourself. Now, you know, listen, my heart is always to equip people people to be able to do what they need to do as quickly as possible to accelerate the process that you're going through in your life to become an artist and make it easy easy easy for you so here's what i'm going to do all right down below in the show notes i've given you two of my trusted resources for building websites. If you're looking for a web designer that can help you, they understand artists, they know the things that you need from a not only design standpoint, but also a search engine optimization standpoint, you could click on either one of them. And one is named Jeremy, one's named Tasha. You can check with them and they will hook you up from a web design standpoint, all right? The other thing that, you know, for those of you that are out there and you're like, you know what, Matt, I'd love to do that, but money's tight. I really want to, you know, do this myself, learn how to develop my own website, but I need some guidance. I need some help. Here's what I've done. I've actually pulled out some of my best teaching from the mentoring program, all about building your artist website. All right. Talking about why you need it, how to build it, how to get everything organized before you start planning it. You know, I've even put in my website planner, which is a PDF document that I developed for our mentoring members so that it walks you through the process of doing that, getting organized before you start. Also, I talk about in the course how to create and optimize your blog to get more traffic, how to create a storefront so that you can start selling on your website. I talk about how to start using keywords and phrases, the basics of search engine optimization, plus how to know and include the top things every artist's website must have to make it effective. All this is available in this little mini course. And guess what? It's not 300 bucks. It's not 100 bucks. It's 39 bucks, all right? One-time purchase. You can grab that right now and get everything that you need to get started. I use Weebly and I use Weebly to teach. It's a great option for folks that are wanting to manage their website themselves Beth, you may find that this is a great option for you as well. But either way, if you want to have some trusted people to build your website, I've given you a couple options for that. Or if you want me to walk you through the process in this mini course, you can get that as well. Or if you just want to try it all yourself and be like, Matt, thanks. This has helped me a lot. I want to give it a try without any help, then you can do that too. But I just want to make sure that if you need help, you've got it and you've got it from folks that know what they're doing. All right. Well, hey guys, you know, thanks for being on today. Beth, thank you for your question. Remember, if you've got a question for me that you want featured on 5-Minute Mentoring, just go to matttommymentoring.com forward slash podcast and record a message. And who knows, maybe it'll be your question that I am answering next time here on 5-Minute Mentoring. All right. I'll see you next Friday. Bye. Now, before I go, I want to encourage you, make sure, make sure you pre-register for our upcoming Thriving Christian Artists Conference. It's coming up in March 2020 here in the actual North Carolina area out at Ridgecrest. Incredible, beautiful conference center that we've been doing conferences at for years. Listen, this is the only conference in the world that you will be able to get, hear from speakers on healing and wholeness. All right? Identity. being able to learn how to grow as an artist, get into creative flow with the Holy Spirit, develop your unique creative voice, all right? How to do the practical things to grow an audience, grow your business, all right? So that you can really be the artist that God's called you to be. This is our first year we're doing this. I've been doing this online for years, all right? My mentoring program has been uber successful over the years, helping thousands of artists move from striving and struggling to really thrive. in their spiritual life, their art life, and their business life, and what I've done is I'm bringing a lot of that teaching to this conference, not only from me, but also from some of the best speakers that I know in the areas of healing and wholeness, in marketing, in Instagram, in social media, all right, and how to build a brand, what do you do with your website, all right, and so, so much more. We're going to be talking about all of that kind of thing, plus doing it in a We'll be right back. And when you do that, you get the opportunity to get a$100 discount on your ticket, all right? Then we open the doors for pre-registrants only on October the 29th. We give a full week ahead of time before we open it to the public to those who are pre-registered. Why? because just about every conference that we do fills up, all right? They sell out. And we want you that are serious about coming to be a part of that. So pre-register right now at the link that's in the show notes. You can see all the details about the conference and get your name on the list so you can get that$100 discount and get first in line, all right, before we open it to the public. I would love to see you hug your neck, hear your story, and meet you face-to-face at the Thriving Christian Artist Conference coming up in March 2020 at Ridgecrest. Alright, do it now. Bye.