New Ask Expert on board for September 2010 – Dena of Dena Designs
I am very excited to announce that in September we will have another new art licensing expert on the line. As a new contributor to the Art Licensing Info Monthly Ask Call series, Dena has graciously agreed to share her more than 20 years of experience in art licensing with us.
I first became aware of Dena at a SURTEX trade show – she always has an amazing booth that is draped in fabric and very inviting. Then as I started designing fabric and thumbing through Quilting and Sewing magazines her name and face would show up again… Dena boasts an amazing career of art, design and honors in the industry – the studio has won 17 Louie Awards including Greeting Card of the Year from the international membership Greeting Card Association. Dena has also been nominated for Best Art Brand Program of the Year at the prestigious 2008 and 2009 annual LIMA International Licensing Excellence Awards.
Dena knows art licensing. Designer, TV Host, and entrepreneur, Dena founded internationally acclaimed Dena Designs Inc., as a full service design and merchandising studio.
For more than 20 years, Dena Designs has created powerful best-sellers which have sold globally in the hottest stores, from specialty retailers to the nation’s leading chains. Join us for Dena’s live (FREE) 60 minute teleseminar on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 (5:30 pm Pacific / 8:30 pm Eastern).
To submit your questions, head to www.AskDenaDesigns.com
Dena has several home decor and scrapbooking books at Amazon.com – one of the most recent being “Embellish Your Home*”.
Learn more about Dena on her website, www.DenaDesigns.com and be sure to mark your calendar for Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 for this great new expert!
– Tara Reed
P.S. If you can’t make the live call, as is always the case with new experts, the audio replay will be available for free after the call.
FTC disclosure: The Amazon links are affiliate links and Tara Reed will receive a small commission if you click the link and make a purchase. Every little bit helps us keep blogging and creating these calls!
FYI – Online Copyright Registration System Upgrades mean Down Time for Submissions – plan ahead!
Yesterday I got organized and registered a batch of art with the Library of Congress. As I logged in, I saw a big red warning about system upgrades and downtime and thought I’d pass it along to all of you.
The Copyright Office is engaged in a major project to upgrade the software application that drives eService. System testing and implementation of the new software will occur over three upcoming weekends, resulting in periods during which eService will be offline. The testing and upgrade schedule is as follows:
I hope you have some system in place to regularly submit your art to the Library of Congress. Without registering your work, you are limiting your ability to defend your work against theft and unlawful use. Submitting your art to online sites that say they will confirm your deposit if there is a problem isn’t good enough. The only way to protect your work is through the US Library of Congress.
If you register online, the cost is $35 per registration and you will get your paperwork back much faster than mailing in your submissions – which costs $45 – so slower and more expensive. Do you think they want artists to embrace technology?
Attorney Cheryl Hodgson has talked about a variety of copyright related issues in her Ask Calls. If you have never heard her, go download her first call audio replay for free at www.ArtLicensingInfo.com/audio-archives.html#CherylHodgsonJuly09FreeAudio
Cheryl’s January call replay is available for $25 at www.ArtLicensingInfo.com/audio-archives.html#CherylHodgsonJan2010Audio – try getting legal advice of any help for only $25. 
Cheryl will be answering more of your legal questions, copyright or otherwise, on Wednesday, August 18, 2010.
To submit your question for consideration, go to www.AskCherylHodgson.com today.
The call is free if you listen live and the replay will be available for a small fee after the call.
Protect your creative genius – register copyrights and learn the legal aspects of licensing. Here’s to your creative success!
– Tara Reed
SEO For Artists: Google Wants To Help You Sell Art | Guest post by Daniel Tardent
Back in February I was interviewed by the lovely Tara Reed for her monthly Ask Teleclass. The topic was Ask About SEO For Artists and it was a valuable call (if I do say so myself!). Tara has a real talent for bringing out the golden threads in these classes and the result was some very straightforward guidance for artists to improve their search engine rankings.
If you weren’t on the call and haven’t listened to the replay I highly recommend you do so. If you think I’m kidding about how valuable this is, here are a couple of testimonials from that call…
From Shawna Erback…
Thanks to your tele-seminar with Tara Reed, I am now in first place and first page when I search for “licensing studio”, “art licensing studio”, “artist licensing” and “artist licensing studio”. Before I listened to your ask call my website looked pretty on the outside but was a mess on the inside and thanks to you I now have seo optimization! I listened to that call more than once taking notes and will listen to it again and again to keep things fresh. Thank you Thank you!!
From Sue Allemand…
SUPER SUPER SUPER! That’s all I can say! I never expected to get this much out of Daniel’s call! I understood EVERY WORD! He makes it so simple to understand! And to think — I spent hundreds on supposed “promotion” companies who claimed to submit you to X amount of search engines – numerous times over a certain amount of time, fix your meta tags, get you X amount of reciprocal links, etc… and NONE of what they CLAIMED I needed (and what I paid for) was in Daniel’s top 3 for SEO!! Unbelievable!
I confess that I’m not normally one to self-promote as outrageously as I have above! I’m an Aussie by birth and we are trained to be somewhat self-effacing. When I landed in California 15 years ago I had to learn self-promotion 101 very fast otherwise I would have been eaten alive!
But seriously, the reason I am pushing this whole SEO topic strongly is because it is SO IMPORTANT for you as an artist and there isn’t a lot of comprehensive SEO guidance available focused on the art community. This interview with Tara was exactly that – SEO For Artists.
So, why is SEO so important?
Many artists and even some art coaches think it’s not relevant to art because art is somehow “different”. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you sell art that is business – and SEO is a major force for business success online. Let me give a hypothetical example of how it might work for an artist…
How Search Engines Help Artists – An Example
Susan is an oil painter who lives in Northern New Mexico and paints landscapes, many of which are focused close to the town of Abiquiu. (Note: If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit this town you should mark it on your list of places to go – it is right near Ghost Ranch and Georgia O’keeffe’s desert home – just gorgeous landscape!)
Susan has a website which she has optimized for search engines. During that process she discovered that many people google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” and so she optimized her artist website to rank highly for those phrases.
Susan has opened the door to several big potential opportunities:
- A gallery director scouting for new work of Susan’s style and subject matter may very likely google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” as part of their search strategy. When Susan’s website ranks on Page 1, it means they can find her and look at her work. This is priceless attraction-marketing for free!
- Similarly, an art licensing company may be looking for work similar to Susan’s for a new line of home decorations at Target Stores. Search engines would be part of their strategy.
- Finally, tourists who have visited the area and fallen in love with it often get home and realize that they really want a piece of art to remind them of their experience at Ghost Ranch. What do you think might be one strategy they might use? Search engines – of course!
Now, in all honesty, search engines are only one method used by businesses and individuals to find what they want. But they are very powerful – so why would you want to miss out on the potential business with a website that doesn’t rank highly for the phrases that are heavily searched? Why would you risk missing out on possibly 50% or more of your potential new visitors?
You wouldn’t right? That would be plain crazy! But that is exactly what MOST artists are doing with their websites! And the most insane part of this is that SEO is not really that difficult to master, IF you know what to do.
A lot of powerful people think that search engines are important for your business. Here is what Qi Lu, President of Microsoft’s Online Services Division said recently…
Search Engine Advertising is the most powerful economic force on the internet.
Those are important words and as an artist I would certainly want the most powerful economic force on the internet working for my art career! So, if your website doesn’t already rank highly for search terms that actually bring customers here is what I would suggest:
Start by listening to the recording of Tara’s SEO For Artists Teleclass. It’s free, and as you can see from the testimonials above you could actually learn some useful info. This is really required knowledge for any serious art marketer.
If you are really serious about selling more art via high search engine rankings on your artist website, consider buying our Artist SEO Success System.* It is a complete 21 day program to comprehensively optimize your website for search engines – and it is 100% focused on artists. At $97, it is not cheap but it is tremendous value when you think of the potential market you can open your website to (learn more*). And yes – we have many great testimonials about this product too! Here is one that just came in this week…
I’m going through the workbook and doing a lot of the exercises which are really great. As an creater of educational materials and online courses (in my day job, I have a Masters in Instructional Design) I am totally impressed with the guide and workbook. It is so well written and thought out and CLEAR! I can tell you guys did a ton of work… Bravo! …. Kristen Hoard
As art marketers and artist website developers, our job is to give you the tools to create business success with your art. I’m handing you this one on a silver platter – so please make use of it and go sell some art. I can’t wait to open the champagne and toast your success!
About The Guest Author
Daniel Tardent is the Co-founder of Beautiful Artist Websites and Espresso Artist Websites in Santa Monica, California. Focused primarily on the development of websites and online marketing systems for artists, he also writes regularly for Art Marketing Secrets, and is the co-author of The Artist SEO Success System.
FTC disclosure: Links with an * are Tara Reed’s affiliate link to the SEO for Artists product by blog post author, Daniel Tardent. She will earn a commission if you click the links and make a purchase.
85 people listened to the “Ask Tara Reed” call live – were you one of them?
My sister, Christine, who many of you have met over the years at SURTEX or who you may have heard on the Trade Show Tactics Teleseminar, helped me on the July Ask Tara Reed call. We always have a lot of fun together – including her pre-call threats to do one of the following:
- forget the call completely and leave me stranded
- be asleep and if she woke up, she’d be groggy and hard to understand
- swear and embarrass me in any way she could come up with
- use different accents for each question
She didn’t forget and behaved very well. The only problem reported was that we sound so similar that sometimes people had a hard time figuring out who was talking. (We get that – especially over the phone. Lots of fun to tell our dad it’s “His favorite daughter” and listen to him pause – trying to figure out who it really is and then say the others name!)
Here is what we covered on the July 21st call:
- What are the first steps you should take before you try to license your art?
- Do you need an agent to license your art?
- Is it better to email or snail mail submissions to agents?
- Is there a “set” advance price for artwork?
- What types and sizes of files should you submit to agents or manufacturers?
- Should you follow online submission guidelines to the letter or make follow-up calls?
- How do I make calls to companies without sounding like a newbie?
- What are the pros & cons of a contract with a “worldwide” territory?
- How can I build marketable character-based art without having a Saturday morning tv show?
- Trade show preparation strategies / tips
- How do you use social media (Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn) in your art licensing business.
Thank you so much to Laura for her fabulous question about cold calling and willingness to let us tease her (we are twitter friends so I knew it would be ok!)… we are now applying peer pressure to get her on the phone and then to report back on how it was, on the blog. Send her a message of encouragement on Twitter – she’s @CreativeGirl – to keep her moving forward.
Facebook was a little quieter than usual but on Twitter it was so cool to see people joining forces to stay accountable! Social media is such a great connector!
If you want a copy of the audio replay, it is $15 through 7/31 and $25 thereafter. We appreciate your support in purchasing these calls – it helps us continue to attract and create the great content artists have come to love and expect each and every month!
What’s coming up next…
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 – Attorney Cheryl Hodgson will be back to answer your legal questions. www.AskCherylHodgson.com
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 – NEW EXPERT Dena Fishbein will be answering your questions. Head to www.AskDenaDesigns.com to learn why I’m so excited to have Dena join the ranks of Ask Call Expert.
July Ask About Art Licensing Call is tonight – will you be on the line?
Just a quick reminder that I’ll be answering the questions submitted by artists like you tonight on the Ask Tara Reed call. My sister Christine, who many of you have met at SURTEX, has agreed to join me. If you’ve signed up for a call before, you should have received the dial-in details by email.
If you’ve never participated, head over to www.AskTaraReed.com and sign up. Since we have already organized the questions, you can just put “no question” in the box then fill in your name and email and you will get the dial-in details.
The call is at 5:30 pm Pacific / 8:30 pm Eastern and will last for an hour. It’s free to listen live. The audio replay will be available Thursday and cost $15 through 7/31 and $25 thereafter.
I look forward to chatting with you tonight!
– Tara Reed
P.S. Don’t forget! Let’s get social on Twitter (use #ask when tweeting so we can find you!) and Facebook during the call. CLICK HERE to download all the details.
Twitter-proof that I can make people run from the idea of art licensing in 45 minutes or less!
You might think that is a bad thing but I’m here to tell you – I’m so proud! One of my goals with my introductory information – be it the Beginner Basics Teleseminar or How to Get Started in Art Licensing eBook or any of the interviews I do with others – is to polarize people.
When you are trying to make a living as an artists, being neutral or unsure about many paths is a dangerous place to be.
To sit and say, “Well… I could do kids books. Or I could create things and sell them on Etsy. Maybe I’ll do website design. Why don’t I license my work. Hey – here’s an art gallery – I should try that.” This type of artist will more than likely be confused and going in too many directions to get anything done well or make any significant progress.
Many artists like the concept of art licensing – they like the idea of being paid by multiple people for the same art collection. They like that they can get paid over a period of time and share in the success (or less than stellar success) of the product without have to do the production, marketing, etc. If they are left to focus on that, with little or no information about what it takes on a daily basis and from a creative standpoint to get the deals and licenses in the first place, they could waste a lot of time.
That’s where my mission comes in and I’ve had it from day 1: give some real world examples of what it takes so artists will know right away if it isn’t going to be a fit or if licensing deserves more time to investigate.
Some will still think it’s a fit even if it turns out to not be. (Those are the artists who then complain about the type of art manufacturers are looking for and want to educate the masses as to what “real art” is … good luck!) Others won’t be turned off – they may say, “hmmm…. this is interesting, tell me more.” And some will get so excited and just KNOW art licensing is for them.
I was on Twitter last week and got a message from an artist – thanking me for helping her realize art licensing isn’t for her, just by listening to one blog talk radio interview. I was so excited! (She has given me permission to share the tweets…)
SO… if you are new to art licensing, here are a few ways to find out if you feel like @artsong does, or if you want to hang around and learn more.
INTERVIEWS: I’ve done a number of interviews with others in the art field, find free replays at www.ArtLicensingInfo.com/interviews.html
BEGINNER BASICS TELESEMINAR: 45 minute replay of a teleseminar I did that goes into the nitty gritty of what working in art licensing is like. www.ArtLicensingInfo.com/start.html
HOW TO GET STARTED IN ART LICENSING eBook: you can get the first chapter for free at www.ArtLicensingInfo.com/get-started.html
Here’s to your creative success – in whatever area that may be!
–Tara Reed
P.S. Find my new Twitter buddy on twitter – www.Twitter.com/artsong or on her wesite, www.CarleySense.com – thanks again for letting me share!
Artist Interest Groups Using Social Media – #kidlitart
As you know, I’m a big fan of social media. It’s a great way to find people from all over who share common interests, reconnect with people from your past and learn what’s going on. There is a group of artists interested in Children’s Book Illustration who “meet” on Twitter every Thursday for an hour to discuss… whatever. (They start by handing out virtual cupcakes – always a great way to start anything!) Just like we use the hash tag #ask during the monthly ask calls to find each other, they use #kidlitart.
I think I happened to be online during one of their chats a few weeks ago (they aren’t private – just streaming through Twitter) and someone asked something about art licensing and I replied. Then I got a direct message asking me if I wanted to be the first “Special Guest” – someone from another art arena, to answer questions the #kidlitart twitterers had. Why not?
So last night I spent an hour watching and typing and talking about art licensing in 140 characters or less… if you want to see what we talked about, they have the full transcript online at http://kidlitart.blogspot.com/
I got to chat with some new artists and learn that they have similar issues, just in a different arena. We create collections, they have to create books and then figure out how to make the cover art compelling. We discussed how you almost need several art brains – one to think like you license art, one to think like an illustrator, one to figure out how to market yourself so you can keep creating art…
If you have any interest in learning more about Children’s Illustration or want to join in on their discussions – head over to Twitter on Thursdays ( 6 pm Pacific / 9 pm Eastern ) and tweet away!
Thank you to Bonnie and Wendy for inviting me – it was fun!
Here’s to your creative success!
– Tara Reed
What outdoor coolers and art licensing have in common
You think they have pushed coolers to the limit… until you see the next innovation. Then you say, “What a great idea! Why didn’t they think of that before!” Here is my theory on the evolution of coolers…
- Someone puts ice in a metal box, adds their food, goes on a picnic. Others at the picnic who brought their food in a basket are envious of the new invention, they have cold food and drinks!
- Fast forward many years and insulation processes are added. The box itself insulates the food – keeping the cold inside. You don’t have to add as much ice. Easier to transport. Awesome!
- Now someone invents those blue things that stay cold but don’t melt and create a pool of water at the bottom of the cooler. Better yet!
- Plastic… wheels… handles to pull your cooler…. each time we think – this is the best it can get! How can you improve on that? And it’s good enough, so why try?
- But innovation continues…
Last week I saw these new “Party Stacker™” coolers from Colman.
I had one of those “What an amazing idea!” reactions. They come in a variety of sizes colors (only one size shown in the photo). They stack together – like building blocks of refridgeration. You can have your beer and soda in one and food in another. No more sandwiches looking like they were made on pita bread because they got mashed between the mayo and Uncle Ted’s 6-pack.
I found these to be so cool and innovative that I almost bought some. I have no plans to go camping or need coolers mind you, I just thought it was an amazing idea.
So what does this have to do with art licensing?
We, too, must reinvent the proverbial cooler. Year after year, manufacturers want new art for many of the same themes. Santa – can’t get enough of him. How do you do a Christmas collection every year that is fresh and different? If you’ve done it 10 times – shouldn’t it be good enough? Nope.
In art licensing, you must constantly come up with a new twist – a new catch – something that will make a manufacturer have a “What an amazing idea!” reaction. Then the reaction needs to hit the consumer so they pick up your product and buy it, allowing you to receive royalty checks so you stay in business to create yet another Santa the next year.
The ability to re-think, re-work and re-create a concept or theme that the rest of the world thinks has been done more than enough times is a valuable asset to any artist interested in licensing their art. So head for the woods and think outside the cooler… I hope you come up with something amazing!
Here’s to your creative success!
– Tara Reed
Are you ready for the next Ask Call?
Heidi Gray is! The next call is Wednesday, July 21st at 5:30 pm Pacific / 8:30 pm Eastern with me, Tara Reed. After submitting her question, Heidi sent me this great email and gave me permission to “share it with the group”. While it isn’t chocolate chip cookies – hopefully you will be inspired by her positive attitude and action taking style!
“Hi Tara!
I can’t wait. I’ve been busy working on artwork and making plans – a plan to be @ Surtex May 2011.
I’m working on updating my art licensing story to re-post on your stories page… coming soon.
My original story: I made it while on VACATION… hunting for the nearest internet in the mountains! Thank goodness for Starbucks and just a few pieces of art on my computer hard drive… I took your advice of “Done is better than nothing at all” – way out of my comfort zone of perfection.
So, I’m revamping and adding in my journey over the last few months…. including my own website to link to!
I can not tell you how much I value your insights & networking with other artists in the business. I am confidant that licensing my art is the venue of the entrepreneurial spirt I’ve had deep within.
The stories from this year’s Surtex were so exciting & inspiring.
Thank you!
Heidi Gray
www.HeidiGrayDesigns.com”
Here is Heidi’s original video again – can’t wait to see what the updated version will look like!
If you haven’t submitted your question for the call, head to www.AskTaraReed.com now and give me your best shot. I hope you can join us on the 21st but if you can’t, never fear, the replay will be available shortly thereafter. ($15 thru 7/31 and $25 there after.)
Talk to you soon!
– Tara Reed
P.S. Is Heidi working on her second video making you think you should do your first? I hope so! I’m all out of videos so no more will be posted till someone sends them to me! Click here for all the details and remember, you get a coupon with your first entry!
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