Hello. My name’s Dan Fone and I have a photography site here on The Artists Web. I’m going to be writing a few articles exploring ways of selling my work, both through my site and elsewhere.
I have another website called Hammerhead Rabbits that I use to air different experiments. It also houses the blog I write for the MA I’m currently doing in Digital Arts. My site on The Artists Web is intended as more of a commercial outlet. I want to use it specifically to press forward with my photography. I’ve loved taking photographs for a long time and would like to develop that by using them to supplement my other income. You might ask why I don’t do this on my other site. This is where the wider infrastructure of The Artists Web comes in. How can it help me in ways my individual website can’t?
On the way I’ll build up a good list of the basic things that will raise our profile online and look to start getting consistent sales in the process. In short, I’ll be researching how to get the most out of the internet as an artist. I might be slow in getting started. At the moment I’m not too much better informed than anyone else.
I’m also planning on investigating a few other things on the side, which will feed into my wider project. I’ve got developing obsessions arising from my MA, mainly connected to the way the art scene will be affected by the internet; because of that I’ll be looking at how people sold work ten years ago in order to gauge the differences and the way we can take advantage of any changes in the industry.
I don’t want to offer bullet pointed advice here. You can already find that elsewhere on The Artists Web and at sites like the very comprehensive emptyeasel.com. I’ll be writing about the personal end of trying to get all of these different things working and possibly ranting my frustrations out here as well.
The first thing I ask myself is, what are the obstacles I face stopping me from selling my work? In my case, I think I’m my own worst enemy. I tend to be very timid regarding things I’ve done. I’m not saying this to beat myself up. I get the impression a lot of freelancers and artists have exactly the same problem. I think I’m going to have to keep an eye on this tendency. The only way I can see of addressing it it is that for every time I get shy about my photography, I must do something to overcome it. And pointedly. Does anyone here have similar problems? How have you dealt with it? Or are you reading this thinking you need to do something about it yourself? Whatever your viewpoint, I’d love to hear about it.
PS – if anyone has something they’d like to see looked at in more depth, do leave a comment below.
