How I get the most out of my website!

[Karin Wells]

First of all, I am lucky enough to be part of the "Stroke of Genius" website. Cynthia has aprox. 80,000 people walk through the front door of this website EACH MONTH.

Because SOG is so well placed in the big search engines, it usually pops up in the top 10 when a search is done on "portrait artist."

Each month, I get aprox. 4,000 people to visit my online portfolio. These 4,000 people click on aprox. 28,000 pictures (hits). Not bad. If I had my own gallery in NYC, I wouldn't get this much traffic.

When I first wanted a website, I put up my own. I probably got around 20 "hits" each month and I knew exactly who they were.....my family....but hardly anyone else. The search engines didn't know me.

I get almost all of my new business from my website and make a comfortable living. I do not pay any % of the work I get....only a relatively small yearly fee.

So.....with all of the above in place, I have self promoted my website and think that this has greatly contributed to my marketing success.

For a small fee, Cynthia Daniel, will run her software that enters my URL into thousands of search engines and links. Probably doing this twice a year is plenty.

I pass out business cards with my URL at all my shows.

I ordered a bunch of "Web Cards" and pass them out. SOG has this listed under "resources for artists."

I automatically add my URL as a signature to the bottom of all my email.

When I have some extra time (I don't watch TV) I will sit down and enter my URL into the major search engines.

I visit websites and leave my URL in guestbooks.

When I have an article in my local newspaper, I always add my URL.

There are more things I have done and still do, and will post them as I think of them.....