My business journey begins...

Thanks for reading the entries!. The 100 entries are now complete!. They have provided my website with alot of hits over the last year!.

Below is a few links so you can keep in touch with the business, add me as a friend on asittingducktv and subscribe!. The Facebook group has over 500 artists as members so its a good start if you want to network with cool new artists.

Website: www.asittingduck.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20000194683&ref=ts

YouTube: http://uk.youtube.com/asittingducktv

Every June thousands of young artists leave university with degrees in art. Quickly to find out that they can't sell their work for the price they thought they would.

If you want to become a famous artist you need to be patient. You need to start local, and don't start at the posh galleries, start with the government, the council, librarys and the community. If the general public love your work they will write about in blogs and tell their friends on facebook. Sometimes galleries want young artists to struggle for 10 years so dont fight them, if your good and your getting newspaper coverage they will email soon enough!.

Get your work out there, take photos and document it well on your website. Link with popular art websites and become facebook friends with as many creative people as you can!. 5,000 spaces on there so fill them!.

Price your work up and sell it!, most artists make more off prints so push the prints!.

Thanks

David

www.asittingduck.com

Its nearly finished, the website, designer networking on Facebook, and the items for sale.
Its really important to have a good launch and press release in June when I move into the new office. Get the relative links up and a photoshoot.

The sales should follow!.

David

www.asittingduck.com

Noone is interested in news emails anymore, its enough having 50 event invitations everyday, never mind all the group invites and cold calls. 10 years has past since the internet kicked off properly so people are wise to signing up for news emails. If you are a business and your main place you sell is on your website then offer a fun alternative of keeping in touch, something thats more chilled out like subscribing to Youtube or Joining a Facebook group. If you get tons of Facebook messages then you can always leave the group with a couple of clicks, with news emails they always seem difficult to stop.

So think of your customers and offer them an alternative!.

Thanks

David

www.asittingduck.com

Once you have built your website, set your .com email up and registered it with google, it usually takes a week or 2 to see it when you search for it. Once its there you have a google listed website, thats when you have to think what can you sell or what service can you provide. Once you figure that out over time google will scan your website to find out in the code what its all about. For instance my website is selling prints and t-shirts, so google will look at it and find that its relevant to illustration art and t-shirts by finding the key words in the google sentence and within the contents of the website.

Once thats done the only thing that stands between you and other websites really is how much you want to spend on adverts and how many backward links you have.

So my plan is pretty simple but its hard work, slowly but surely I get enough people to link to my website, say 10 popular websites about art and design link to me. That should get about 300 fresh new people clicking on the website every month, if they join the facebook group or subscribe to the youtube channel then I've got them as a contact for the future, if they keep seeing new designs and stuff through posting pictures on Facebook and videos on Youtube then after a while they will either buy something or even better they buy something and are that pleased that they write a blog about it or post a link on there own website.

So I would suggest leave the advertising for a while if your short of cash. Build a blog of what you are doing, think what you want to sell long term, if its products then what type and price range, if its a service dont under value your service, be patient, if its an entertaining website which your hoping lots of people click on and earn money from advertising then good luck!.

* Set up a blog.
* Build your Facebook up with relevant contacts in your chosen field.
* Make your website colourful and fun.
* Have a Youtube channel and video camera ready to broadcast yourself!.
* Keep your customers happy, package your product well and send an email to confirm.

One of the most popular courses to sign up for in university, a cool title for a job when your out on a Saturday night and if you manage to get a first class honours from a top university then you could earn up to 50K for some companies. But there are more people with graphic design degrees than there are graphic design jobs. So what can you do?, start up your own business!. There is no harm in buying a website and posting some of your Adobe work on there, even if you decide to go in another direction, its always something you can update and keep for the future. What you need to do is go to www.101poundwebsite.com say asittingduck sent you, buy a website and go for the extras like stats and video content, then your away!.

Thanks

David

www.asittingduck.com

In the webdesign world or art world competition in the Uk is getting stronger. I've been checking out the top website on searches relevant to my business and the page one of searches is above 100 on the backward links.

Uk search:

Illustration : top website on google : backward links: 143
Digital Art : top website on google : backward links: 1490
Design : top website on google : backward links : 1430
Web Design : top website on google : backward links : 156
Paintings : top website on google : backward links : 38
Artist : top website on google : backward links : 4,440
t shirts : top website on googe : backward links : 25

So thats all the key word searches I'm going for to work on, out of interest the artist that has 4,440 backward links is "Banksy", as he is popular on the internet with bloggers and art websites!.

Thanks

David

www.asittingduck.com

Probably in the top 10 for youtube channels ever is smpfilms. I typed into google link:http://www.smpfilms.com to find out how many backward links he has. Surprising he only had 6. Yet Kidrobot had over 1,200. Maybe some business's look into paying experts to create backward links, as smpfilms is not short of hits because it gets a large amount of traffic through the youtube channel. Just interesting to find out, try any website type link: before the full http://www.asittingduck.com, mine is only 7 at the moment but I'm going to look into whats available, link for link takes ages!. I'd be happy with traffic from the youtube channel but backward links are the strength for any website business as with youtube you can be world famous one week and the next noone wants to know. Hope this was of interest, probably my most interesting entry so far if you are thinking of building a .com empire!.

Thanks

David

www.asittingduck.com

In the vinyl toy and designer world the biggest name is Kidrobot, http://www.kidrobot.com its because they are cool, its a well established brand that has been running for a few years and the stuff they sell is worth talking about. I need to take a leaf out of their book. What I need to do is build the logo and brand up, offer a range of t-shirts and prints and have cool photos to look at, this way people will want to share the website with their friends and family. Photos I'm definately looking into and videos, it inspires people and hopefully enough to get posts!.

But it is tougher than I thought and could cost alot to get models and a pro photographer to sort this out. I'll look into it, hopefully should be ok!.

Thanks

David

www.asittingduck.com

In order to rank high on google the main thing you need to do is get your links!... Links, Links, Links!... Whether it be Facebook, Youtube or your blog its important to create links to your website. One way to do this is offer a link for link, this can be time consuming and a very slow process. Ideally you just want people to mention and link your website, the only way to do this is if your website looks good and has cool pictures or interesting stuff to read or just simply worth someone telling people about it. This will be far more rewarding in the long run than posting hundreds of links every week on websites.

What I'm looking to do is create a website and brand that is cool and worth blogging about. Its an easy website to remember so I think people will remember how to type it in. But the main thing is the links. What I'm going to have to do is upload good videos onto asittingducktv. Youtube is definately an inspiration for many bloggers and they enjoy finding videos to embed into their website or blog. This creates a cult following, something that tv will only broadcast in a few years after everyone knows about it. But the links that you will create will be awesome!.

If anyone likes my website and would like to mention it on their blog or website, that would be a big help!.

Thanks

David

www.asittingduck.com