This Brave New World, pt. 3

craigahamilton (58)in #earthnation • 7 years ago (edited)

This Brave New World, pt. 3

Read Part One here
Read Part Two here

Hello Steemit,
Throughout the past 5 years, jobs have come and go with the seasons and offer no solace. The threat of homelessness, like gnawing at the gut, poverty beckoned at every turn in pay or change of address. These positions held many honest hard-working individuals as disposable, yet supposed inexhaustible batteries in some unseen machine, gnashing the flesh of unsuspecting generations through concrete, glass, and steel stomachs. What is of this society that has literally enslaved people into labor, disguising itself as freedom, by keeping in line one after the other, immortal students. Over the past few weeks have given me time to reflect on my some of my successes (and some hard-earned lessons) I've made throughout the years since my "education", in exchange for what I believe here is real wisdom. In this piece, I will begin to explain a system I've developed over the years, a ongoing business plan I wish to share to other creatives struggling, now striving, for success.

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Visual arts is a broad spectrum of media that covers advertisement, editorial illustration, industrial design, and various intermediate applications of an ingeniously balancing act between form and function. One must follow a devout commitment to this augury; summoning matter, visual arts is sort of an act of instant manifestation for both those who create and the viewer that consumes it.

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Our culture is undergoing somewhat of a global renaissance, by way of social network driven by media, largely visual mediums like video and photos. More people can share their mindset, their personal perspectives of life happening all around us, similar to what we commonly regard as "artists". Being artistic is as much a discipline than a simply a character trait. Everyone can become an artist and only through rigor and righteous practice, anyone can develop drawing and painting in a multitude of interpretations given a high level of esteemed determination. An artist must elevate themselves to the title of artisan as well as profession of a businessperson. Before taking on this challenge, the working artist must evaluate themself, examining their art of how many hours spent into drawing or painting, materials, and curating an environment conducive to meaningful, productive effort.

If you are the type of artist that needs a client telling you what’s next, you are not ready to become a full-time artist. Portraits, traditional landscape painting, even comic book illustration, are all examples of some of the client input driven types of artwork that is made from someone else hiring your talent to channel their wants and desires, but if you want to become truly notable, it is important to continue to publish an ongoing body of work independent of anyone's demands. As artists turn entrepreneurs, one must develop the savvy necessary to utilize new tools into workable results from creating new art. It is small actions that create big changes ahead; it is this principle that keeps one ahead of the increasingly changing landscape of visual art and how we all interact with its medium. I admit, though my tradecraft is a very analog process, without the aid of information technology, computers, and other digital tools, the reach of my artwork would be severely limited.

Develop a strategy that incorporates envisioning long-term success, along with producing meaningful near-term gains.

Then go on to define clear, attainable objectives within those goals and pour as much fuel on the fire as possible. If you're going to become very successful, that is, to possess happiness and self-sufficiency, we must earn our keep from our means in the grind between the cold grit of reality and the blissful ignorance of dreams. When focused, any idea can become a plan. There are many ways to increase your success as a working artist, but if you want even more money, typically it's said to follow a side hustle. If you are reading this right now, either by link or luck, consider this guide in practice to integrate the following steps beneficial creating your own business plan to profit from your art.

Invest in your online presence. Start with a private email address for your business affairs.

The internet revolution began with email. At first, many people didn't understand the concept; a virtual mailbox for messages, communicated across the world in an instant. But as the personal computer became more commonplace in the home, as eventual did the use of the internet. Email is your reserved inbox connected online and anyone with your email address can send you data; a website is like your "place" on the internet to share your data with the world 24/7. Images, video, audio is streamed right into our hands nowadays. The internet, to date, reaches over 3 billion people all over the globe, connecting lives across oceans, borders, and time zones...and more join EVERYDAY. As new economies are formed around the world, different cultures are now able to communicate and relate beyond borders. Wouldn't you like to tap into even a fraction of that kind of traffic? It is the ENTIRE WORLD in an instant and ready to commerce on information!

(Remember the feeling first connecting to the internet back in the early 1990s?)
Use said email address to setup your business operations through a website hosting service, like Wix.com or Wordpress.org

(source: Wix.com)
There are quite literally dozens of companies that offer website hosting, design, and management for a wide range of price points. Many, in particular, feature a free option to use the service at the expense of real estate on your website for ad space. However, be undeterred, it is your public-private space available to any connected device, always "on" promoting your artwork and sharing your vision. As you begin to generate revenue from your website, specifically but not exclusively from site traffic, invest into your website to grow along with your business. Then purchase a unique domain name, for instance, from a reputable source like GoDaddy, incorporating your name or alias into the title as if your brand. Doing this makes it EASY to remember at a glance both your art and YOU, the artist.
(source: Wordpress)
No need for anything fancy to start with, just a simple page with photos, text, and links that tell your story. Later, you have options to upgrade your plan with the same place you're creating the website or seek specific sites that offer more flexibility, accessibility, and interconnectivity featuring your domain.
Utilize the power of social media through networks like Facebook and Instagram to create profiles for your work.

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Social media networks have completely dominated our online experience, even after larger websites, search engines like Google and Yahoo have organized of the internet landscape. These companies, too, offer plenty of resources to connect and communicate for free, simply with an email address. Google +, for example, is a subset of your Gmail account that already connects you to over 2 billion people and that's free!

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It is easy to understand the great potential of social media networks in the amount of users each has, however each have their own respective medium that you could focus streaming particular content types. Hashtags are a way to designate and organize information into subject titles, allowing users to find information by keyword. Accordingly, select a network that best displays your artwork (or music, movie, or composition) and explore different markets organized by meta hashtags. By the same token, hashtags are similar to SEO, or search engine optimization, by keywords that detail who you are and what you do that delivers value to people abroad.
Connect your social media accounts together, i.e Facebook + Instagram + Twitter + Snapchat, bridging the gap between desktop and mobile experiences. Within your social media network account is usually an ability to share your content that you post within their network to other social media networks, uniting the stream into a flow of information for a larger audience. If you have multiple accounts within a given network, so multiplies your potential reach, directing specific content to individual audiences. However, the more parts a machine has, the higher the likelihood of a breakdown; the same principle applies to managing your workload, posting different types of content consistently to each network individually can become cumbersome. Direct your message to exactly the groups that respond to your artwork positively, connecting to other like-minded individuals universally, and thus allow any criticisms to perpetuate your content into the internet simply by sharing and commenting.

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Once you do have a website, you can post html widgets of your Facebook page and Instagram pages into your landing page, use HTML widgets from your social media networks to create a portal on your website landing page with these social plugins, now made as an omnichannel to broadcast your art to the world 24/7.

No need to do any fancy, even complicated level of coding for your website. It is now easier than ever to create a website, mostly powered by online infrastructure like HTML 5, that makes matching exactly your intentions super simple, with stunning but effective templates that can help display your content online.

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Imagine your website when planning it out as much like holding a newspaper with images as windows to other places your artwork or content is viewable and highlighted text as hyperlinks to other web pages; placing these types of links directly into your website's front [home] page is a highly effective way to create what is called a landing page. If you can afford to hire a web designer, employ an artist that can design custom buttons, frames, and other web assets unique to your website to create a greater, deeper experience.

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Develop a regular posting schedule that compartmentalize your creative process down to sequences that reveal your art coming to life.

Websites like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and Pintrest feature a functioning algorithm that sorts out the thousands of posts users make every second all around the world. Basically, how it works is to populate your content feed with the most potent content made available by its users.
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Each social network features their own individual mechanics that manages the flow of content to each user's visible feed. Functions like the "like" button varies by name and appearance on these networks, it is an example of the powerful democratic force of the masses on each network. Likes serve as one of many forms of metric to measure the value of content online. Comments on and sharing original content is paramount in creating high value within a social network because no amount of advertising can travel further than word-of-mouth. Timing, above all, determines the rate of which traffic on the network can access your content; at certain times of the day, posting at peak traffic moments can accelerate growth and attention to your content instantaneously. Regular, routine posts of various media types can exercise this metric to the greatest effect.

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Once established a regular posting schedule, design a tier rewards system on a pay-by-pledge network like Patreon to fund trust and loyalty of your following for your art.

It isn't simply casting out blind requests for commissions or continually advertising your own work, but it is possessing a system that create passive income streams by monetizing your incoming site traffic (otherwise known as inbound). Establish a foundation of habits that enable you to create new work that you're excited to make and talk about. It is easy to share something created out of love, easier to market this love that is contagious when you're passionate about it.

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With all social media networks connected, manage your content through the stream with punchy captions, powerful hashtags and other metalinks, as well as test and save your best sales pitches to easy-to-load word/text documents so you can reuse them time and time again.

Now, there are so many ways to become and develop yourself as a career artist, one that is dedicated to their art as one would perform music or dance in a theater, or even, to design a house to be constructed. Being both an artist and an entrepreneur can be lonely at times but its a lifepath that is as rewarding as it is rigorous. Self-motivation, otherwise drive, is a key element to finding success for yourself. That means creating consistently and progressively, regardless of current environment, to find the best results to continually succeed.

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Create a Google Form to capture incoming clients with a simple, straightforward quiz that streamlines offers to a manageable flow. Use this form to gather email addresses for your future newsletters to your following. Following up with those that do contact you, keeping warm leads by building up a email contact list, and regularly sending out email blasts whenever you update your website. These methods help staying committed to your vision uncluttered and all your efforts is compounded into long-term earnings.
(source:http://www.howtechtips.com/create-contact-form-using-google-forms/)
(Source: Google)
Mirror your content blogging on Steemit.com to gain passive income from your original content, on a social network that binds all of the prior interactions together.

(source: Steemit)
Steemit (if you're not aware reading this post here.) is a radical social media network based on blockchain technology to drive producing qualitative value for users posting original content to their network. Steemit has it's own currency (called Steemit Dollars) that is converted from its token value STEEM to serve as an index of valuable content on the network.

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Once you have a plan created from this guide, challenge yourself to more questions that help you figure out the direction of business you should pursue, and validate if you have what skills necessary:

What skills do you have?
Where does your passion lie?
Where is your area of expertise?
How much can you afford to invest in yourself? Can you afford not to do so?
What sort of lifestyle do you want to live?

Before considering leaving that J.O.B, develop a plan around this foundation, one that builds a generous emergency fund, of not just financial, but storing away ideas and concepts to later be developed on into final projects and readymades for new clients that may emerge through the journey. Doing so religiously can ease, even speed up, the creative process it takes to make the art you really want to manifest. The stress of owning a business will be overwhelming at times. Apart from nurturing the will to create, it is learning how to juggle the day-to-day running the entire business, whilst dealing with pressure from many angles, that will make a constant challenge to overcome with each project.

Read Part One here
Read Part Two here

I'd like to continue to elaborate on this content in time. Please, feel free to leave your comments at the bottom and references to what methods you found success using for your website.

Craig A. Hamilton
Artist - Imagemaker
www.artistcraigahamilton.com

Agency - FLOATINGMARS
Creative Consultant - Intellectual Property Holdings and Asset Management
[email protected]

Art wizard Craig A. Hamilton, Imagemaker - Artist, founder of Floatingmars, FUTURE REPUBLIK! AUDIO WEAPONARY GROUP, and The Imagemakers' Guild. Based in Miami, FL, I am a maker of original graphic illustrations, sold as print, product, or for publication. Currently, I'm managing my entire art business through daily curation of my website, www.artistcraigahamilton.com, using a handful of websites and their respective networks to harness my own market niche.

Thank you Society6, Patreon, and Steemit for empowering this self-employed artist-illustrator to profit from my own labor and turn this talent into a real world business.

I belong to a select group of content creators here on Steemit. My Artist's Circle here on Steemit I proudly support (and recommend you to check out!):
@earthnation
@qurator
@qustodian
@originalworks
@originalworks2