The original feeling of self-loathing
A.K.A. Having way too many things to focus on
The best part of doing all this has been focusing all my energy into one place.
Just one place.
Before this weekend, I had three things going on. Now I only have one. It feels great.
Before, I dreaded attempting to market myself, much less creating a website. Trying to promote myself seemed like this great, big mountain looming over my head. I'm sure you know what I mean. I had thought about selling my art for years. But I just never did.
I was crippled by idea.
Frozen in my steps.
Before I even began...
The Questions
The questions that paralyzed me were:
- Can I make it out on my own, in a market flooded with products so similar to mine?
- If not, how should I go about offering my art up to a bigger retailer?
- And who should that retailer be?
- Barnes & Noble?
- Amazon?
- What's a good query letter?
- How do I make myself stand out?
[Insert more angst] [Give-up mode initiated] [red light]
Then I got re-inspired by sister. My beautiful (and much more talented than I) sister. I wonder what handle she will choose for herself when she finally gets up the nerve to get on here...
The Name
The name, It's all in the branding
[Inspiration activated] Turns out my sister had created this amazing resume using wix for school. She combined her writing and photography skills, plus some other skills, and compiled it all just so beautifully! I was so jealous! It was then that I decided I needed to do the same thing, too. I nailed down a business name I could use (as an umbrella name) for my three artistic ventures: Robyn Eggs Art, Poetry & Photography! It was perfect!
[I had already attempted publishing some of my poetry using the name Robyn Eggs & Toast. I hadn't sold anything though. So I took down my Amazon self-publish (see my prior post) Kindle book, and started over.]
I designed my new wix site to maximize these three art interests. Apparently wix has a template for creating a combination of blogging & storefront needs. I created my first blogs. I created my first store products, which are me and my son's art work, including my poetry shorts. You can buy high-resolution prints of these now, if you like, I put the link at the bottom of this post. Luckily, I had already designed a logo. It is a piece I drew myself, in ink, years ago.
The Steps
The first items to consider before launching your own wix site:
- Choose a name. Think about what you are selling or promoting...what do you want your brand name to convey? Think about it as long as you need to. It needs to be right. People are going to know you by it, lots of people. Think about it. Does it feel right? Does it summarize the genre you are dedicated to? Is it a broad enough subject to cover all your interests?
- But maybe you already got your brand name picked out. For example, you've been "navajo jane" for a long time now and you feel comfortable moving forward with that name. Next, choose a logo. What image best portrays your business name?
- Choose a broad topic or interest to blog about. Or, choose a genre for your art to fit into, such as "sci-fi" or "poetry". Choosing the community you will engage your audience in is key because it banks on search-ability. Choosing a subject of engagement narrows down your search results, and your followers search results. People searching for your material will more easily find it, if the subject is narrow enough. (Me, myself, I am still trying to establish the poetry genre: dark poetry.) ;-)
But, heed my warning, for it is all fun and games until you get sucked into whipping out that card to pay somebody.
Yes, I got sucked into paying Wix to let me accept payments from PayPal
But hey, at least I can accept payments from PayPal now! :-D
And then I figured out how to embed an HTML text button to the product description, after I had already paid for the upgrade, of course. At least I got a domain name out of the deal. Maybe.
The trick here is to go into the PayPal site and configure a button, not sign up for it in Wix.com.
You can support this action from Wix.com by choosing (Option B), vs paying Wix to allow you to use PayPal (Option A). You can find these options when prompted to 'setup' your business account under "Payment Setup". Phew, you just saved $$! :-)
You can honestly build and sell stuff for "free" (minus a % commission from every sale) by using Wix.com, a popular and user-friendly website building platform.
Just don't the make the same mistake I did, above.
My Site
Please, check out my wix site, below, and offer up any feedback on how I can make it and/or this post better. Thank you guys, for all that you do. I aim to create something that will honestly contribute to the community and hopefully help somebody else get inspired too! XO
