A Frozen Burrito and Cheap Shiraz – a day in the life…

I came home the other night, to (once again) nothing, except my cat. I’ve had her for two months and she still has no name other than baby, honey, darlin’ and myriad of other sugary southern idioms that show affection. At least she still saunters over and rubs against me nonchalantly, as if to say ‘Did you go somewhere?’

Finally, Friday night, which means staying up late, standing at the easel, painting as much as I can before crashing onto the bed. I’d been home for about 2 hours and began to hear that familiar rumble in my stomach. So to the ‘cubbard’ (that’s Southern for ‘cupboard’) I went. Hmmm… Soup? Too hot outside. Mac-n-cheese? No milk. Cereal? Again, no milk? Ramen – if I see another bowl of… Well, nothing there. To the fridge… and not much there either. Let’s check the freezer. Hey, a frozen burrito! Now, I like shredded cheese, sour cream, and salsa on mine thank you very much! These three ingredients make the microwaved cardboard marginally more palatable. Unfortunately, the fridge holds none of these items. Off with the wrapper and into the microwave for two minutes, thirty seconds… and voila! cardboard wrapped goodness! Grab a fork and throw a slice of cheese on it – not as good as shredded, but it will have to do.

So the only thing left to do is grab a glass and some ice and… You have got to be kidding me..! Where did my Cokes go? Ok, here’s a sidebar. Coke in the South does not necessarily mean Coca Cola. Here’s the scenario: Two friends driving down the road in a truck (It’s the South, everyone drives a truck). Driver is thirsty and pulls over at the convenience store for a ‘Coke’. Driver asks his buddy ‘You wanna a Coke?’ Buddy says ‘Yeah, I’ll take one’. Driver says ‘Whatcha want?’ Buddy thinks for a moment and says ‘Get me a Mellow Yellow’. In the South there is always two parts to the question, ‘You wanna Coke’.

…And back to the dilemma at hand, no Coke. I could go to the store and get a drink, which means my burrito would get cold. Which means, I would have to nuke it again (I’d hate to ruin such a gourmet meal). What to do…? And then (this is where the angels sing ‘Hallelujah’), my eyes fall on the bottle of Shiraz! Great, now other than water, the only thing left in the apartment to drink is cheap shiraz. Well beggars can’t be choosers.

So, I carried my plate with the steaming burrito and my glass of cheap shiraz to my bedroom, grabbed the remote and turned on ‘Scrubs’. I guess all is well in the world tonight!

Marketing Your Art Website

I’m an artist wanting to sell more art, most artists do. So, what does an artist do? Build a web site, of course. Now, that’s easier said than done when one has no web building experience. I have an artist friend who is going to build a site for me, though things are on hold because she is having some personal issues. So what does an artist do? Build one myself.

I decided to go to Freewebs.com. One reason is because I am not html savvy, and Freewebs.com is pretty idiot… I mean user friendly! Another reason… it was free! I won’t go into a lot of detail about how I created the site, though I will tell you a little about it.

While I was setting the site up, I also opened an account with PayPal.com. It was free to open, and there is no monthly fee until a transaction takes place (hopefully I will be paying them for several transactions). Freewebs.com works with PayPal, so setting up purchase points for my art was fairly easy. So now, when that was finished, I kept working on my site.

I added a free statistics site, Statcounter.com as well. When building the site, each page offers a button that will allow you to insert html code. Once I signed up at Statcounter and created a profile and project (my project is my website). I linked to Statcounter, inserted the code that keeps track of everything, and now begin tracking potential customers to my site.

Hopefully, by blogging, I will be able to increase online sales. A great source for marketing yourself as an artist is a site called Empty Easel . It was from this site that I have learned a tremendous amount on marketing my art, blogging included. If you are an artist, you really need to consider checking EE out!

Something else was to e-mail all my friends about the new website, Fine Art of Scott Alcorn, and kindly ask them to pass the link on to their friends. In addition to emailing friends, I also asked some of my artist friends if I could put their link on my site. Most people will allow you to do this, especially if the two websites are common in nature, such as wildlife. Hey, it’s free advertising for them, and they will probably return the favor!

One of the last things I did to drive potential customers to the site was to put an ad on craigslist. I was really skeptical about this… craigslist? I will say that I have not received any sales as of yet, but I’ve only been on for less than a week. However, I have gotten almost 300 hits! I have put a new ad on every three days so I will not get lost in the other entries that come after me and push my ad down to the next page.

So that is what I am doing on a limited budget… or should I say, no budget! Everything I have done so far has been free. Of course there is so much more I can do, and will do, to continue getting my name out there. I’ll keep you posted on any sales!!

Happy marketing!