YES, FINALLY, CREATIVITY HAS A VALUE!

I watched "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" last night, the episode was "Unlock Your Creative Genius". This is what Deutsch said at the very top of the show:

"The number one currency in the world today is creativity. It drives money, markets, products, service - everything, but if you ask most folks they'll say they aren't creative and never will be."

Now, read the first part of that quote again - "THE NUMBER ONE CURRENCY IN THE WORLD TODAY IS CREATIVITY".

I'm sure you have all heard things like "that's a silly question", "You can't do it that way", "WE don't do it that way", "are you crazy?", "you can't make a living as an artist", "stop day dreaming", "get a real job", or something of that ilk.

Guest Marc Ecko (CEO of Ecko Unlimited) calls the people who make these kinds of statements "gatekeepers" and I love that. He mentions "editorial thought leaders" (the "gurus" of art, fashion, education, et. al. aka gatekeepers) as those who validate who we are even though they aren't the consumer we are trying to reach - in other words, they really don't set the rules for what succeeds, sells or becomes a hot commodity - or what is art.

Another guest on the show, Dr. Robert Epstein says that everyone is born with the potential to be creative, however it's "shut down" by those in authority (the thought leaders/gatekeepers.) He says creative types are "misfits" - the people who have something in them that can ignore what the teacher (gatekeeper) says and think "I don't care what you say" and then act on their own beliefs. (He shows a video, the "Pigeon Banana Experiment" as proof of creative potential.)

You, my fellow artists, are among the few who defied the institutions that attempted to drive this out of us. You were born with something that made you question when you were told and pushed you to think outside the box. You have the creativity that is now being recognized and valued by the "movers and shakers" of the world.

So, get up off your duff and get out there and get creative with more than your art! Get creative with the way you market your art, promote your art and yourself. Use your talent for thinking outside the box to create your market or to create something the market wants!

Because, finally, your creativity is being recognized as a commodity and not a quirk. Aren't you glad you're normal challenged now?

CHECK OUT THE "UNLOCK YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS" PAGE at The Big Idea

Show Off Your Creativity with fun tees, gifts and goodies at The Normal Challenged Artist Shop!

SET UP A FREE SHOPPING CART AT PAY PAL

Selling anything online requires a shopping cart of some sort. There are many ways to do a shopping cart. Your web hosting company (I use GoDaddy- they always answer the phone when I call and no long wait!) should offer a cart for a fee. There are also several web companies that offer shopping carts....BUT. . . .

If you're willing to put a little work into it Pay Pal offers a free shopping cart solution for you. You must set up an account with them and that's not really fun, you have to fill out a bunch of forms, get all your bank information lined up, allow them to verify your bank account blah, blah, blah. But once this is all done you can then go into your account and use their merchant services to build your own shopping cart.

You will need to have some familiarity with html code so you'll feel comfortable inserting the code required. (And there are a lot of free html tutorials online as well as CSS for those of you who want to spend the time learning.)

You can create "Add to Cart", "Buy Now" "View Cart" even "Donate" buttons with their button wizard. You put in your information - product name, price, optional product code and you can even set up shipping and tax procedures. Then they give you a code that you paste into whichever web page you set up for that product.

These buttons when clicked take your buyer to Pay Pal to purchase. They pay Pay Pal and Pay Pal pays you, minus a small fee for processing a sale. You pay nothing until you've made a sale.

Pay Pal can take all forms of payment from your buyer. They handle the financial transactions so you are not forced to deal with any of that, worry over security or keep track of transactions. Pay Pal does it all for you for that small fee. And that fee is usually lower than what your merchant account charges to process a credit card sale for you.

Additionally, you can set up a merchant account with Pay Pal that will allow you to take and process credit cards offline - like at your art show. You have to go through a lot more forms and applications and that service is not free but it is available.

So, check out Pay Pal's services and see what you think. Remember, I'm not recommending anything for you just giving you information and resources to make up your own mind. There, that should satisfy the legal mumbo jumbo.

Buy Great Products for ARTISTS at The Normal Challenged Artist Shop!

WEB DESIGNING TIPS & TRICKS

The image above is the new layout for my Blogs Page. If you click it you will be taken to my existing page and see the slight layout change - pictures on top!!! If you do that after the end of June 2008 this page will then be uploaded and live along with the rest of the new site.

I am in the process of doing a structure redesign on my main website, PopArtDiva™.com. While I'm at it I am also remodeling the look a bit.

I have learned that most people who surf the net are not that savvy and you have to K.I.S.S. - keep it simple and say it with pictures, just like you would for a 5 year old.

You have to point them where you want them to go, tell them where it is and make it interesting for them to want to go there. Not an easy job when you have limited real estate, about 8 seconds or less before they click away and you're competing with a billion or more other websites and blogs.

I have decided to focus on pictures for my navigation points and leave the text as a secondary element. Most people don't read on websites - they want quick, instant, bullet points and pictures that say "GO HERE". A lot of my text is not good for bullets as I write a lot about my art and the pop culture theme, but I make an effort to keep the text limited and dynamic.
I rely on my images to gain my visitors interest. If the images catch them they will stay and read more and visit more pages.

Here's some of the Tips and Tricks I use to boost my SEO, my page rank and my hits:

• My brand icon is at top left, followed by my logo. Mine are unusually large and, if you can, I recommend you make these smaller, but my brand icon is not readable much smaller and I feel it's important to give my logo and my brand top priority as they are the hub of all my web spots.
• Under that is my navigation bar that leads to all my major sections. This navigation bar is on every page and, additionally, at the bottom of longer, scrolling pages to aid in helping people get around my site and find what they're looking for.
• The left hand column always contains my main keywords - search terms that I expect people to use in finding my site or page. Since this page is about blogging I have used Blog, blogged and all the main terms for each of the blogs I publish: pop culture, martinis, art, TV, movies, pets, etcetera.
• The far right hand column is the "cheap" real estate - where the eye usually travels last, unless there is some horrible blinking or flashing movement located there (P.S. Don't do that or allow any offsites to do that either unless absolutely necessary! It will take the focus away from your content!) This is where I place my affiliate advertising. I do not place affiliate ads (Google AdSense, etc) in my "hot spots". Hot Spots are prime spots on a website where the eyes will focus first. I reserve those spots for my own important elements like my brand images, my keywords, my own ads for my stores and blogs and for my key linking images. This website is not one set up to make it's money from affiliate ads, though I get enough traffic that having them in the "poor neighborhoods" to pay for all my web costs! That is my goal for affiliate marketing on this site.
• The middle section is visually the prime spot for a visitor, but not for the search engines which will read this section almost last on their spidering! So this is where I put my images which I have turned into smaller icons. I have tried to put as much visual information that tells the story in there as possible while still keeping them readable at these small sizes. These images load quick, they are visually appealing and they tell the viewer what to expect from that click. I always use "alt" tags, text that the search engines can see, to describe the picture and where it's going (keywords again!). Search engines do not see images - they are blind to pictures so you have to remember that and use alt tags!
• BTW, I use tables for my layout because this will force the search engine spiders to follow my path of keyword and content crumbs. Additionally, if someone alters the text size of their browser this keeps you elements from accidentally layering over each other and becoming unreadable!
• My third column to the right is where I put additional secondary information - like links to other pages, links to my stores, my newsletter sign up icon. This is a good way to get the spiders to search deeper into your site - put links to third and fourth level pages that aren't included in your prime navigation bar.
• Lastly I always put some keyword in the very last column at the bottom because spiders will always hit that area before they leave the page. I darken them to almost the color of the background just so they're not too visible to the reader. This information is for the search engines not visitors to my page. If you make it the same color as your background you will get spanked by search engines for it so don't do that!
  

So there you have it. A few lessons in how to layout a web page! Happy designing and keep checking back for new tips and tricks on web design for artists.

Buy Great Products at The Normal Challenged Artist Shop!