There’s a cottage industry devoted to helping people to pursue the dream of becoming a working artists. There is a lot of advice, some contradictory and other things just not how it works in the real world. Or, if it works that way, it is far slower going and heavily sprinkled with rejections and other unavoidable negative aspects.

The one commonality though is that one must have an online presence. Starting with a personal page which should not look as if only free sample software was utilized. There is also the need to have a social media presence. This is the thing so many get wrong.

Have updates of what you are doing in regards to new releases, shows, concerts etc. (It is strange though to keep up a steady stream all day long on twitter et al. When are you working? )

The biggest mistake with social media is the machine gun approach. The theory being if you have something you want people to buy/see just send a deluge out onto social media non-stop. Ten, fifty, one hundred thousand people see it and then if only “X” percent act….

Rarely does it work this way, to a higher percentage of people you are being an annoyance or another thing to mark future communications to go directly to spam folder.

Of course all artists want their work to be seen, myself included. But you should want an audience, not customers. Social media has definitely made it so that there is potential to reach many people with the press of the button, but done too often or two impersonally the only thing achieved is adding to the volume of cacophony of voices yelling “look at me, buy my stuff”.

I have several pages which have been around at this point for years. Anyone familiar with them sees that I rarely steer people towards commerce side of my artistic life. Exceptions being mainly when i have a new book out.

My newest collection is just out and you can find it at amazon in Paperback & kindle versions.