I'm afraid you don't know much about the life of artists

> SEO is NOT a waste of time. You assume that people have websites just for
> the customers that know them already and know their site's domain
> name/URL. SEO is not for that. SEO is for finding NEW customers. NEW. What
> a concept, huh?

No... I didn't make the mistake of thinking SEO was for old customers.

What I'm saying is that it is a waste of the artist's time AND money to dither around on search engines because the most efficient way to get new customers is through displays and shows. Carla can develop a good market and if she gets on the local show circuit, the customers are steady and the money isn't bad.

> classified as crafts. BIG difference. Why would Carla not want people who
> are looking for stained glass crafts but do not know of Carla or her site
> to NOT find her site?

Because all the optimization in the world isn't going to bring her buyers. She can kill herself doing optimization for "stained glass" and every single piece she has, and that only means she's wasted a lot of time when she should be creating.

> Again, you are confusing expensive pieces of art with non-expensive arts
> and crafts. Arts and crafts are just another product, just like any home
> decor item. And people do in fact search the web for home decor and this
> is what I have seen on Carla's site (from just a quick glance).

In fact, no, I'm not confusing it. My polyclay dolls fall in the "arts and crafts" category.

> You have narrow mind. Newlestters can come in all shapes and sizes and can
> serve different purposes for different markets.

I think you may be making the mistake that many do in thinking that artists are doing art on the side and can whip the art out at a prodigious rate.

Both are not true.

Artists ONLY have income from what they produce. If they aren't making stained glass (or doing an illustration or whatever) they effectively have no money. The minute they stop working, the money quits. There's no kind person or no second job paying the gas, the insurance, the rent. There's nothing.

During the time she spends trying to write a newsletter, she's not making new art. She can't sell prints of her work so that means no income. And it doesn't matter how attractive her newsletter is, if she doesn't have art, she can't sell anything.

She gets zero income.

Crafts aren't a "whip it out in 10 minutes" thing, nor is art. A good, large piece of stained glass can take 60 hours to cut and produce. A good small one can take 8 hours to produce. A painting can take up to a month to do in oils (longer, even.) Even a black and white cartoon or daily comic strip usually takes 8 hours to pencil, ink, and letter.

If I take six hours to write a newsletter, I've just put my production schedule for the next show behind by six hours -- or just reduced my month's production by one piece. If I spend $300 on SEO, that's money that can't go to supplies or rent...and it won't be made back by putting the site up on the top of the heap.

> Take a look at Carla's site. Look at some of the stuff she makes. It can
> be classified as home decor and therefore there is a ready and waiting
> market out there to buy it, even from a website. If marketed correctly to
> them. Which requires internet marketing, online or offline.

The sales from online for crafts are miniscule (you can build up a market on Ebay but it's slow and relies on name recognition.) The BIG sales come from in-home events, from crafts fairs, and from art shows (I've done $1,000/month on small items such as my polyclay dolls.)

I wouldn't advise her to spend and money on SEO or on newsletters, etc. She could instead use that time and money much more effectively and get more customers by doing craft fairs, submitting to shows, and investing in business cards that serve as price tags.

If you doubt me, do the SEO for her yourself. Count her traffic and sales now. Then do the SEO. For every 8 hours you spend on submitting to search engines, take a piece of art off her site (because that was time when she couldn't produce it if she'd done it herself.) At the end of the month, count her internet sales and divide by the number of hours you worked to make the site come up on the SEO in an appropriate rank.