How to Setup an Art Gallery Website

December already and I'm still building my online Art Gallery by constructing a behind the scenes presence on the web to move forward with my own domain and main gallery. This project started in September. By mid-month I'll have reached my goal.

This morning I garnered the simplest game plan for beginning a project-- from the Harvard Business Review tweet: Priortize Before Starting Your Project

• Clarify the assignment. Don’t start until stakeholders agree on the goals and the general timetable.
• Organize your troops. Get team members involved at the get-go so they feel ownership. Agree on a way of working — how often you’ll meet, how you’ll communicate, etc.
• Create a project plan. Ask your team to help you identify project activities and how long they will take. Put them in sequence and identify which are interdependent and which can run at the same time. 

That's a pretty good summary of everything I learned in school-not Harvard-and these are, indeed, the steps I used to get started with the best brand, the most effective marketing tools, and the knowledge I need to move forward to a successful project--with a little more hard work.

I clarified the assignment:
       - build an online art gallery to sell your art so you can continue painting!

I organized my troops:
       - built a Facebook presence using Artist page and favorited; facebook.com/GailKentStudio
       - setup a Twitter account and chose great following accounts; @Gail_Kent
       - networked with Etsy shop "circles" and " Treasury" lists by sharing other artists' and
           artisans' work with Facebook and Twitter postings; etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
           (carefully blocked and banned forever any attempted link baiting and spamming)

       - then came the hard part: planning the creative web presence embracing my "brand"

I created my project plan:
       - created a Google website about my new online studio; sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios
       - began a blog, though I'm numbers/images minded, not a writer; A Painter's Resources
       - setup artist website to offer quality reproductions of my work as wrapped canvas prints,
           acrylic, prints, framed prints, and cards; http://gail-kent.artistwebsites.com
       - and now, having read the blogger how-to and the website building how-to, I'm ready to
           create my own domain site, without having to go back to school or study programming
           at very little cost. Others may have done my site differently, but I like that I was able to do it!

This is just the basics, but these steps will get your art online and help in building your brand. There are many other web accounts to open and some to play with while getting your feet wet.

Please share your comments in this interactive blog, then share the post with others who may find our experience helpful.

I'll soon add great blogger links on the bottom of my page. I've found some to be wonderful resources from the start of my project. You never lose anything by sharing your knowledge.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studios

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios