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Spring in My Steps

Twice last week, while working on my latest Grizzly on Grass painting, I got an idea for a post. Instead of simply jotting it down, I ended up writing a thousand words. Before I knew it, I thought, “wait, wasn’t I just painting?”

Winter is nose to the grindstone time for me; low on inspiration and motivation, putting in the hours to get the work done. Spring is the opposite; an abundance of nervous energy, plenty of ideas and not enough time for all of them.

Not having enough ideas is bad, but having too many can be worse, especially when all of them seem important. There is the fear that if I don’t address these lightning strikes right away, I’ll have lost whatever mojo that made it exciting enough to stop painting in the first place when I finally do get to them.

I count on that spring motivation to pull me out of the winter blues. I usually get a lot done in spring and summer. Last year, that spring motivation never showed up, for obvious reasons. I spent most of those months and a good chunk of summer worrying about losing my business.

While it certainly wasn’t a comfortable time, my worst fears didn’t materialize, so all of that worry was a big waste of time, as worry usually is.

I must now be used to this new base layer of uncertainty because this year, the spring high thankfully showed up. I’ve got many things I want to do, not enough time to do them, and I must prioritize what’s important.

As I talked about in a recent post, marketing my work and looking for new ways to get the word out has become one of those priorities. David Duchemin has opened my eyes to possibilities I hadn’t considered, and now I’m seeing them more often. There are plenty of little ways to improve my marketing efforts. Lumped together, it seems like a monumental effort, a mountain to be climbed. But you know what they say about the journey and single steps.

Besides drawing, painting, and writing, I’m trying to add a bit of marketing every day, either research or actual implementation.

Here are a couple of recent changes that I hope are improvements.

Checking Out?

If you don’t have a PayPal account and want to buy something online from an independent seller, it’s clunky to go to the checkout on the site and then keep going when you find you have to set up another account somewhere else.

For some, it’s one step too many and leads to cart abandonment, which translated for the site owner, means you just lost a sale.

Shopping is supposed to be easy.

PayPal is the most popular online payment method, and plenty of people have an account, but if you don’t or don’t want to use one, I’ve tried to make my online store a little simpler at check out.

As of yesterday, in addition to the usual PayPal option, you can now checkout directly with your credit card. My site was already well secured, and while the back-end payment engine is still PayPal, it will no longer take you to another site to process payment; it will happen right in the shopping cart.

Better still, if you’re looking for a specific print, you can now buy directly from the item and bypass the cart process entirely.

Care to Comment?

Blogs were a big thing in the early/mid-2000s. I’ve had mine since 2008. Over time, they seemed to fall out of fashion, criticized for something that old people did. In recent years, however, I’ve been reading about their resurgence. With so much content online, people are again more interested in the stories behind the work and long-form articles. The wheel has come around again, and blogs have integrated with newsletters.

I kept my blog going all of these years because I enjoy writing. I don’t remember when I turned off the comments, but I certainly know why.

Before Facebook and Twitter became the polarized sewers they are today; there were still people who wanted to turn every available comment opportunity into a forum for their political or social grievances, regardless of where they were.

My early work’s foundation was editorial cartooning, so my work attracted quite a few trolls long before that term was in widespread use. The same people would show up on my site and accuse me of being in bed with one political party or another, regardless of what I posted. When it was just on the editorial cartoons, I tolerated it because I felt it only fair to allow a rebuttal to my own illustrated opinion.

That was back when I would foolishly engage in political discussions with strangers. Live and learn.

As my work became more diversified and I’d paint caricatures of celebrities or illustrations for board games, those same commenters would still have something to say, and often it had nothing to do with the post. They had just become used to my site being somewhere they could spew whatever bile they had thought up that day.

When these same people began to drive away others or tried to start an argument with followers in my comment section, I’d had enough and disabled the comments. Think about it, if you were about to check out a retail store and saw people inside having a loud argument, would you go in or keep moving?

That’s also why I deleted my Facebook page and Twitter account. Because Facebook and Twitter are now notorious for anger and bitterness, with people posting and repeating their political agendas all over the place, it’s easy for artists and other self-employed people to get caught in the crossfire, with little means of controlling the damage.

The upside of all that vitriol concentrated on social media is that blog posts like mine are no longer attractive venues for political opinion carpet bombing. People who engage in that type of recreation want as many eyes on their rage as possible and social media is their preferred playground.

Now that I’m focusing more on serving my audience, I thought a little more engagement might be beneficial. People send me emails all the time, something for which I’m grateful. I try to respond to each one. But as my work gets more popular and my audience grows, it can be a little time-consuming. Comments are one way I can still hear what my audience has to say, what they like and what resonates with them, but they might not always require me to reply.

In the end, all of this stuff is an experiment, anyway. I could suddenly be inundated with spam or inappropriate comments and might have to turf it all again as I did before. I hope that doesn’t happen, and I’d like to see it become one more small improvement to the overall enterprise.

Time will tell. With fingers crossed and happy thoughts, what do you think? Feel free to comment below.

© Patrick LaMontagne
Follow me on Instagram @LaMontagneArt

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Pit Stop

I started a new painting yesterday morning. About an hour or two in, I found myself wondering at what point I should share a work-in-progress screen shot on Instagram or maybe record another video or two of a close-up of the brushstrokes. Suddenly I wasn’t focused on the painting, I was thinking about promoting it.

In our online content-obsessed world, there’s a ton of pressure on self-employed artists to always be sharing images, works-in-progress, blogs, memes, photos, thoughts and snapshots of life in general. A lot of that pressure is self-inflicted. For most of us, there’s nobody standing at our back, cracking a whip.

Working artists are not only driven by the need to earn financial compensation for our creations, but to also get the likes and shares, new subscribers, and to expand our reach and audience. It’s an endless quest for that validation high, convincing ourselves that just a few more followers will get us closer to the carrot on the stick.

Like any addiction, it’s never enough. The dopamine hit that did the job yesterday doesn’t quite do it today.

Promotion and advertising is part of any business, there’s no escaping it. While it would be nice if there were any truth to that famous whispered line in Field of Dreams, it’s a fantasy to believe that “if you build it, they will come.”

Yes, I know the line was actually “he” will come, but I’m paraphrasing.

If you’re in it for a living, it’s not enough to create something; you have to sell it. It becomes a hamster wheel and it’s easy to lose perspective. It feels irresponsible to ease off on the gas pedal, that any momentum earned will immediately be lost. But it’s an unsustainable pace, and every machine needs maintenance.

I’m taking a summer break from the promotion.

I’ll still be drawing daily editorial cartoons, filling print and calendar orders, answering emails, shipping and delivering the masks when they arrive, basically running my business as usual, but I’m trying something new.

For the next little while, likely a month or six weeks, I’m taking a break from the blog, newsletter, and Instagram to focus on painting and writing. I need to get better at time management, and something has to give, at least in the short term.

I want to work on a piece, without having to think about how to share it, either while it’s in progress or when it’s completed. I want to finish a painting and not have to immediately write about it, size it for the site and Instagram, copy and paste the gaggle of hashtags, then check to see how many people like and comment on it over the course of that day.

It often feels like shouting in a crowded stadium, desperate to be heard above the noise.

After sharing this post (ah, the irony), I’m temporarily deleting the Instagram app from my phone and iPad. It would be too easy to tap that icon and fall back into the habit.

It’s a scary proposition, filled with what-ifs. I might lose subscribers, followers, sales, interest, but I don’t think that’s realistic. I’m simply taking a vacation from sharing everything, carving out time to regroup, to consider where I want to go with my work.

When I come back, I expect I’ll have a few new paintings, wildlife photos and stories to share. But who knows? As we’ve all learned the hard way this year, nothing is certain.

Enjoy your summer.

Cheers,
Patrick

___

© Patrick LaMontagne
Follow me on Instagram @LaMontagneArt
Sign up for my newsletter which features blog posts, new paintings and editorial cartoons, follow this link to the sign up form.

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Comments and Choices

PostitJust as artists discover their own style,  freelance long enough and you’ll discover your business style, too.  As the online world changes, faster today than ever before, so will your way of doing things.  For example, when I began to post editorial cartoons on this site, I disabled comments because I knew it would turn into a melee of differing political opinions.  While I agree with a person’s right to express themselves and argue their point, anybody who strongly disagrees with my point of view can send me an email or write a letter to the editor of one of the publications across Canada in which my cartoons appear.  But all one has to do is look at almost any political story on a news website and you’ll see how quickly it gets turned into a free-for-all brawl.  Pro-Conservatives will seize any opportunity to further their cause, regardless of whether or not the story warrants it.  Pro-Liberals do the same thing.  Any real discussion is lost amid the noise.  To avoid that, comments have never been allowed on editorial cartoons on this site.

An argument has been made by some in recent years to disable comments on blog posts as well.  While I’d never given it much thought, I’ve read some of those arguments, and recently revisited that question.   When it comes to interaction with artists, freelancers, and the folks who just generally like my cartoons, social media is where the action is, at least for me.  Facebook is where I get the most feedback and where people seem to like to comment the most.  It’s also where I get the most questions about how I do things, requests for help, and just general discussion on cartoons, blog posts, and other links.  I regularly get commission work on that platform as well.

Twitter is another form of interaction that has proven to be worth my while lately.  Not only does it grant access to other people I don’t interact with on Facebook, but I get real time information in short bursts.  It also forces me and others to be succinct in posting any links and comments.  It took me a long time to see the value in Twitter, but I get it, now, and am using it daily.

Google+ is still an effort for me.  I don’t get nearly the interaction there that I get on Facebook or Twitter and have been having a hard time finding the value in the platform.  While some would argue that Google+ is where everybody is going, I’m just not seeing it.  For awhile, it seemed to be taken over by photographers or at least hyped to be the place where photographers should be, but I only post there lately because it takes two more seconds after I’ve posted to Facebook and Twitter.

When it comes to blog posts, there are many who will tell you that you must keep a blog, while there are others who’ll say blogging is dead.  I still believe in keeping a blog, but only because I enjoy writing.  If you don’t like writing or teaching, you won’t enjoy it or keep it current.

The point of all of this rambling about my online posting practices is to show that what works for one person may not work for another.  Many self proclaimed authorities will tell you the exact methods and devices you must use when it comes to self promotion, but usually they’re just validating their own choices.  It’s the same reason the Apple vs. PC, Nikon vs. Canon, Coke vs. Pepsi debates still rage on.  If you can get other people to do what you do, then it somehow means you’re right.

The reason so many more people are choosing freelancing as a career is that they want the freedom to make their own choices.  It’s a very big reason why I chose to do it.  I would much rather screw up and learn from my own mistakes, than take orders from a boss who refuses to admit he ever makes any.  With that freedom of choice, it’s important to listen to other professionals and find out what your options are, but then make your own choices based on what you feel is right for your business.  Weigh the facts, but trust your gut.  We’re all just winging it, even the so-called experts.

When it comes to my website, I think of it like a storefront or a brochure.  It’s the image of my business that I want to project.  That means controlling the content, the look, and what gets posted.

I don’t get  a lot of comments on this site in the first place, largely because most people choose to interact with me on social media, and to be honest, that’s the way I prefer it.  While many of the comments I do get are positive and supportive, I regularly have to weed out the ones that are argumentative, ill-informed, and some that are so long, they’re blog entries all on their own.  It’s a time suck, and lately, it’s just not working for me.  By censoring comments, as well as picking and choosing which I want to show, it would be hard to argue that it’s real interaction, anyway.  Consequently, if I allowed anybody to post whatever they want, it would quickly begin to look like a business where the front window is covered in leaflets, announcements, and propaganda for other businesses, agendas, and personal causes.  I find neither of those options particularly appealing.  The main reason I chose not to sell ad space on my site was to avoid that problem.

Freelancing is a tough gig most of the time, but if you try to please everybody, you’ll be miserable.  Make your own choices, judge their effectiveness, make new choices.  Keep what works, discard what doesn’t.  Repeat ad infinitum.

Today, I’ve decided that even though blog comments used to be mainstays in online interaction, I believe that social media has replaced their usefulness, so I’m disabling them on my website.

Thank you for those who have commented on this site in the past, and just because I’m turning comments off here, doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear from you.  I’m on social media every day and am happy to talk with you there.  Chances are you found this link on social media in the first place.  But if not, here are the links to my social media accounts.

Facebook: LaMontagneCartoonInk

Twitter: @CartoonInk

Google+: Patrick LaMontagne