Perhaps you’ve read Cory Doctorow’s blog post “Think Like a Dandelion” and know where I’m going with this. If you haven’t here is a link to the post. Cory Doctorow is a successful blogger, journalist, and science fiction author. He’s a pretty interesting character and in my opinion a futurist when it come to copyright laws and marketing creative offerings on the internet.
In the context of being an author the “Think Like a Dandelion” blog posts suggests that spreading your work freely as widely as possible is the key to marketing and sales in the age of the internet. I don’t want to plagiarize or ruin a good read for those who haven’t read the blog post. Do yourself a favor and check it out then come back and think about it in the context of other art forms in this digital age.
I had authored a fairly lengthy post here but the loco-art.com community is a pretty business savvy bunch so I think I’ll cut to the quick and paraphrase my thought.
Having your artwork on the internet and being distributed a widely as possible in a non-business threatening way is important in that it: ‘
- Increases your marketing funnel of potential customers
- Is essentially free long standing marketing
- Should not decrease your conversion rate to customers if done right
What do I mean by done right? Here are a couple of examples from the Loco-art.com community. Joanne Pasieka is a photographer who has a personal gallery here on Loco-art.com. She has taken care to provide lower resolution images with watermarks. Obviously a high resolution freely available version of her photography could impact a potential sale. The online work is still totally enjoyable by people who are casual viewers of art but they have no intention of buying anyway. But they may spread the word and influence other buyers. Then there is Maciek Peter Kozlowski’s site where his art is repurposed to augment income. What a great win win, not only does it generate income but every sale results in more thinking like a dandelion activity as his work is spread far and wide.
So lets get the art out there, think like a dandelion, spread your work far and wide on the Internet and to quote Cory Doctorow “the winds of the Internet will toss your works to every corner of the globe, seeking out every fertile home that they may have“.