Progress

I believe it was back in 2006 that I started doing the blog and marketing thing. I recall struggling terribly for a few views and there was no such thing as a comment. I spent quite some time penning articles about nonsense. Thinking back now it was just a serious lack of passion. I had no belief in it and thusly it did not grow. I got by don't get me wrong but it wasn't 'fun'.

I was really leery about blogging again, or going public. I've been hiding in my own little reality for a while and I've come to enjoy the safety of it. I didn't want to spend hours tweaking settings and optimizing everything only to have 2 views. Fortunately I was spared that gut wrenching this time around.

Perhaps I have found something to be passionate about again and it is showing through or maybe it is just a better time for it. Being more social certainly helps. All around I am starting to feel more and more like this ambition may turn into fruition. So far I have established enough views to actually call it traffic. Considering my projects are less than a week old I think that in itself is worth dancing a jig over. I am so pleased to be able to interact with the world outside of a Facebook page.

I expect it will take time to build a genuine readership, and to have folks that actually follow, join, or comment is perhaps a matter of luck. Sometimes you have a talkative audience, more often you have voyeurs. I am guilty of that one myself, lurking in the background. In all honesty it's kind of creepy (which is probably why it suits me) but I am working to rectify that. One thing all artists need, be it visual or authoring is feedback. We need to know that someone has seen our efforts. It's always nice to have someone oooh and ahhh but genuine commentary shows thought and gives us tools we would otherwise not have to work with.

All in all for my first week out here new and raw as I am I feel pretty good about my overall impact. There is a sense of having achieved something I set out to do. Admittedly I am a long way from my goal. There is so much more to be done - after all this is still really in test mode but I feel I've made a few big steps forward.

Now of course I will need to finish some of my projects and get a proper scan of my works so I may present them in the fashion I originally intended. My plan is to spend this entire year building my gallery and setting up so that sometime next year I may make the leap to selling my work. I feel I've made a good foothold here in March. I think the time restraint is doable provided I apply strict adherence to my timeline. This requires at least 6 hours per day devoted to this project. Be it painting, setting up, marketing, optimizing, or gathering supplies it must be spent purely on the goal at hand. So far... so good.

Here's to the future of this project, maybe I will even give it a name as I go lol. Thank you to all who are along for the ride, and have given me the boost of confidence I so needed to keep this going forward!