Author Archives: Russell Collins

About Russell Collins

An aspiring artist who came late to the art of painting and now I am hooked. Father of Freya 10 and Morgan 8. Freya tells me that the man with the curly hair on the DVD is still a lot better than me at painting, but I am getting better. Morgan just goes and plays with his Lego,

Making More Money From Art-5

Making More Money From Art-5 – A Review of Previous Posts

A Life Saver

A Life Saver

I have been pleasantly surprised by the reaction to my series of posts in numerous art groups about how artists can start to make more money from their art.

This post will review what I have written in the past few weeks. It will also answer a few questions raised by readers, and I hope clear up some misconceptions.

I will then talk about some of the subjects I will cover in future blog posts.

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Making More Money From Art-4

Making More Money From Art-4 – Painting Workshops

Silent Night Painting Workshop print on demand

Silent Night,, after an Idea By Marion Dutton

One way of making more money from art is by incorporating a POD (Print On Demand) service into your workshop plans. Learn how you can double or more the profit from your painting workshop over a period of time. You can do this for very little extra work on your part. This post is a little longer than the last ones. I hope you think it worth it, I am talking here about using a POD service for your students, not your own art.

First Of All, A Health Warning

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Howe Park Woods – Fantasy Forest

Howe Park Woods – Fantasy Forest

Howe Park Woods

Howe Park Woods. The Fantasy Forest

What creatures live in Howe Park Woods – the Fantasy Forest of the night? What creatures stir when the sun goes down? Is this the forest of Lothlorien the home to the Elves, or Fangorn home to the Ents. Maybe Mirkwood, now the home of dark and savage things.

Howe Park – Fantasy Forest is an eye catching, but simple glazed landscape painting that is easy to do. Join me for a day time workshop on Saturday 7th January and at the end of the day, you will be taking this home. You will paint it under my tuition and it will be your own masterpiece. This is a suitable painting for any standard of painter from the never painted before, to the experienced. A relatively biggie at 100cm x 40cm. Creative ways to use a radiator roller. (more…)

Making More Money From Art-3

Making More Money From Art-3 – Economics Of Art

Daisies aglow and pricing your art. economics of srt.

Daisies Aglow

This blog post will introduce the concept of the economics of art, and how understanding some simple economics of art can help you with pricing your art, making more money from art, and your art workshops.

At the end of my last post, I briefly mentioned the situation where some of the artists I know have too many customers, and too little time. I said that one answer to this situation is to just raise your prices. The problem with raising prices though, is that you might get more customers as a result of raising your prices. Please read on.

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Making More Money From Art-2

Making More Money From Art-2 – Government Art Subsidy

Lady In Red Dress Walking In London Cityscape Looking For A Government Art Subsidy - Make More Money From Art

Lady In Red Dress and Louboutin Shoes

I had a very good reception to my earlier blog post about how you can make more money from art. I had many good comments and as far as I know, no bad ones. Group moderators allowed me to post on all groups – thank you.

So, here is my second post on the subject. It will explain a little about how you can get a type of Government Art Subsidy. Also, how some artists could almost immediately start making more money from art.

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Daisies Aglow

 Paint Your Own “Daisies Aglow” – Based on an idea by Marion Dutton

Daisies aglow

Daisies Aglow

An eye catching, but simple painting that is easy to do. Join me for a day time workshop on the 5th December and you will be taking this home. You will paint it under my tuition and it will be your own masterpiece.

Marion Dutton’s “Daisies Aglow” painting is the subject of my next art lesson. It is a still life depicting a burning candle, with a floral base. It has a suitably Christmas feel and can be painted in any colour you want. This workshop will let you customise your art. You can paint it in blue, dark green, red – the choice will be yours.

You should join me on December 5th, and at the end of the day, you will have your own personal masterpiece.  Then you can turn your masterpiece into Christmas cards, that should arrive within a week. (more…)

Making More Money From Art

Making More Money From Art

On Sunday 30th October, I made a little more money from art, not a lot more, just a little more.

Lady In Red Dress Walking In London Cityscape - Making More Money

Lady in red dress with red umbrella walking through London.

I sold another version of The Lady In Red  earlier that day at a craft fair. So, I am now an artist with a little more money. This is the 2nd version of Lady in Red that I have sold, it must have been her Louboutin shoes.

It is not easy making money from art, but small changes could help artists make more for very little extra effort – it is called added value. Be honest here: What would you rather be, an artist with less money, or an artist with a bit more money?

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The Lady In Red

The Lady In Red Painting (in her Louboutin Shoes) Story

Lady In Red Dress Walking In London Cityscape

Lady In Red Dress, Red Umbrella and Louboutin shoes Walking Through London

The Lady In Red, in her Louboutin shoes is on the march. Today London, Tomorrow who knows, maybe Paris, New York or Berlin?

This little story charts the development of the concept of The Lady In Red, through its developmental stages. The latest version gives her a pair of Louboutin shoes. I will start with the first version and work down to the latest version. You can buy reproductions of this piece of art from our shop here: Read on for the thrilling story.

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SEO for the Artist

SEO For The Artist

Yoast, Yoast seo, SEO for the artist

SEO for the Artist by a certified Yoast SEO practitioner

My idea for SEO for the Artist is an idea for an on-line training course for artists, crafters and small business owners. It is not currently live. The training covers the subject of search engine optimisation. People who are heavily involved in doing the business, frequently overlook the importance of running the business. They are more concerned with the short term urgency of satisfying customer needs. The longer term importance of areas such as marketing is seen as less important. SEO for the artist is an on-line training course that will take the complexity out of search engine optimization and improve on-line marketing skills.

As well as being a businessman in a non-artist area, I am also a practicing artist. Keeping track of the latest procedures related to Search Engine Optimisation can be difficult, and I want to make it easy for you.

SEO for the Artist is based around the concept of organic and holistic search optimisation. A holistic approach does not involve pay-to-click Adwords. Although a holistic approach can take longer than an Adwords campaign, it gives a better ranking over the medium term. This better ranking results in more conversions and return visits due to the enhanced user experience.

How I can help your Search Engine Optimisation Strategy

You are an artist, a crafter, a businessman or woman and you have a great web site. The problem is though that your web site doesn’t get the exposure that you think it should get. You don’t have the skills to run a proper SEO strategy, neither do you have the time to learn those skills. So watch this video to find out how I can help you.

Once you have watched it read more about Google and SEO, and how we can help small businesses.

Russell Collins of RussellCollinsArt gains a Yoast SEO certificate

Basic Yoast SEO Training

The Basic Yoast SEO course certificate

Basic Yoast SEO Course Icon

Thanks to the Yoast Company in The Netherlands, I have gained my Basic Yoast SEO qualification, and here is the certificate to prove it. I have always said that I know how to use a computer, but know nothing about how it works, whether software or hardware. Well, now I know something about how Google and SEO works, and you dear reader could benefit as well.

I am going to follow the Yoast way to optimise this site as well as my other site that deals with the fine art products of Gary Jenkins  www.farbi-flora-uk.co.uk I am also going to offer SEO services to others based on my knowledge.

Yoast SEO for WordPress Plugin

So where do I go from here? I am now going to do the Yoast SEO for WordPress Plugin course and I hope to get that completed within the next week or so and then I will do a blog post on that. The Yoast plugin comes as either a free version or a paid for premium version and you can read more below about how it can help your WordPress.org site.

The Yoast Plugin is probably the most comprehensive WordPress.org tool available. It has been specifically designed for the purpose helping WordPress users optimise their web sites. It incorporates everything from a snippet editor and real time page analysis functionality, to a Flesch reading ease analysis tool  that helps you optimize your images, pages, xml site maps and more.

Users of the free version get a host of useful features and obtain help through the WordPress.org forums. Buyers of the Premium Plugin also get additional features. A comprehensive feature list is shown below:

  • Breadcrumbs
  • Canonicals
  • Permalink clean-up
  • Robot.txt editing
  • Robots meta configuration
  • XML sitemaps
  • RSS enhancements
  • Head section clean-up
  • Post titles and meta descriptions
  • Redirect management – Premium Feature
  • Premium support – Premium Feature
  • Multiple focus keywords – Premium Feature