It’s been said that the words “new” and “free” are the most powerful words in advertising. And there they are together in the title of this article. Admit it, you were a little hooked by the title weren’t you? People love to get things for free. When someone offers something for free many people are moved to action. They like to get somethin’ for nuttin’. That could work to your advantage when you are trying to promote your art.
For example, artist Janet Nelson has a blog called A Planet Named Janet. She grows blog followers 
by regularly offering a draw for free original art. She has been giving away her art since the spring of 2009. She offers a couple 5 x 7 acrylic paintings at a time. Rules are simple. Visitors leave a separate comment for each painting they would like to win and they can enter as often as they like within a 2 week period. Janet numbers the comments and uses a random number generator and pick the winners. Janet even ships for free. She considered giving away a variety of artwork in stock just to reduce inventory. Instead she chose to encourage collecting by offering similar paintings as part of a series. The series features a pair of items (2 peaches, 2 birds etc) painted on 5 x 7 backer boards. Winners also receive a blank notecard of the same image which she hopes will be sent to someone else.
As a result of the give-aways, her blog followers have doubled. In addition, some winners have blogged about it. To produce that result she discovered that it was necessary to promote the giveaway, which she did on Facebook, Twitter and Etsy. Unlike some other Etsy giveways, she made entry simple: just leave a comment. Some artists require entrants to become followers to enter.
Janet also has a weekly give-away at a gallery where she is represented. This has resulted in “a large fishbowl of entrants” whose e-mail address will be a valuable asset for marketing.
Other artists who have achieved a high level of exposure also use giveaways. Over 1800 people have joined the Facebook group, d’art Lottery for a weekly chance to win a piece of art by Val’s Art Diary.
I, myself tried a little experiment on this blog last month. I offered a chance for a free website analysis with every comment posted during October. I was curious to see if the offer would encourage people to make more comments. It did. The average number of comments per article jumped from 1 to 9. Significant. That does not include people who commented by e-mail. Adding in those comments, the comments per article jumped from 1 to 16! The other interesting thing that happened was a conversation among artists began. I like that. I see this blog as a place where artists can share their experiences and ideas about marketing online. I encourage you to engage in the converations.
And the winner of the free website analysis is………. Ron Vickers!
What a great idea. I am thinking of doing the same thing to increase my readership. However, I received a blog reply from someone I have never met which was really a pleasant surprise. What a great thing this blogging is! I am really enjoying it.