What is the name of your Blog?Just Painting
What is your name?
Mary Sheehan Winn
Where are you from? (include country, state and/or city)
Marshfield, Massachusetts
What is your current age or age range?
57
Please describe your blog
My blog is about my life as an oil painter. I was inspired to begin blogging my paintings by an artist named Duane Keiser who became a successful seller on eBay through his A Painting A Day blog. I paint several paintings a week and post them to my blog. All are for sale and I have cultivated a following by visiting all of my commentator's blogs and their commentator's blogs. I'm fascinated by the amount of creativity I've seen and grateful for the feedback I get about the paintings.
Describe the main purpose of your blogging, what are you trying to accomplish?
My main purpose in starting my blog was to get my paintings seen and hopefully sell them. I've really enjoyed building an audience and getting my work seen all over the world. It's really fun. Blogging is a virtual world. I have come to know some of the visitors to my blog, through their repeat visits and by cruising their blogs and commenting on their work. Just getting the work out there is a big accomplishment.
What blogging platform do you do and why?
Blogger. I signed up after a friend began blogging.
What do you blog the most about?
On my Just Painting blog I blog about my art. I also have blog called Not Really A Cleaning Lady which was my first blog. I post photos and musings on life. Existentialism, I guess.
What kind of blogs make you angry?
If I click a link and it brings up porn. This can happen on the blogger site where on the header it says, 'next blog'. I flagged some content there to Blogger and was informed that these blogs weren't hosted by blogger. So, let that be a lesson to us all.
Give five of your best blogging tips.
Post regularly and take good photos
Write succinctly and spell correctly
Visit the back links of all your visitors and post a comment to thanking them. Their readers will see your comment and visit you. This is the number one way to get traffic.
Register your blog everywhere you can
Link other quality blogs to yours, you get their visitors too
Use a wide range of 'key words', 'labels' or 'tags' on your posts as these words bring unlikely visitors to your site. For example I posted a painting I called Beach House using 'Naples Florida beach house' as one of the tags, and came up 51st in Google search using 'Florida Beach paintings.'
What are some things you would NEVER blog about?
Nothing too personal or controversial. No religion or politics ;)
Did you start blogging for the purpose of making money and if so, are you making enough money?
I'm Not making any money to speak of. I hope to eventually sell more of my work through interest generated by the blog, but it's not the only reason for blogging.
How long have you been blogging?
Since October 2005
About how many hours per day do you spend blogging?
Too many ;) Hours and hours. I'm always checking in to see if there are new comments and following the back links.
Do you track RSS feeds and if so, how many do you usually track daily?
I usually get the subscription sent right to my email address, but I do have a Google homepage and get rss feeds sent to it.
Do you use Digg, and why or why not?
Not yet because I'm not familiar with it.
Do you use Stumbleupon, and why or why not?
I know about it but,no. I find that keeping up with the blog is time consuming and I haven't examined Stumbleupon yet.
What promotional techniques work best for you and why?
I registered with Technorati and other blog promotion sites. Many magazines have blogs now. Register with publications that reflect your interests and make a comment which creates a back link to your blog. I register with art related publications.
If you could post a blog on any blog in the world, which one would it be and why?
huh?
What mistakes have you made that you could warn others about?
can't think of any mistakes as such.
What are your top five blogging site picks and why?
Duane Keiser, A Painting A Day (the Godfather of painting a day blogging) Carol Marine, painter from Austin,Texas Edward B. Gordon, painter from Berlin, Germany Karin Jurick, painter from Atlanta, Georgia Jennifer McChristian, painter from Los Angeles
Have you met anyone offline as a result of your blog?
Not yet, but I've connected with many really fine artists all over the world. Many of them do workshops all over as well, so it's likely that I'll be meeting some of them in person.
What is the url of your blog?
Just Painting