Paint My Dog!

"Digital Painting in Progress"
Killer and Barney

 I am having fun today working on Killer & Barney. The original photo I am painting from had a few scratches that I had to clean up using the clone tool. I think the project is coming along nicely and I am having a lot of fun with it. I should have proofs ready by next week.  We are starting to get moderately busy again. I met with a repeat client this morning that was dropping over some vintage photos for me to scan.  Many clients seem to have limited photographs to choose from these days, except for one lady that is doing a great job of shooting for a Master Paw Print of her Schnauzers.
 

 "Paint My Dog"

... O.K. yea I know a very weird post title for me. Sounds like the name of an i-Pad Ap or a quickie digital arts company. Art Paw is not either of those. Here is the back story on that phrase:

 Yesterday I spoke with a really nice sales guy from an SEO company that called and wanted me to purchase his services for search engine optimization. I actually have done  a lot of work on my website http://artpaw.com to have good title tags and I feel like I rank well for a few important search phrases. He pointed out that I am not yet ranking well for the phrase "paint my dog". We talked for a very long time and I really enjoyed learning from him what his company offers.  In speaking with him I realized that it is impossible to know the many different phrases and terms that someone might use to try and find an artist to paint their dog. I learned a lot about how these SEO companies, or rather how his company goes about helping their clients. They go out and try and get back links for you from other websites.  He used a lot of on the spot tools to measure my site and actually said I was doing very well in many areas. I was impressed with his sales skills and yet, I am not ready at this point to hire someone else to do that sort of work for me. It is not that I don't think he would do a great job, I am just not sure that this is where my very limited marketing budget should be spent.

A Tip For Other Pet Portrait Artists:
If you get a lot of cold-calls from sales people wanting to do Search Engine Optimization for you, be sure and ask them their company name and then, while they are on the phone with you, use google to see how well they do for the phrase "seo services ". If they are not found within the first 2 pages of results politely ask them what phrases they are targeting for their own business, then check and see how well they do for their own domain, and their chosen keywords. I was actually impressed with my sales guy yesterday, while he did not rank for the terms I would use to find him, he did rank for the terms he was going after. He was also not defensive or flustered at all by my question, and I admired that and we had a very nice long talk.  I do not always have a lot of time to spend on the phone with cold-call sales people, but I was focused on marketing yesterday so his call came at a good time and I learned a lot from him.