How do other artists market themselfs?

Lauren mefi of Bitmap dreams is an artist that i have consistently referenced back to in my blog, and she exemplify that a strong on-line presence and communication with audience is very important when marketing yourself.

While static websites used to be good, advertising has largely shifted and you have to actively try and put your work in peoples way as much as possible. This is largely done via social media now, as it becomes much easier for people to filter out subjects they like and engage with it.

I personally got a large portion of my audience by putting time and effort into the groups section on deviant art, and having a stable upload schedule.

Although Lauren has less of a stable upload schedule on her tumblr, it is updated consistently enough  that i know what she is doing, however it is not updated enough to be spammy and overbearing.

Although i cannot find the original info this image gets it's ideals across, that as an artist you have to keep in mind when you upload your art as well, but this is usually centred around gaining an American audience, and what kind of audience you have. I largely post in the weekend evenings however when i graduate i plan on expanding work to upload at least two to three times weekly on my tumblr and Deviant art with properly finished work.
Usually things that are pay ware and advertisements for products i leave until Friday evening.

However i would like to bring up the point that social media can be incredibly detrimental. With facebook and instagram having a rampant issue with stealing content, Deviant art having work misused and put as blog decoration (an especially prolific thing in the pixel art community) And often having popular posts on tumblr does not necessarily mean success, just a large number.
Often your art my be shown around but it may just go out of your hands, having the ability to consistently show your artwork is fundamental in marketing your work.







With the decline of personal websites, and artists moving more onto social media what make people want to visit my own website and maintain interest in it?

It's a hard question to answer as many people only like to follow an artists presence through social media. However this is another reason why i hosted my website through neocities, it's already essentially a social media in itself.

(Screenshot from my pet project website Hellosailor)

Although on a much smaller scale you can easily engage people on the website, Neocities also has a build in RSS feature where you can choose to update the feed when you felt like you have made significant changes to it. It's sharing feature is also pretty good for sharing your website on many platforms when you have made large updates that you think your wider audience may be interested in.