To briefly summarize : it's the beginning of a new year and from
the looks of the overall economy it's going to be a tough one
on the artwork sales side of things, but 2008 was also an interesting
year as far as attendance and sales. The 2008 attendance at a
majority of the art festivals was down 30-50%, but our sales,
in general, were up at a few of the shows. A couple of milestones
this season also included the artwork sales of well over 200 pieces
and dollar amount also well over the 10 thousand mark. It would
also appear that our online advertising campaign with Google AdWords
has paid for itself again this past year and with customer input,
slight improvements, as well as new designs, the website will
achieve more sales per Click this 2009 season. Now, the details
of the story . . .
After reviewing last season's numbers it became very clear that
we will not be returning to 3 of the art festivals, all of which
are in New York. Two of them were first time shows; Montauk, Long
Island and Park Ave, Rochester, with the third being Corn Hill,
also in Rochester.
Montauk, at The End of Long Island, was a new show for 2008 and
the artists attending were some of the elite in their fields from
the Zapplication site. Since the town is out beyond the Hamptons,
it is not only expensive to stay within town, but hard to get
to on its one and only through road. The show originally advertised
with most of the local vendors and motel websites as being held
in the center of town on the rotary Green. But the show organizer
seemed to increase the attending artists numbers and could no
longer fit the festival at the Green and moved it around the corner
to the Lion's Club soccer field. It would have been nice to have
had advertising signs pointing the way to the festival not only
within Montauk but at the rotary surrounding Green as well; we
walked a couple blocks to and from where we stayed in a few different
ways and noticed the lack of functional advertising. As a result,
limited attendance and the moving of the show to the Green for
2009.
Prior to attending the Park Avenue festival in Rochester for
the first time, Google Street View on its map search provided
exact detail to our booth space surroundings and piece of mind
to setting up. But, as we found, the Park Avenue area has some
of the healthiest people from that of any of the festivals we
have ever attended; because all they did was walk-in one big mile
long loop, chatting with their friends and not looking at most
of the booths. We usually give a festival a couple years to prove
its worth, but not if there isn't interest in, not only our artwork,
but also everyone else's in the general area. We heard that the
mustard lady did real well at $5 a jar. To top off the event,
the local beer distributor does its best business for the year
that festival weekend. The local university attendees, it turns
out, plan their drinking activities for that very weekend of the
festival, as we had been warned at the previous Corn Hill, Rochester
festival. We typically leave the artwork hanging overnight, and
since being setup in front of a church we believed our booth safe
for the evening festivities. We fared well for the evening, but
two booths down didn't fare as well, for a few revelers decided
to have a little party on the church side steps and destructively
entertain themselves within the booth. An isolated incident would
not a decision make, but several such did as the daylight dawned
. . . oh well.
The third show, Corn Hill in Rochester, we have been contemplating
not returning since the previous year. This was their 40th anniversary
and the free rib dinner was very good, but the construction on
the nearest highway, which closed many exit and on ramps, as well
as other highly advertised events in the area limited the attendance
and sales. The festival is very well organized, easy access and
parking, as well as closing off the entire neighborhood to traffic.
But it is the very neighborhood with booths on all the side and
main streets that adds to the attendance issue with the festival.
People have just stopped coming to the festival not only due to
sprawl, even though the organizers have been cutting streets back,
but the push towards public transportation in the area that had
quite a few patrons complaining ; " If we come to the festival
to buy artwork, we certainly do not want to be riding the bus
home with our purchases...".
Finally got one years worth of AdWord data from Google to go
through and make some what of a decision(s) as to which keyword(s)
get paused. The years worth of data would take the campaigns through
their respective active sport season as well as the holidays.
Also, turned the gift(s) keywords back on for the holiday season
at the end of October and will continue them through the new year
to again catch each respective active sport season throughout
the year. After pausing a few campaigns near the beginning of
the year (bike, football, golf and surf) for various reasons,
we managed to get our desired campaign results of average first
page ranking of sponsored link position(s) of 5 to 7, with a Click-Thru-Rate
(CTR) of around 4% at around $10 per week ($50 per week during
the 2 month holiday season). The final numbers for the year 2008
on Google AdWords were 166,592 impressions, 6438 clicks, click-thru-rate
of 3.86%, $0.18 average per click cost with an average position
of 5.2. The final tally has yet to be determined, but at this
point we're pretty close to having the AdWord campaign pay for
itself.
Just having the Google AdWord advertising campaign(s) pay for
itself is not the best of desired results and changes are currently
underway to help with potential sales missed. One of the site
updates is a Dedicated IP to allow the site to utilize its own
SSL certificate with visual TrustLogo from Comodo, instead of
the shared secure server certificate of which no visual authentication,
other than the lock symbol, was obtainable. The TrustLogo is a
Point to View Authentication which will alleviate any customer
doubts as to site authenticity or security. Another issue is landing
page quality, as determined by Google, which effects not only
click pricing but, since the site is still frame based, the page
search rank position. Still need to figure out, short of a complete
redesign to CSS, how to get the full page template of content
and not the frame call function. But, in the end, it's still amazing
how many more sales are completed based on the increasing number
of designs . . .
Google AdWords, it appears, possibly in an update, also informs
its account users if there are limiting factors, such as daily
cost limits, on the account that impede potential sales and inform
the user by how much of a factor and what increase would be required
to bring in the potential sales. It potentially gives more money
to Google, yes, but it also give our website more impressions,
possibly more clicks and hence possibly more sales.
We dropped our advertising campaigns with both the Shopping.com
network and Yahoo Shopping. Both were not costing very much to
have products listed out on the web, until both required a substantial
increase in funds deposited to the account. In one case $250 minimum
deposit to keep the account active. Since our log files indicated
not one sale concluded through either network, made the decision
an easy one. Our one advantage to the Yahoo Shopping network was
the site linkage back to our website, as recognized by Google,
which helped with page rank and hence CTR.
Also, found it interesting in the latest Google AdWord site maintenance
and evaluation of account data that it questioned our screen name
of BiyoArt. Non-conforming said they . . . oh really, said I.
Sent in the justification which basically stated that if our registered,
corporate EIN company name of Biyo LTD made toys it would, in
kind, also subsequently be named BiyoToys. Who knows where they're
going with this one . . .? Google : oops . . . never mind . .
. for now.
It's been real
We'll have to do it again real soon.
Talk at ya.
