Online Business Q&A

I have been using Zoom to run an online writing group, and find it a very solid platform. I do recommend getting a paid account so you can go longer than 40 minutes (also dial-in isn't always working for free accounts due to the current high demand - there was a warning about this on their site recently).

If any of your art is digital art you may be able to capture your progress through the device. For example the Procreate app (for iOS) saves every stroke you make, then allows you to export it as a time-lapse video. There's one example of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr2Dx80TU6Q

If you don't currently do digital art, it might be a good time to consider it as a diversification, as it will be easier for students to share already-digital work.

In terms of filming (physical) art, your challenge will be capturing and sharing at a high enough resolution that people can see the fine detail of what you are doing. That is going to be difficult for A3 due to the resolution and frame size you'll need. Alternatively, you could zoom in and film small areas of detail to show the method in those areas. Then perhaps display the full size work as a series of still images.

It might be worth using Vimeo rather than YouTube to host your videos as you can password protect individual videos - this isn't currently possible on YouTube.

I would consider a mix of pre-recorded lessons and live meetings because people are in need of human contact right now. If it's difficult to share visual material over the live meeting, distribute files beforehand (your examples/their homework) then use the live meeting time to discuss people's progress and challenges.

Lisa,

What we are using for several different ventures is Mail Chimp. They have a free tier which makes it really cost effective for building an email list. They also have a widgets that you can add to a regular website or a Wordpress site with minimal effort.

Another tool we have used is Google Forms. You can quickly create a form and post it your website or social media to gain feedback (and email addresses among other things). It has a few more steps than Mail Chimp but gives you more flexibility for capturing different types of information.

I would also suggest using social media to connect with interest users or perspective clients. Connecting with them on social media isn't going to create a database of users for you, but it will give you a great idea into who some of your more engaged connections are and you can leverage them to help you spread your message.

Garbo, having looked over your website, there are numerous ways to increase your traffic. Advertising is the most obvious. However, increased traffic doesn't necessarily equate to increased sales. If your current marketing and sales systems are faulty, more traffic will simply result in greater numbers of lost sales.

The choice of which methods/channels to use depends entirely upon your available budget and expected return. By which I mean, first establish the goals for your marketing.

Where are you now? Where do you want to be at a given future time? What resources can you make available to get you there?

The questions have only just started. What percentage of your current visitors become buyers? Whatever the figure, find out why and quantify your funnel.

• Where are visitors coming from?
• How valuable are your current social channels?
• Where are buyers coming from?
• What characteristics do they share?
• Are would-be buyers dropping out of the shopping cart?
• What does it currently cost to acquire a customer?
• Who is your customer?
• What would attract her to the site?
• How often does she buy?
• What would entice her to buy more/tell her friends?

The list of potential questions to be asked goes on and on.

When you've established your goals, you can certainly go about answering them yourself with access to good reference material and advice. But to figure out which questions are relevant to your business may require outside help from a marketing consultant.

This is probably not the answer you want to hear, but I think you must start with the fundamentals before spending any money on increasing traffic.