How to create an online art business when you graduated high school before the Internet was in your pocket.
I grew up in the Just-in-case learning style — you spent kindergarten through high school trying to learn everything you might need to know for the rest of your life. But I didn’t learn how to sell metal art online when I was at school. How do I gain the skills I need? I can enroll at a community college and get a fire-hose of information over a semester or two or I can go online and learn just what I need to know in a few weeks.
I’m going online.
Over the weekend, I attended the monthly class from Learn PlasmaCam with Robert Johnson. He’s been providing answers and videos for years on how to use the design and cutting software that comes with the PlasmaCam CNC plasma tables. Through my membership, I can now ask questions in a small group and learn from other people who ask different questions. I learn more in a couple of hours than I have in the last couple of years.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been taking a class from Lucy at Bloom by Bel Monili on how to create content to promote my art business on social media. It’s a great class because it helps me focus on making progress in small steps and Lucy has created very helpful workbooks and is so incredibly good at explaining the why of every step. The thing that was overwhelming now seems manageable.
Yesterday, I signed up for a course on how to develop my YouTube channel from Meredith Marsh at VidProMom. In addition to learning how to turn my content ideas into video, I’m learning how to adjust what I put on YouTube based on understanding the statistics. Yes, I have years of experience doing video production but those years are meant for a broadcast generation and the tools have changed. And learning how to get videos shot, edited, and posted in my spare time feels very exciting.
If there’s something you’ve wanted to learn, there’s someone online teaching it. And if there isn’t, that’s an opportunity for you to become the person who teaches it — and to have people pay you for teaching them. There are even people who can teach you how to become an online teacher!