Happy New Year!! Let’s all have the best year we have ever had! It would be wonderful for each of us to move ahead with our goals, health and relationships and to have peace and justice everywhere on earth. This includes environmental justice – caring for the earth! Sounds good to me!! Marketing is going to wait a few days as I am inspired to write a few other posts first. Lisa Call inspired me to review the year in this post. Today I am going to look at 2007 and see what I have done and tomorrow focus on what I want to accomplish.

Lilac Wonder, Digital © Diane Clancy

Actually I have accomplished quite a bit in 2007 and perhaps it will be useful to document some of it. Some of these were goals and some weren’t.

• Opened my CafePress Shop which allowed people to buy my paintings on mugs, tiles, totes, journals and more. This has been a goal of mine since 1988 (to offer my paintings on merchandise) and CafePress has allowed me to!
• Opened my Etsy Shop where I have been selling reproductions of my artwork from cards to larger matted prints. Opening this shop allowed me to reach more people who wanted to buy my artwork. I have been wanting to market more effectively for a long time.
• Learned about Art Trading Cards (ATC or ACEO) this fall and started offering them for sale. These were my best sellers at Etsy.
• Learned about blogs this spring and have posted a post every day since the end of March on this blog.
• Had several clients for whom I created web sites and blogs. If you go to my site and look under links to clients links, you can see some of them.
• Several clients wanted substantial graphic design work which I was delighted to do!
• I exceeded my financial goals for the year.
• Thanks to one of my readers on this blogs, I am doing better at keeping on top of my financial records … trying for every day to keep the details fresh in my mind as I put them into my databases.
• I have maintained some local card sales.
• Made fantastic connections with online friends!! Thank you!!!
• This fall is when I think I first heard about social networking … I have been very hard at work doing this!! Sometime I will do a post with my connections so you can connect with me in these various ways.
• Found out about and joined WWAO, Worldwide Women Artists Online, a great group of women artists who sell our work online. I have made lots of great connections there.
• On Etsy found out about VAST, Visual Artists Street Team. I was in the group for about a month before I became a moderator … so this is a great opportunity to again connect with other visual artists who sell our artwork.
• Had a very small amount of licensing of my artwork. This was something I wanted to pursue a lot … next year.
• Several clients hired me to put their animal companions into fields of flowers or butterflies. This was a big success.
• I sent out one email newsletter this year – and I didn’t get any “take me offs.” Several people wrote back thanking me for this holiday newsletter.
• Finished “Reflections in Blue IV,” a pastel series I have been working on.
• Been creating digital art like wild, supported greatly by your support and enjoyment of my bubblescapes.
• I have cut a whole pile of blank ATCs that are all ready for me to fill up .. it should be a great way to get back into my traditional painting …. next year.
• Our local Artists of Franklin County became much clearer about our goals, under my leadership. We put on 3 AWE (Artists Window Exhibits) since mid-summer.
• I was invited (and accepted) to be on the Board of Directors of the Create Franklin County, the regional group working to build the Creative Economy.
• I am sure there are more .. but this is exciting to see all the things I have done to move my business ahead as I wanted.

~ Diane Clancy

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