The ArtKlick Blog

Cancelled due to lack of replies from ski fields and I am going on my North Island Roadie next week. Might still hit Mt Ruapehu up and see if they are keen for an exclusive art day.

Hi (NZ ski field),

Would you like:

1.       More people to visit your mountain, buy lift tickets and eat your food?

2.       To increase your national and international media coverage and awareness?

3.       To get traffic to your website?

4.       To have fun and get people talking about you?

5.       Be part of making international snow and art history?

If you answered yes to these 5 questions I have an idea you might be interested in being part of.

The idea is called: “New Zealand Snow Art Project” and is pencilled in for Saturday September 13^th 2008.

The New Zealand Snow Art Project is a new idea to promote New Zealand art and ski fields to the world by starting a whole new art form/genre. We aim to encourage the public to get up to their local ski field for a day of fun and art in the snow.

Snow Art can be created by painting/dyeing snow with food colouring in spray bottles and spray packs.

What do you need to do?

1. Designate an area for snow art to be made (ie a slope near the cafeteria)
2. Push a pile of snow up to be used for snow sculptures.
3. Freeze some water blocks for carvers to do ice sculptures -great decorations!.
4. Give away some day passes and/or food etc as prizes for most creative etc
5. Promote it on your website.
6. Provide a sound system / music (optional).
7. Confirm your interest by Friday 1^st August

This is a great way to get people up to your mountain to have fun in the snow, get international coverage for being part of a whole new art genre and bring traffic to your website.

The NZ Snow Art Project is an initiative of www.ArtKlick.co.nz and will be promoted on www.ArtKlick.com, the Art Klick Facebook Group and www.MillionDollarLeg.co.nz (plus expected extensive media coverage).

Please  email James Stewart on james@artklick.com by 5^th August to confirm your interest in this project.

Amie is an artist based in Wellington who develops affordable websites for artists and galleries while maintaining one of the most comprehensive directories for New Zealand artists, galleries and organisations called Art List.

She is also a member of Art Klick and passionate about educating emerging artists while increasing their profile and sales internationally. For artists who would like to compliment their Art Klick profile with a personal website that is affordable and easy to manage I highly recommend Amie’s website development company Blue Bubble.

Below is a guest post about what she does. I think it will be of interest to many members of our community. I encourage you to email or call her if you are interested, she is very friendly and fun.

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As a full-time artist, I know how difficult it can be to get your work out there in the public eye. It might be because one cannot find the right gallery, a lack of confidence or business and marketing skills, or simply not knowing where to start. Prior to taking up being a full-time artist in late 2005, I had a successful career in the area of online development and internet marketing. Utilising these skills I started out displaying my artwork by building my own artist website www.amiemccarron.co.nz which has proved successful in creating interest in my work and has resulted in many sales both national and international.

Realising that many artists do not have business skills or online marketing knowledge, I teamed up with an artist friend of mine (Collette Fergus who has extensive experience in dealing with artists and galleries) to create ARTLIST as a guide to and for New Zealand artists. The free Reference Guide has loads of great online resources for artists and the ArtList Directory can help lift your profile on the internet due to its high search-ability. More recently, I have been helping artists to get their own websites up and running – one they can manage themselves and at an affordable cost (cause let’s face it, most artists are not affluent!).  Check out what I offer at Bluebubble Design.

Anyway, enough about me. I believe the internet is an amazing resource and the opportunity for selling art online is huge.  It is beneficial to have your work available via different selected avenues so as to capture the widest audience you can. Art Klick seems a credible way of displaying and selling your work online and especially so if you do not have a website that allows online sales. The opportunity for photographers to showcase their work and sell prints is fantastic.  Emerging and established artists can only benefit from having a credible means to showcase their work. Plus having signed up myself, the process is so easy and the site well designed.

One of the keys to a successful online business is a strong focus on marketing and promoting your website. Art Klick seems to get this!  The enthusiasm that Art Klick founder James Stewart is showing towards getting Art Klick out into the public arena is up there at the top!  Not only that, I can tell from talking to James that he genuinely has each artist’s interests at his heart. This is a great business venture for the benefit of New Zealand Art – a venture that I personally hope pays off for the creators of Art Klick and the artists who are able to join for FREE. Why would you wait I think these guys are onto something big!

Amie McCarron

ARTLIST Director

Click here to watch the video of the first tattoo for The Million Dollar Leg

Yesterday afternoon I got the outline for the first tattoo at Inkgrave in Edgeware, Christchurch.

Got some great media coverage with CTV filming my first TV interview and Blair from The Cut Lunch show on local student radio station RDU recording the action for a podcast doco.

The first tattoo (below) is “The Orange Bangle” by loyal and talented Art Klick artist Kim Loasby. The tattoo is 40 square cm which would be $20,000 NZD. I don’t expect anyone to pay that much so have decided to sell half of it on Zillion and the other half on international auction site eBay.

Each auction is for half of the 20cm (half of the tattoo) and have $500 reserves.

I have also got a small instalation planned for Christchurch CBD this morning to draw attention to this blog and advertise the two listings.

AND I got my first official paying sponsor last night! Brendan Smith the founder of Apage.co.nz a new social networking website for New Zealand. Apage is still in the development phase and I am advising him with a redesign for the whole site into a whole new (secret) niche that I think has huge potential both in New Zealand and internationally.

So keep an eye on the auctions and this blog as I try to post news every day due to the constantly developing nature of this idea and what is involved.

If you miss out on this auction or are interested in becoming a sponsor/advertiser please check out the new packages I have made up to suit everyone.

Also - are there any flash animation designers out there who would be interested in building the MillionDollarLeg.co.nz website - should be a fun project (as this one is just temporary).

Below are some pretty pics for y’all.

*** Please Note - This photo was taken in real time and not photoshopped

Things have been so busy since I launched The Million Dollar Leg Project on Wednesday that I haven’t had time to introduce Aidan who has literally taught me everything I know about online and guerrilla marketing.

So I thought I should introduce him and give him the credit he deserves.

Aidan has been involved in the online marketing business, especially Search Engine Optimisation for the past two years. Originating from Taranaki he started Inkode - New Zealand Website Marketing as a total  “SEO Noob” (newbie) and picked it up rapidly. In August 2007 he was scalped by one of the most successful website development companies in Christchurch, Hairy Lemon. He is currently the Marketing Manager for Hairy Lemon while maintaining Inkode and is a partner in Art Klick Ltd, advising me on marketing in his spare time.

His speciality is social media exposure which can result in 10’s of thousands to Millions of visits to a website within days if done correctly. He says this is the best way to jump up through the Google rankings as you get media coverage, blog posts and best of all “sweet links”.

Aidan is also a very talented cartoonist, although he has been slacking recently due to his busy schedule so he is looking forward to getting back into it and using cartoons to promote Art Klick and MillionDollarLeg.

We look forward to keeping you and the media entertained and involved with crazy art stunts, aiming to put New Zealand on the map for its diverse artistic talent.

Love from the Art Klick Team

To encourage people to join the Million Dollar Leg Project and ArtKlick facebook groups I am going to give away 5 lots of $200 cash per group + 10 lots of $200 on the Million Dollar Leg Project blog.

To qualify:

Join the Million Dollar Leg Project facebook group, invite your whole friend list to the group and comment on the homepage, photos or news and go in the draw to win one of 5 $200 cash prizes.

To double your chances join the ArtKlick facebook group, invite all your friends and comment and go in the draw to win another lot of 5 cash prizes of $200.

To quadruple your chances visit the Million Dollar Leg website, comment on a blog post or photo and go in the draw to win one of 10 cash prizes of $200.

I need your help to spread the word to get media coverage and sponsors - you deserve to be rewarded if you are helping me out + we can make history.

And of course if you are an artist or photographer sign up to www.ArtKlick.co.nz and if I use your artwork for part of the tattoo I will pay you $1,000 cash!

Disclaimer -

- Prizes will paid when $1,000,000 is reached.

- Prize winners will also receive exclusive invites to the Million Dollar Leg Party at the completion of the tattoo.

- Prizes are open to everyone internationally.

At 9 am this morning (9/7/08) the Million Dollar Leg Project will be released to the press as a fun project to raise funds to promote Art Klick.

The concept behind MDLP is to sell advertising in the form of a permanant tattoo on my left leg. Similar to the Million Dollar Homepage but with a tattoo, and artwork from members of Art Klick instead of logos.

Sponsorship of the tattoo will be sold at $500/cm2 (+GST) with a minimum of 10cm2 per sponsor.

$500 x 2,000cm2 = $1,000,000

Sponsors will receive:
- Their logo pointing to the area of leg they sponsored on a highly trafficked website for a minimum of 10 years
- Mentioned in media coverage
- An invite to the Leg Completion Party
- A free A3 print of the completed leg on stretched canvas
- An automatic sponsorship status and have their logo on the scrolling sponsors box on the homepage (being built)
- The first option to sponsor future events and competitions
- A part of making history - I don’t think this has ever been done - international press is very likely.

All artists who’s artwork is used for the design of the tattoo will be paid $1,000 each and their artwork brought. I will also donate $50,000 to charity.

To find out more visit http://www.milliondollarleg.co.nz

I hope this works so we can promote Art Klick and our members really well, and make a bit of international art history while we are at it! If interested please email me one james@artklick.com or call me on my cell 027 320 9881

Sorry about the poor quality post, its been hectic all day but I finally have everything sorted at 2.15am! Over and out.