Marketplace Mondays is a regular article that will be featured on most Mondays. If you are interested in topics about the business of being an artist, make sure to stop by each Monday. We will be discussing issues such as developing a product line, reviews of various venues where handcrafted work can be sold, pricing strategies, retail vs. wholesale, working with galleries, photographing your work, developing your “brand”, writing an artist statement and much more. If there is a specific topic that you would like more information about, please leave a comment and we’ll try to accommodate your requests.

For our first post, Zed has made a terrific tutorial on how to make a banner for a website such as ETSY. Making your own personal banner from your own photographs will help to ‘brand’ your store and attract people to buy your products. Think about what you want your banner to symbolize first. What type of photographs best represent what you do? If you already have a logo or business cards with photos, consider using the same photos or logo in your banner. Consistency is very important so that your customers will recognize you no matter the venue. If you have a Facebook page, a blog, a website and an ETSY shop, using a similar or the same banner on all of these sites will establish a consistent web presence.

Once you’ve picked out the photos you want to use for your banner, just click on the PDF file below and follow Zed’s tutorial. She uses Photoshop but most photo editing programs will be similar. If you don’t have a photo editing program, check out Gimp at http://www.gimp.org/. It’s a free program that you can download and use to edit your photos.

How to Make a Banner