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Hi friends! Welcome back to my website and this week’s vlog. So I’ve been talking about resources for artists and free things that can help you with your art and your business so far this month. And I think I have a little bit more to share with you today along those lines. So let’s dive in!

A lot of people think that they have to spend a whole bunch of money on their website, on their mailing list on all kinds of things to make their business, like to get it started. But if you want to do that without paying money, here are a few websites that might help you.

So the first one, if you want to sell things for free, like you don’t have to pay to create this website and you can sell things from it and get paid from it. I use beacons.ai, it’s kind of like you might be familiar with linktree. It’s kind of like that where it’s one website like one link and it’s basically full of other links, but the cool thing about beacons is they also have a shop section on there where you can put things like digital products in there to sell and you don’t have to pay to create an account. So they might take a small percentage as like a service fee. I don’t remember if they do or how much it is, if they do. But just to like, start off and have something and be able to start making money immediately after you sign up. This is a really good option. 

So, beacons.ai, I’ll put the link to mine below (CLICK HERE TO SEE MY BEACONS PAGE) so you can see what an example of one looks like, but it’s really simple. If you have like multiple social platforms, and if you have, if you don’t really have an actual website yet, but you want to start selling stuff. This is a really good option because you can link to all of your socials, like, say you have a link to your Instagram, your TikTok, your YouTube, your Facebook, whatever you want to link to, I think you can have that section where you sell digital products.

They also have a place on there where you can have people pay to like, receive a video from you, or like, a one-on-one session kind of thing. They have several options for ways that you can make money on there without having to pay to create a website.

Another website that is really helpful that is free. You might… depending on what kind of art you make, you might want to look up for something different. But if your art is not too controversial, not too much like nudity and stuff, this is a really good option. So if you want to have a mailing list where you have a list of people that you can send emails to and create like landing pages and that kind of thing. MailChimp is a really good option. It’s you can sign up for free. They have a paid plan which has more features and things you can do. Like, you can actually schedule your emails instead of having to send them, like, click the button to send. But to me, it’s worth it to have it free. And I can just, you know, if I want to send it, I can draft it and then send it whenever I want it to send, but there’s other things on there that you can get for the paid version, but I’ve never needed to use it.

We use MailChimp for Going Beyond the Lens. I don’t use it for my personal art because I have a whole bunch of nude stuff. Like, that’s most of what I share. So just in case because of their terms of service, I don’t use MailChimp for my personal, like, email list, but for the Going Beyond the Lens email list, we do use MailChimp. It’s really easy to use. It’s free. It’s great if you’re just starting out. 

Also, none of these things are set in stone. Like, if you’re just starting and you want to get started and start stuff for free right now. These are great things to do and you can always switch platforms later on like say if you start a MailChimp you have a mailing list. You have like a hundred people on your list and you’re like, okay, this is great. I’m ready to start paying for a different list that can do more things. But I don’t want to stay on MailChimp. You can grab like you can transfer those contacts, your whole list from MailChimp to another platform. So it’s not like you have to be stuck with this one platform forever. If you choose it, it can be a temporary option for you until you find something that fits you better or until you can afford the thing that you really want.

So yeah, those are two websites that can be really helpful to you if you’re just creating your art business and you want to get started selling stuff and having things for people to look at and sending emails, but you don’t have to pay for it. These are great options. Beacons.ai and MailChimp. Yeah, they’re real great. I think I think beacons does have an affiliate program. So if I might do that link here, but I don’t think MailChimp does. And if they do I’m not going to try to do that, but I might try to do the affiliate for beacons, because I think it might give y’all like bonus thing and me a bonus thing, if I refer you to beacons, so it will be beneficial to everyone. So, yeah, I just wanted to share more of those Resources with you because they’re helpful for me, so hopefully they’ll help for for you. 

Yeah, I just I want all artists to be able to succeed and do well and I don’t think that we should have to pay a lot of money in order to do that because money is an automatic barrier to a lot of people, especially a lot of people that are already marginalized this society. So the ways that we can support them, that are free, I want to do it. Yay. Okay. So yeah. I hope this helps you. Beacons, and MailChimp are great. I have used them personally.

Yeah, if there’s anything that you are curious about want to know about want me to talk about, let me know. You can either comment below. You can send me an e-mail or you can respond to you by survey. I’ll put the link below. Thank you so much for being here. I love you, and I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!

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