The Wall Street Journal published a feature article (June 16, 2008) on how artists are making use of the Internet. Its a well written and informative piece. It focuses on Artspan, Etsy and Ebay.

You can find the article here as a pdf document.

Tutorials

As we add features, site management can be a little more complex. Therefore, we have added some tutorial videos for the main features. Members click on them in the Control Panel. There are four showing now. As always, no computer expertise required!

New File Upload: pdf and videos

We have also added an icon allowing members to upload video, pdf and other files on to our server so that they can be linked to from the site pages. A separate icon allows upload of actual image files and placement on the desired page.

New Portals
Thanks to the efforts of our Portals Editor, Nina Alvarez, we were able to add this month the following Portals: Art in NY, Pastels, Watercolor and Drawing. Nina has also added and revised resources and features for Botanical, Portraiture and has updated almost other portals.

RSS News Feeds
We finished the work on creating an administrative interface to give us the capability to assign news articles to the different portals. If you visit the portals (see the links below), you will see a lot of new articles on the contemporary scene. This is an important step in making the portals as rich in features and content as we can. We aim to get more visitors to artspan.com and through to your sites. These articles should also be useful in improving our search engine rankings for terms associated with each portal.

New Portals
We launched two new portals in the last couple of weeks: Nature Photography and Photojournalism.
This brings our Portals line-up to 19, with many more on the way. Here is the current line-up. Coming this week are the Pastels and Art in New York portals.

Members can now add larger images, 1200 pixels or larger as the maximum dimension heigth or width, and can choose to have these images show on their sites with an image magnifier.

This month sees the completion of a major overhaul of the Artspan search functions (and the restructuring of our database to make this possible). The completion of this project resolves a lot of issues and means far more defined searches with more accurate results for visitors as well as better options for categorizing work by members. The full details are found in the February newsletter.

Artspan is pleased to announce the launch of the Art in the UK and Art in LA Portals. These are the first of the regional portals with Art in NY and more to follow. The Figurative Painting portal is also live. Portals feature events, articles, reviews, may resources listed by resource category, as well as member work and directories. We aim for these portals to be a real resource and preferred destination for anyone interested in contemporary art. Go here for the Portals menu.

We are happy to announce the launch of the new customization feature for all Professional Plus Artspan member sites. Members can choose any color/font combinations they wish. There is no limit to the number of styles that can be defined.

Reordering images in Artspan member galleries is now easier thanks to the addition of the arrows to the right of the image in the Artworks pages. The double arrow allows members to make the image show first (or last) and the single arrow allows members to move the image up (or down) one place. Alternatively, members can
change the order of the images by using the drop-down menu next to �Display Order.� We will program this function so that members can drag and drop, but not until we redo the image upload function. The latter needs to be reprogrammed for speed and for maximum image size. We will be making the image enlargement
size larger also (for Theme B sites).

Artspan is pleased to announce the launch of the Still Life, Botanical and Ceramics Portals.The Portals feature events, articles, reviews, may resources listed by resource category, as well as member work and directories. We aim for these portals to be a real resource and preferred destination for anyone interested in
contemporary art.

Artspan is pleased to announce the launch of the Mixed Media, Glass Art, Landscape Painting, and Plein Air Painting Portals.

The Portals feature events, articles, reviews, may resources listed by resource category, as well as member work and directories. We aim for these portals to be a real resource and preferred destination for anyone interested in contemporary art.

Reordering images in Artspan member galleries is now easier thanks to the addition of the arrows to the right of the image in the Artworks pages. The double arrow allows members to make the image show first (or last) and the single arrow allows members to move the image up (or down) one place. Alternatively, members can change the order of the images by using the drop-down menu next to �Display Order.� We will program this function so that members can drag and drop, but not until we redo the image upload function. The latter needs to be reprogrammed for speed and for maximum image size. We will be making the image enlargement size larger also (for Theme B sites).

We have also simplified the Artspan application process. The domain registration has been integrated into it. It�s a lot easier for new members to sign up. We continue to (happily) extend a free month every time you refer a new member. We have also done a lot of work on the portals and there were upgrades to prior tech initiatives

We have added a slideshow option for the individual sites. Members can log in to their main admin page, then click on "Art Work" button, then on My Galleries (upper right hand corner), and then choose a Gallery (or add a new Gallery). When opening ("Edit") the gallery page, they will see "Display Artwork as a Slideshow" in the upper left hand corner. Click on the check box to choose that option and then click the Add to Gallery checkbox below each image.

Members choose from a variety of different effects and speeds. It is VERY simple to use, so we suggest having some fun with it. It can illustrate different works, or your studio or your methodology. Here for example is the link to a jeweler who created a "Process" slideshow:
http://www.jessicavburnett.com/gallery/Process%20and%20Examples/1034

Artspan is pleased to announce that Brett Downey is joining our staff. She is taking a leave of absense from New York University Fine Arts Program where she will graduate in 2008. She has a broad range of expertise, ranging from ceramics to contemporary Chinese art, and is a talented writer. Artspan is fortunate to have her services.

The Portals will feature content and information as well as member work and directories. We aim for these portals to be a real resource and preferred destination for anyone interested in contemporary art. The first one, the Photography Portal, was launched in July. Programming has been done for addititional portals to be added as soon as content is gathered. More launches will be coming soon.

On July 6 we launched our new member site designs, the latest in a series of designs. Members can see these designs by clicking on the "Themes" button in their main Admin page. And then clicking on the

drop-down menu and previewing the "Theme B" designs.

The biggest change is the up to 36 thumbnail images which can show on each gallery page. This is

especially useful for those of you with a lot of images. Visitors don't want to scroll through multiple pages, they like the speed and convenience of viewing that this option provides.

Artspan now offers 29 distinct design options. Members can preview a new look for their sites with a click of the mouse. And then publish that new look with a second click.

July 10. Artspan announces the launch of its first Portal, the Contemporary Art Photography Portal. Three more portals are ready to go as to content and awaiting programming: painting, photography and sculpture. These will feature content and information as well as member work and directories. We aim for these portals to be a real resource and preferred destination for anyone interested in contemporary art. Projected as the next portals are fiber art, jewelry, mixed media, Chinese art, feminist art, UK & Ireland art. But the possibilities are endless.

Photography www.artspan.com/photography
Sculpture www.artspan.com/sculpture
Painting www.artspan.com/painting
Ceramics www.artspan.com/ceramics
Fiber Arts www.artspan.com/fiber_arts
Jewelry www.artspan.com/jewelry
Portraiture www.portraiture.com

The new Artspan site design is up. It incorporates a very understated and elegant design. More importantly, we believe the new look will make it easier for visitors to search for member artwork.

This cpmpletes the second major redesign in six months. This was not something we planned, but we felt it necessary as we got feedback on the previous design which may not have conveyed our mission and features as clearly as we would have liked.

We would like to salute Artun Koktug, whose design this is. His work evidences clean design, a clear organizational logic, and an understanding of the technology serving as the foundation for any strong web design.

We are happy to announce the new Articles section is live. We hope that members and visitors have an article they may wish to contribute that would be of interest to the broader artist community or to collectors. For members, when you add an article, always link it to your website (just as you do when you post on the Forum).

The Regional and Category directories and subdirectories are fully functional. Members should make sure they show in these directories. If you don't show in the

Regional directories or subdirectories, go to your main admin page and click on the Navigation Bar button. Locate the Contact line and then click on Edit. Use the

region drop-down menu and highlight your state/country. Click Save.

As to the category and subcategory directories, if you don�t appear in them, that is easy to fix. Again, go to the main admin page. Then click on About You. At the

bottom of that page, you will see two drop-down menus, one for categories and one for subcategories. Choose the ones that apply to your work. For example, you

may do paintings and prints and your subcategories could be landscape, seascape, figurative and abstract. You will want to appear in the directories for all of these

items. Select paintings, then hold down your Control button and select the other ones from the two drop-downs. Then click Save.
These directories should have a significant positive effect on member traffic. For example, visitors might well want to know who was in their neighborhood.

Artspan has a considerable and continuing interest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We spend a lot of time and money on it. Recently, a website with an offering that was similar to ours emailed all our members with an unsolicited sales pitch. The features and pricing of our respective member sites are similar. What is very different is that Artspan.com is a serious portal and gets a lot of traffic from visitors interested in contemporary art. This is in part due to our Google page rank which is now a 6, the same as MASS MoCA, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and other major art content sites, but more importantly is the result of our optimizing the site for various search terms. Here is a comparative table of some representative search terms. A search on any of them brings up literally millions of results. We rank in the top 10 for many terms and are moving up for the rest of these terms and for others not shown here.
It is important to remember that free listings on Google and on the other search engines are clicked on at a rate of better than 4 to 1 over paid listings. Artspan is the only provider of artist websites to offer not only a low-cost, fully functional and easy to manage site but also the traffic to go with it.

N/A = ranking of 50 - 200
0 = ranking of over 200 (almost no one will look past the first 10 or 20 pages)
Rankings in the top 10 are in bold (these appear in the first page of results)

Artspan.com				other sites: myexpose, yessy, snapfolio, foliolink, etc
keyword	Google	MSN	Yahoo	keyword	Google	MSN	Yahoo
abstract painting	33	19	30	abstract painting	0	0	0
artists websites	1	9	1	artists website	0	0	0
black and white photography	N/A	26	48	black and white photography	0	0	0
contemporary art	6	2	3	contemporary art	0	0	0
contemporary art gallery	2	10	5	contemporary art gallery	0	0	0
landscape painting	N/A	11	0	landscape painting	0	0	0
mixed media	0	6	N/A	mixed media	0	0	0
mixed media art	14	6	N/A	mixed media art	0	0	0
online art galleries	18	9	N/A	online art galleries	0	0	0
original art	6	31	5	original art	0	0	0
original art web site	3	N/A	N/A	original art web site	0	0	0
original art work	3	2	0	original art work	0	0	0
original artists	1	1	1	original artists	0	0	0
original artwork	4	8	0	original artwork	0	0	0
photographer websites	14	1	1	still life art	0	0	0
still life art	N/A	1	22	still life art	0	0	0