I don't know about you, but I regularly get email invites to join art sites. It can be daunting working out if they're worth your time and energy. I can't make those decisions for you but I've written this general guide to help you assess this sort of opportunity.

1) Do You Like The Other Art?
People judge your work by the company it keeps. If you'd be embarrassed to be shown on the same gallery wall, then don't place your art in the same online space. The exception to this is when it's an enormous site like Saatchi Online, where there's a huge selection of work in a wide range of styles.

Submitting your work to a curated site can be more work but that 'gatekeeper' aspect often results in a site with a higher quality of art. That exclusivity can also appeal to visitors who may take your work more seriously because it's been vetted.

2) Does It Match Your Values?
Do you like the aesthetics of the site? Does the site have an ethos with which you strongly agree or disagree? How much control do you have over what appears on your page? Are there adverts? In short, does the site chime with your values, both moral and aesthetic?

One important point you must always check is whether the site retains any rights over your images. I know it's a nuisance but you need to read the Terms Of Service (often abbreviated to TOS). These are always available when you sign up to a site - you'll probably have to check a box to say that you've read them - or you can also usually find a link to them at the bottom of the site or in the FAQ.

3) Do They Charge?
Ooh, the big one!

I have no objection to spending money online but I do think that a lot of art sites prey on the desperate and inexperienced. There are many excellent free art sites that offer just as much exposure.

There definitely are good subscription sites out there. Even though I've still not got round to applying, I've long considered AXIS to be worthwhile, especially for UK artists. They're a long-established site with a solid reputation and they provide a lot of 'added value' such as job opportunities, forums, high Google ranking and access to curators. Personally, I'd be incredibly wary of newer sites who want payment without having that sort of proven track record.

However, different rules apply if the site is specifically for artists in your area. These can be very worthwhile. I'm a member of Bristol Creatives and Textile Forum South West. Both charge a small annual membership but they're worth it because they connect me to other local artists, give me access to pertinent news & exhibition opportunities and organise regular offline events that are close enough for me to actually attend. Consequently both sites have a far greater practical value to me than many free national or international sites. Similarly, as a UK artist I wouldn't dream of letting my annual subscription to a-n lapse. An artist at a recent networking event I attended described it as "like Equity for artists". There are masses of benefits but frankly, it's worth it for the free public liability insurance alone.

There's also usually at least one professional organisation specifically for artists using your particular material and many of these now have websites where you can add a profile. Even if their website doesn't give you space for a profile of your own, you'll get access to high quality information that is specific to your field.

So I'm not saying that you shouldn't join websites that charge but you need to research them thoroughly, find out if they're as effective at promoting artists as they claim and and know exactly what you're getting for your money. In my opinion, you should definitely spend your money on your relevant professional organisations and local networks first.

4) How Effective Is It?
Randomly pick a few of their artists (not the ones that show up on the main page) and type their names into Google. How highly do those site profiles rank? If their site profile doesn't come up on the first couple of pages, it may not be worth your time.

Do be aware that if that particular artist already has a broad and effective internet presence that will skew the results. I'm all over the net like a cheap rash, so any site I'm on has to compete with all the other places where I'm active online. But if you check several of their artists and none of their profile pages rank highly, then that site probably isn't promoting its artists very effectively.

The second way to judge whether a site is worth your time is by checking their stats. Diane Gilliland has put together an excellent short video demonstrating how to do this. Her video is specifically about judging other blogs but most of the information still applies.

5) How Much Work Is It?
Is participation necessary or is it a 'set it and forget it' kind of place?

A lot of sites strongly encourage artists to maintain blogs on their sites. In my experience, there's a limit to how much blogging a single artist can do well. Remember that Google punishes duplicate content - it regards it as spam - so simply writing one blog post and plastering it over loads of art sites is counter-productive. I do allow occasional republishing of relevant blog posts from this blog on a few select sites but I would never republish every single post because that would definitely hurt my Google ranking. Many sites also contain forums where regular participation can gain you valuable contacts and further exposure on the site. However, be aware that forums are a notorious time suck.

If you're spending a lot of time on an art site but not getting many visitors to your site, you should question whether it's a good use of your time and energy. Marketing bods call this ROI - 'return on investment'. There's a wealth of information about your visitor numbers and behaviour in Google Analytics. If you've not already got Google Analytics on your website, you absolutely must because you need to know that information.

Now there could be strategic reasons to spend time on a site that's not bringing many visitors to your main site - perhaps it contains lots of people you're trying to get to know or it may just be fun - however, if it doesn't fulfil the criteria you've set, reconsider your participation.

6) Will You Be Seen?
Will your work be lost in the crowd? The smaller, more intimate sites can often be a more effective way of promoting your work than the huge sites. However, if a site has sufficiently huge traffic, you may garner significant eyeballs just by chance.

Are there opportunities to feature in newsletters, on the front page of the site or otherwise be brought to people's attention? I enjoy Central Station, partly because it's a fun place with interesting people but also because they regularly showcase my work. Because it's not a huge site, it's quite easy to stand out there with very little actual effort. In places that showcase new work, it's smart not to upload all your photos at once but to stagger them over a couple of weeks - you're more likely to get featured that way.

7) Who Are Their Audience?
Will your work be seen by the people who matter to you? If you're selling work, are new customers likely to find that site? If you're more interested in coming to the attention of curators, is there any indication that they browse the site? Does the site contain a lot of artists who you'd like to get to know?

If you're marketing your work to a specific niche, consider participating in non-art sites where your customers are likely to congregate. For example, if you paint racehorses, being active on a respected racing forum might be beneficial. Obviously you don't want to spam people but many forums allow you to have a short signature when you post, so you can subtly let people know what you do. Plus, you're presumably painting racehorses because you're interested in them.

Conclusion

If the site is free, matches your values and joining it won't take too much time, then you might as well go ahead and whack up a couple of images and a profile. After all, you don't know exactly who their audience are and you've got nothing to lose. However, if a site charges or requires far greater time participation such as using forums or blogging then you need to carefully weigh up the costs against the benefits.

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Get more help
If you'd like more information about building your online presence, check out the free resources section.

I am also available for online consulting if you need one-on-one help.

Comment

I'd love to hear how you decided which sites to join. I'm planning on a follow-up post detailing some of the sites individual artists use, if you'd like to be included with a link to your site, please comment below or get in touch on Twitter.

1. I CAN'T AFFORD IT

Websites used to be an expensive proposition but the costs have dropped considerably over the last few years. Excluding any initial design costs, the annual fees for a self-hosted website should be about £60-£80. If you really can't afford that, there are other options for setting up a simple online portfolio.

a) A free Blogger or WordPress blog and a Flickr account can be set up in a couple of hours and are a surprisingly effective combination.

b) If you don't want a blog, Flickr can be used on its own as a basic art portfolio.

c) Many art sites will host portfolios for you and some of them are quite sophisticated. There are too many to link to but type the words 'free artist portfolio' into Google and you can research the many options available. Do check that their artists rate highly in Google and choose a site that gives you a short URL so you can easily add it to your email signature and put it on business cards.

d) A Facebook fan page is a fourth option. Most artists use Facebook fan pages as a subsidiary to their main site but at a pinch you could use it as your sole online portfolio. However, this is not something I'd recommend as a longterm option because they're overly fond of suddenly changing things around and there's some debate over how much control they have over any images you post there.

Any free site will have limitations but if it's a choice between whacking up something free now or waiting until you can afford something better, go with the free option. You can always move to your own site later if you want to. But get something. Hell, use MySpace if you have to! And I say that as someone who hates MySpace and thinks it should be your last port of call unless you're a musician.

2. I DON'T HAVE TIME

I won't lie to you, setting up a full website like mine is not an instant process. My site took about 6 months from start to finish and was a lot of work for both myself and my web designer. Even if you work with a designer, there's still blurb to write, design decisions to be made and photos to edit. In addition, all websites need low levels of ongoing maintenance. Blogging is an even bigger commitment and ideally needs to be done at least once a week to be effective.

However, setting up a simple portfolio site in the ways detailed above is relatively quick. If you've already got edited photographs of your work and a reasonable artists' statement, you could do it this weekend.

If you're serious about your art career then you must make time to get some sort of website up and running. Take a good hard look at what you're currently doing and what your priorities are. Can you let go of any commitments? Are you using your time wisely? As Gary Vaynerchuk says, quit watching Lost!

If you definitely don't have time to commit to a large website project right now, free up a weekend and put up a quick free version for now.

If you decide you do want something a bit more swanky, you can gradually start working towards your permanent website by doing preliminary things like researching designs and deciding what you want. Start a digital scrapbook of other artists' sites that you like - a site like Evernote is good for saving this sort of research. If you look right at the bottom of the page it will usually say which templates or designers they used. Equally importantly take note of what you don't like. Now look at your work and think about what sort of presentation would suit it. Do you want quirky or classic? Colourful or monochrome?

Laying the foundations like this will shorten the time taken by the final design process and if you do decide to pay a designer, you'll save money if you're clear on your design brief from the beginning. Although I changed my mind about plenty of things during the design process, I was very consistent about the basic parameters of the brief. I knew I wanted something elegant, simple and easy to navigate in neutral colours that would subtly compliment my often monochrome or pale work.

3. I CAN'T CODE OR DESIGN

Then pay someone who can!

Artists are absolute buggers for believing they have to do absolutely everything themselves. I understand the reasoning: money is often tight and even when it's not, that starving artist mentality is tenacious. I tried to put together my own site 4 or 5 times over the space of a decade. I taught myself HTML at least twice! Finally I had to admit that while I was perfectly capable of learning to code, I was monumentally shitty at the design side.

If you've got a good grasp of design but no coding skills, there are masses of customisable templates out there. If you're willing to pay for a premium WordPress template, I hear very good things about both Thesis and Headway. There are also lots of cheaper and free templates available: type 'free WordPress themes' into Google.

4. MY GALLERY PUT UP A PAGE FOR ME, SO I DON'T NEED A SITE OF MY OWN

Oh really? And how much say do you have over how that page looks? Do you plan to be with that gallery forever? What happens if they drop you or go bust?

Please don't give your power away like this: ceding control of your career is never smart. There's nothing wrong with having a page on your gallery's website but it shouldn't be your only online presence.

5. MY FRIEND SAID THEY'D MAKE ME ONE

This is one I hear surprisingly often.

Unless your friend is a professional web designer, you may be waiting a long time for what turns out to be a sub-standard site. Are you willing to put such an important part of your promotion in the hands of a untrained mate who probably has better things to do with their time? Even if your friend does know what they're doing, the process can be fraught with problems. What if you don't like their work? Are you going to fire your friend? What if working together sours your friendship?

I'm being slightly hypocritical here since my site was designed by a friend. However, he is a professional web designer and we were both very clear that I was employing him but we wouldn't let it get in the way of our friendship. We worked hard to keep the boundaries firm and managed to come through mostly unscathed. I'm quite certain that I was far more annoying during the process than he was but thankfully he still talks to me!

6. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT

Yep, that's going to make life difficult!

Start mindmapping what you do want. Follow the steps mentioned in Excuse 2 and Excuse 7. Again, if you recognise that this is going to be a long process for you, slap up something quick and cheap like a simple Flickr portfolio now (are you sensing a theme yet?)

And remember that the website you have now doesn't have to be the website that you have forever. Websites are not static things. If you make a mistake or your needs change, you can always redesign the site. Even though the basic design template for this site has stayed the same since we launched three and half years ago, I've changed multiple things since then. Things change. You can change too. Website nirvana does not exist and perfectionism is just another excuse.

7. I JUST DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START

I'm always sympathetic to cases of overwhelm because it's something I'm extremely prone to. But you don't have to conquer the internet instantly. Break it down into small manageable chunks.

If a full website is too overwhelming for you to consider right now, there's absolutely no shame in going with any of the other options I've discussed. It's OK to just set up a Flickr account, whack some photos on there and a bit of blurb about your practice and then stop. It won't be the absolute 'best' website option but it's far better than being so frozen by indecision and fear that you wind up doing nothing at all.

If you do decide that you want a 'proper' website, your first step should be deciding what you want that website to achieve. Do you plan to sell from your site? Is it a virtual portfolio/business card? Are you planning to drive traffic to your site with a blog? Do you want to deepen your relationship with existing collectors?

Your second step is to decide on your professional name. If you've got an unusual name you've got an instant advantage. Artists with more common names may need to be more inventive.

Your third step is to buy that domain name. It'll cost you less than £10 for a year.

There you go, you've made a good start towards having a website and you've only spent a couple of quid!

8. I DON'T BELIEVE I NEED TO BE ONLINE

Don't be daft! As I hope I've demonstrated, you don't need a fancy website hosted on your own domain but you need something. If you don't want to deal with any of this stuff yourself, hire someone who's willing to take over the whole process for you.

I personally believe that a well designed website hosted on your own domain name is the ideal option but you can still have an effective and beautiful online presence by using one of the simpler methods detailed above. What won't work is sticking your head in the sand and hoping all this crazy internet stuff will go away. It won't.

Get more help
If you'd like more information about building your online presence, check out the free resources section.

I am also available for online consulting if you need one-on-one help.

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Well, I hope that was helpful. What website solutions do you use? Please join the conversation by commenting below or tweeting the article.