The internet continues to provide new ways to better communicate with your customers and prospects. The recent interest in web logs, or "blogs" for short, is one of those new ways that has grown rapidly in popularity. Essentially a 'blog' is an online and interactive diary, which can post images, links and feedback from readers. MyArtClub.Com is delighted to announce the Artist Blog feature is now available for our artist website users. Your blog page allows you to express your comments and include your images in context with your diary comments or to post other 'object files' (see the MyArtClub.Com webmaster blog for details on objects). Your blog page shows your comments for the current month and archives your past entries by month. The blog page allows readers to send their comments or responses to the artist blogger. The artist receives all the comments privately and can decide whether or not to post the comments on their site. The artist's blog is linked from the artist site and MyArtClub.Com features links to artist's blog pages with current entries from the right hand column on the MyArtClub.Com main home page. Several artists' entries have sprung up quickly, so please have a look and post your comments back to the artist or dive in and create your own "blog" page. Recently artist Robert Genn (who has been offering a weblog for years) gathered feedback from many mostly positive artists about their experiences and comments on blogging. Here is a paraphrased sampling, much more detailed comments can be read at www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/blog.asp: Artist blogs help artists to: "share human experiences; evoke responses; be creative; get it all out; connect with a brotherhood of artists and art lovers; make a difference; let art buyers, collectors and appreciators know how and why artists feel about their work; join a forum to meet, discuss, argue, critique work and support each other; get feedback and better understand clients and others; answer the many questions collectors have and make that artist-to-collector connection; be more available to followers and gain support while isolated". To start your own blog, log in to your member pages, use the right-hand box titled "Artist Options" and click on the word "Blog". On the next screen, titled Update Artist Page Options, set the second option to "1" and press the update button at the bottom of the page. Now on your main menu page a new option appears titled "Maintain your Artist Blog Pages." We look forward to seeing you online!First published in the My Art News Letter #16 (June 2006). read more ...

Did you make a New Year's Resolution to advance your art career this year? So how is it going now that we are nearly a month into the new year? Resolutions are hard to keep, especially going it alone. MyArtClub.Com can help you with marketing your art more effectively on the internet. The Marketing Team at MyArtClub.Com is introducing a program of publishing a variety of marketing tips for more effective Internet Marketing. These reports will be placed on a blog on fictitious artist "Art Marketer" our newest website locale for marketing tips on MyArtClub.Com. Our first tip relates to one of your greatest assets, your email list. read more ...

The way Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and other search engines review the artist and art pages is constantly changing. Google recently added a new process whereby the artist and art pages are presented in an XML format referred to as a sitemap. This sitemap provides Google and other search engines with a speedier way to find and catalogue your website, access all the links on your site and track the last time site pages were updated. MyArtClub.Com is pleased to advise you we have added this enhancement for all the artist, group, art and blog pages within MyArtClub.Com. We feel it is important to constantly update your site with these new methods so your website pages are most easily found by all those searching for you. This article was first published in the My Art News Letter #21 read more ...

Knowing what, where, and how other artists earned their art business income during 2011, we believe can help you make more informed plans for your efforts to market and sell your art in 2012.MyArtClub.Com has launched a 15 minute online survey to help you learn what you need to know. We plan to compile all survey submissions and publish the aggregated results on our Art Marketer's blog, www.MyArtBlog.ca just in time for spring art sales.Please act now, survey closes Feb 14, 2012. Simply come to www.MyArtClub.Com/Survey and fill in your answers. We do the rest.If you do join our survey, please review our definition of "art business income" which we hope will serve as a guide: "Art business income" is any income from your work as an artist is the source of income for your art business. Please do not include commissions paid to galleries or agents, and do not include money earned from salaried positions (such as being an art gallery administrator, or say an art school teacher). You can however include income such as grants or sponsorships etc. that support your personal art business.Your personal submission details will be kept confidential. We believe your own answers will give you insight to your own business story. If you would like a copy of your personal submission, and to be sent a full report of the findings, please enter your email at the end.We hope you will find this of interest, and if so, would ask if you could please pass this along and encourage your artist colleagues to join in. The more details we gather, the better our results will be for all.Thank you for being with MyArtClub.Com, we look forward to helping you succeed in 2012Cam Anderson and Peter Newell,Webmasters of MyArtClub.Com read more ...

You may have read the fascinating story about a stolen painting that was recently recovered. If not, please read it - a great story! The website the boy in the story googled is run by MyArtClub, and it is called Stolen Fine Art. The story behind the website really starts with Reet Herder. Reet has been a founding member of our website. In 2005 Reet let us know that she and 2 other artists had suffered a devastating loss, a theft of 17 paintings. Peter and I were shocked to hear how bad it was. At MyArtClub.com we always like to respond to artist request for features, or listen to their business issues, and look for ways we can assist. This practice has been wonderful for both the artists and for our development as a service. Peter and I put our heads together and figured we could host the images of stolen art as a collection. The MyArtClub site was already set up to host artist groups, so we simply leveraged that as a way to focus on this awful issue. We ask artists for a police reference number of some kind and police and artist contact information. Harbouring Great Memories, recovered from this listing: As you may see from the example on our form below, Reet was really the founding person involved in creating the form. Karma has a way doesn't it? She helped build a service that we host and hope it is of some use to artists, and voila – her art is the one found through the internet! I telephoned Reet, to congratulate her on the recovery. Reet is amazed at not only the painting's recovery but the media attention! "All I did was paint it" she says. This was one of her earlier works, but she was happy with how it had turned out. It was based on a visit to Schooner Cove. The story continues: as might be expected the painting itself was not in the best of conditions. However with luck Reet had prepared to create giclees from this art, and so offered this kind family a giclee in return which they accepted. Reet says " the giclee's colours look better". I thanked Reet for being a long term MyArtClub artist, and especially for helping to start a service for artists, Stolen Fine Art, can now be said to be "proven effective"!! If you have experienced theft of your art, we offer the service free to all artists, write for a submission form to us at [email protected] There are also interesting organizations that focus on stolen fine art. You may enjoy the ARCA blog, written by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief,a Canadian based in LA, who kindly first alerted me to this story. ARCA stands for the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a non-profit organization promoting the study and research of art crime and cultural heritage protection. See her story about this here. What has your experience been? Please add a comment to share your story! read more ...