New artists: how to advertise using web?
Nowadays using instagram, facebook and linkedin is very popular to advertise yourself. But after a few time, you can find yoursef stuck with the design of these social platforms.
If you wish to create a website to run your business and to let
people know what you are doing, the best is allways to create a
website and to inform people around you about this website.
The best is to have your own website with the name
like “WWW.yourname.com”. It may be unexpensive to have a website, because now you have wordpress which can be incorporated to your website freely, and it lets you make professional design just visually. No need to know coding anymore or database etc. These things are now over. WordPress does it all to you. And you can design your site and publish it with less than 1 hour or so.
So wordpress, weebly and other similar user support systems lets you save money from designing your website.
Building a website can be cheap or expensive according your wishes. What I have suggested at the top lets you build a cheap website.
Lets see, what are the general costs of creating a website: The hosting, and the domain name are the two “must spend” costs. Some websites may include the domain name cost inside the hosting cost; think of these like promotional features, and they can be interesting. But remind of this: before choosing and paying money, be sure the site is trustfull, always ask to people around for advice. Never make any payment before taking advice from some professionals around you. Also before making online payments take advice from your bank on how to make secure payments using the internet according the country you are in.
So lets suppose you have listened to good advices from the professionals around you, or they are next to you and assist you on all the steps, and so you are ready to go.
You just lookup first at the google to find out the best hosting providers. When you choose one and pay the bill for hosting next is to pay for the available domain name that you choose. The available domain names can be cheap or expensive. The very cheap one are those that has never been used before. The expensive ones are the ones that a buyer bought it and sells it to you. I recommend for newbie artist to buy the cheapest, never used before domain names. Why spending your valuable money at first?
There are other possible ways to advertise your art objects: using only instagram, facebook or linkedin can make you also earn great money.
You are right to think like; “instead of spending money in this kind
of advertisement I`d rather buy stuff (paint, brush, machines etc)
to do my art works”. But you may do advertisement to expand your
business and to be known.
So what to do?
There are many website that create subdomain names.
What is subdomain?
a domain name has generally the following format: www.yourname.com
a subdomain has a different format. For example:
www.yahoo.com/yourname . A subdomain is in fact a folder in the host
website.
Links I suggest for subdomain providers:
The most important things that I can list about these websites are:
1 – They have free of charge membership systems.
2 – They provide web tools to build quickly and efficiently your
website. So with these website you make your own webdesign.
3 – And you don`t need to buy any program, or you don` t need to
know programmation to make these design.
4 – You don` t need to pay the hosting service
5 – you have a limited bandwith, and limited space to build your
website. But generally there is a large space like between 500 Mb
and 1 gigabyte in these website.
What you MUST be carefull about these sites:
1 – You must log in frequently to your website, because your website
is free, it is supporting advertisements. So your host is sponsoring
your site with the help of these ads. And your host requires you to
log in frequently. See your membership details for more requirements
and rights you may have.
2 – Allthough some subdomains are free, some are not. I suggest that
you choose only the free subdomain names. Because as you have the
full control of your domain name, you don`t have the full control of
this subdomain. You share the control with your host. So why pay for
a domain that you don`t have unique access.
3 – Choose a host who has credibility. The one that are operating
more then 5 year are real business oriented websites. Others can be
tricky.
4 – DO NOT give your credit card number or any critical information
about yourself or your business in your website. Generally people
give their names their business phone and fax number, the business e-
mail and the business address on their website. Other details are
not really necessary. The serious customers or service/merchandise
providers just need these basic info to contact you.
5 – Do not put any of your critical business information in your
website. Don`t put your critical know how in your website. You must
be aware of business and industrial or even art spying. All
business, industry or artist has a secret to keep up. But all good
artist share some basic knowledge with the amateur artist or even
the clients. So eep up the most important things for yourself.
6 – Don`t use these website to keep your personal information files
or documents. The website can be down because of network problems,
or because the company may run out of business. No one knows what
will happen tomorrow. keep your files in a secure place.
7 – Keep a backup of all the text and images you used to create your
website. Preferably use quality writable CD`s. Keep these backup
CD`s in a box where you can find them easily. Also you may write on
the CD the backup date, the contents etc so as to classify your
cd`s. Remember that all business do backup. The fequency of the
backups depends on your business and works. You can make backup`s
weekly or monthly or just before critical updates on your computer.
In the old times there was sites like tripod.com and geocities.yahoo.com – but they are over.
All the information given above are in advice matter. I just
transmit my experience, but you are strongly recommended to take
advice from the experts for any matter. All advice can make you
save money and time. Also there is never one truth or one knowledge
in this world. You or anyone may know some things better then me, so
listen allways to people around you and your commonsense. Don` t
hesitate to change things when you apply any of my advices.
You are also welcome to comment on these topics. Share your
knowledge with us. Also feel free for asking we as Alorya art will allways try to help you on anything that we can.
Best regards
Alorya Art
