Website Confusion

I have a personal website and show it as a portfolio, not a place to shop

Just another way for people to find you. If you are good at what you do, eventually people are going to google your name, having your own website gives you presence, legitimacy, and a portal into your work from another way.

In addition you have complete control, you can use keywords and links to position yourself well in the google searches you want to be positioned well in. Plus, if FAA kicks the bucket, if POD's as we know it all start to give us $1 per sale, you have a place to pull out to, etc. Control long term is huge.

Think of it as your online business card.

Jessica, Thomas and Edward thank you! I know my site needs work but I was lacking any direction!

Jessica I love your new avatar!

Thanks, Val! :)

if you don't like the name pixels. and you don't want to send people to look at your work just to have them look at my work - you send them to you own site. where you sell everything, can make a custom url. and keep people from looking at my work.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Mike I like your new avatar too....but I don't understand what you said.

ok

you have FAA - posters and stuff - and ME

you have pixels - odd name, has all the stuff - and ME

you have your personal website with your own name - it has all the stuff and it doesn't have ME

so in other words, when you send people directly to your own personal site, not only do you look more professional (especially if you get rid of the artistwebsite.com thing) - but i'm not there to distract them. because after all, people love my tan, and they go nuts over it. but anyway, that's why you want the art site over the other ones.

however it might be simpler to just send them directly to my site http://www.MikeSavad.com


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Mike let me see if I got this right...you have your own personal website but actually use the aw site but use it with your mike.com name...so no one actually goes to your private site at all because it just sends people to your aw site....where they can see your great tan and summer clothes?

the mike site is my art site - with my own name. that's currently the best advatnage. the only time i'm on faa is right now,and when i send sales notices, because i'm still here logging in here.

so basically - the art site and the mike site - are the same site. that's it... and they can really see me in my summer clothes on all the sites. because i'm EVERYWHERE..... that should be an echo wavy effect, apply that...

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

OK I definitely hear the echo...I think I've got it...you have a mike.com site but we can't see it because it takes you to the Mike aw site. But on the Mike.com site do you do things there that no one sees? or it can be just a complete blank because no one sees it? Or do you do things there to drive people there even if they can't see what you did, and then they just end up at the Mike AW site?

yeah it totally replaces the url, and it keeps it looking nice. hard to say if it helps, but its easier to remember than the old one. the site doesn't so anything any more special than the other sites. it just keeps it contained. ideally its worse than this site because the pages look like a search result rather than a store. and you can't keep the colors consistent - black on one page, white one the master. its a bit messy like that.

when i upload more things, or advertise, it always comes from the mike site. hoping that someone will visit the page.

as for seeing what i did or can't seeing - i have no idea what your talking about there... but its just a normal faa site with a fancy name. just like all the other clones.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I am sort of liking the idea of what you did ...I can send people to my personal website address and link it to my AW site here so they never actually see the pages on my personal website. to which I translate that to mean it doesn't matter if my personal website is a mess because no on will ever see it!

AND if I can figure out SEO and how to write it search engines will still find that other site and drive customers to my aw! I think I have got it!

they are the same site. the artist website and the mike website are the same site. they url looks different. they will see the same site. if its messy, you should clean that up. but if your art site is messy, so is this one, because they are the same site.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I thought Val was talking about a personal site, Not AW or FAA! I have a personal site where I don't sell. It's more of a portfolio.

My personal site with a shop link to my AW:

http://www.jessicajenneyphotography.com/

the thread is about confusion - which i am now. so i guess that's good.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

OH my...I didn't want to get more confused

Jessica you are right... I was talking about my personal site

Mike I thought you were talking about linking your personal site to your AW site. Not the faa site and the aw site because your domain name takes you to your AW site

Jessica thank you for sharing your website Your photography is so beautiful! I love how you linked the two makes perfect sense to me.

I have my own website so I can customize it to look however I want it to look, I can add whatever I want to add, I can link it to whatever I want to link it to, and it has a shorter URL than my AW site.

http://aprilmoen.com

That said, I set up my AW site to look like an extension of my personal website, so when you click on the images under the "Fine Art Prints" tab and it takes you to my AW site, it just feels like an extension of my site. It's a good idea to keep everything nicely branded.

April thank you! I guess if I want to continue doing this I need to do a lot more work! Your site is great! and it is starting to make sense!

Val -- you ask an excellent question. "Can someone please explain to me why we want to have a personal website?"

Well, you know by now I do things different than most around here, so I wont disappoint you now. Like Thomas said, you want to have something that when people search your name it comes up on the top of the list. Before a customer will buy, believe it or not, they will check you out online ... for various reasons.

First, I checked out your website and it is very beautiful. Yes, I agree you can use it like a portfolio that you can send people to. Other that that, unless you give it some SEO juice ( like it might be getting now from this thread ) its just sitting there. I would think if you're using social media that you'd want to link them to your site because it doesn't have the shopping cart until you click on it, unlike the AW or Pixels - people don't like to be sold, but they love to buy.

However, if you didn't already own a domain name and website I would suggest you don't have one. I once had my own website with domain and I dumped them both. What I use is about.me ( which I know you have ) and LinkedIn. Why? I just did a search on Yahoo for - Val Arie art - and your about.me was at top on the list. As you know the page helps you create your own SEO as you can lay out the links / online platforms that you want customers to see, and not worry about how the search engines will lay it out for you. Both About.me and LinkedIn are FREE and usually come up before FAA on search.


Hope this is helpful to you.

By the way, I don't miss having my own website or domian ... and I certainly don't miss the cost when I can do it for FREE.

I ditched my personal website and use the domain name for my AW.
Bradmartinphotos.com
Less work for me.

I do pretty much what April does. I have my own site, which is my travel blog, and I have a Galleries tab, which takes people to my AW. And, like April, I've tried to keep them looking consistent.

I think the biggest upside to doing it this way is that if FAA ever goes bust, or as someone mentioned, forces us to take $1 commissions, I can just link that tab somewhere else. And it won't make a bit of difference to the fans and followers I've acquired.

Endless Weekend | Creating Time for Life

Frank thank you...all this other work I do and I am found because of about me where I do almost nothing!

Bradford maybe you and Frank are on to something...

Although what Thomas and Edward said makes sense too!

Lorie thank you! you are right... if all our eggs are in the FAA basket and something happens...it would make a LOT of difference.

Wow thank you all ...I think that's enough to think about for tonight :)

I had a website years ago but let it slide away into the abyss of failed websites. Maybe I should resurrect it?

Yes, Val, the about.me platform has made some strides and many of the people on there are viewing your page so it's working the SEO for you. .. even when you do nothing. Personally I give it some SEO juice about an hour per week ....

I have been a professional for over 40 years. I have my own website.
My major thrust is selling originals...
selling prints is just gravy.
when someone googles my name, I want my personal site to come up.....a place where they can seriously look at my work without being slammed with pricing for prints, options, products, etc.

I would never, ever, ever,ever put all my eggs in one basket....and faa was far from my first basket.

And the reason I choose to not hitch my online presence to the about.me wagon is the same reason I don't hitch it entirely to FAA. Frank makes it work for him and thats awesome, it scares the crap outta me.

Different strokes for different folks.

The important thing is you devise a strategy and work hard to make it work using the tools that strategy gives you.

FAA is a one man show. The owner can become sick, have an accident, sell the company, ... With my own website, I can implement another shop from one day to the other.

With your AW, you can only offer FAA products. I offer calendars, for example. There is no way to do this with your AW.

There are many more reasons, but I'm writing on my phone, and I'm rather slow on it.

Here's my website with the FAA shopping cart widget: http://www.colinutzphotography.com

Colin Utz

I use mine as a central place to list and direct people toall my various online stores, books, artwork, products, etc... I also promote other's works, as well as my husbands books... I don't have the ability with just my AW, as wonderful as that is.

Http://www.Artist4God.net

I originally wanted a personal website that would look the way I want it to look, had no limits on how I utilize links and what I link to, but would mostly funnel visitors to my AW. So, I built this site -

http://www.art166.net

Now that we have a good-looking and apparently-working FAA store widget, and I've had time to consider options beyond POD, I'm in the planning stages of completely re-vamping my website. I'll use the widget to have a direct FAA store on my site, but will focus much of the site toward my other venues and custom product offerings. I'm still deciding on whether to incorporate some of my writing work and other interests there, too, turning it into a well-organized, 'All Things Wendy Online' type of environment.

It's all still in the early planning stages . . . again. ;-)

My rambling point, Val, is that your personal site can be whatever you want it to be -- without the restrictions of how someone else thinks a site should look or operate. It's the difference between living in a rental property where you're not allowed to paint walls or change the carpet or window treatments, as compared to buying your own house, knocking down a few walls, then painting the living room red! (Which I actually did!)

It's a place where fans and other interested parties can see a side of you they won't find on a POD, where they can read your complete artist's statement, CV, or more detailed bio, if you want to make them available, where you might choose to invite them into your studio or workspace, show off your process or works-in-progress, tout your accomplishments, incorporate a blog, share your ideas, offer freebies or other perks to your fans/buyer/patrons.

You can't do any of that through an organized POD site.

I think of my POD sites as straightforward catalogs: Here's the artist, buy the art.

That's fine, for what it is, but I want my personal site to be more of an ongoing, ever-changing, autobiography of my life as a working artist . . . with a portfolio attached. It's not there yet -- nowhere close -- but it will be, and in the next few months, if nothing else seriously disrupts my 2015 schedule! :-)

And, as mentioned above, it's one more place where web-surfers can run into you online -- what they see or learn while they're on your site, is completely up to you! :-)

Val my website covers several aspects of what I do including in my work as a Tai Chi Instructor, Reiki Master and Author. The artwork pages are being revamped (and an Italian version of the whole website is under development) but they basically act as a shop window to the PODs. The personal website is more aimed at people locally who might be interested in buying some art or products with my designs. My own website is also the home of my artblog and that works really well. http://www.shannathshima.me.uk/ When marketing my art specifically I push my AW.

Val,

There are several deals involved. You can have your own email list. Not under FAA.
You can set up some competition for discounted prices, not such a good idea, but I have almost no sales....so....for now....

You can add connections to SM.

You can add to how you want people to contact you. Some folks here have their phone number front and center. This means
if anyone should call the sale is yours right there and then. No competition.

You have more control over how you present yourself. For instance on a business card or elsewhere on SM.

You need to get versed in how to work a website and build a site perhaps? The best way is to research on YouTube and
then add that functionality in building your site or adding to your site. You can see the videos twice over and stop the video
as I do while completing a step.

Dave

ok so we are talking about a 4th page?

you should have a private site to direct people to your other sites. its a place for articles and other things. i really should revamp mine, but the problem with a personal site is - it has to be advertised as well. and like a blog, it can't really be about photography or you'll attract photographers, and most won't buy your things. which is probably why i haven't done anything with mine. right now i send people to the mike address because at least they can buy stuff there.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Wow so much information! Thank you everyone!

It's funny...it has been more than three years since my son said to me "you can make art on that" He was talking about the computer, of which I had very little understanding. At the time I thought that was a battle...nothing compared to this mind boggling world! I am glad I didn't have a clue about all of this at the time...I probably would have given up before I ever started!

Well I have to go off to my real job...with a head full of information...that is starting to make some sense.

Here is my site: www.edwardfielding.com This was created with Wix.

I deal with two primary markets - Rights Managed Licencing and Print Sales. The site allows me to direct these two distinct sets of buyers to the proper place. My site also allows me to showcase my work in a different way than it can be shown on FAA - namely on the wall. And display my tear sheets of published work.

I also have a Tumbler and Wordpress site. I have it set up so when I post on my Wordpress blog the post populates my Tumblr and my Edwardfielding.com site.

I've invested money into all of this but my sales cover it.

Oh, and MOST importantly, I want complete control of what my website looks like....

What Marlene said. I want to be able to present more content than just a shop page, and I want to have as much control as possible over the look and feel. I want it to feel unique and contemporary.

Jessica on Smugmug which of the plans do you think are sufficient of the four BASIC POWER PORTFOLIO BUSINESS?
I have beeb evaluating the plans and am torn between basic and power

If cost is a factor and you don't want a free one like Weebly.com and FAA is enough then don't do your own. I have both, but not spending a lot of money and a day will come when I deleter one or the other. For now, I wanted to learn, know people do look you up, so the more the merrier. Hope this helps!

If cost is a factor and you don't want a free one like Weebly.com and FAA is enough then don't do your own. I have both, but not spending a lot of money and a day will come when I deleter one or the other. For now, I wanted to learn, know people do look you up, so the more the merrier. Hope this helps!