May,  2005  |   Volume 2  |  Issue 5 
artspan.com
newsletter

Artspan News
New Membership Level and Pricing

Artspan is happy to announce a new membership level, the Professional Plus membership. Until now, there have been 2 site choices: Basic Artspan site and Professional Site, with 12 and 18 images respectively. Members have been able to buy additional pages of 6 images each for $2.00 per page per month.

Going forward there will be 3 choices
Basic Artspan site (12 images): US$11.95
Professional Site: (18 images): US$14.95
Professional Plus Site (unlimited images): US$16.95

All members who are currently paying more than $16.95 per month will find their next month bill reduced to $16.95. For some of you with a lot of extra pages, this will represent a significant saving. Let Denise know If you want to upgrade to a Pro Plus site, support@artspan.com. Also let her know if you find your billing has not been adjusted.

We believe this new option is important for members, most particularly for artisans and photographers.

PayPal buttons for each artwork item

At members' request, we have added a field under each image on the gallery pages that make it possible to add a PayPal "Buy Now" button right under your artwork! If you have not already done so, you will have to sign up for a PayPal account. Just log in at the member admin and check the KnowledgeBase if you need further instructions. Many thanks to our tireless programmer, Rodney, for making this possible.
A note of caution: adding buttons to each item may change the nature of your site. If you are promoting your work to galleries, for example, you will probably not want to add all these buttons. It could make your site busy and commercial.
Artspan search engine rankings

As you know, we spend a lot of our resources on improving search engine rankings. These are key for Artspan traffic and for the traffic through to your sites. Wil Reynolds is our search engine guru, and this is his sole preoccupation. Here are some sample rankings: # 1 for artists websites on Google. # 5 for contemporary art on MSN, #1 for contemporary art gallery on MSN (# 18 on Google and # 21 on Yahoo!) and # 2 for online art gallery on MSN (#9 on Ask Jeeves).

All this takes a long time. We have been working on this now for more than 5 years and are now really just beginning to see the results of our work. This trend towards top 10 or 20 rankings for important search terms can be expected to accelerate. As you know, there are literally millions of results for each of the above terms, so being in the top 20 or 30 rankings is key for all of the Artspan sites in terms of attracting buyers and other visitors.

We have just optimized all of the individual pages for better rankings and will be making big changes in our links pages to other relevant art sites. These 2 steps should improve our rankings, and we will do more.
Send Us Your News!

Any suggestions you may have for this newsletter will be most welcome. Email your items for publication to support@artspan.com, Subject Line: Newsletter.

Featured Members

Clay Vajgrt
Abstract Paintings
"I try to visually record conscious moments of meditative connection, which often quickly dissolve. These sensual levels of consciousness are what I try to bring to the surface in my work as I mine their depths… I grab my brushes and palette knives and use them to smear and push layers of oil or acrylic paints into pockets and pools of colors that create a type of layered perspective. The natural world seems to call me into artistic action to play an active role in the world's awakening. Life is a meditation.."

Scott Stoll

Sculpture: stone, wood,
mixed media
"Scott Stoll has lived in Maine for the past 20 years where his life and work has found natural companionship with the environment of forest and sea. Scott has recently turned to full-time sculpting, working in mixed media and directly carving stone and wood. Scott also produces work through a variety of casting techniques, including bronze.

Other Stuff
Another Scam Alert

Artspan director tells us that his email address, director@artspan.com, has been used by others to spread viruses. This is a recent event, so be very careful even with emails from him. The subject line was "your website" and the attachment was a .pif file. Delete that email immediately. Do not open.

Also, a few members have emailed support@artspan.com with a 'too good to be true' offer from overseas to buy various pieces of art. These scams are targeting anyone that sells on the web, NOT just artists.

Here is the latest example: An English woman sent an email to several members, stating that she wanted to buy some artworks for her new apartment in Australia. The artworks she expressed interest in were listed in the email, with the descriptions being lifted directly from the image info that appears on the website directly under the artwork. She asked for the price in US funds excluding shipping, stating that she has her own shipping company that she works with. She offered payment through a cashier's check.

After the (understandably) excited artist responded, the buyer proceeded to explain how she is being billed by the shipping company for the shipping of the paintings and her other house decors. She expressed an interest in speeding up the process by sending the artist a cashier's check in an amount that is significantly (thousands of dollars) greater than what the artist requested for the artwork, and asked the artist to take it to an ATM cash store, cash the check, deduct the amount for the artwork and forward the leftover money to the shipping company to pay for the buyer's shipping costs. Pretty convoluted, hm?


It would be nice if this were a legitimate offer; however, there are many scams out there that issue fake cashier's checks and then profit from them. ARTSPAN cannot endorse (or discount) any offers made to individual artists. Use your judgment!


We have also seen a recent revisitation of the old 'Phishing' scam: you may receive an official looking email purporting to be from PayPal or Ebay, asking for verification of your account information. They may state that someone tried to fraudulently use your account to make a purchase. A link to what appears to be a PayPal or Ebay page will be included. THESE ARE FAKE PAGES, created by unscrupulous folks to gather your credit card information! ALWAYS open a new browser window and don't use the embedded link(s) to access your PayPal/Ebay accounts.

— Denise Glover, Editor

Legal


Copyright 2005. Artspan LLC. All rights reserved.

All images are the property of their respective owners. The opinions expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of artspan.com members.

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