We are in the final stages of testing the new design. It will be up January 3 or 4, but can be seen here in the meantime: http://stage.artspan.com. We are also promised new member templates by our development team “in a few days.” The new Regional Directories (by state and country) should also be up this month.

We sincerely regret the delay in bringing these on line and thank our members for their patience

As of January 1, we have added one new programmer to our development team which now numbers 4 persons. Two members of the team will be dedicated to reprogramming the entire backend of Artspan. This should take a couple of months and will give Artspan a more robust platform allowing us to grow and to add more features.

The team will also be working on adding significant new features to Artspan and upgrades to your member sites. Members will see three new batches of designs (each with various color options) beginning this month. We will add Regional Directories and Directories by Category (ie Abstract Painting, Sculpture, etc) to make it easier for visitors to find your sites.

Artspan itself will undergo a significant change as we expand the Artspan concept from Artspan as a portal to the visual arts to Artspan as multiple portals to specific areas of visual arts. Each category such as painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, glass art, fiber art, etc will have its own home page and articles and links. They will also have their own member directories. When these are launched, we will add subcategory portals (abstract painting, metal sculpture, etc). All this is intended to establish Artspan as a true authority site and a real resource for anyone interested in contemportary art. It will, we expect bring a significant increase in traffic to Artspan and more traffic to your sites.

In our seven years, we have had only one very small pricing adjustment which did not effect members who were already part of Artspan. We now have to raise the price across the board for the template websites. This is a very small increase, one dollar per template site per month. Professional Plus will be $17.95, Professional $15.95 and Basic sites $12.95. The new pricing will go into effect ONLY when the new member templates are in place. Again, we expect this to be very soon, so February will probably see the price change.

We have always functioned as a community and we believe in keeping our pricing low, but with the ever greater development costs and increasing advertising expenses we need to do something to begin to bridge the large gap between costs and revenue. We believe that we are significantly adding to the value of what you are receiving and will do a lot more in the future, so we hope you will understand the need for this modest pricing change. We are still the least costly of the major template providers and we are the only one to also function as an art portal with traffic to your sites.

We sent out an email message last week regarding the proposed Artspan health plan. We had 113 positive responses to date. I am told that we will need 150 to 200 to make this a viable proposition, so we are getting closer. It is a bit frustrating in that we believe that once the plan is in place we attract plenty of interest which will quite possibly result in better rates. So you are welcome to tell any friends who are not members. Ask them also to take part in the survey (the link is given below) and to also send me an email at director@artspan.com with the phrase Artspan Health Plan in the subject line.

Here is the message again:

We know that for many of our U.S. members, affordable health insurance is a major concern. The proposed Artspan Health Plan would be a group plan and one that Artspan would administer. Because of this, it should be considerably less costly for individuals and families than buying coverage on their own.

We do need certain information in order to get a quote. We ask all those who are interested to click on the link below and fill out the survey form. We will need the demographic information in order to get a quote. A word of caution: there is no guarantee that we can put this together. We need at least 200 members who are seriously interested and, even with that minimum base, the demographics may not be of interest.

But lets see what we can do . Even if we do not have enough members interested now, we will have that in the future. Here is the link. http://www.mydemozone.com/artspan_facelift/web/healthplan_survey.php .

Our designer, Mariana, is sending out today, January 2, comps of the proposed coop ads to those who expressed interest in participating. We will feature 9 participating members in the full page Art in America ad and 3 in the half page ad for B&W Magazine. Pricing is $466 for participation in the Art in America ad and $160 for B&W Magazine. We hope you will like the look. Anyone else interested, please email her at display@artspan.com.

This year has seen considerable growth in traffic. December 20, generally a slow month, saw 90,000 unique visitors (visitors counted once only), 152,000 total visitors, and 3.76mm page views. For the year, Artspan had 836,000 unique visitors, 1.53mm total visitors and 40.77mm page views. These numbers do not include the visitors who go directly to your sites. Those total numbers are considerably greater. Traffic for the year was almost twice the prior year (87% greater) and we hope for a greater increase this coming year.