Both the new Regional and Category directories are up. The main pages for these directories are www.artspan.com/region_directory.php and www.artspan.com/category_dir_temp.php, respectively.

These directories are very important. Please make sure that you are listed in both. If you find you are not in the regional directory (we are missing over 300 people), that means one of two things:

1) You have deleted your address from the Contact page in the Navigation Bar section of your admin. Go back and put it in. For examply, if you are from California, use the drop-down menu, and highlight California. Then click Save. You do not need to put in your street or city, and no salesman will call.

2) You have not checked the Member Directory checkbox for any image. Please do that. Click on the Artwork button, then choose an image to represent your website, then click Edit and, finally, in the upper right hand corner of the page that opens, click the Member Directory checkbox.

While you are at it, make sure that nine images are searchable (if you are a professional plus member) and that you have carefully entered every appropriate keyword for these images. I just stumbled on a member site with NO searchable images, a bit of an exercise in futility. It may be that we at Artspan are just not clear enough in our instructions as to what to do when setting up the sites – we will take a look at our procedures.

If you find you are not in the Category Directory or Directories that correspond to your work, you have two choices:

1) You can email us at Categories@artspan.com. We will add you to one or more Category directories. For example, you might want to be in the photography, prints and painting directories, if you have work in all of those categories. Tell us which directories you feel you should be in.

2) Better yet: wait a few days. We are changing the access to the category drop-down menus to enable you to control this. Then you will be able to click on the About You button and highlight one or more categories and subcategories at the bottom of the page, thus dictating which category and subcategory directories you wish to be in. I believe this will be done at the beginning of next week.

Appears that a lot of our members did not get the good news that the new templates are up. They are not reading the newsletter or the newsletter is not getting through their spam filters.

The new templates are variations on one totally new design. We urge you to take them for a test drive. Just go into your admin, click on the Themes button and preview template 01, 02, 03, etc. My own favorite is 08. You can see my site, www.ericsparre.artspan.com. This is also our experimental site, so don’t be surprised to see a slide show or two, and other features that we are playing with.

We will be doing a special promotion around the AIPAD show in New York. AIPAD is the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, and the annual show is at the 7 th Regiment Armory in New York (67 th and Park) from April 12 to April 15. We have taken a spread - the back page and inside back cover of Focus magazine to promote Artspan and our photographer members. Focus will distribute 500 copies at the show. It is a very elegant publication and the ad should get some attention.

I am passionate about photography and very happy to be able to do this kind of thing. This is now the second photography magazine we are advertising in. The first is B&W Magazine and, again, that's a very elegant publication and one that is read by collectors and anyone interested in contemporary art photography. We have a half page in every issue (8x per year).

We hope to also launch the photography portal this month. More on that soon.

We have not issued any specific warnings lately. This does not mean that the would-be scammers have gone to sleep. There are a couple of popular approaches. The first is, of course, to express interest in purchasing your work. These are usually pretty easy to spot, as the messages are characterized by bad English and bogus money orders. For any buyer you don’t know, just follow two simple rules: always know your buyer (get contact information and references) and always wait for the money to clear your account. This can easily take a week or more

Another popular scam is the one where a company will offer to optimize and submit your site to search engines. Anyone who makes the claim that they can make your site really rise in search engine rankings is blowing smoke. Promoting your site is not that difficult. The first step is to go back and read the December and February newsletters. Both have tips on how to promote a website taken from an article I have written for the The Artists Magazine..

You will see from the discussion of the new directories how important it is that you stay involved and focused on using your website properly. This is easy to do, and I am surprised at the number of members who call with the question, “why am I not showing in the searches or in the member directory.” These callers generally express serious unhappiness with the Artspan Director.

Here is the point: we cannot help you if your images are hidden, if they don't show in the searches or if you have not spent some time entering a variety of appropriate keywords.

Traffic: February stats show 94,000 unique visitors (visitors counted once only), 163,000 total visitors, and 6.5mm page views. These numbers are a little off from January, but this was a short month. We would otherwise have seen a new record in all categories. Incidentally, these numbers do not include visitors that go directly to member sites. That number, with 1500 sites, is much larger.

Finally, and not for the first time, here is my plea...join the Forum! Its entertaining and interesting. When you register and fill out the profile, remember to add your homepage as part of your signature line so that your site URL will be indexed by the search engines every time you post.

Copyright 2007. Artspan LLC. All rights reserved.

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