Fine Art America is the premier online marketplace for purchasing fine art originals and prints.   It is also the easiest way to discover new artists and art galleries and to stay connected to your local art scene!

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November 8th, 2007 - At the beginning of November, FineArtAmerica.com surpassed the 5,000 member mark, and as that milestone fell, we put the finishing touches on several exciting new features which will continue to drive traffic to our site and spur growth into the future.

This newsletter provides an overview of these new features and other improvements to FineArtAmerica.com.  Within the past two weeks alone, we have redesigned our main page (again)... added a new blog feature... and released an exciting set of marketing tools for our artists and galleries.

Please take a few minutes to read through this newsletter, and if you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to send us an e-mail at: support@fineartamerica.com

Thank you for visiting FineArtAmerica.com and helping us continue to grow.   Our goal is to become the #1 online destination for artists, art galleries, and fine art collectors!   We greatly appreciate all feedback and try to implement helpful suggestions as quickly as possible.

In the middle of October, FineArtAmerica.com began accepting registrations from artists and art galleries all around the world.  If you look at our new artists page on any given day, you'll see that approximately 25% of our new members are now signing up from outside the United States and Canada.

With so many international artists, FineArtAmerica is quickly becoming a website that never sleeps.  No matter what time of day you visit the site, if you stop by our chat room, new content page, or discussion section, you'll find that there are always members online posting new content and discussing fine art topics.

In order to accept registrations from international artists and galleries, we had to redesign our geo-location system in order to allow visitors to quickly and easily change their location on our website.   This exciting feature lets you instantly move around the world and view local artists, local galleries, local events, and much more!   Give it a try!   You can be as specific or general with your location as you wish!   For instance, try typing in 'Zimbabwe' and then go look at the local artists!

In early September, the FineArtAmerica homepage was completely redesigned in order to make it easier to locate artwork by: medium, color, categories, and/or popular tags.

The redesigned layout also provided spaces to feature new artwork from our members.  There are currently 12 "featured artwork" spaces available on the homepage, and for the past month, those spaces were occupied by 12 pieces which were selected by our staff.

Starting in December, the featured artwork spaces will be occupied by a rotating selection of pieces which have been "favorited" most frequently by our members.  "Favoriting" is a new feature which allows you to add artwork to your "favorites collection" as you're browsing FineArtAmerica.

With over 50,000 pieces of artwork currently our site and hundreds of new pieces arriving each day, it can be difficult to remember which pieces you want to keep track of and revisit.  With the new "favorites" feature, simply add the artwork to your favorites collection, and you'll never forget where it is.

Effective immediately, all artists and art galleries can link to their FineArtAmerica.com profile pages using the following format:

http://firstname-lastname.fineartamerica.com (artists)

http://galleryname.fineartamerica.com (galleries)

For those of you that have already printed business cards or other marketing materials using the older link format (e.g. http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/firstname-lastname.html), please don't worry - both formats will be accepted indefinitely.

In order to view the exact spelling of your new link, simply login to your account and click on the 'Marketing' tab.

Most artists and art galleries on FineArtAmerica also maintain independent websites for promoting their artwork.   If you have your own website and are interested in linking your website to FineArtAmerica, we now offer a variety of marketing tools and 'widgets' to help you get started.   Simply login to your account and click on the new 'Marketing' tab to see what's available.  You'll find logos, text links, and much more!

In addition, if you visit any of your individual artwork pages on FineArtAmerica, you'll now see an 'Image Link' located at the bottom of each page which you can copy and paste directly into your own website.  When you copy that link into your website, your website will display an image of your artwork similar to the 'Aspen Grove' example on the left.  You can resize the image to any size that you want, and best of all... when you login to your account and change your prices on FineArtAmerica, the prices on your own website will change automatically!

When visitors click on one of these marketing tools, they'll be immediately directed to your profile page or your artwork page on FineArtAmerica.com.   At that point, it's our job to make the purchasing process as simple and secure as possible in order to help you complete a sale!

Creating links that point to your artwork from other webpages is the #1 method to improve your visibility on the internet and improve your rankings in search engine results (i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.).   This topic is will be discussed extensively in our December newsletter.   In the mean time, feel free to get started with our images, links, and widgets!

Artists and galleries now have the ability to post blogs on FineArtAmerica.com.  In recent years, blogs have emerged as a popular method for artists to promote themselves and their artwork online.  It is commonly understood that search engines can not 'see' what is contained in your artwork images.   However, if you blog about your artwork, the search engines can 'see' the text in your blog.

FineArtAmerica members may post blogs as often as desired and may include images with each post.  You can also allow other members to comment on your blog.

By the end of this year, FineArtAmerica will also be providing RSS feeds for each blog on our site!

For those visitors that stop by FineArtAmerica.com quite frequently for the purposes of viewing new artwork, posting comments, and participating in chats and discussions, there is a new page which allows you to monitor activity on the site in real time.

From that page, you can instantly see when new artwork is posted... when new discussions begin... when new members join the site... and much more!   It's the simplest way to view new content as it's being posted by our 5,000+ members.

You can view the 'new content' page at any time by clicking on the appropriate link on the FineArtAmerica homepage.   The link is located on the right side of the page - next to the newspaper icon.

At the beginning of September, we launched an exciting new feature which allows Fine Art America members to offer prints for sale via our website!   To get started, all you need to do is activate the feature... upload your images... specify the sizes and prices that you want to sell... and then start selling!   We take care of everything else, including: processing credit cards, printing, framing, matting, boxing, and shipping!    To see an example of this new feature, click here.

 

You get to keep 100% of your profits, and best of all, you earn an extra 10% commission on all accessories that are sold along with your prints (i.e. frames, mats, etc.).

There is no better way to sell artwork online!   To learn more about this exciting feature, please visit our print on demand page.   Please note - there is a $30 annual fee to participate in this program.   In order to activate Print-On-Demand, simply login to your control panel and click on the "Print-On-Demand" tab.   Then, follow the directions on that page.

It is well-publicized that Google is the dominant leader in the online search business.  Google currently processes nearly 75% of all internet searches, with Yahoo and MSN coming in at #2 and #3, respectively. 

Google recently unveiled a new program which allows website owners to advertise products for sale directly through the Google website.  The program is called 'Google Products', and if you visit the Google homepage, you'll see a link for 'Products' at the upper left.

If you do a search for abstract paintings on Google Products, you'll see a list of abstract paintings which are available for purchase online.  Google Products displays an image of each painting along with a price, description, and link to the website where you can buy the painting.

For those artists that are participating in the FineArtAmerica print on demand program, we automatically submit all of the above information to Google Products for you.  This is a brand new feature which was activated at the beginning of November.  Print-On-Demand members don't need to do anything new in order to participate.  Simply continue posting your artwork as you have in the past, and our website will now submit each piece for inclusion in the Google Products search results.

If you haven't visited FineArtAmerica.com in a while, you may have forgotten that you can upload 10 new images per month.  Each member can upload 25 images during the first month of membership + 10 additional images each month thereafter.

Simply login to your account, click on the 'Artwork' tab, and you'll see how many images you have uploaded and how many empty spaces are available.   Images may be any pixel size and may be up to 10 MB of memory, each.

Since FineArtAmerica.com was launched almost a year ago, all of our pages have been meticulously designed to be "search engine friendly".   Our efforts our now starting to pay off.   FineArtAmerica.com is currently attracting several thousand visitors per day.   Approximately 75% of our traffic comes from Google and Yahoo searches, and our traffic continues to grow by approximately 25% each month.

Many artists often ask: "Why should I join a fine art website when I already have my own website?"

The answer is simple: you get free exposure and better rankings in the search engines!   Plus, Fine Art America is free to join!   Consider this example:

If you create an oil painting of a horse and post it on your own website, the only people who are going to see the painting are those people who already know your web address (e.g. www.johnanderson.com) and happen to stop by.   It is very unlikely, if not impossible, that your website will pop up in the top ten results for "horse painting" on Google.   There are billions and billions of webpages on the internet, and it is very time consuming and technically challenging to get a page to the top.

But don't lose hope... we've already done all of the hard work for you.   Simply post your artwork on FineArtAmerica.com, and we'll take it to the top!   

For example, click on any of the search terms, below, and you'll be taken to a page of the top ten search results on Google.   Look for FineArtAmerica.com... we'll be in there somewhere:

Each of those search results takes you directly to a piece of artwork on FineArtAmerica.com!

Therefore, just by posting a piece of artwork on our site, you can significantly increase the likelihood that a fine art collector will find your work on one of the major search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN).   We receive thousands of visitors each day via search engines.   The keywords, above, represent just a few of the keywords which were pulled from our visitor log within the past hour.

Our positions in the search engine rankings will continue to improve over time, and the sooner you post your artwork, the sooner you will rise to the top.   When posting artwork, please make sure to use keywords to describe the subject matter of the artwork.   We utilize your keywords as a significant part of our search engine strategy.

This is another old, yet unpublicized feature.   When you login to your control panel, you can view a summary page which shows the date, time, and geographic location of every visitor that has ever viewed a piece of your artwork.

You can also view another page which shows all of the comments that you have received on your artwork.

In addition, you can select to have new comments automatically e-mailed to you at the end of each day.   Don't worry, this won't clutter your inbox.   You will only receive e-mails when you receive comments on YOUR artwork.

As Fine Art America continues to grow, we greatly appreciate any feedback from our members.   We try to implement useful suggestions as quickly as possible.   The new Print-On-Demand feature, for example, was added after many artists requested the abilty to sell prints via our site.   Similarly, the new "search by category" and "search by keyword" features were added after several members expressed dissatisfaction with our older methods of locating artwork.

There are many exciting new features coming in the next several months.   Please check the website every now and then to stay posted!