The art social networks like Myartspace and Deviantart are far better. But you have to know what you want from the site in my opinion. Deviantart has a sorted history of copyright issues, complaints, and a lot of other negative nonsense. I recently read that Photobucket allows a partner company to sell prints of any image uploaded to Photobucket unless the user has that option turned off. The problem with that is that Deviantart has a partnership with Photobucket. So when you upload art to Deviantart it also goes to Photobucket which means the other partner company could be selling prints of your art right under you knose. A few people are already mentioning lawsuits again Deviantart and Photobucket over the issue. So it will be interesting to see how that turns out.

Another problem with Deviantart for me is that most of the artists on the site are anime and manga artists. It is very hard to find fine art on the site because a lot of people label their art wrong. Deviantart is supposed to have a staff person who manages that with a volunteer team but they don’t seem to do much about it. So you end up with drawings of popular anime characters listed as fine art or classic or even sculpture. It is a mess.

Another issue with Deviantart is their deceptive numbers. You can’t delete your account on Deviantart. So when they claim to have millions of users you must ask how many are still active. They actually state that they can’t allow accounts to be delete because it would mess up their code which is a bunk if you know anything about website design. They just want to have the appearance of big numbers for investors and press. For what it is worth they do give instructions on how to remove your content from your page but the account itself and your login name remains.

I also like Artwanted. They have been around since the 1990s and recently had an upgrade to the site that makes it look very nice. Unfortunately if you visit their forums there is a lot of bickering so it is not the best place to meet and greet online. They also limit free users of the site. You can only upload five images per month with a cap of 50 per year. So unless you buy their Premium service you can only upload 50 images per year. I don’t know if you can sell with a free account or not because that part of the site turned me off. But they do allow everyone to have their own url.

Another snag with Artwanted though is that they have had little press even though they have been around a decade and they are not doing good at all considering that other art sites have the same traffic rank as they do on Alexa and other traffic ranking sites. I guess they can be blamed on bad marketing. By all accounts Artwanted should have been as popular if not more popular than Deviantart.

Myartspace is a good one. They cater more to artists like me who work in a fine art direction. They don’t feature anime and manga artists and what you see featured is the kind of art you would see in a New York gallery or at a contemporary art fair. Some might say that is elitist but since I enjoy the mainstream art world it works for me. Myartspace is the only site I know of with members who are represented at galleries like Mary Boone in New York. So people take it serious. There are draw backs though. Mainly the lack of a community forum at this time. The fact that free users can upload as many images as they want as well as video and audio makes up for it though. The comments other users leave me are normally detailed feedback compared to the ‘I love your art’ type comments I get elsewhere.

There is also the New York Art Exchange (www.nyaxe.com) that the same people who made Myartspace just opened. From what I’ve read it is an ecommerce solution for Myartspace users but they did not want to conflict the social networking community by putting too much focus on selling art. That is kind of nice because Imagekind and Redbubble can be very annoying because you are reminded that the site is primarity a site for selling art no matter where you go on the site. Social networking and ecommerce are two different things and when I want to network I don’t want to be talked into selling something or buying something by flashy banners and scripts.

I guess the thing to focus on is using all these sites as much as you can. Each site helps to promote you so it does not hurt to use all the free ones. But the best thing to do is to have a blogger on a popular blog service so that you can post contantly about your art and what you are working on and so you can direct people to the sites where you have art for sale.

Niche social networking site that focus on art are better than Facebook and Myspace in my view because the buyers who join networks like Deviantart, Myartspace, or even Saatchi Online know what they want and know that they can find artists with ease.

I use Facebook primarily to keep up with friends and family who are spread out, rather than to promote my art. At least for now - think the election proved that it has more possibilities.

I use Twitter and my blog, From the Studio, to talk about art and painting with other artists. I was surprised when Twitter got me a spike in visitors to my blog, just because I mentioned it in a tweet. I’m finding the blogosphere great for connecting with other artists.

I plan to join etsy at some point and make sales through that since my website is set up as a virtual gallery only.

I use an email tagline (Thanks to Alyson Stanfield for the suggestion in her book) to advertise my website and blog with some success.

Because I have a full-time business in addition to my art, I can’t seem to find the time to pursue any of these. As far as marketing benefits, they may not directly bring in patrons, but let’s face it: the larger the web, the more flies you catch. I can also understand that full-time artists lead lives with lots alone time and and touching base with other artists is comforting.