Today, I want to talk to you about why you should have a website as an artist.
I have been hooked up to the internet since February 2000. I was 13 at the time when I got access to the internet. That’s almost 25 years ago(!) and the internet has changed A LOT. And in my opinion, not in a good way. I think the internet has lost it’s spark.
Back in the day, the first thing I wanted to do when I got access to the internet, was make a website. Inspired by Pokemon, I created my own little fantasy monsters and I wanted to display them on a website. I wanted the build a little website about the world of my own made monsters, that I used to call ‘The Tiny’s” (kinda written like that – I was 13 and still learning English). There were a lot of free website builders that allowed you to create your own webpage. The first one I used, was called Homestead. As it closed down its free service, I moved over to GeoCities, but I’ve also tried out AngelFire, Brinkster, Tripod and a few others which names have slipped my mind at the moment. These were the biggest free website builders back in the day.
Gradually, I learned HTML and CSS, as well as some basic PHP codes to make life easier and I was able to move to a paid host with a real domain name in 2003. I changed my website’s purpose several times and eventually stuck with just inspiremari.nl since 2009.
That’s a little bit of my history. It has been a great journey making websites and getting to know people along the way. Sadly, as social media became bigger and bigger, people stopped updating their websites in favor to just posting on social media, mostly Twitter. I think that’s really too bad, and makes the internet less awesome. Let me try to convince you why you should have a website as an artist!
Benefits of Having Your Own Website
There are a lot of benefits to enjoy when you have your own website! Let me list a couple:
Full control
You can filter out anything you don’t like. Your website is entirely yours to design and fill in. You can display your art in any way you want, sort your art by title, date, color, subject, you name it. You are not restricted to whatever social media sites allow you to show.
Portfolio
Impress clients and visitors with an amazing and unique looking portfolio! Instead of displaying your art in the same manner as everyone else, you get to stand out in your unique way. It’s that personal touch that the internet is missing nowadays.
Not fed to AI
You’re not bound to any terms of use such as Instagram or Facebook, where your art is probably (definitely) used to train AI. That’s not to say that AI can’t crawl the web for images, I mean, I think AI is an unstoppable force, but hey, if it at least puts up another barrier, that’s cool.
Don’t lose your stuff
Your website is available for as long as you want it to be. My website has been around for 15 years! How many websites have come and gone in the mean time? You’ll never need to worry about the web service that you’re using going offline.
Control over comments
When you have your own website, you have full control over whether you want to be able to have people post comments, whether they should immediately be public, and apply any filters you want.
Then and Now: Major Differences
Back in the day, the internet was more of a wild west. There were tons of different types of websites to visit. Don’t worry, you wouldn’t get bored!
Nowadays, most people stay within the confines of a couple of big hubs. Looking for entertainment? YouTube. Looking for a recipe? YouTube. Looking for a tutorial? YouTube. Looking for memes? Instagram Reels. And YouTube. Looking for a job? Indeed. Looking for …anything? Google. And YouTube. Looking for a product? Amazon. Looking for family? Facebook.
How often do people really stray from the same few major websites nowadays, anyway? How many websites (and apps) do people know, besides the ones listed above + TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit and local news sites?
A Time Before Search Engines
Back in the day, we didn’t rely on being found via Google. We helped each other. We networked. We allowed each other to plug our links on our websites. We didn’t need some algorithm to help us be found – it was a lot of fun exploring people’s websites! Every day, you would find a new page. Every day, you’d check if there were any updates from the ‘webmaster’ or ‘webmistress’ that owned a website. And if you’d comment on someone’s post or leave a message in their guest book, they would most of the time comment back on your page!
Yes, likes are nice. Retweets are awesome. I love comments and getting mail from my visitors! I want the spark back. Hopefully I can inspire you to make your own website, maybe we can link to each other like in the old days!
Some Random Thoughts
I feel like everything is about niches nowadays. Niches that you have to force yourself into, in order to please the algorithm of the social media you are using. While I think it is valuable to adhere to a certain strategy if you do plan to grow on social media as an artist, I also believe that humans can enjoy more than just one thing or one niche at a time.
That’s why I don’t shrink my niche for inspiremari.nl down too much. I’m not only posting my art. Although I do focus on kawaii art and anything that is visually appealing, I decided that if people like my cute art, those people probably also appreciate pictures of my cats. Plus, I blog about food every now and then. I mean, who doesn’t like food? Other than that, it is my personal blog after all, so I also post about myself as the artist every now and then, and dedicate posts to helping other artists through guides and tutorials.
Conclusion
I hope I was able to convince you why you should have a website as an artist. It can be as extensive or modest as you want it to be. Whether it’s just a portfolio or even a full-fledged blog with updates on your art, your progress, commissions etc. It’s all in your control.
Personally, I think managing my own personal website is a very rewarding experience. I love designing my website and writing content, and I love being able to categorize my art on my own website. It also acts like a diary – I can always look through my websites and see updates throughout my life in chronological order. :D
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