We’re in this Together | FineArtViews

We’re in this together, dear artists. Or, rather, we should be in this together.

Let me explain.

We live in an era of unprecedented opportunity for creatives. We call it the Sovereign Artist Era. Some people call it the “creator economy.” Whatever you call it, it refers to the convergence of global connectivity, advanced technology availability, and subsequent removal of gatekeepers.

The removal of gatekeepers is huge. It’s an amazing development that any visual artist in the world can now connect with any other person in the world without a middleman. No galleries necessary in this modern world. However, there are a couple of downsides: since there are now no required gatekeepers, you are essentially competing with everyone in the world.

Think about that for a moment. You’re competing with the most skilled, most driven artists from every corner of earth. In addition, you aren’t protected from competition by a trademark, or a patent, or a gallery’s endorsement. It’s just you vs everyone else. So, yes, it’s easier than ever for you to get your work in front of people, but it’s easier for every other artist too. You must bring real skill to the table, because collectors too can now connect with any artist and often they will want to purchase from the best ones they can find.

You now have the tools to reach anyone in the world, but getting attention in a world awash with everybody clamoring for attention is not easy.

And now I’m coming to my point: Big tech is not going to help you with this. They aren’t your friend. They aren’t even your vendor. You aren’t the customer in most cases, you are the product. A drop of water in an endless ocean of eyeballs and metrics.

Just look at what’s happened to Instagram in recent months. It was promoted as a place for you to promote your art, to showcase your photography and, importantly, a way for you to show your latest works to the following that you built on their platform. But what did they do? First they let you bring your friends and fans to their platform, then they changed the algorithm where less of your followers saw your posts, and now, they are changing the algorithm to the point where you’ll be lucky if any of your followers at all see your posts. They are trying to turn themselves into TikTok at the expense of the photographers, artists and creators that made them what they are today.

You know, as an artist, at some point, you need a great website to promote your art. A place to be your home base online. A site to provide a place for your fans to purchase your art. And there are a lot of website providers to choose from: Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and WordPress on the generic site builder front. And, of course, our service, FASO Artist Websites, designed from the very beginning to show and sell artwork.

At FASO, all we do is think about artists. How we can provide tools for artists. How we can provide channels to help them reach new customers. How we can help them sell art. We provide free information about how to market your art. We pay substantial salaries to people to make videos, write articles, manage art communities, develop software, provide support and a host of other things. Every single one of those people is thinking about one thing: how do we make artists successful? In fact, our goal is to empower a million artists to live off their art.

We are on your side. We are in your corner. If you email us, we will answer. If you join our Facebook groups, we are there, including me as the CEO, responding.

So here’s my question to you: Why don’t you host your website with us?

Isn’t an organization like I’ve described above, an organization that wants to partner with artists, something you’d like to be associated with? Why would you rather host your website on a generic platform run by a publicly traded corporation that hosts millions and millions of sites? They aren’t going to promote your art. The CEO won’t be in the Facebook group helping you. Their support people won’t even talk to you on the phone.

It is true that we aren’t doing this for charity. We have to make revenue and turn a profit. If we don’t continue to grow, we can’t keep investing in useful materials for visual artists. We can’t reach our goal of empowering a million artists.

Look, we’re not asking for charity, we would never suggest you host with FASO just to support us out of the goodness of your heart.

But we’ve spent nearly two decades building a platform that, according to many artists, and every single art collector we talk with runs circles around big website hosts for the specific purpose of selling art.

That makes sense – that’s all we do. And we’ve gone to pains to make sure our pricing not only is in line with SquareSpace – but that our pricing actually provides much more for the money. We provide channels to promote your art. Sure, they don’t always work for every artist on our platform, but sometimes they do work. And we are always experimenting with other ideas to amplify our artists’ efforts. Some ideas work, some don’t, but the point is – we try to help you. Squarespace and others simply aren’t going to do that.

So this is a serious question – if you don’t host with FASO, please reply to this email and let me know why.

If there is something our platform is missing, we will consider adding it, because we want to be the home and the partner for visual artists.

In a world awash with big public tech companies who use you for your data and your dollars – why don’t you at least consider that we should be in this together? At the very least, please take the time and reply as to why you prefer to host with a big huge tech company versus one that does nothing but support artists. And if you don’t have a good answer, let us know in your reply and we’ll see if we can make you an offer that will convince you to move to FASO Artists Websites and help us empower a million artists to live off their art. Perhaps you can be one of them.

If you’d like to give us a try, please tap the button below to sign up for a free trial. Or hit reply and share your reservations with us.