If you take orders and sell your art online, you may be already aware that MyArtClub.Com provides the convenience of using Paypal or other payment providers to take orders. You can place your payment options with each work of art showing or you can create your own catalogue to show all your works on one page.

MyArtClub provides each artist with their own catalogue space designed to let you arrange conveniently all the various ways you may sell your work. All you need to do is specify the product and the price, and the catalogue takes care of the rest. We also offer an email order form for your customer to send you an order by email.

When the artist sets up their catalogue, a link appears from their artist page to their catalogue. The catalogue displays their art thumbnails included in the catalogue along with the information previously shown under each art page.

Each work of art can have up to 8 different offerings. Therefore you can sell your original art, giclees as well as prints of your art in different sizes and perhaps cards, then you can list all of these formats in the catalogue with different prices attached to each. You can set up your catalogue so that you can use PayPal for payment service by email or bank transfer, have the customer contact you directly for payment or sell through your merchant services account. The catalogue is linked to the individual art page so that the payment options are also available on the art page.

Here is how you do it
To turn on your artist catalog, login in to your member site, click on the link to your "Maintain artist page" and select option 8, "Add your Artist Payment Options". Select option 2 to start your catalog.
Then click on the "Art" tab or from the main menu, click on your "Maintain Art Menu" and a new column is shown that allows you to select which art images to include in your catalogue.

Update the database with your selected art images by clicking on the button at the bottom of the page. Then click on the "Edit Catalog" link beside the button to take you into the catalogue setup page. Click on the "edit" link to add your payment options for each of the items you want to sell.

This article was first published in the My Art News Letter #14

Artists often want to include pictures of their art studio or of themselves on their recent outing in their blog. Or they may wish to display a poster of an exhibition they are in on their webpage or provide a link so that their customers can download an order form for their art.

I Object
MyArtClub allows artists to load these files as "objects". An object is a file with any of these extensions

• .jpg image
• .gif image
• .doc word document
• .pdf file

Artists can post these files to their site and then display the file in their information text or in their studio pages or on their blog page.

The objects are referenced in your test by using HTML code which MyArtClub provides when you upload the image. You can insert this HTML code into your text sections wherever you want.

Remember that if you change the object, then the HTML code referencing the object changes. So if you change the object by uploading it, then you must change the references to it in your text.

Enhancing your site with your images
You can load your image (.jpg or .gif) and show it anywhere on your site.
You can repeat images on more than one page. You simply link to the same image more than one page, in fact as many times as you like. You can adjust the Height and Width to make your object appear bigger or smaller.

You can load other objects i.e. word documents, Adobe pdf files, or text files. These documents can be posters of your upcoming show or exhibition, order forms or promotional brochures, to name a few.

You can include your image objects in your blog pages to show the progression of your current art work, your show photos, your gallery or studio, or perhaps the vista that inspired you painting.

Here is how you do it
Using the objects requires you to copy and work with HTML tags so it appears very scary to the beginner, but it really is not that hard. First you need to set your site to "manage by size" rather than "by number of images". Login in to your member site, select the link "Maintain your account". Then select "Manage your account by size of space used."

Art works are loaded as per usual from the "Art" tab. The "Object" tab opens up and allows you to load your objects by selecting "Add or Maintain your Objects" The objects are loaded the same way you would load an image.

From the Object Menu you can view the "BLUE text" located just below the yellow object square after loading your object.

Copy and paste the "BLUE text" into your text pages anywhere you are allowed to load text. You have now placed your images or other objects for display on your pages, anywhere you like.

This article was first published in the My Art News Letter #13 and #16

Thanks to artist Graham Eagle www.grahameagle.com for this suggestion which is available to all MyArtClub.Com artists.

Deions and keywords are used by search engines to help catalogue internet pages. The words describe the page without necessarily appearing on the page, acting as 'behind- the-scenes' indexing.

MyArtClub.Com has always had computer generated deions and keywords, based on entries made when an artist loads up their art. Search engines use these to varying degrees, to help surfers find your website.

What Graham suggested was that MyArtClub.Com provide access for artists to modify and enter their own deion and keywords, to enhance the specific keywords linked to their pages.

You may build additional selection into your search engine presence.
For example, to the basic deion you might add "Now teaching art classes in certain community centres, including the Dogwood Pavilion, Coquitlam" and to the keywords you might add "art teacher, art classes, Dogwood Pavilion, Coquitlam.

To access this feature, login in to your member site, select "Market your Artist Site", then click on "Maintain your Internet Keywords and Deion."

This article was first published in the My Art News Letter #10