• Happy New Year
• Two upcoming learning events for artists
• 2004 renewal rates and special offer
• New web site capabilities
• New web services offered

As the New Year is a new beginning, is it time to update your site content? Or perhaps update the look of your site? Have you posted your upcoming calendar events on your site? Have you invited your network of customers and supporters to view your works on line lately? Give this some thought as you start out your new year.

We invite you to read on, this newsletter has some exciting info to help you kick-start your new year with new features for your site, a renewal offer and opportunities to learn skills and information to help you succeed.

MyArtClub.Com would like to take this opportunity to thank all our artists for their support and patronage throughout the year 2003. We especially appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback, information on technical glitches and suggestions for new features. Your inputs help shape our direction, and enable us to better meet your needs. We wish you every success for the upcoming year 2004.

Cam Anderson and Peter Newell,
MyArtClub.Com

Two upcoming learning events for artists

1) The Artrepreneur Seminar - January 23rd, 24th and 25th, 2004 at Plaza 500 Hotel Convention Centre, 500 West 12th (at Cambie), Vancouver Being creative is only the beginning of building an art career. Acquiring skills to link you with the community and art market is vital. Alice Rich has developed a 3 day seminar called "The Artrepreneur" that will help you to look at your own work and access the market place through a targeted marketing plan. You may have read some of Alice's ideas in the last three Opus newsletters. The articles can be viewed on line at www.alice-rich.com

This event is co-Sponsored by Opus Framing & Art Supplies, with MyArtClub.Com presenting as part of the Jan 24th agenda. The cost is $299 plus tax. Registration is underway. To inquire about registering call Joanne White at 604-255-1010 or write to [email protected]

2) 2004 Arts Symposium & "Live At The Symposium" Demo Event - Saturday, February 7, 2004 from 8 am to 5 pm at the William Lucas Centre, 2132 Hamilton St, North Vancouver Since 1998, the Arts and Cultural Commission of North Vancouver has hosted an annual Arts Symposium event. Scheduled for the first Saturday each February, the event has quickly become a popular and well-received forum for the arts community to meet, take part in a variety of educational workshops, network, exchange ideas, form partnerships and debate issues. MyArtClub.Com has participated in previous events and plans to be there this year too. More details are shown on www.northvanarts.com. Registration begins Jan 5th, call 604-980 -3559 or visit the website for on line registration.

2004 renewal rates and special offer

In 2004, our renewal rates will change effective April 1st 2004 from $19.95 to $29.95 for the basic website including 10 images for one year. All other prices will remain the same.

The special offer is for all members and is especially of interest for those who normally would renew later in the year:

You can renew your basic artist site at the current rate of $19.95 if you do so before the end of March 2004.

MyArtClub.Com takes great pride in offering you web services at very economical rates and will continue to strive to do so.

New web site capabilities

Your can change the look of your web pages today by selecting one of the following new options:

1) Adding frames to your pictures
2) New alternate Artist Page format
3) Customize your site look using graphics

1) Adding frames to your pictures

A recent feature added to MyArtClub.Com is the ability to add a coloured frame around your artwork and the thumbnails on the artist page.

The frame is a coloured band surrounding your work of art.

Select the size and colour of the frame for the thumbnails on the artist page options, and for the art works on the art page options.

2) New Alternate Artist Page Format

For expanded variety MyArtClub.Com has introduced a new alternative artist page look. It may be of interest as it subdivides the artist page by providing links to smaller sub-pages, making it easier to find your information and to be more readily organized.

The first page is the artist's contact information and picture with button style links to the artist's information such as artist statement, shows, galleries etc. Clicking on any of these links will replace the artist page with the selected artist information and links to the other pages as well as back to the artist home page.

Each artist page shows a thumbnail to link to your artwork. This leads to either a choice of studios or art page showing the featured work first. More images are viewed by clicking on thumbnails presented at the bottom of each art page.

A visual example will assist greatly. Please visit our fictitious artist "Art Meister" at
www.MyArtClub.Com/Art.Meister.

The feature is activated in the Artist Page "Options". If you have any comments or suggestions about this feature, contact us at [email protected].

3) Customize your site look using graphics

Graphics can be used as backgrounds for your artist pages or art pages. The feature is activated in the Artist or Art Page "Options". Combining a wide choice of graphic images and colours gives you a large number of optional backgrounds.

Selecting a graphic will set that image as a background to be displayed on your page over the background colour you have selected for your artist or art page.

Graphics have mainly been patterns but more recently we have added seasonal images like Halloween pumpkins and Christmas bells.

If you have a pattern or graphic that you would like to use as your background, just send your graphic as a .gif image to [email protected] and we will include it in the selection of available graphics for use in building your pages.

New web services offered

MyArtClub.Com is expanding our offering with three new customized services for which we welcome your inquiry:

1) Custom web design
2) Payments on line
3) Email forwarding

1) Custom web design

MyArtClub.Com is pleased to offer a new service entirely open and flexible and lets you maintain control of the content of their site: custom web pages. This may appeal to artists who have wanted their own stand-alone website, but like the ability to change their site content themselves.

You show us your design ideas, or work with us to create the look and feel for your website as you want it to be. Nothing is preset: you work with us to create your own customized pages. We set up your ability to allow you to make changes any time, from anywhere.

Artists building their own custom website are required to have their own web domain address e.g. www.YourName.Com. Although having your own web domain address is available for any MyArtClub.Com artist, it is a prerequisite for this new service.

You still take advantage of all the powerful MyArtClub.Com benefits:
� Complete control of the content of your site,
� Ability to modify it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
� All the MyArtClub.Com marketing tools to market your site.
� Your site content is loaded in our art and artist search database,
� Your pages would be regularly scanned by the search engines
� You can readily access support for technical or user issues.

Custom pages are available for $25.00 per custom page for the whole year. Number of pages may vary depending on your design requirements. If this feature is of interest to you, please contact us at [email protected].

2) Payments Online

Although MyArtClub.Com does not participate in the sale of your art, nor take any commissions, we can help you to set up a link to a payment service so that you may accept payment on line. Please remember though that the fulfillment services i.e. the responsibility and cost of packaging and shipping and insuring your art for shipment, etc. remains with you the artist.

If you already take MasterCard or Visa, you have a variety of choices. If not, there are online options you could use, such as a service like PayPal or other payment services. Please note that there are charges (beyond those of MyArtClub.Com) involved in setting up these services. We have not set up this arrangement yet so it will take some research and exploration to set up the first user. However, if you are interested in pursuing this avenue of sales, please contact us at [email protected]

3) Email forwarding

For those users who have their own web domain address registered with MyArtClub.Com, we can offer you an email forwarding service so you can set up your email address using your domain name address e.g. [email protected] and have the email forwarded to your regular email account provider.

Contact us at [email protected] if you are interested in this service. Well that is it for this issue. Thanks for reading � hope you enjoyed it, look forward to seeing your latest art on the Internet!

Peter Newell and Cam Anderson,
MyArtClub.Com

Do you have any comments or suggestions?
Please write to us at: Webmaster @MyArtClub.Com

P.S. Previous issues of this newsletter are available on MyArtClub.Com under the Member's Help Section.