There are many dependable services available for $10 (or less) per month to host your website, with reasonably fast connections to the internet and full access for you to make changes to your pages whenever you want via FTP. As long as you have local dial up access to the internet, it does not matter where your site is hosted.

If you are using a free service now, you should try to leave them behind as soon as possible. Not only are they generally slower than paid services, but often they will insist on placing commercial banners on your site, which in the arts field is a disaster. Plus, some search engines are NOT including sites hosted on free services within their own database - a serious disadvantage when it comes to attracting new traffic.

The only way to accurately know how many visitors that your site is getting is through tracking software or services. The information provided by these statistics is absolutely essential to ecommerce success.

A simple "counter" is meaningless, as it will tally the same person over & over & over (even if they repeatedly return to a single page), whereas the more sophisticated trackers will only measure each "unique visitor" one time only.

The better services will also keep a record of the sites that referred the visitors to you. In some cases they will only keep the most recent referrers, whereas others will keep records longer.

Your own website hosting service may already provide you with detailed statistics, so first look inside your control panel to see if that's the case. By periodically checking to see your total unique visitor count, plus the referring sites, you'll get a good sense of how your site is doing.

If you need to use a 3rd party for tracking, then set up is generally easy & prices vary, so check carefully to see which one is best for your needs -- we have some services in the right hand column.

NOTE: Read the fine print! You must sometimes add a banner to your site in exchange for the free tracking -- "FreeStats.com" for example requires this.

JOLAF does not actually make sales for exhibitors - our job is to attract targeted visitors who are interested in original art & handmade craft, then direct them to exhibitors. We take the position that artists do better to make their own sales, and thus do not have to pay "per sale commissions".

To easily make sales on the WWW, you need to seriously consider adding a secure shopping cart capability to your site. People who use the web to shop also expect to have the option to use their credit card to pay via the web, without having to make a phone call or send a check.

Once you have your website online, then it is to your advantage to learn how to do your own basic maintenance as much as possible. It makes a lot of sense to pay for the foundation of the site to be professionally designed, but thereafter, you should learn how to make simple changes yourself.

For professional artists or craftspeople who want to sell their work on the WWW, everything begins with quality images. Once you have photographic prints or slides that properly present your work, then you have to get those images into a digital format.

Soon after your email address is published on your website, you will begin getting much unsoliticited junk mail.

EmC checks the messages that you have on your server, then allows you to delete the ones you do not want *without* down loading them to your harddrive, and it has a great filter system.

One of the biggest misunderstandings that people have when first entering the WWW is the notion that the project is over once their website is uploaded. Nothing could be further from the truth!

In the opinion of many web professionals, the single most important job is driving quality traffic to your site, and that happens after your site is ready for prime time.

Here are some promotion suggestions to help you get started on that all-important effort. Even if you only do 30 minutes a day, within a month you'll see a difference in your visitor stats.

There are also a number of excellent Marketing Books to guide you with the promotion of your work.