Metal Clay Business Resources - Websites, Blogs and Social Networking Sites
This page contains links to all kinds of resources for building and developing websites and creating blogs. We've also listed resources to help you build traffic to your website - after all, there's not much point in having a website if no-one knows about it! As social networking is also now becoming a very useful marketing tool, we're including information about using these to promote your business.
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1000 Markets
Selling site for US artisans. Set up a shop for free and pay a small fee on sales. Payments processed by Amazon payments.
35 Ways to Improve Your Online Video Performance
Very useful article from Web Pro News for anyone who makes and distributes videos on the internet.
Accessify
Site promoting accessible website development. Lots of tips and tools to help make your website accessible to everyone.
Article Info
Free article directory with loads of articles about search engine optimisation, e-commerce, blogging and generally everything to do with trading online.
Artisan's Accomplice
Artisan's Accomplice enables artists to manage their business online. Popular media include fine jewelry, beaded jewelry, polymer clay artwork, pmc, pottery, and hand-made clothing. Unique features include email list, PayPal integration, wholesale and consignment support, an event planner, easy editing tools and much more.
Art Jewelry Magazine - Market your Jewelry Online Article
Great little article about online marketing. Well worth reading.
Artspan
Create your own unique website with Artspan—it's easy! Use your control panel to customize and manage all areas of your site. Your work will have maximum visibility as part of a top art destination and your site will also have its own URL. Artspan is ranked number 1 for Contemporary Art.A site of your own
Step by step guide to getting on the internet. Contains lots of useful information links. Published on the Jewelry Artist/Lapidary Journal website.
Authority Directory - Five great ways to get more traffic coming to your blog
Useful article for anyone with a blog. Learn about how to get more traffic in this free article. You can also submit your site to this directory so you get linked to them.
Authority Directory - Four things that visitors to a blog should immediately see
Short but very useful article with top tips for setting up your blog. This page also has links to other useful articles. You can also submit your site to this directory so you get linked to them.
Bandzoogle
Using their step-by-step system you'll be online in 5 minutes. No coding, no software to download. Choose from hundreds of layouts created by award winning designers, or create your own from scratch in just a few clicks.
Bejeweled Software Company
US based supplier of The Jewelry Designer Manager™ software program. This lets you keep track of parts and vendors, calculate costs and pricing, create bills of material, print invoices, price lists, catalogs and more. Whether you sell to wholesalers, craft-fairs, home parties or retailers this program can help you get organized so you can spend more time making jewelry.
Beyond the North Wind
UK based website builders who specialise in art and craft websites. They have an impressive list of clients and you can browse the websites they've created for others.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel is a simple shopping cart for artists. It’s easy to use, customizable, and awesome.
Big Commerce
Over 7,000 business owners trust BigCommerce to power their online stores. Using just your mouse and without any technical skills, you can create a beautifully customized online store with all of the bells and whistles your customers expect - in just a few hours. Free trial available.
Constant Contact
Email marketing and newsletter solutions. Create newsletters using their templates or upload your own. Also has online polling software. Essential if you're building email lists from a website or planning to email large numbers of people.
Craftster
Craftster is an online community where people share hip, off-beat, crafty diy projects. Craftster was started in August 2003 and has since grown to a readership of over 1,000,000 readers per month. Craftster is the largest online community for what is now commonly known as "indie crafts."
Designs to Love
DesignsToLove is an online craft gallery and community dedicated to helping craft enthusiasts from around the world connect, showcase their work, share their passion, learn from each other and have heaps of fun.
DIYSEO
Free tool to assess your website search engine optimisation ranking. You can compare your site against your competitors and the report gives you details of the things you should improve to get yourself properly indexed and searchable.
Do Your Own Site
Easy self build website with no jargon. 30 day free trial to see how you get on with it. From building a small site about yourself or your business, right the way up to a full "eCommerce" shop selling thousands of products, DoYourOwnSite! has all the tools and features you need. And you don't need to be a computer whizz-kid to use them!
Facebook for Businesses
This brief and easy to read article from Wayne Kessler clearly explains the importance of using Facebook for businesses. It has a step-by-step guide to setting yourself up on Facebook and tips on how to use it to your advantage. Well worth reading.
Facebook Tips
Useful short article specifically about the business page layout in Facebook. This article has some information about how to capitalise on the new layout in Facebook and includes some tips on how to make sure your Facebook marketing is effective.
Favicon Generator
A favicon (short for "favorites icon"), also known as a page icon or an urlicon, is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage. A web designer can create such an icon, and many recent web browsers can then make use of them. Browsers that support favicons may display them in the browser's URL bar, next to the site's name in lists of bookmarks, and next to the page's title in a tabbed document interface.
Flash Slideshow Tutorial
Simple tutorial for setting up Flash slideshows on your website. Very easy to follow and contains a download of the code you need.
Flickr - Promote your work by displaying your photos online
Sign up for a free account with Flickr and upload your photos. This photo sharing site is a great place to display your work, especially if you don't have a website of your own.
Free tools for building your website
Large site with free resources. Includes free customisable backgrounds, graphics, buttons, logo's, menus and sound effects.
Ganoksin Blogs
Free Blog creation from the worlds leading resource for jewelry artists. Orchid Members can now have an online presence within minutes of joining, and have access to resources that come from being part of a community of a considerable size. If you already run a Blog site, they offer specialized migration tools which will transfer your existing Blog to the Orchid Blog website in a single-click. The migration tool will not delete your old Blog but will duplicate it on Ganoksin.
Go Daddy Webhosting and Domains
This site offers domain name registration, hosting and also has a simple way of creating your own website.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google offer many free tools for webmasters. This is also a good place to check out how to make your website search engine friendly. This is important because if people can't find you, you might as well not have a website! Follow Google's tips for making your website easily indexed and you should begin to see your website traffic increase.
Homestead
Website hosting company with an easy to use method of building and publishing a website. Over 2000 ready to use templates you can customise. Build a professional looking website web quickly and easily.
How to use cursors on websites tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to create fun cursors when people visit your website.
Hubspot - Search Engine Optimisation for Lead Generation Kit
The SEO for Lead Generation Kit includes 3 how-to videos and an instructional e-book:
- Video: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101 (1 hour)
- Video: Combine SEO, Blogging, Social Media for Marketing Results (1 hour)
- Video: Optimizing Landing Pages for Lead Generation and Conversion (1 hour)
- e-Book: Get Found Online - Learn how to get found online in the search engines, blogosphere, and social media sites (10 pages)
Indiepublic
Indiepublic is an independent art and design community. If you're an artist, designer, retailer, blogger, or just someone who gets giddy when they buy indie, this is the place to be.
The Internet Explained
Confused about what the internet is all about? Don't understand all the terminology? This is the place to go. Very easy to follow and packed with useful information.
iWeb
iWeb’s Web Site Builder offers simplicity and great designs. It is the ideal tool for anyone to create a high impact web site in no time. You can subscribe to a complete package of hosting and domain name registration here. Live chat help if you need it.
Listamatic
This site shows you how to customise lists on websites. Well worth having a browse around to see the potential. Contains HTML and CSS code to achieve the list effects.
Logo Design Team
'Logo Design Team', a Team of 90+ Professional Graphic Designers are well-equipped in Talent, Expertise, Experience and Infrastructure to serve the Custom Logo Design, Creative Graphic Design, Web Design and Print Media Design requirement of Startups, Small Businesses and Big Corporate Houses. Fixed rate of $149 for five logo designs, delivered within two days and with unlimited revisions until you're happy.
Moonfruit
Incredibly easy way to get yourself on the internet. They have a variety of packages allowing you to build your own website.
Mr Site
Site allowing you to make your own website really easily. Cheap, all in one package for beginners.
Network Solutions
Website hosting company who also provide a web site building system.
Newsletter Creation
Email marketing tool.
Poached Egg
Poached Egg provide logo design, website design and business startup help. Their website shows you exactly what you get and how much it costs. It's very reasonable if you want someone else to set up your website without any fuss. Everything can be done by email and they'll also provide you with business cards, leaflets, letterheads in one of their business packages. A good all round service to set you up - and they're nice people too.
Promote Yourself online without a Website
Good introduction to online promotion which doesn't involve setting up your own website. Written by blogger Elaine Luther.
Sandvox
Sandvox is the popular, award-winning website creation program for the Mac. Download a trial version and see how Sandvox gives you the power to build a rich, multimedia website easily and quickly.
SearchBliss - SEO Tools
This site has lots of great free tools for finding out about how your website is performing. Particularly useful are the backlinks checkers and analysers. Find out how many sites are linking to you, generally, through social networking sites and also authority sites. Authority sites are particularly important as they affect your Google rating - if important sites are linking to you, you're considered more important yourself. You can also check out your competition!
Search Engine Optimisation
This site provides a free newsletter helping webmasters to get higher rankings on search engines. The site also contains a number of other free resources for your website. Check out the FAQ's to find instant answers to some basic search engine optimisation questions and start driving traffic to your site.
Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation for the Non-Techie
This PDF document is a very brief introduction to Search Engine Optimisation for the non-technical. It relates directly to metal clay websites. Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO is a huge subject and there are many resources on the internet about it. There are also lots of companies offering to get you listed on search engines for a fee. This article talks about FREE ways of getting yourself noticed on the internet and how to structure your website to be search engine friendly.
Shop Factory
ShopFactory 8 all-in-one shopping cart software allows anyone to quickly create and manage their own professional Internet shop — despite being one of the most powerful and feature rich eCommerce solutions on the market. Now you can update your own website and products to sell securely online: without professional help. Free trial available.
The Site Wizard
This is a great site for help in generating HTML code to do specific things. It's free to use and is a great resource if you know a little bit about the coding side of website building.
Statcounter
A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!
Submitterbot
Semi automatic directory submissions tool. Free.
Sunglow Media
Graphics and multimedia firm specializing in professional, quality design and photography services for artisans and small businesses.
Swiftpage
Email marketing provider. Create newsletters quickly and easily using their templates or upload your own. Essential if you're building email lists from a website or planning to email large numbers of people.
Thingamablog
Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.
Tips for Ranking Higher on and with YouTube
"Did you know that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine and the 4th largest web property? It also attracts hundreds of millions of users a month, and 15 hours of video are uploaded every minute." This useful article from WebProNews includes lots of tips for getting yourself noticed on YouTube. Video is a great medium for metal clay artists. Not only does it allow you to put tutorials online, it can also be a great way of showcasing your work.
Twitter 101 - What's it all about?
Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.
Vertical Response
Email marketing and newsletter solutions.
Website Law
UK based site outlining website law. It has a website disclaimer which can be used free if you retain the credit for it on your site. The disclaimer for the Metal Clay Academy website is based on this free template.
Web Development and Design Course
This website is a web development and design course that's free to access. It is constructed like a book with chapters of information to teach you all you need to know about designing and building websites.
Webs - Free website building site
Webs provide all the tools you need to create a professional-looking website in just minutes. Add a blog, forum, calendar, photo gallery, video gallery and much more. Want to turn your site into a social network? No problem! You also have the ability to add members and create personal profiles so you can turn your site into a community where friends, colleagues and family can connect and collaborate.
Web Safe Colour Chart
From the PC Man Website. Use these colours to make sure they are safe in any browser.
Web Studio 4.0
Web design software. Very easy to use, download and try it free for 30 days.
Wix - Free website building site
Wix is the simpler, faster, better way to create stunning web content. Make a Flash website just the way you want it, add stunning free content or upload your own
- No downloads or programming needed
- Creating a website with Wix is free
- Simple drag & drop interface
- Thousands of free, fully customizable Flash templates
World Wide Web Consortium W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. Visit this site to check that your CSS and HTML coding is compliant with the latest guidelines.
Yola - Free website building site
Set up and host a basic website for free using Yola. Very easy to use.
