This is the first rule for a blossoming art career online.
In the Draw Porn series I’ve spoken briefly about having your own site and social media sites. Having a business model that me be free, doing a Patreon site, or a membership site. I wanted to share what I think is the most important: ALWAYS OWN YOUR OWN .COM (or .net, .info or whatever you want to buy). It’s based on this simple rule: Don’t build your house on rented land.
About a year ago I was on Shadman’s site and he said Tumblr cancelled his Tumblr page. With no notice, no remorse, they took it down. Thousands of fans and people who followed his Tumblr page had no where to go. Oh wait, but they did, they still had http://www.shadbase.com/ to go to if they wanted to find his work easily. But on the other hand, I’ve passed dozens and dozens of stories online about how “they” shut down their blog with no notice. I’ve seen operators of Tumblr, Facebook, Blogger, (etc.) only blogs who have literally tens of thousands of followers and have to start back at square one with a new name and NO following. Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t be lazy, don’t be cheap, buy the damn domain and put a site on it, FIRST. Then get your social media second.
The only people generally dumb enough to build houses on rented land is government (which native American appreciate I’m sure), and you don’t want to run your art career like the government do you?