If you use any of these networks, what are your impressions? Have you actually gotten a job out of them? Without further ado, I’m going to review each service, in order of relevance at Alexa.

Facebook

Ah, the second most visited site on Earth. Just because of that, you MUST be there. You don’t even have to use your account, but you certainly need to create a fanpage for your site, so people can follow you! I don’t recommend importing your feed;, it’s better to post manually your links, so they come directly to your site. In my experience, FB is the only place where I’ve gotten comissions and job offers.

On a special note, if you have a self hosted Wordpress site, you DEFINITELY have to use the Fotobook plugin, it’s awesome! That’s how I got the nifty gallery on my frontpage ;) It’s a great way to have an infinite number of images hosted at FB and your site at the same time!

Flickr

If you prefer a cleaner, more public network, Flickr is for you. It’s very popular, so be careful when stating your copyright licenses because many blogs and online newspapers borrow pictures from this site. It also allows you to post your latest pictures in your blog and make slideshows.

The disadvantages, in my not-so-humble opinion, are the 500 px limit in the width or height, so if you post a very wide or long piece of art, it’ll look very small and people would have to click a second time to see it correctly. The other one is that if you want to post more than 200 pictures, you have to pay. Hmm…

Deviantart

The most popular art network in this top seven! It’s the first one I ever joined to; my old drawings are kept there. Trying to get noticed in dA it’s like being the shiny needle on the hay; you must be VERY good, network a LOT and get lucky with a Daily Deviation; maybe you could earn comissions or even a great job offer, like Space Coyote! You can also share your deviant gallery in your site with deviantshare.

Things I don’t like about dA: Advertisement—yeah, I could pay a premium membership but I don’t want to—the small earnings they offer for your prints and the dAportfolio. It’s supposed to give you a more professional option for making your online portfolio, but it doesn’t get much exposure and can be slow sometimes with the Flash. Definitely not my first option.

Behance

Behance is a more professional art network which is really strong and it makes great efforts in promoting the best works of its members. It’s a bit more complex than dA, but user friendly and it allows you to post projects with many images in one single page.

Con: This is a silly thing, since my site is Zirta dot net but sometimes I forget and actually try to log in to Behance dot com instead of Behance dot net. Watch out for that!

Coroflot

This art network is very popular in the USA, so I’m giving it a shot. Well designed, with a very resourceful blog and job offers. I still have to tap its potential :) It also allows you to post a badge with your recent or random submissions in your blog.

Cons: Not very user-friendly, I struggle whenever I want to edit my gallery; first you have to click Edit profile first and then you’ll get access to Edit Portfolio. And—this is a personal opinion—I dislike Coroflot’s logo. The little one in the badge is a lot better!

Carbonmade

If you must have a slideshow portfolio, Carbonmade is THE place. The most elegant, fast loading, Flash based service around, with a kind support team which convinced me to stay because clients are on the lookout for fresh talent. VERY user friendly, you absolutely don’t need any HTML knowledge to make a great portfolio here.

Cargo

And last but not least, the new kid on the block and my personal favorite! If you must pick one site for making your portfolio, please let it be Cargo. It has awesome designs and it’s very user friendly. You can even host your own domain but the $66 upgrade it’s a bit expensive for my budget—for that price, I could host all my sites in Wordpress. If they had a cheaper plan that kept the free features AND domain hosting, I’d take it in the blink of an eye!

So that’s my word about these sites, hope it’s useful for you :) Myspace is also a good place to showcase your artwork but I don’t have any more patience left to customize it, really. There are some other art networks I am discovering but that’s talk for another day. The best luck in your self promotion!

Thank you again, Tomo and Kaspars, for sharing your talent to the world!