Artists are not exactly famed for having money. Most spend their cash on supplies and multi-packs of noodles. Luxuries like new clothes, fancy mobiles and delicious ice cream have become distant, nostalgic memories. It’s not a great situation to be in but it’s been the case for years and years (unless you’re one of the lucky few with rich parents willing to finance every project you ever conceive no matter how awful). Unfortunately nowadays a website is essential for artists who want a good chance of getting their work noticed. This can be expensive and also very complicated if you have no training in web design. Luckily, in 2007, Tumblr (tumblr.com) emerged from the depths of the internet to save the day.

Tumblr is in essence a free blogging platform. There are of course plenty of these in existence already. The problem with these other platforms is that without some decent coding knowledge it is difficult to stop them looking like a blog. You need a page that actually looks like a proper website and with Tumblr you can do that with ease.

Tumblr has a collection of themes freely available that look fantastic. They’re also easily editable so you can put your own stamp on it. It’s a simple process to change fonts, pictures, menus, links and anything else. Obviously for more complicated adjustments you’ll need to have a bit more knowledge. Well, that isn’t strictly true. The Tumblr community are a generous bunch and there are plenty of tutorials and bits of codes about so you can change your site however you want.

So once you’ve got your sparkly new page all set-up you’re going to want people to see it. This is another excellent aspect of Tumblr and that is the how incredibly easy it is to share your work directly to those who will be interested. The first way is to tag everything you post properly and extensively. Say you’re uploading your latest photography series on your pet cat. Mention everything about it in the tags including cats, photography, photo, animal, pet, series etc etc. Then get more specific as in if the cat looks cute mention that in the tags.

On other blogs, this wouldn’t do much to help you. Tumblr has the option to search tags and people will do this all the time to find things they want. So if they searched “cute cat photo” your picture will pop up and then the searcher can like it or, preferably, reblog it to all their followers. Beware though, don’t tag things erroneously, people on Tumblr get very upset by this and they will let you know in a tirade of anonymous messages.

You can also search these tags yourself to search out communities of people interested in the same stuff as you. Start following people and soon enough you’ll have your own followers. Post lots of decent stuff and you’ll get more and more and the amount of exposure your work gets will massively increase.

There are plenty more features too. One of the best being that it is very simple for people to contact you directly about what you’ve created. It gives it all a very personal feel. The reblogging feature is also very powerful. If the right people share your stuff, you could find your post reaching tens of thousands of people and all at zero cost to yourself. Tumblr is only getting more popular so get started as soon as possible. Don’t miss your chance.