What’s happening inside MaineCreates.com?
A monthly update from the founder, Matt Zito.
Wow! We are growing. This is good news for the creative
people of Maine. As our community expands and more
people join, more opportunities will arise for everyone.
This is called the “the network effect.” Below are quick monthly statistics. A highlight of a new
art gallery and artist relationship formed through MaineCreates.com. Recent press received, new features
added to the web site and an update on what's coming
later this summer. 17,000 page views this month 5/29-6/29 71 new members 88 creative work connections 6 new ideas. Support MaineCreates.com If MaineCreates.com is providing you with opportunity,
please give back and support us financially as we
continue to build this community.
Buy a LifeTime Membership - $99 for unlimited work
and idea connections for life and free links from your
profile page to your web site. This limited opportunity
will last till we reach 100 members and or when we
launch the e-commerce storefronts for members to sell
online, whichever comes first. Links to personal web
sites will not be included with the free membership in
the next update. (See What's Coming below.) To buy
the LifeTime membership, login to your account, then
click the LifeTime Membership link on the left hand side.
Buy a Showcase advertisement only $2 a day and have
your ad displayed in every search and search results
page. Login to your account and click on "My Showcase"
located on the "My Profile" page. This is a great deal!
New Connections made at Maine Creates
Chapter Two & The 2 Fireflies
By: Garry & Rosemary Levin, owners, Chapter Two,
Corea, Maine. "Chapter Two is a growing art gallery in Corea, and
when the opportunity to list on MaineCreates.com
arose, we took advantage of it. Shortly after we listed,
we learned that Amy Hayes from Franklin who, with
her sister Jennifer, had started a jewelry business
called The 2 Fireflies, and was interested in making a
connection with us. After visiting their website, we
contacted Amy and offered her the opportunity to
retail her jewelry in our gallery. On Saturday,
June 29th, Amy came to the gallery and we agreed to
do business together. Working together, we picked a
selection of her earrings, necklaces and pendants to
sell and before we even got the display set up, we
had people looking and commenting on the work.
We look forward to a successful joint venture, which
came about as a result of MaineCreates.com." Do you have a MaineCreates.com connection story
to share with the community? If yes, please send so
we can highlight connections being made.
Features added to MaineCreates.com Customized Your Possible Connections - at the bottom
of your "My Profile" page, we enabled full customization
of your Possible Connections, so you can now set your
own search parameters for what type of creative person
or organization you are looking to connect with. (thanks
for the suggestion WendiLee, whopaints).
You can select a specific geographical area, and enter
in your own keywords that our system will search and
look for matches between members and your keyword
entries.
Search function being added to home page- we added the
search to the home page. If you get overlapping text, then
"clear your cache" and clear your private data as your computer
is pulling the older image.
Blog from your Profile page- we added a simple Blog
interface so you can now Blog and members can comment
on your posts. Add a title to your Blog and away you go.
You will see your Blog published on your public profile
page at the bottom. A few extras features we've built
include private messaging between members, and you
can send an email to all your work and idea
connections/contacts.
Submission of your Creative Profile to search engines -
we are currently adding search engine submission
technology, so your profile, and blog posts will become
active pages on the Internet. Many people will access
your Profile and Blog posts outside of MaineCreates.com.
This is good and part of our distribution plan for getting all
our members visibility.
Google Analytics- we are adding analytics data to all
our pages for site traffic stats in addition to our current
server tracking system.
Total Member Profile Views- in the lower right corner
of your profile page you will see the number of "views"
your profile has been viewed. This counts as one view
per session or one unique visitor to your profile page.
*Note- the total views have been reset due to the latest
upload as of July 1st.
Press - on this page we highlight all press coverage on the community. This month MaineCreates.com was covered in
the Ellsworth American, the Maine Technology Institute
and the Portland Phoenix. Member Badge– Member Badge enables members to add the official- MaineCreates.com membership logo to your web
site or Blog. Ideas - you can now comment on your own idea, rate a
members idea, and bookmark the idea.
RSS- you can RSS every new ideas, creative works,
projects and Blogs added to MaineCreates.com.
(see your "My Profile" at bottom of the page, too add RSS.) Questions asked by a few members. How does the Possible Connections feature work? If you use our "default" Possible Connections and do not
"Enable" the new Customized Possible Connection feature,
then the web site checks each members text entered in
My Works, Current Projects, Associations, and your
creative profile information. The systems also checks all
the tags or tagging your enter. The system then looks for
matches in text description and tags with other people's
text descriptions and tags. When the system finds matches
we send that member match to your "Possible Connections"
page in your My Profile. Who can join MaineCreates.com as a creative member? We have purposely kept the web site open and did not
define who was welcome and who was not at the onset.
We realize this is "abstract thinking." This was done on
purpose as I was not sure on who would use the site and
I wanted to leave it open. I estimated that at 100 members
I would have a pretty good idea on who was using the site
and how it was being used. As we near 100 members we
are starting to define the site. We have recently removed two new profiles as they were
added. We have only had to email two people telling them
that we had to remove them from the web site as their
profile was not "creative" in nature.
In narrowing the membership to a specific target group,
we are moving towards defining Maine Creates members
as creative people that reside in Maine and create a
product, creative service, good, and or provision with
their hands or mind. We have included about 75 creative
economy work classifications so we reach to include all
of Maine's creative people.
When the community starts selling online, new product-
service categories will include "Maine Goods", "Fine Arts," "Handmade Craft," "Homemade Provisions" "Maine Products"
and "Creative Services." As we get closer to 100 members
and we integrate the selling system the web sites branding
and focus will narrow. My mission will not change in that this web site at its core is
about changing the lives of people in Maine and to invigorate
the creative economy of Maine. I welcome feedback on my comments above. Visit my Blog to comment.
The buyers and people that come to the online community
to connect with us and buy from us of course will be welcome
and be open to anyone in the world.
What's Coming? In the next 2-3 months- Member storefronts to sell your works online. Yes, its coming.
Distribution of our members creative profiles and your works
for sale to partner web sites. How to help us grow? Please spread the word about what we are creating at MaineCreates.com and how we are building a community of
creative people through the use of technology, online
networking, and selling to invigorate the creative economy
of Maine. The online storefronts will bring us full circle and
shortly we will not only be connecting with people in Maine
but we will be selling to the world. Please support the web site and buy a LifeTime Membership.
This offering will "disappear" from the web site shortly.
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