Intro: Why artists need a website

The short version

Every platform you post on — Instagram, TikTok, Substack, wherever — has its own algorithm, its own rules, and its own agenda. Your website is the one place online that belongs entirely to you.

When a curator googles your name, when a grant panel checks your work, when a residency director clicks the link in your application — they land somewhere. The question is: did you decide what they'd find there, or did you leave that up to Instagram?

That's the whole argument for having a website. You control the narrative.

What this lesson covers

• Why your website matters more than any social platform

• Why "getting it live" beats "getting it perfect"

• What to expect from this course (and how to make it actually work for you)

A note on perfection (skip this at your peril)

Most artists I know have a very specific vision of what their website should look like. Beautiful, seamless, perfectly organized — a true representation of the work.

That vision is also the main reason most artist websites never get finished.

Here's the reframe: your website doesn't have to be perfect. It has to be there. It has to be findable and current. The good news is that websites aren't permanent — you can update them whenever your practice evolves, whenever you add new work, whenever something stops feeling right.

The goal isn't to build the ideal website once and call it done. The goal is to build a solid, working website now — one that you can actually maintain and improve over time.

On time and money (being real with you)

Good website platforms cost money. The free ones take more time and usually more technical skill. You're constantly making a trade-off between the two, and there's no version where you get both for free.

The best way I've found to navigate this is to break the whole project into small, manageable tasks — and that's exactly how this course is structured. Instead of "build my website" sitting on your to-do list like a boulder, you'll have specific, completable tasks at each step. We'll start with strategy before we touch any design decisions. We'll build intentionally.

Your action step

Take a look at your current website (or if you don't have one yet, look at a website by an artist whose practice is similar to yours). Notice one thing that's working and one thing that's missing or outdated.

Write it down. We're going to build on this as we go.

Up next

In Lesson 2: Goals & Strategy, we'll do the strategy work before anything else — figuring out what your specific website actually needs to accomplish, based on your practice and your goals. This is the part most people skip, and it's the part that makes everything else easier.