New Partner: Wix

Please join me in welcoming Wix as our newest blog sponsor! They'll be filling the home page banner for at least the next month, and those of you who visit the blog via the web may have already seen their banner displayed.

Wix offers up a simple and powerful online platform for creating Flash websites — and for free! They also have a premium service that allows you to use your own domain, display your Wix-created site without ads or Wix logos, extra storage, premium support, and a few other goodies.

As photographers, you may be asking yourselves “How is this relevant to me, and why is Brian taking on a Flash website generator as a sponsor?” Yeah, just hear me out. Visit their sample websites and click on “Photographers” (2nd link down on the sidebar). Go ahead and flip through the sites and tell me that isn't cool! These are all very unique sites and quite professional in appearance — definitely worth a look.

My thought is this… If you want to put together a portfolio or a photography website to display your work, but you don't have the know-how or funds to create something on your own, Wix is the place to go. Hey, if nothing else, start off with a free site and build it up until you're satisfied. When you get the dough to upgrade to the premium package, go ahead and get your own domain. At that point, you'll have an awesome display of your work.

If you want to learn more about Wix or about how their site works, be sure to check out their FAQ in addition to the main site. They cover topics such as search engine friendliness, PayPal integration, stats packages, and more.

So who is this online service for? I'd say it's a very good option if you don't already have your own photography site or portfolio, you don't want to spend a bunch of money to get your site going, and/or you don't want to deal with the technical side of website creation. Hell, even if you already have a site, you've got the money and know-how for a custom site — you still might get a kick out of creating a Flash site through their platform.

If any of you out there already have a Wix-generated website, let us know in the comments so we can check it out!