~Malachyte

Putting the list of sites you can find me on here at the top for easy access. Only listing the ones I'm super active on for now (I'm name squatting a few more than this).

Gallery Sites: Weasyl || Inkbunny || SoFurry || Itaku || NewGrounds || Furtastic
Social/Streams: Telegram || BlueSky || Picarto
Business/Sales: Artconomy || Ko-Fi || Weebly

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I was talking with some friends about the various website options for us furries and artists, and ended up giving a small review of each one. We often see lists of sites where we can find people at, but not really much opinion on the quality or personal experience of using the sites, so I thought I'd share what I wrote. Keep in mind, this is from the point of view of an artist, so your desires for a gallery may differ from mine depending on how you engage with things. Also, this is all just my opinion, so if you see me talk negatively about a site you like, please don't take it personally.

Weasyl - Personally I love it, but I hear the devs/admins/whatever you call them have been absent for years, so the site just kind of exists. It's fine for now, but if it got heavier use, I don't know if anyone is there steering the ship. I rarely get interactions on there, maybe three comments a month and a handful of faves.

Inkbunny - This would be my first pic for "if FA was gone", but a lot of the artists we like to follow on other sites are not on IB. It has a ton of activity, and great artists, but a different pool than the FA/Twitter/Etc crowd. Easiest to use, and about 50% or more of my business comes from there. I get more engagement on my art here than any other site.

SoFurry - This was the first furry site I ever established myself on, and I do like it. It's difficult to post to though, and often has errors when I upload. Interactions are more frequent there than on FA, but less than IB. The general vibe of people there seems very nice, with an active community.

Artconomy - A great tool for sales, I'd recommend this to any artist. You can set up a storefront, manage your queue, all sorts of good features. It's still a newer site and there are things being ironed out, but even still it's been totally worth using. The devs are very active and always looking to improve things. As a place to casually browse art... not so much. Posting ads for my commissions counts as an upload and clutters my gallery since there's no scraps. When others upload art I've made them, it auto-uploads them to my gallery in a random order, without any of the description I would normally put on my uploads. Interactions on my posts there are nearly none.

Itaku - Great for uploading, seems robust, and generally well-liked by quite a few. It seems a little confusing to use, but I also haven't really sat down with it to play with all the buttons. Not my personal fave to browse since it's a timeline format, which I don't prefer. I get a fair amount of favorites on my posts there, but no comments.

NewGrounds - Posting there just to test out a non-furry crowd. I've gotten a few interactions there, to my surprise, but less than on Weasyl. It's easy to post to.

BlueSky - So far I'm enjoying it. There's no algorithm so people are actually seeing my posts. I get more likes there than I ever did on Twitter even when I was posting regularly. Good for finding artists due to the curated feeds you can follow. I recommend it.

Picarto Galleries - Feels like throwing my art into a void. NSFW art seems to be shown to everybody even when I'm logged out and looking, not sure what's going on there. Not really recommended outside of posting examples for your stream sales or something.

Discord - Fun to post to, I love to share my art here with my little circle. I imagine in a more publicly-open discord it's even better engagement. Downside is the obvious; only the people in the discord get to see it, so it doesn't equal growth. But the satisfaction of the posts is much higher, since you can have a conversation about your work once it's posted, rather than a wait-and-see sort of engagement.

Twitter - I no longer use this. Even when I was actively trying, I struggled to gain any traction, and only got stressed from being there. Knowing that revenue from that site literally goes to fund Trump's campaign makes me sick and I wish we'd all quit using it. I also never found it very enjoyable for browsing art or finding things. It's like trying to hold sand.

DeviantArt - Used it back in high school and formed a lot of find memories there, but it is now a shell of itself full of shitty features and AI shilling. I wiped my whole account a while ago and haven't looked back. RIP.

Cara.app - A new Instagram-alike. I enjoy that it has anti-AI tools built in, but it doesn't allow NSFW, so it's a bit pointless to me. Postybirb isn't connected to it, so I have no motivation to use it. If you're a fan of Instagram and don't like what it's become, this may be worth looking into.

FurryNetwork - I used it when it was in Beta. The site creators originally swore they believed in freedom of art of all kinds and allowed cub, then a few bigger named artists threw a fit so they banned it almost immediately. Once I saw the flimsy ideals, I left. I hear it's been a ghost town in recent times. I haven't logged in for a few years.

Pixiv - Easier to use once they made the English version of the site, but you have to censor your NSFW art, so I don't post there anymore since it's too much hassle. I had some decent engagement when I did, though.

e621 - It's ingrained in me for some reason that you never post your own art to an image board, that's something that you just cross your fingers and hope someone does for you. I always feel special when I see my art posted there, but I have never posted anything myself. I hear some artists do use it as a gallery, but also that the crowd there is a bit unfriendly, and things get removed at random with no warning, given the image board thing.

Mastodon - I literally don't understand how to use it even after several explanations. I am too stupid to use Mastodon, orz

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I hope this is useful to someone out there! Or at the very least, mildly interesting?

If you know any other hot sites around, I'd love to hear. I've been working to spread my presence online as far and wide as I can handle since 2012, and I ain't stopping now. Gimme more!

Posted using PostyBirb