That Strange Feeling....

First of all today I want to send out a huge "Thank You! and Congratualations!" to Sage who bought 3 paintings today! I hope they bring a lifetime of enjoyment to you and yours! And your support of my art is much appreciated!

Now that isn't the strange feeling I intend to talk about but it sure is exciting. On to that strange feeling....

Since the beginning of my new obsession... the Vlog and the Five Element Tarot, I have had a really positive feeling for my goals on this project. The objective clear, the ideas free flowing, it is just a great place to be for me mentally and spiritually. What's even greater is that I have been getting feedback! Some outright contact such as emails from people I haven't heard from in a while and then some quieter and more subtle, like subscribers to my Vlog and my Blogs of people I do not know. This is just exciting and adds to that positive feeling I've had for this project from it's inception. Thank you all who have been sending me feedback in all manner, I love it.

Once every 6 months or so, I "Googled" and "Yahooed" myself. If you haven't done it yourself, do it...it's fun! I do it because I forget all of the artist portfolio sites I've posted my work on (there are many) and it's good to keep up on what's out there. I know I blogged about doing this with "Five Element Tarot" just recently but that was to see if I was getting somewhere with my current efforts. Searching for myself, that's a different matter - it shows a full history of where I've made a mark on the system.

It used to be that I had a few links, my website of course, and the couple of sites that I have my artwork posted on (like d'art, art.com, cafepress, etc. it all depends on how well they promote the site and if I'm looked at on the sites. I have spent years posting on artist portfolio sites... they are great but I didn't get hit often enough to end up on a top search ranking.) and then there are some obscure link from the newspaper article I was mentioned in or some group I belong to, etc. these you can find on the 5th or 6th page of a search.

Well, yesterday, I decided to check it out again... What spurred me this time is that someone had found me through d'art website. My site tracks refurral URL's, the page that sent you to my site. So I wanted to investigate where I was out there again. It had been a while since I did it, so why not...

I was struck dumb... On Google, my work, my website, my new vlogs, and such took up nearly all of the first 6 pages. On Yahoo, I have most of the first 3 pages!... just amazing this thing called "The Web." I had no idea how quickly prolific you can get out there on the web. What a strange feeling... knowing that I'm that accessable, finally. I have spent a lot of time and effort over the last few years trying to "market" on the net. Just to have my name out there, and it takes a lot of finesse to get people to pop in and take a look at what you do.

This whole thing makes point toward positive thinking and creative manifestation... what ever you focus on just gets bigger... positive or negative... I am so thankful that the positive is going strong.

Now, to get known well enough that people can actually recognize the last name Leivan without doing something illegal. Then I'll be in! :)