Becoming a successful artist is hard work. But Cristina Figueredo Zizold has been on a mission to make it easier.

She's the founder and creative director of ArtistaMundo.com, a bilingual social network for artists to showcase their portfolios of work and connect with other artists around the world. And as an artist herself, she knows first hand the challenges visual artists face to get exposure.

''There are so many roadblocks,'' Zizold said. ``You have to find something really unique to stand out. You have to be able to communicate. You have to know a network of people. It's a complex system for an artist to get to where they are within the galleries, and very few really get there.''

The 30-year-old University of Miami graduate student has been working on ArtistaMundo.com since 2003 with her family, and they are about to take the 1,500-member site to the next level. This week, the company announced a partnership with eBDSoft, a Barcelona-based software designer and manufacturer of Web applications for businesses, which is investing more than $200,000 in site improvements. eBDSoft had been contracted before by ArtistaMundo to do work on the site, but now eBDSoft will be owning 15 percent of the company.

FAMILY ENDEAVOR

ArtistaMundo has been quite the project for the Cuban-American family. Zizold's father, Fernando Figueredo, was with her from the begining as co-founder and chair of the board. He is chair of the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Florida International University and previously worked as a vice president of corporate communications at AOL Latin America.

Zizold also works on the site with her two sisters: Annette Figueredo, 33, who manages marketing and sales, and Alexandra Figueredo, 27, who is an assistant vice president at Gibraltar Private Bank and works as an financial councilor for the site.

Fernando said investors have estimated the value of ArtistaMundo.com to be somewhere between $3 million and $5 million, and they are speaking to two major Internet service providers about potentially becoming their arts channel. The company is projecting that it will reach 11,000 members in a year and 300,000 in four years.

''We're at the point where we have investors who are interested and proposals that we've been asked to submit,'' Zizold said. 'A venture capitalist I spoke to this week said, `If you have a few more members, you can come talk to us,' so that's not too bad.''

Jeremiah Owyang, analyst at Forrester Research, said he's seeing niche social networks like this being made for every single type of variable and interest group. But he says to do one that's global in nature can be a challenge.

In a 2008 survey, 35 percent of U.S. adults said they used a social network in the past 30 days, Owyang said. But each culture is different. In Europe it's 16 percent.

''Technology and culture impacts adoption. A single strategy to approach each culture the same is not an effective way to do it,'' Owyang said.

ADDING LANGUAGES

Right now the site is in English and Spanish, and a Portuguese translation is in the works. The company also owns the domains artistamondo.com and artistemonde.com for the option to build niches for Italy and France in the future. Zizold said the company is still figuring out which direction to take when it comes to expanding to more languages. But language hasn't been a factor for some members from other countries.

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