One reason to hesitate calling yourself a "net artist" is you surrender so much control to graphically and artistically challenged web developers. These people sneer at the average non-technical user but have as much understanding of image-making as a first-day Bob Ross student. Two real world examples below. How hard is it to screw things up this badly?
Non-animated graphic (to be used in lieu of a headshot) before uploading to Vimeo (3 KB gif and detail):
After uploading to Vimeo (15 KB jpeg and detail):
Before uploading to Twitter (12 KB animated GIF):
After uploading to Twitter (6 KB jpeg):
Some bloody-minded artiste friends will inevitably say "hey I like the number two examples." This post is not for you.
Update: Feedly users may have noticed the layout of this post is fuX0red by Feedly's CSS. As I was saying...