Seeking Advice On Landing A First Sale

Hello everyone,

Looks like I have a lot of work to do on my site! Thank you all for your great tips and recommendations. I will make the adjustments accordingly to hopefully improve the activity and sales on my work.

Best,
Susie

Susan... Read all the recommended links from JC.

Think about how people (potential clients, collectors, purchasers), will find your work. Searching the internet. They must be able to find your work before they can see it and before they can purchase it. To do that they will search with words that we call "search tags". These search tags are words you use to describe what's in your image. So, it's very important if you want to have others find your work to have descriptive search tags (words) for and about what's in your image. On top of that you will have a lot of competition with many of the same words from others that will keep you from being on the top of the search ranking.

It's also important to understand the particular search engine that FAA uses. For instance, unlike other search engines that allow you to search for tree and will bring up everything with the four letters "tree" in it, including "trees"... here, you will have to include search tags for both "tree" AND "trees" if you have more than one tree in your image.

Welcome to FAA and all the best here.

you'll want good descriptions, and more keywords along with plurals. twitter is a pretty good place to advertise too, blogs are better. you have to get your name around. it will be uphill though because it takes time to get people to know your name and associate with your stuff.

qualitywise, you'll want to watch your noise levels, i saw a few that have a lot of rainbow noise.

but most of these pictures have no ID that tells use where you were


this says boston in the tags, but not the description. and where in boston? add more words like boat,boats,sailing,sail,water,reflection,reflections,architecture,buildings, your name - and anything else that will key people over here.

---Mike Savad

Hey Susan..

I took a few moments and breezed your images. They are very nice! I also hit your like button for Facebook.

You've been here for a very short period. It takes time to build exposure and a following. The first thing I see right away is this thought that you might be "bugging people". Until you overcome that thought with a good balance so that you are not "irritating people" you will have a hard time pushing your own talents. The old axiom "the squeaky wheel gets the oil.." has some merit. And you have lots of talent that others could use...

That said... You're not in any groups... you have not favorited any other artists work... need to develop more galleries... no other artist is on your watch list... and no FAA blog is set up. These are good things to get involved with to help establish yourself around here, make friends, and possibly get a flow going.

Then there's the facebook thing, the Stumble thing, the google plus thing, and the twitter thing... and then the possibility of ordering some of your own work and showing physical sample out in the marketplace. Yes... business cards... and so much more that others will fill the blanks in.

And time....

Love this sky,



Wish you the best.

Glenn

http://glenn-mccarthy.artistwebsites.com

Welcome to the discussion area. There are some helpful topics listed on the Need Help – Start Here tab located on top of the main forums.

Please take a look as the rules to the discussions are located there also.

You will find a Search feature which also contains links to many previously answered questions you may have.

Best of luck to you!



Put marketing in the search here in the discussions and you will find many hundreds of threads devoted to that very subject

As an artist, half of the work is marketing yourself.

Here are some good links to discussions in our forum and elsewhere about marketing your work

http://1stangel.co.uk/downloads/ Dan Turner's 7 Keys To Selling Art Online
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=720538 The Art Of Social-network Marketing Available Online For Free
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=908258 How to critique and edit your own work for better sales
http://1stangel.co.uk/fineartamerica/2011/07/12/tagging-or-keywords-and-descriptions Tagging, or Keywords and Descriptions
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=377664 Marketing Yourself
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=431967 Innovative Marketing for Artists - Challenge!
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=420132 Niche Marketing?
http://1stangel.co.uk/fineartamerica/2011/07/11/how-do-i-launch-a-local-art-show How Do I Launch A Local Art Show??
http://1stangel.co.uk/fineartamerica/2011/06/23/press-releases PRESS RELEASES what are they and how to use them
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=432109 YOUR Print Quality - Please Read
http://www.fineartamerica.com/newsletters/order-fulfillment-partner.html One of the newsletters with some good info on

Be sure to stay active on Fine Art America: join discussion, contests, etc.

We have an entire Marketing section for you to utilise to help sell your work. Try using those tools to help you.

But the best place to start is telling your friends and family.

Search takes into consideration many different factors when determining the sort order of the images.

It takes into consideration:

1. the relevance of your image keywords
2. the number of times an image has been sold
3. the number of times an image has been favourited
4. the number of times an image has been commented on (by others. Your own comments on your work do NOT count)
5. how long an image has been on the site
6. the number of times an image has been featured in a group
etc...

There are more than 25 different criteria that the search engine evaluates.

Contact Support is here http://fineartamerica.com/contactus.html You will need Technical Support for help starting out

We do not do Technical Support by telephone

Everything you need are two links when you log in.

They appear in the top middle of the page. One is your name. That leads you directly to your profile.

The second link you need is your Behind the Scenes link, situated right next to the name link.

Behind the Scenes are all the tools you need to work with on the site. Everything you need is in there.

I strongly suggest that you spend a good half hour, playing around in your Behind the Scenes, familiarizing yourself with the layout and what things are when opened.

Again, welcome.

I am brand new too and have been wondering about the same thing. Thanks for any advice.