Just Not Selling

What are you doing to market your work?

You have to actively market yourself. There are tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of photographs here on FAA. It's a lot for people to sort through. There are threads written by successful sellers about how to market your work in and out of FAA. Do a search of the discussions for those. They give great tips on how to maximize yourself here on FAA (keywords, titles, descriptions, features, etc).

Just putting your work up, no matter how wonderful it is, won't get you sales. It's too big a pond! You'll have to find ways to promote yourself and direct potential customers to your selling page here. Get a Facebook page for your photography (artist's page). Get a webpage, participate in other forums and messageboards where it's reasonable to put a link to this site in your profile or as your signature line. Basically, you need to advertise.

You might consider looking through the work here - especially people you see in the recently sold blurbs - compare your work and prices with the others and try to get a feel for what an average markup for your type of work is. Look on other sites too, to get a feel for what an average markup percentage would be for your type of images. You don't want to undervalue yourself, but overpricing for the sake of making a buck will mean you sell less pieces overall. Me, I'd rather sell more and make a little less on each one. You need to figure out what feels right for you.

this is lovely - and very en vogue at the moment for home decor - has that shabby chic vibe. Do you have a Pinterest board? You should!

Found it! This cut and paste brought to you courtesy of JC Findley.

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

You sell to family? How do you manage that??

Really Jeff, I can't even get my family to buy my work.

My mom has bought a couple greeting cards and my dad's cousin bought 10 works of Troy, Ohio for their Salon. Gotta spread the word and keep marketing!

have you advertised? that's usually the reason. you should have more images and start people in the gallery. i think your prices are way to low, when people look for quality or gifts, they look for a higher priced thing. you should have good descriptions of each thing. talk about location, or even pull on heart strings using those dogs. google picks up on this.


you should watch the quality and horizons on this, it could turn off a buyer, or worse, make them think the rest has this look. the close up of this, will probably never print as it's too soft and stretched, compressed looking up close.

you have to constantly advertise work, put them in groups, come into the forums every now and then.


you have to decide who your market is and aim for them. i see many images kind of hodged podged all over. like while its interesting you made this - who's wall would this be for?


while this isn't a critique thread, i'll be honest, the small version attracts attention, but i don't care much for the close up as it just looks soft. a buyer might want the details of the bird and not an effect. there is no description and most of your keywords are kind of common over all.

i think you should rewrite your bio and explain to the buyer what to expect when they look at your work - like what kinds of things do you make, and why should they buy from you. rather than a history of your camera and software.


---Mike Savad

If you can even get your family to LOOK at your Gallery you're off to a great start. Then ask them to share share share & brag for you.
I'll look through your work later - but it's all about the networking, which I haven't started yet.

Unless you have thousands of photos listed and thousands of keywords, the chances of selling are very slim.

I recently sold a large canvas here of a painting of mine. I am marketing my art on pinterest, wanelo, twitter, facebook.....I have made a few hundred dollars in the last 2 years online. Can't retire.......BUT............ If you like my work
, please let me know and share!! http://rhonda-clapprood.artistwebsites.com

I just opened an account at Wanelo: http://wanelo.com/toonicorn/collections/toonicorn-studio-fantasy-art-gallery

Family? Buy art?

Who wants to adopt me :D

My photos are BURIED behind a hundred pages of previously viewed work with more hits. How discouraging. I've moved from concern about my work being viewed to my work being stolen! Anyone can right click and save good quality images on this site. A little watermark in the corner is easy enough to crop out. Even more discouraging!

@Rhonda - I just opened a wanelo account as well - thanks for the mention of that!

Another Pinterest site?

@kristine - they can't do a whole lot with a 900 px image, well they can, but they were never planing on buying anything in the first place. if your being buried, you have to advertise your stuff.

---Mike Savad

Anyone can right click and save good quality images on this site.
-------------------

No. Don't worry about that. The best they can do is a screen capture, and then they will only get it in whatever resolution their computer screen is displaying -usually 72 dpi. Watermarks and tiny previews just make it that much less worthwhile.

Kristine,

It takes lots of footwork to get noticed. You've been here for probably a month. I see no group involvement, 4 favorited pieces of art, nobody on your watchlist, no personal website, and no link to your Facebook page. You do nice work, but need lots of legwork to get noticed! Can't go up the ranking on Fine Art America or Google without being noticed.

Mike is right about the 900 pixels thing. But even more, if you can't be found it won't get stolen anyways. If you are going to do business on the net the chance you take of an image being lifted will always be there.

I agree with everything Mike said.

OUCH!! That hurt. ;)

Thank you for the wonderful advice! I market my world on wanola, google plus, Facebook, pin interest, twitter, and digg. I will get more involved with the forums, how did you get my photos into this posting? How did you do that? @mike

it's also not just advertising, it's who you market it to. like cat people won't be interested in dog stuff, and vice versa

to post an image in the forums ---- on the image go to the right, you'll see a box, in the box you'll see colors, below those colors you'll see a text box, in that box copy the code and paste it here, and done.


---Mike Savad

@kristine, as said you've been here a month, only have 86 images and not that many keywords. the search is set up on the basis of how many sales you get and how popular you are. you can't depend on the search, you have to reel them in.


---Mike Savad

it is important to know the name of your subject: for example this one is a crocus not a tulip. if someone looking for a crocus image, it won't show up during search.

OMG, thank you so much. @ Alfred @ Mike I need to do better.

Thanks to everyone who responded. And yes, "OUCH" is appropriate. I have sold on several stock sites where I had daily views and sales. I'm learning that this is a bit different. Thanks! again.

stock sites advertise all over the place and push words by the truck full. on here you have to pedal your own work.

---Mike Savad

@Julie - "No. Don't worry about that. The best they can do is a screen capture, and then they will only get it in whatever resolution their computer screen is displaying -usually 72 dpi. Watermarks and tiny previews just make it that much less worthwhile."

Not so, I'm afraid. Any image can be saved from this site to the desktop at full resolution with the swipe of a mouse. By 'full resolution', I mean the 900 pixel preview that appears on the site.

Your work is very nice, I think you just need to have it seen by more potential customers.

You definitely need to beef up your descriptions and include some key words in the description, like location, what the subject is, season of the year, etc... Many of your photos don't even have a description, and the ones that do don't include important keywords that someone searching on google may type to find your image.

Marketing using the social networks, email lists, and face to face in the real world are also very important.

I am a newcomer and just found this discussion.
I have been with a large respected general online agency for some time with only a couple of sales. The site operates despite a fairly tight marking procedure for initial submissions before enrolment is accepted and all images are marked out of ten from then on, my point being that my images met the criteria which includes marketability but sold little.
Possibly my stuff was too routine, its difficult seeing something that stands out from the crowd.

Before I moved abroad from the UK I was with a specialist site (Flora & Fauna) and enjoyed sales with gardening magazines and even an American Encyclopedia.
Very excited about becoming a member of Fine Art America but thought it worth pointing out that specialist sites do have their uses for people who mainly take one subject and know it well. (For flowers etc it can take some time to research the botanical names to add to keyword lists and you do have to be sure the plant is properly identified).