Aw Upgrade - Still In The Works?

it's still a carrot waving at us. hints that it will be here. he released some software so i guess that was a surprise of some kind. i think he said soon, within a week? but that was a week ago. so don't know.

---Mike Savad

I gave up hope on this some time ago.

Some improvements would be appreciated! Hope to see something soon.

There have been some changes along the way. The site is not the way it was six months ago. Maybe he has come up with some further improvements and didn't want to release ti until it is complete.

we might have to consult the tea leaves to know the exact date. best to work the bugs out. it's nice to know that we don't need the plurals for the search any more. still not sure if thats good or bad though.

---Mike Savad

Hate tea... can we read the coffee beans instead? lol

Don't like teaser announcements either. But not sure it matters. It is want it is and it will be what it will be.

Actually I am not all that dissatisfied with what we got. Last thing I want is a whole new big learning curve of an upgrade full of bugs. It is working for me right now with the exception of a few things I would like to see that I don't think are going to be in the new upgrade.

Like I said, it is what it is.

I would be satisfied if the faa links were removed from our personal sites.

yeah i don't drink tea, it's probably the reason those fortunes don't come out right. the stuff i do have, when i have, is in a bag. and it's more of an eye patch then a divination device.

---Mike Savad

I know some people like the AW as it is now. I'm with the group that sees it as totally outdated in appearance, and light-years behind gallery sites like SmugMug. Right now, I don't use it at all and wouldn't even bother sending potential buyers a link. So, minor tweaks and 'improvements' won't do anything for me - it needs a complete replacement. Which I seriously doubt it is ever going to get.

I agree with Floyd. While there's room for improvement, the existing AW setup does the job. Still, I'm curious about what might be coming, but I'd rather they get it right than get it now.

Well maybe if they just removed all the useless clutter - and stopped appending the word 'Art' to my gallery names... nah, it's not gonna happen. But hey we now have an iPad app.

Philip, I dislike it as much as you do, but that 90s AOL look probably works for some people. It depends on who you see as your market. Bottom line, unfortunately, is that the AW sites probably aren't seen as a big revenue generator for FAA so there's no interest in upgrading them.

Wait... what.. we don't need plurals in our tags anymore.. is that what you are saying Mike? ;O)

If so .. I missed that one.

so did i.

yeah he snuck that one in i think about a week and a half ago, though you don't need plurals, it doesn't recognize them either. shortened words look more like spam.

it knows frog and frogs. it will know milkshake and milkshakes. however if i remember right, milk - will find milkshakes as well. it just looks for the most recognizable version of a word and uses that. and though we've been saying it forever that you need them, apparently it's been in place for months.

---Mike Savad

Thanks for clearing that up Mike. So no need to take them out.. just going forward don't bother. ;O)

Oh... but what about Google? I guess it probably doesn't matter... Google probably does all that already.

Has anyone tested the results like Mike is saying?
Sean, has also said that the keywords are going to be shortened from the current 500.
So would be nice to have the above parameters before all our stuff gets truncated.
-- mary ellen anderson

i did a number of experiments and simply found it was overdone. too many words -- cowcatcher (you'll get trains) - look up cow, (and still get trains, mixed with the cows), even though it's one word it breaks it up and it becomes two words. its possible that less sales are happening because it's finding too many results, hard to know. google does it's own thing and is far more advanced. it will take a name like bill, and give you results for william - its pretty annoying when you have to single it out like that. but on this site, it's a little overdone. i don't think the words will be truncated like on zazzle. just like there is a 500 cap, there are still people with a lot of words, they would have to fix it if they edited it though.

---Mike Savad

Well, images on AW display smaller than on FAA, number of images per row also differs, so no way of ordering them for both sites. Cannot get a clean white background, and turns out, or so I read, that traffic driven to AW will not improve your personal visibility in Google.

If you add up all this you end up with a visually weaker site with no Google relevance for you. Better promote yourself through FAA.

As a result of all this I am using it less and less and thinking more and more about an independent gallery with a better display and that works for my visibility. Exactly what AW was supposed to provide.

I have the growing sensation that AW is just a seemingly useful solution so we do not look for a similar one outside, but it actually won't do. I am fighting in too many fronts at the same time now, but it seems sensible to consider this an oncoming step.

Don't get me wrong. AW is a free service that comes handy in the beginning. It's just not a place to stay.

My opinion.

IF the improvements are helpful to sales because of appearance, thoughtful cosmetic changes, all well and good.......but if we don't get recognized by Google, I just don't get the point of it all, lovely as it is as a destination/link - .Am looking forward to any change,modernization,increased sizes of images, of course.......

I am happy being on FAA but it needs a lot of work. When you have people here saying just use the AW that says a lot about how much is wrong. Ignoring the problems with the search and the file pages is not going to help the problems. When someone comments on my image and their avatar and link has 4x the amount of pixels as mine, that is a pretty serious deficiency. When I have to explain to both an engineer and my mom how to link from my images to my profile and they still can't do it to my profile that is a pretty serious deficiency. When I have to put instructions in the description on how to get to my portfolio that is a serious deficiency.

You have to come to the site the way a visitor does to see how wrong it is. I guess if this is all you know about it might seems pretty good. Yes for $30 dollars its a good deal. I don't need good deals I am looking for a sales and order fulfillment platform with a search engine to reach those that are trying to find me and my images. I need a home base with high Google ranking. A high Google ranking is great, only if it helps directs viewers to your images not to something unrelated. I want the whole package and it is not that hard to do. Those that think it is about being hip or slick or modern are missing the point. It about ease of use and helping the buyer get to what they want instead of going back to Google and going to the next site. Those that can do that will be the number one soon.

Philip, where is Graphic Dimensions located?

Thanks Philip, will contact them tomorrow and see what they have. This place is pretty good but it is way to hard to find anything. We are integrating it with our web site, but not sure how it is going to work out. We have about 90,000 photographers and 1.5 million photos, so looking for a more automated way to sell them, it is rather painful doing it one at a time with the interface here.

Imagepolis - I was checking out your site and I'm curious. So you are a photo sharing site and then you sell the photos on PODs? How does that work?

Hi Edward, we invite our members to sell their photo through us and if they agree they send us a high resolution image. We do a revenue split with them. It doesn't work out to a lot of money unless the volume is there, but they don't have to do anything other than send us a file. We do the rest. We used to be the website UseFilm.com. The site went down a few years ago due to lack of interest by the owner. He gave it to me and I am in the process of resurrecting it from the dead. Working on new features, modernization and a general re-write. So far we have sold 2 images and all has been quiet on the FAA site so don't know what to expect yet.

" But FAA could sell this to us, because FAA has this high traffic that individual artists don't have. Not selling it in the way FAA already does now with the artist websites and such but more like acting as a middle man to also give the artist that more personalized automated order fulfillment, while FAA itself being invisible.."

Philip, that would never work for Sean.

The individual artist would then have to do all of their own advertising and promoting even more so then they do no. These people don't even want to spend $30 a year let alone $100 or $200 a day to promote their own webpage.

Sean has spent a lot of time investing in building the FAA brand. That is the draw as far as he is concerned and for him it is.

He has thousands and thousands sending out his brand in all of those Facebook and twitter post. All of those clicks come back to FAA one way or the other. All of those automatic post on the uploads carry the FAA brand. All of those Facebook, Twitter, G+ and the rest of those social media messages that are sent out carry the FAA brand and 90% are still using their FAA gallery and not their AW. All of those clicks come back to FAA. That is brilliant marketing for FAA, not so much for the individual. But it works great for him.

Now take the same number of artist, all trying to market their own website where the clicks only come back to that artist. Not so good for FAA. And actually it would not be anywhere near the same number of artist because only about 10-25% of the members have enough images to even think of having there own online store. But all of that 10's of thousands of member are tweeting and facbooking.

The thing is the business model is working great for FAA just the way it is. It could look like 1950 for all it matters. Sean as much as admitted he is drowning in cash flow.

It is extremely difficult for a stand alone web page, no matter how state of the art it is, to draw significant numbers. Why would Sean want to go into the business of offering services to a bunch of independent merchants that he has no control over and may be here today and gone tomorrow when he has what he has here right now?

Sean has a gold mine here for Sean. Sure it can be updated. But the day any update goes live it will be outdated.

Bottom line, if works. And you know what they say when something works... don't fix it.

Floyd, I like your take on it. That is pretty much what I figured. He has a good thing here and has done well.I cannot complain about that. I know what it takes to create something like this. All we wanted was a fulfillment company to print and ship, the extra exposure that we get from FAA and our AW site is gravy and I didn't want to have to code a store module! We have a for sale gallery on our site that gets indexed on google and is easy to find which then has links to purchase. Right now there isn't a lot of activity, but it has only been up for a few weeks, it should help people find the art that is for sale though.

Back in the day our web site was in the top 20k web sites and was really hopping. Being down for a few years didn't help and when we started back up I think we were rated somewhere around 13 million. In the past 8 months with almost no advertising we are starting a resurgence and are currently in the top 200k web sites. We still have a ways to go but we will get there. Our members are finding that we are back and they are starting to come back as well. In the sites hay day we had "get togethers" around the world, first one in Las Vegas with an attendance of around 100 people. We even had members fly in from as far away as Sweden. It was quite a community, and all before facebook and twitter. We run pretty much on donations and what little we get from the Google ads. One day it will pay the bills, maybe. ;-)

The FAA website is outdated and there is pretty much no incentive to update it.If ain't broke and all that. It is probably a cash cow, you don't mess with a cash cow.
As a marketing site for artists, forget it. It gets zero Google love, and the only way anyone sees it is if you personally lead them to it. Which is fine as long as that is understood. That's not a website it's an archive template, which is why it's only $30. It is great value for what it is, the key is to diversify and establish a portfolio site in other places that DO get found on Google.
As mentioned we are all here marketing FAA all the way and as such are their product. ALL links lead back to FAA - even from (or especially from) the AW.
Phillip - spot on.

Have you ever searched on Google for art or print related queries, Nicky? FAA is everywhere.

Unless it helps sell prints, there's no point in making changes to FAA just for aesthetic reasons.

It's easy to figure out how to buy something and configure the options on FAA. It does a good job of showing images.

Smug sites look nice but the checkout process is horrible.

I'd love to be able to put the AWS under my own domain name and have stats with it like Smug short of that (which would make it possible to advertise and actually see the results to figure out where to allocate time and money) I don't think cosmetics will make much difference to the site.

It's simple, it works and it sells a lot of stuff.

Yes another awesome announcement will be very soon (its so cool) and then i think the aw is next!!!

Well I don't think you would use FAA as your own website POD. But you are selling in FAA store here. Demanding or even thinking it's reasonable that just because you can sell a size here means somehow FAA should make this technology available on your individual website is pretty out there.

The technology for you to setup a shopping cart and link to your preferred POD is available. I think with all the security certificates and hosting required is abt $700/year. The learning curve to setup is steep and then maintenance is even more costly in time and $.

There have been several comments today about how easy it would be to 'add a check box to the auto-renew' and similar. Guys it's not easy. The easiest part of anything is putting the check box on the form, getting the check box to mean and do something is an entirely different issue. Especially in the IT world, where it's getting it to what you expect to happen if someone chick something.

Expecting FAA to put the effort and cost into making a check box so you can get every second of your membership period that you don't plan to renew is never going to be a priority for FAA. Neither is giving you free technology. I don't see the issue if you've chosen FAA as your POD that it hurts that it's under their label and order site.

-- mary ellen anderson

I think it would be a great idea if communication regarding a time-line for the roll out of any upgrade would be a bit less vague than, “coming soon”.

The thing is, with the search function working as it does now (ranking based on past sales, cutoff after 28 pages), my new stuff has absolutely zero chance based on keyword search alone. And an iPad app isn't going to change that - it's just another vehicle for FAA to sell more of what they're already selling.

The only way most of us would ever sell here is by marketing in some other way. But if I actually started doing that, why would I direct buyers here, to that clunky, dusty old AW site? I'd rather set up a modern looking gallery somewhere else - but then I need POD, and a UI for choosing a size, frame, mat etc.

Right now there's no competitor who really does it all well, but that will change. FAA doesn't want discussion of competitors here, and that's their right of course - so I think what we really need is a forum somewhere else, to discuss the larger POD/art sales picture. Where might that forum be?

BINGO, Jim! Exactly what I have been thinking.

I am not going to say when the rollout will be but, I can say with absolute certainty now that it will be soon... after the next announcement that is even sooner for something brilliant. REALLY brilliant

Shielding my eyes from the Dazzling brilliance - can't wait ! : )

Philip (and Jim), I am not disagreeing with you. I am saying that there is zero incentive for Sean to do it.

As mentioned, he is buried in cash flow. Sean has worked himself into a position to where he no longer has to do what everyone else whats him to do or what he has to do to make money. Sean is doing what Sean wants to do and it is working.

Every independent business person tries to get to that position.

What you are saying guys if right, for you. That does not make it right for Sean. What Sean is doing and where he has indicated he is going, may not be right for you. But it is want Sean wants to do and where HE wants to go.

Besides that, you don't know how many of the idea you are complaining about not having may be in whatever he is working on now.

The problem is, no matter how up to date any new anything is on the Internet, it is outdated within a few months after it is released. You can't just throw everything away every few months. Especially when what you have is still working. That is how you maximize your investment. That is business 101. Find something that works and keep doing it until l it no longer works. Pretty simple stuff.

I came in here 21 months ago. I have been selling since almost day one. I have sold a lot of stuff and every month I see growth over the previous month with the rare exceptions. And I am not anywhere near the top of any of the searches. I don't even know if my stuff ever comes up in a FAA search. And I don't over stress about it. I can't remember the last time I even checked.

If you are not selling on FAA then you need to look at you own business and marketing plan, not Sean's. His is working fantastic for himself and for some of the members that have figured how to work within Sean's.

Ya, I have made comments about certain things I would like to see. But trying to keep the FAA platform THE state of the art is not only not necessary, but it is also unrealistic, imho.

"something brilliant. REALLY brilliant"

Oh so he did incorporate all of my ideas! That is good to hear! lol

I had a stroke of brilliance once. I married my wife. Never topped that.

Aw that is SO nice :D

Jim,
That is pretty much the path I've taken. I use several PODs including FAA but here is one I use: http://finerworks.com/
They ship under your banding.
--mary ellen anderson

I'm looking forward to it. I love all the changes so far.

--Roz Barron Abellera

Oh how I hope the brilliant new thing is a real zoom. That green box is sooooooooo frustrating!

I hope my bio won't be front and center in my AW. No one is coming in to read my bio but there is information that needs to be seen. With every word I add I knock some galleries off the page. Sorry that has nothing to do with being dated. It's just a bad layout and why would I want to link to a bad layout? I want all my main galleries seen without scrolling. Sorry this is stuffI learned before there is a web. You have a second to gain attention. That's why pictures have always been important. That's why magazines and books dedicate the cover to strong images. Why put the print stuff first? And this is a print site. Please give me a reason to use this AW everyone says we should be linking our work to.

+1 What Bradford said.

I think the real answer would be a partnership with JAlbum that integrates JAlbum 'skins' with FAA. . Then we could create our own gallery sites, make them look the way we want, and have them tie into FAA for POD without needing to punch in hundreds of links by hand.

Bradford -AW is free with a premiers membership, it matches my website and it looks like it is part of it, and it doesn't have other FAA artists on the navigation bar -I have it linked directly from my navigation bar on my own website and the black background works with the black of my website - I know my website is prob a design from the 90's - i haven't updated to the new templates so Aw works great with it - if it shows my images and I can sell from there, I'm happy.

@bradford, bio is keywords.