I have my own website for years too but got stuck on the lazy - it's so much easier to upload at FAA and then spread the word around. If one advertises and spreads the word from our own websites one is better off in the long run. I did a lot of advertising throughout my social network which included advertisement of my photography, other artists work and FAA of course. I still do this as time and schedule allows. If I would have gone through my own website only 50% of all marketing I would be in better shape. It's true that FAA does a fine job getting traffic and ranking high on google but than you compete with many other artists. The FAA search is revamped 24/7 so nobody can really figure out what is going on. It appears it will now finally be fixed or another attempt will be made. It also bugs me that there is no easy way of knowing where a sale comes from here on FAA, I mean in terms of how an art collector found an image and then hit the purchase button. We also build an email list for FAA versus our own. There are a lot of negatives that I have realized are not acceptable to me any more - unfortunately those were always present but it took some time to click and as I mentioned: I am lazy in nature :-) Still love FAA and I am thankful for what they have built to provide opportunities for us artists - they really have done a lot and built a great platform but it's time for me to use it for what it is meant to be and do even more of what FAA preaches: Do your own marketing, drive traffic to your site ... just gotta do it smarter :-)
