What Social Networking Sites Have Worked Best For You?

I'm sorry I can't really say. It all seems like a crap shoot to me. I use FB, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Blogger, and my own website. I get traffic from all of them but can't ever seem to link sales here to any of those. I use StatCounter to see where visits come from to some of the above sites. They never seem to match the locations of sales made here. I can't figure it out.
But I'd say my 2 favorites, though, are FB and Pinterest. I like Pinterest because of how visual it is. Eye Candy galore! But it lacks interactivity. I like FB for its interactivity. I probably spend the most time on FB because of the conversations you can have. I've been told over and over that Twitter is still the best, but I've never been able to get it to work for me. I just can't seem to get the hang of it. I do get quite a bit of traffic from another art forum, also, but I don't think I'm allowed to mention the name here.

I've gotten sales off both twitter and FB not sure about any of the others though.

I will definitely have to get a Pinterest. For some reason I feel like trying to get Twitter to work for me is an uphill battle. I don't know what to do with it exactly

G+ and Facebook

As I didn't want to spread around too many networks, I decided to focus on FB only. I have 2 pages : one related to my regional Business and an International page. All together, they generated around 200K views in 2013
It is difficult to say which percentage of revenue this is generating but it does... and it definitely brings visibility and a good way to enlarge your audience

G+ best for me without a doubt, to start with its public, and doesn't rely on just those that follow you, also various communities means those looking to buy art can easily select an area of interest including "art for sale" communities.

Facebook is now a waste of time, however many likes you have only a handful of people see your post unless to are prepared to pay to promote.

Twitter is OK if you get followed by people who are not other artists, the problem for me is most of my followers are from here and are not potential buyers, I need to break out into the world.

Pinterest, I've never really got going with it and don't quite see the point, I'm not sure that potential customers are going to look for the art on that site, I wouldn't, but perhaps that's just me :)

Instagram, well most only post images from mobile devices and are not for sale, ok for a bit of exposure I suppose, but because of the square format its difficult to post art work there

Edit: One thing I would say, forums beat the lot, if your art work is of a particular subject (mine for example steam engines, aircraft) then find an enthusiasts forum and post there, don't spam with links to your images but join in the conversations and put your web site link in the signature box

I have fb, twitter and pinterest, none of the works for me. My only one better sale was from the themed image thread.

I was entranced by Pinterest at first, but eventually I came to believe that it's really just a site that encourages copyright infringement. As an artist, I can't in good conscience participate in that, so I closed my account.

Twitter gets the bots. Facebook can get some views and some discussion and it has got some definite interest. Pinterest gets some views and some repins. Not sure what Goggle + does for me. I can't say for sure that any of them got me a sale, but if one did, it was Facebook.

By far the site that gets my most sales is Flickr. I get requests for shots on there almost weekly. A producer for a TV show saw some of my work and within a few days, we had closed on a deal. My biggest sale on there came from a local town who saw some of my shots both railroad and non railroad from that town. The first sale led to a second sale on their economic development web site. Flickr was a great decision when I signed up for it in 2006 and when I stuck it out two years ago when they had their horrible redesign, which I still hate by the way, but which is no reason for me to give it up.

Facebook.....

Followup question... For those that use FB, Twitter etc. how did you find people to like/follow your page outside of your friends and other artists? I'm basically putting the little bit of money I've made on selling prints back into advertising my FB page. It has gotten my page a fair amount of likes but I'm not convinced that it's really bringing in any potential customers (plus as already mentioned only 20-25% of people will actually ever see your posts).

@Toby, On Facebook I paid for advertising for "likes", this was around 18 months ago and I soon built up around 1000 likes. At the time many of those followers saw the posts I made however several months ago FB changed the way posts were distributed and now only a very small percentage of followers see my posts unless I pay further to promote them. The last few posts I made less than 50 people saw them out of 1000 followers.
It may well be worth while just creating an advert for a piece of work with a link back to FAA and see how it goes but be careful to state how much to want to spend in total, its easy to let the advert run and get carried away with the cost.

http://www.facebook.com/BillSwartwoutPhotography

http://twitter.com/Beachy

EDIT: If we count blogging as "social" because people can interact by commenting, then I also have...
http://www.BillSwartwoutPhotography.com

~ Bill
~ USPictures.com

Paul it makes me wonder if it's worth paying for the advertising to get more people following your page. From what I understand growing your audience can actually hurt your engagement if the people who actually wind up seeing the posts aren't as into your work as others. 50/1000 is really awful. But how else are you supposed to try to grow? It's really annoying.

there are no stats there is no way to know. the idea behind marketing is to be seen everywhere. on twitter, facebook etc. just look at coke ads, they put themselves everywhere to be recognized by everyone. so there is no one good place, they are all good, you just want places people will see you.

---Mike Savad

None...not FAA, not Twitter, not Facebook, not flickr....

It might be my subject matter or the fact that I don't promote myself.

It's very difficult for most artists to make money from their art. Some do of course, but not many.

My instagram (@julianbanks) and tumblr are probably the most successful in my case. I use my tumblr as my main website (www.thejulianbanks.com) which is also linked to my FAA. Instagram is a great way to draw people to my tumblr. I've gotten offers for commissions and things of that nature through my instagram.

Definitely there was a collapse of fb being any use at all a few months back. The people that have liked you aren't seeing your posts, and you don't see what people post that you've liked. It's almost all sponsored ads and it's like reading the yellow pages. FB also bugs me because it randomly will send out friend requests for you; I'm fine with suggestions but I want to decide.

Twitter is mostly getting you bot hits, but I do think it has gotten me sales in the past (as Mike S said we can't know).

Pinterest, tumblr I have them but just haven't gotten to making it an organized presentation so don't promote these mostly.

I too like google+ (especially since google search so favors them).

I find that activity in either FAA or linkedin forums gets a lot of traffic, but most of these aren't buyers but other artists.

-- mary ellen anderson