Advertising How Much Is Too Much And How Much Is Not Enough

One of the most common discussions that comes up is advertising (selling) . Particularity how much and where to advertise.

I have posted a blog: Advertising Your FAA Artistwebsite http://fineartamerica.com/blogs/advertising-your-faa-artistwebsite.html

After you read the comments below you may want to check it out.

There are some here, and I don't mean to target or embarrass anyone, that seem to know little or nothing about advertising, some hate it to the point that they refuse to do it and some know more about the subject then I will ever know.

One of things that people struggle with is the time it takes away from creating their art. I stated one time that advertising takes away from the time you have to create your art and creating your art takes away form the time you need to sell your art. What I mean by that is, you have to find a balance if you want to sell your art anywhere.

How well you will sell on FAA will, in no small part, depend on how much you have to sell on FAA. I know, some will argue against that and point to a few that have very little product and sell all the time. Given the chance to research that I believe you will find special circumstance that would explain that. The obvious one is how big of a following that artist has. But there are other extenuating circumstances as well. I am not address those issues here. I am addressing the issue for the benefit of those average sellers on FAA. Not average art or artist, but those that come into the threads nearly daily looking for help.

I have built several online stores going back way before FAA and even eBay were selling art on the Internet. One of the most common things that I have seen was the threshold of where the sales seem to take a huge leap. That threshold was 1000 items for sale. That seemed to be a magic number.

I am not suggesting that you have to have 1000 items for sale on FAA. But what I am trying to point out that there is a direct correlation between the number of products for sale and sales. This is common sense if nothing else. There is also a correlation between product mix and sales. As the old saying goes "you can not sell off an empty wagon".

If I had to suggest a number, I would say somewhere in the 200 uploads area is where I seen my first big jump in sales. But 1000 was a bigger jump and where steady sales began to take hold. I know that 1000 is huge number for most artist. Probably totally unobtainable for some. There are ways of increasing those numbers with out having 1000 individual pieces, but that is another subject.

I think that if you have less then 200 uploads and you are really concerned about selling, you need to shut out all the noise and spend the majority of your time creating more art. I have used the 25/75 rule. Spend 75% of your time creating new art and 25% selling or marketing. And selling and marketing does NOT include the groups, contests, likes and favorites or hanging out in and starting threads that do not go directly to marketing and creating. Those groups and contests, likes and favorites and creating view and followers of other FAA members are NOT going to create many if any sales.

That same time should be spent building your up Facebook friends and Twitter following or developing other ways of reaching the outside of FAA market place. There are several other free adverting vehicles but I am not going to go into them here. As you gallery grows, so will your advertising base grow. How many FAA members friend your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter is not near as important as how many people outside of FAA are following and befriending you. You simply must reach the greater art buying public to have any chance of achieving decent sales.

Product numbers are important but so is the product mix. If you have a nothing but seascapes in your gallery, you are obviously not very likely to sell to a buyer that is looking for western art.

We are not allowed, for good reasons to point out specific members of FAA so I can not show you examples. But they are there. Several of the most successful sellers that I have run across and talked to on FAA have a very diverse product line. Westerns, seascapes, florals, abstracts, wildlife and other genres. Some here will tell you that you have to focus and stay in one genre. I totally disagree. I think that you want to appeal to as many art buyers as possible.

One last thing. Some here mistakenly think that what is working for some one else will work for them. THIS IS JUST BAD THINKING!

You have to tailor an adverting plan to what is best for you. Not just do what anyone else tells you to do. I cover that in that blog in the link above.