Large Clearing Houses At Faa And Pixels?

I'm not sure you've proved which comes first, thus, where the importance of virtual warehouses is.

IF "the usual subjects" have obtained such overpowering presence through...1. Talent, 2. Hard work promoting, then I say...all power to them.....and, do as they do!

There are a lot of platitudes to describe the phenominum you discovered.....money makes money; the cream always rises to the top: the public are sheep and buy "brands" not quality, etc, etc.

You're certainly doing your homework! !

Vivian, if these were individual artists like you or I, with loads more marketing "talent" and better work, I'd be inclined to agree with you. But what I'm seeing is generic, but decent stuff, being flooded into ALL the spaces by many seemingly interconnected and possibly branches of the same global clearing house. Similar to what we're seeing with these large Chinese "shops" popping up constantly on Amazon.

If that's the case, then I really don't see how any of us can ever hope to compete for visibility with virtual art warehouse behemoths like these, and it appears they have either figured out how to "work" the system to keep mostly their inventory at the top of all the lists, OR they have struck backroom sweetheart deals with many of the POD site owners to feature them prominently above all of the "little people noise."

If that's indeed what's going on, I think it'd be good to know that's who the REAL competition is. And we as individuals really don't stand much of a chance on that playing field.

I'd love to be proven wrong about this.

I'm not being negative or anything like that. Just trying to figure out if it's hopeful for an individual to creatively get their work seen and sold here? Or, if the real competition is just too large and it'd be better to try and find one of those behemoths that'd be willing to market a few of your pieces for you instead of trying to do it all by yourself via newsletters, cards, social networks, etc.

We are competing with a large amount of art that is put here with gallery accounts. I am not sure what you mean by clearinghouse. There are art dealers here that represent represent artists and museums. There are also dealers that upload public domain images. The competition is fierce. In a sense FAA is like the real world. Every kind of art that could be sold as prints is potentially here. They are not excluding people to make it easier for those with no track record.

The big advantage you have here is that you can market your images while the big dealers are not likely to do that. In some cases there may be some backroom deal no doubt. But that does not exclude you from moving up the ranks in the search or finding a niche. Ultimately you have to bring buyers to you images. I am far less concerned about the other artists her than I am about how FAA presents my work and how well they allow people looking for what I have to be able to find me.

Right now I have better ranking in some areas on Google than I have on FAA. So when they link into here based on my past success and marketing efforts I am very much concerned that they get to see what they were looking for and not get shown a lot of art that has nothing to do with what the Google search was. That unfortunately is not what always happens.

Remember not everyone wants what is popular all over. You just might have what they are looking for.

Look at the recent sales from the front page and you will see that the big sellers still sell but so do a lot of lesser known individual artists. This is no different than the way the music world is right now. You have large record companies and music publishers dominating but lot if indies out there selling too. We have a saying in music, "Don't quit your day job" and that also applies here to most of us.

I wouldn't go so far as to think that there is some secret clearinghouse. Maybe some artists have reps that take care of making sure they are on all the PODS, etc. I would say that is the exception. The big dealers don't have any artists that dominate beyond the classics and not many want the classics.

Bradford, you bring up another issue I've been trying to figure out, that is... targeting a general audience, and getting in with a large virtual clearing house "gallery/art dealers" who're spreading your work high and low and for cheap. It seems eventually your work would lose any perceived value and eventually be worth about what they clear out the art shelves at Walmart at the end of each season with rock bottom prices.

Or, is it better to forget about the general market, and focus on a niche fan base that loves your work and want to support you as an art patron with lower volume but higher premium pricing?

I'm thinking unless you hit it out of the park with a couple of extremely popular images, you're never going to win at that game after all the vested parties take their cut.

Thoughts?

ps. I didn't say "secret warehouses" they were very easy to uncover as the sources.

I think you've got very little proof, so far, of your theory, Skip. And, I'm not sure what good it would do to get to the 'woodpile' ! If it's true, there is a huge monopoly, and, more importantly, "it"prefers mediocrity Art.....am not surprised.

The big money in Art....item vs item...is Originals....! To break one's ass to promote a print that gets you (others!) their $50 occasionally, does not compare with gallery sales of one's originals.

Nothing has changed that. And the more paper/canvas products on the market, the more each artist's Art is devalued. It is disposable, lovely,throw-away "art"...nothing to do with talent, sincerity,passion....prints are disposable commodities....whether in the artist's lifetime or when they finally disintegrate.
All pods are hype. Nice for the popular top artists, but, what stress for the "underclass" who never get into upwards of Page 15! The game is rigged, as you so rightly point out.

It's a thrill to get a $50 profit sale, three times a year? And, all the time, really working,promoting...the pod! .? Oh well, as pods go, at least/most. "Our FAA" is the best.....let us know about that big warehouse in the sky! Same place Fortune Cookies come from. Damned good fare, damned great marketing.....

I'm not fooled about myself, or pod! Just compare the bottom lines,lol.!

....

Another thing to keep in mind is that not all the sales traffic is coming in through FAA. Museums have web sites that link to print dealers that fulfill through FAA. Some big artists use FAA for fulfillment. They might even flip a switch from time to time and use another POD. I am sure if they are big then FAA would try and provide incentives for FAA to be their order fulfillment site.

Keep in mind that we are all getting a free ride in the Google ranks from the big sellers as well as those individuals that do things like market hard and sponsor searches. Essentially if you are not bringing n your own traffic then you are leaching off the traffic that others have generated. The pool of buyers is still largely untapped.

Personally i think new artists should not even show up in the search until they have proved themselves worthy by bringing in some sales without the search. If you don't bring something to the party why should you eat for free?
Maybe you have it backwards. Some of these big "clearinghouses" have been in business for decades and we are lucky to have then linking their customers here and not somewhere else.

Very interesting point. I have 3 sites all run by myself and was wondering why the other 2 are doing so great but nothing here yet. 1 I use social media, 2 I have a decent client base, 3 I work my butt off at it daily. So with that said the same images I have here are selling like crazy on my other site but not here: here is a few examples


zero sales here 12 sells on the other site(took photo thanksgiving day)


( sold in 3 days

sorry find it a lil crazy but Im game to play and work it all out

Vivian, no "proof" needed. I'm just not posting the various virtual gallery clearing house names here in the forum and the artists they're placing in all the top spots... because I'm guessing that's not allowed?

It's not hard to figure out on your own. Just pick out some of the most featured artists here on FAA, then start doing some searches for their names, their art, and the companies they're attached to. You'll see that we're up against large conglomerates here for prime visibility and the power of volume/bulk to their advantage against our lowly best individual efforts.

You seem to have interpreted my post as being accusatory. It is not. It's a very clear and verifiable observation that I'm trying to get validated. If I'm correct, that means I will need to completely go back to the drawing board and find a new way to try and compete. Nothing more. Nothing secret. Just asking those who regularly spend more time on this forum that I have historically, what their take on all this is.

I tend to hang out a lot for a few weeks, then I go away for months. That time is coming soon, but I'd like to retool my approach for hopefully better success before I go away and do something else... like live my life instead of trying to figure out search algorithms and looking for level playing fields. ;)

Same thing happened to microstock. It started small, and established photographers didn't want to get involved, so newbies and part-timers had some success. But the big players took note and within a few years, all the agencies were flooded with the same stuff from the same big 'factory' producers.

I can't prove this, of course, but I believe a big difference between microstock and FAA is that while microstocks also heavily weight the search rankings by past sales, it's mostly per-image, whereas on FAA it's obviously per-contributor. That's why we see weird search results containing works from best-selling artists that don't even match any of the keywords. That doesn't fly on the microstocks, where customers need specific subjects and aren't just looking for something pretty.

Once companies like Getty come in, with 10s of thousands of quality images, we all move to the rear. W-a-a-y in the rear.

Skip, for clarity, first/foremost...."accusatory" Not!
You struck a chord....obviously, if William, for instance can do everything the same out there, and make good sales at two out of three sites....I'd say the market attending here is different for his product, and, that the competition here is tough....good for the top players...again, and the pod! Not him!

I'll be interested in your conclusions.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the 'no promotion-no stress' time of my life....just loving the art and artists....

Thanks Vivian, I will say this I have alot of those top photographers on my facebook, twitter and so on, but when we go out shooting business is never mentioned, I see it as everyone has their own client base, although mine could increase, in a way I could say I fall in the catagory he is speaking of. the artistist her are some of the greatest known and clearing houses or what ever you want to call it, in my opinion is false.

Bottom line is putting your work in front of the right person. I have art work in hotels, bistros, hospitols and so on. Now Im not bragging but I put alot of leg work in talking to local dealers and it worked it out for me. They put my name out there along with waht I do and the sells come to me.

A local dealer showed a client some of my stuff and 1 lead to 2 then 3 then 4 and so on.

Do I fit this pattern I THINK NOT.

Skip, it's no secret that there are many large corporate sellers here. I learned the hard way when from one day to the next I had ten pages of Getty images ahead of me in the search. The best thing to do is forget about the search. FAA sells what the public wants and what it feels will generate the most profit. I mostly ignore the search nowadays but recently I was looking for something and noticed that the corporate entities are starting to occupy more and more prime real estate here at FAA.

It's a bit like any main street in any town: one Starbucks might not be a problem but before you know it the entire street is filled with big corporations and little mom and pop stores are forced out of business.

Noting to add just want to get notices in my email so I can keep up on this one!

Skip, I don't ever know what you are talking about or what you are getting at.

That there are huge players in the print business is not any sort of new discovery and yes, they make deals with the big retailers.

I don't understand the point you are tying to make.

There is nothing sordid or illegal or unethical with people dealing in volume. Some of these houses are flying under the radar simply because they do not want have to mess with a bunch of small timers calling them. They deal in huge numbers.

You want to buy 50,000 pieces I can hook you up. But most of the them will not deal with less then that. And they only want to deal with artist with a proven sales track record.

This is have been going on for years and years. Now they are switching over to Giclees and POD's. That you were not aware of it does not mean there is anything sordid going on.

There are artist on FAA selling Giclees that I can buy for 1/8 of the price that they themselves or there agents or representatives are selling them for. In fact I still have some of their earlier lithos in my warehouse right now.

I used to have a telemarketing room with 8 people calling all over the USA and Canada selling packages of prints. We dealt with these huge "clearing houses" that you call them, all the time. But we had to buy in huge quantities. If you were in the market at that level you would know all about them. The guys I bought from most often are not even on the Internet.

Go to one of the big trade shows and they are all there. But you better be ready to talk volume or they are not going to give you the time of day.

As an artist, you have to have proven seals track record and a ton of images before they will talk to you. And then you more then likely will have to have an agent. It is not unlike getting a book published.

"Maybe you have it backwards. Some of these big "clearinghouses" have been in business for decades and we are lucky to have then linking their customers here and not somewhere else."

Probably a very good way of looking at it.

I don't know who Skip means when he used the term "clearing house". Not sure if he is talking about the publishers or the big distributors.

I am still a distributor for several very large publishes. They are the only source for the images that they own the copyright on. No one can sell if for less they they can. I have sort of sweetheart deal with a few of them because I have been with them for years and years and have sold a lot of paper for them. I no longer have to meet minimum orders to get a significant discount. (as mentioned above) but if I want to get the best and lowest prices I have to buy in quantity.

If I want to sell them on FAA or any POD or publish them myself I have do a licencing deal with them and it has to be for significant numbers.

If I do that, I can sell those images on FAA, Amazon, Art.com, print.com, posters.com and any other retail site. But I can also sell them to Haddads or Sagebrush or New York Graphics or any of the wholesale distributor or any of the jobbers that are out there.

I used to do that on a small scale compared to the big guys. So I guess that would make me one of these "clearing houses"?

Floyd,

Since you're struggling to understand what I'm talking about, let me see if I can break this down more simply for you. I never claimed anything "sordid" as you say.

I've been on FAA for a good while. I think 8 years now. It's changed a great deal in that time and that's not a surprise or unexpected. I have over 1730 images here and have checked in from time to time to see what the landscape looks like.

Over the last week or so, I've been trying to get a clear picture of what's going on here at FAA and what I might do to personally evolve my approach for better success.

My prices have been historically high. I've sold at those high rates so I kept them high. I just don't sell very often at those rates so I've been forced to recalibrate and adjust my approach.

On the surface, FAA appeared to be, and actually used to be, more of a place where individual artists mostly presented their work, talked about art, and when they sold something they crowed about it from time to time.

Over time, the garden has evolved to include much larger libraries, and large collections featuring a few of the same artists across the board. Some of the work I can see how it moves larger volume and some of it seems to occupy prime site space due solely to the fact it's included in a larger collection that has more power here and at other sites due to their sheer size.

So, as an individual who has proven that his work does sell, and that it can and has sold for higher prices than you can find in many top galleries, it's a fair bet that given the right approach I could find a way to be more efficient and refine my practices to yield better results.

From this point I start asking questions, some of the answers make my angry to be honest, but I sleep on it, calm down, and then approach the puzzle fresh by starting to gain as much data as I can. One staff member here, and the owner of the site tell me that I have to find a better way to drive my own traffic to my work on the AW site. Ok, check. Working on that.

They also tell me my prices aren't in line with what's being sold in volume here and across the net. Ok. Check, maybe I can tweak that some, bring it closer inline without going bargain basement, and run a promo or two to stimulate some sales. Check. Did that, got more sales.

So at this point in the story, I'm polishing up my Artist Website, front loading my galleries with the stuff that's either sold or shown the most potential to sell from social networking responses, etc. I work on getting more relevant content associated with my work and sponsoring more FAA pages to have a better chance at getting better Google ranking and being found.

Ok.. now we're cookin', getting more traffic, selling more prints, and now what do I need to do to get to the next level? Well, let's see who the biggest sellers are and what they're doing that I'm not. Looks like they're everywhere and not just here. Oops, I was wrong. They aren't just individual artists, they're part of a large collection connected to other large collections and the power of bulk and volume behind them. Is their work better? In some cases yes, in many more... not really. It's just being marketed better and by a much larger entity than little ol' me.

So... what do I do with this information that I don't just have to be a better marketer than fellow artist Betty Smith, but if I'm going to compete for audience I have to beat out the competition from goliath collections with much more clout than me?

Now what do I do? I can't compete with that! They can lower their pricing where they're only making $5 on a print and still make a substantial profit because they're dealing in volume. Lowering my prices down to their level, but spending all my waking ours trying to attract buyers for such a low markup is never going to work out. It just won't.

Then I think, well... maybe I've got this all wrong. Maybe I'm not really competing with gargantuan libraries wielding enough volume power to occupy all of the space on these POD sites and keep the independents buried underneath. Maybe it's not as futile as it appears, so I'll just run it by my brethren on the forum to see if there really is a way to still thrive against much larger collectives.

Do the larger collections who bring the clout of volume and promise of more sales get extra incentives in addition to the very best site placement? I haven't a clue. I would imagine if they can guarantee large volume sales then that would get them some favor. Again, I don't know if that's the case.

It all comes down to this... if you want to earn a decent income from your art work via POD sites like FAA, etc. but you only have the power of a small independent, do you even have a chance at all? Or, are you wasting your time? If I'm wasting my time, then fine. I'll brush my hands off and do something else.

The most valuable commodity any of us have in the end is what ever time we're blessed with. And, I don't intend to waste mine chasing marketing/search engine algorithms and trying to compete in an arena full of art collection Goliaths, where I'm guaranteed to fail. If there's still a fair chance at success, I'll take the gamble.

If I'm just wasting my time, I'll move onto something else. Plain and simple. Is that all crystal clear now? Nothing "sordid" or "unethical" from anyone involved. Just a lowly little guy trying to figure out if he can hang in a pond full of whales and not drown.

***Thinks to self.....HMM.....maybe he has a point...maybe I am wasting my time here if big players are going to put up thousands of works from multiple artists under one account***

***Ponders meaning of life****

***Checks FAA balance.......***

Nope......I'm good here......thanks!

If I put half as much effort into selling my work as you put into this theory.....I'd have made $100.

Juuuuuust sayin.

What theory? Just the facts bub. My balance looks decent today too. Just looking at how best to evolve into the future. Not fishing for "snark." Good for you if you can earn $100 in the 10mins it took me to type that.

You simply insinuated that it looks like you are wasting your time because you can't compete.....or at least I think that's what you are saying with statements like the following.

"It all comes down to this... if you want to earn a decent income from your art work via POD sites like FAA, etc. but you only have the power of a small independent, do you even have a chance at all? Or, are you wasting your time? If I'm wasting my time, then fine. I'll brush my hands off and do something else.

The most valuable commodity any of us have in the end is what ever time we're blessed with. And, I don't intend to waste mine chasing marketing/search engine algorithms and trying to compete in an arena full of art collection Goliaths, where I'm guaranteed to fail. If there's still a fair chance at success, I'll take the gamble."

If your balance looks good like you said above, what are you worried about? Is it worth the gamble or not?

My efforts here are rewarded...consistently and well. Simply posting a counterpoint.....with a little snark added in.

The half effort comment is also my attempt to tell people to stop worrying about what others are doing and start selling their work. Its incredible when your efforts begin to be focused on making your sales instead of the success of others how you tend to actually make sales.

You asked if its something to be concerned about....I am only concerned with my own bottom line so I say no.

Well champ, I'm busy sponsoring pages between posts... so yeah, I'm doing what I can.

I think what you're missing in my posts are the inclusions of question marks... such as this one "?"

The question marks were included to inflect a question, meaning I don't know the answers. I'm asking the questions with hope that other's do.

Here's that question thingy again, but more concise. "IF, the landscape I've described is indeed correct, then is it a waste of time to compete against that if you have aspirations of better returns for your effort than just a few hundred dollars a month?" See it?! There it is again, a "question mark". That means I don't know the answer. ;)

I'm making a lot more than a couple hundred dollars a month here from random sales at this point.....and the past couple months I haven't marketed that hard being very busy with portraits.

So for me...I know the answer...and the answer is its worth my time. I don't have time to waste wondering if I can compete.....I'm too busy competing.

And....at this point....I am the epitome of a small fish here. I have fewer than 120 works.

oh lord this is just too much, I havent made a sale here yet but with my skills and knowledge base I believe I will be a strong contender, and for Thomas congrats on your sales, my other site is off the hook, and this one is well on its way.

Dean,

Those last two paragraphs are golden. :)

Yes, Dean, yes!

Following this discussion with much interest.

Skip,

This thread, like almost all of the thread like this one, has one major problem.

People are making sweeping statements. Life does not work that way. (True sweeping statement number one)

There are at least one billion people with the wealth to buy prints. The timing of when they need to buy prints
varies, but because there are so many potential buyers it is a constant stream of buyers. The warehouse
or gallery guys have a major edge over you, and they do not have a major edge over you. It is a duality. If
prints sell basically one at a time galleries v an artist either party could win the sale. This is repeated over and
over again and will be for decades going forward.

Another duality, it is not about the social media angle and it is about the social media angle. I have over 12k Twitter
followers in less than three months. I have had one sale. And I am not completely sure where it came from.

Another duality, I am not successful as of now, but three years from now I will in all likelihood be rather successful at selling art
online. Time creates more than one reality. In time you can be in every room in your house. But only one room at a time.

The sweeping statements are as right as they are wrong. Another duality.

Duality, two (or more) realities for one thing, one statement.

Skip prices count as much to you as your potential clients.
Selling one print every now and then is not worth much.
Finding where to sell many prints is worth more obviously, but
you can charge your way out of a market successfully. Ironic D'uh!!

Over pricing something makes sense, but excluding potential clients
does not make sense.

As far as the large crowd that says they have few if any sales.....
This process takes talent and quite a few other characteristics the artists
all need to have to be successful.

There are more people signing up for free accounts and leaving a selfie
than people putting up art. While JC or Abbie might dispute the exactness of
that statement, it is amazing how many do only show up to post an avatar, if that.

The next group puts in a lot of effort, but are very inconsistent in their follow through
and/or possibly their technical knowledge.

The group that does more and technically is proficient, but comes in here to discuss
their lack of sales has very little business savvy. These threads are meant to help them.

The final groups brake down into individual success stories of varying degrees. But they
are individual stories. And that is why, even for the Gallery owners, broad brush strokes
apply less and less to these groups. They have no singularity to them.


You can hear from Mike or Floyd. Both know the ropes. Both are giving people in their own way.
But both will stress how they made money. Success is a sport for the individual. No one can take
advise from Mike or Floyd without thinking of how only they can apply that advice. It will be very different
for you than me how we each make sales.

The well meaning old timers who are successful, dont forget that we new comers can not hook line and sinker take
any of your advise. We have to work to process what we get from you very carefully. This does not mean you are wrong, but
our works of art are not at all the same. Our dispositions are often very different. We have different goals in time, and the technical
landscape has been reshaping FAA, SM and Google search. Blanket statements are as much a service as a disservice.

I have to strongly say thanks to the old timers for helping many of us.


Dave

Skip,

UCONN has won the Men's Basketball championship twice in the last several years. The first time only
a few years ago, Kemba Walker led the team. Walker is 6'1". He is short to be playing basketball.

What is the difference between a 6' 8" forward and a 6'1" point guard? Seven inches. Why does that
generally mean so much to men? All men at some time in their life measure how the next guy is taller.
Why would seven inches matter so much? Because the seven inches is not from their feet up to the top
of their heads. The seven inches is the difference in who sees over the other guy going eye to eye. When one guys eye
level is higher than the next the inches of difference gets magnified.

Kemba Walker age 21 took home an NCAA championship because guys 6' 8" were not intimidating to him at all.
He went over them easily. It is only seven inches. As opposed to the full 6" 8" it feels like.

Gallery owners, warehouse owners etc......just sell your art. Go on over their heads.

You learn more on how to work with people from playing and watching sports than in any other endeavor.

Dave

Abbie, another great day for the Blues........

Did Kemba Walker have one hand tied behind his back though? Was his basket higher? His ball heavier? Did the opposing team have a 1000 players on the field making it impossible to shoot for the basket? Were there different rules for each team?

No, there was a level playing field.

@Dave Absolutely :)

God did not give Walker height.

He took his best shot and won.

He can never be quoted in any way as saying guys a lot taller than me intimidate me.

See prior post.

Dave

Abbie,

You a fan? Alright.

Dave

Edit we are now in generation four of Chelsea fans in my family. The team celebrated its founding the other day
in 1905? The year my Grandfather was born.

God gave Walker the ability to overcome physical limitations; he took the ball and ran with it and beat the odds. Good for him, all that practice, determination and courage paid off.

How many shots would he have made with the basket welded shut though?

Practice, skills, determination: yes they matter David. I see where are you are trying to go. But all that doesn't mean anything if the basket is physically welded shut. And that seems to be the case with the search engine.

My chicken came before your egg.

But debating it is a waste of energy.

Dave

The search engine debate is indeed a waste of time; it's been done to death and FAA will not change it.

The OP however wrote

Ok, this all looks sort of ominous and discouraging to me. But, maybe I don't understand exactly what's going on. I was under the impression that we collectively were mostly in direct competing with other individual artists with just a few library collections in the mix. But the evidence of what I'm seeing is that the top real estate throughout this site is completely dominated by large virtual art warehouses that have claimed just about all of the prime real estate, not only here on FAA but throughout other sites as well.

Does that mean with regards to being found here, we're not really competing with other individual artists here for potential buyer eyeballs, but with large collective, global virtual warehouses with large staffs to make sure they dominate most every POD site, or any other site that sells POD art?

And it is within that context that search engine is being discussed.

Life is not a competition.

Live just your own life. You will get better results.

Dave

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has the same chance in search.

Ok like I mentioned above I have been with FAA relative new. I have still much tweaking to do. I have been working very hart since I joined. I took many of yours advise and thank you for being so generous with it, I very much appreciate the help. My views have gone up. I am with twitter,about me,google +,fb,pintrest,Tsu, and am working the groups on FAA. I have also printed special business cards I hand out to drive more business to my site. Bye all means with time I should be seeing all this work kick in and make sales. I even uploaded other work besides food understanding that not all visitors come here for food images. I need to find a balance between creating new work and marketing. Has anyone found a formula to find such a balance. I am spending way to much time networking and marketing not enough time creating.

@Abbie: could you elaborate? Has the FAA search changed? Is there still a cut-off point in terms of images being displayed?

Iris - it depends on how much you want to sell. 80 promotion 20 creating is probably what it takes. Results may vary.

food images are a tough sell, if only because every foodie I know takes pictures of their meal and posts it too god knows where. Some restaurants don't even allow guests to take pictures of food anymore because it was becoming obnoxious. Diversifying your portfolio is a good idea, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Marketing only makes sense if you feel that your images can at least hold their own against the top sellers. You are not only competing with 'the worlds greatest living artists' as the FAA slogan implies, but with decades if not centuries of art history. Investing your time in groups or anything else on FAA only makes a minor difference. Your best bet would be getting your food works on the radar of food and foodie-related blogs and websites.

At the end of all this... although I appreciate all the "You Can Do It" themed posts, it all really comes down to this (as Dean has nailed fairly accurately) 1. Yes, it's not fair. Bigger "Blobs" suck up a lot of the oxygen and light. 2. To all the sports analogies (again as Dean nails) in sports there are measures and rules to make sure it's a level playing field, ie. one team can't have 1000 players against a team of 1 person. Is there anything we can do about that? No. That's the way it is. 3. Are we basically doing all the heavy lifting with all our site interaction, that improves search ranking that the bigger collections are enjoying? (Again from the astute Dean)... Absolutely.

The cards are stacked against us as individuals if your going to rely on being found solely based on your keyword selections, descriptions and titles. There are just too many large collections that are burying you. And if you don't win favor of being hand selected by FAA/Pixels staff, you're on your own.

However, I do think this can be circumvented somewhat. No, it's not fair, but that's the way it is. No sense in face palming. The big collections have an advantage for sure, but I think if you want to work hard at driving your own traffic directly to your own work, and the work is something the buyer wants and values for the price you're asking... then I think you can pull yourself up past the Behemoth gallery collections for prime positioning. You'll have to work MUCH harder than the Goliaths do. But I don't think it's unsurmountable.

It really comes down to 1. whether or not you have a product that anyone wants to buy, 2. if you can find those people to let them know, 3. and then if they feel like the value of the work is worth what you're asking for it. If you can do those three things consistently, and be smart about attaching enough descriptive and relevant data via keywords, title and description and increase the amount of instances of your work without spamming anyone... then I think you can overcome the obstacles here at FAA/Pixels.

If you've got work that people want to buy for the price you're asking, it then just depends on if you're willing to do the amount of work you'll have to do to get noticed in the flood and noise of the mega collections. The only possible, slight advantage we have as individuals might have, is that we can carefully tweak and prune our smaller collections, creatively tailor our inclusion of our work on blogs and social networks in variety of ways that's more personal, relevant and targeted, as opposed to the flooding approach of the Monster collections. Because each of us as individuals are much smaller by comparison, we're also more nimble, dynamic, and more customizable in our presentation.

I do have a couple of questions:
So if these big "blobs" are way out selling us, which they may well be, probably are, how come they don't show up on the recently sold page when you log it? are they hidden, does FAA cherry pick who gets shown there to keep us happy, do the "blobs" upload their art under different accounts?
If they do upload under different accounts wouldn't that put them back on the level so to speak playing field?

I don't know which side of the "Blob" fence I am on right now, I am just trying to figure out how to sell just like everyone else.

I will say this though, if FAA is giving special treatment to the "blobs" that is a slippery slope, I am not sure they (FAA) would make it on blob sales if all if the little guys left them for greener pastures...just sayin!

Terry, if you were one of the big blobs you wouldn't be asking that question ;). They are very, very easy to pick. Their Twitter accounts are full of nothing but themselves - you will barely find them giving anyone a good word on social networks.

So what do we do? Become like them? Stop sharing. Stop favouriting others works. Only think of thy self?

It's a bummer when you come to the realization that you are just a tad fish in many oceans here on FAA. Especially when you consider how long it took to come to the epiphany, and how many hours you have spent promoting someone elses vision.

Unless you are retired and could care less about the time spent... you should sit back and ponder that.

Voice in head....... Which is a big blob seller.

Man this is mind numbing. I come into the cubicle and load art work after artwork. I keyword or just leave what the gubment had in the meta data. I price so low the company will have to sell thousands to even pay my minimum wage salary for a week. I hope they know what they are doing. All I wanted to do was be an artist. Man do the individual artists have it made. They can charge what they want. They can express their creativity in anyway they want. If they sell they make far more than the minions that submit images to us for pennies or even 20% of the profit which is of course hundreds less than an individual artist would make. I hated sending out that 18 dollar check last month to the artist that sold a 48 inch print on FAA. Poor woman, JC Findley made 300 bucks on a single image that size in the same sale.

Well, I suppose I better get back to downloading PD images from the gumbment and the WWW at large. It is sucking my will to live. But at least the company will make 20 or 30 bucks when one sells. Oh I hope 30 thousand images is enough where people will buy enough that the company doesn't go under tomorrow. Oh how I wish I could create and sell my art.....

FWIW, I tried the PD image selling game under a different account and even do a few under this one. It is truly mind numbing and the other account ended up with five or six images being uploaded before I was seriously considering gouging my eyes out with a spork. Want to be a big gorilla seller? Go to the various military sites. Go to the NASA site. Don't forget the other gumbent agencies that produce PD images that are free to download and sell if you want to do so. Have fun with that. For me, I would rather be a creative and do what I do whether I end up competing against them or not. If it is all about the money, go become the blob, it is pretty darn easy to do.

Well as I said before weather you are here or somewhere else you are still competing with the blobs, and with everyone else who is selling art, weather on the net, or from a gallery, or the back of their car at the local 7-11.
I had my own page with my own web site, and I made every page for that web site, and it took a lot of pages, one for the thumbnails, then a separate page for the larger view, and I have no idea what it would have taken to get a real bonafide shopping cart, then you have to try and uderstand all the crap that needs to be built into the web site for the search engines to find you, that's a problem because the bots can't see images, so you need content, if you have never been that route believe me this is much easier, and if you take advantage of the AW, and your own domain it is just like all the good parts of having your own web site, and none of the bad, and all for $30.00 a year, I was paying twice that to have it hosted before, and I thought that was a bargan,

JC Findley, I know I am a noob and all but what is a PD? I have never herd of that!
Thanks

@Terry,

PD="public domain" :)

Well I guess that makes sense doesn't it ;-)
Thanks

.....I still just see a bunch of people looking for a reason to complain.

I love it here.

They dont even need a reason.

Dave