How To Sell Photos Here On Faa

Forget the groups on FAA and the contests and the likes, comments and favorites. Chasing those are not best use of your time.

The 25/75 is the best article address those contests groups etc, etc.

Advertising Your FAA Artistwebsite

The 25/75 Rule For New Artist and Members of FAA

Work Smarter Not Harder To Beat The Big Guys

Okay, I usually agree with Floyd, but this time we have to agree to disagree. Here is my thread about the importance of groups:

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2048106

After that, get out of FAA and bring your customers here as Sean ( the owner of FAA ) describes on this tread:

http://fineartamerica.com/why-every-artist-and-photographer-in-the-world-should-be-selling-on-fineartamerica.html

If there is any consistent I've found here, Michael, is that all of us artists do our own thing, what works for us. It takes time to find it, but when you do it makes it all worth the effort.

The people who are the top sellers are mostly not on these threads, so I've put the article by Sean to work and it's working. .... Start with one thing and when it works move to the next.

Marketing 101 by Mike Savad
Why Your Work May Not Be Selling - By Mike Savad
Evaluating Your Own Work To Sell – By Mike Savad
How To Critique And Edit Your Own Work For Better Sales

choose the ones that apply.

start by placing people in the gallery first.


be sure to add descriptions so we know what and where we are looking at. helps buyers and googlians. add more keywords.

trim your bio down to the basics. your not writing a book.


this was enlarged about 3 times. it won't print. the images have to be clean and sharp up close.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

also be sure the people on facebook know your selling things, not just posting images.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Fudge and create a best sellers gallery.

Dave

Mike, can you answer this? When artwork is scanned in or been saved at 300dpi, it will appear to be seen larger than it should be, thus can look blurry overall. Yet, if the person uploading it here, only offers it at a small size, will it still print? Also taking into account that a PHOTO is not blurry in the beginning, that cannot be fixed!. ( dpi seems confusing at times!)

If you have a 4000X3000 image that is blurry and load it to FAA, it will be blurry at 2000X15000 too on FAA. If you take a 4000X3000 that has some image problems, properly tweak it in post process then resize it to 2000X1500 and it looks fine enlarged to 100% on FAA, then it should print fine at 2000X1500.

"Fudge and create a best sellers gallery. "

Nope, because some cynical butthole like me will then start searching via name and title to see if someone is lying.

My .02.

Stop searching for recognition (likes, votes, comments). It is from other artists, your market is not other artists. By and large if you want to sell regularly...it is a waste of time.Sure they factor into the search, but its been proven, time and again, that one thing trumps all when it comes to the search, and that is sales. It is your magic bullet.

To sell regularly you must begin moving up in the search ranking. To do that...you must sell your prints.

Facebook is a great idea, but it sounds like to me you have not put the time in creating an audience of prospective buyers, instead you have a bunch of family and friends who are unlikely to buy (this is an assumption, I could be wrong). For Facebook to be powerful you must over time build an audience of people who love your work and who may buy it. To do that, you must over time get it in front of their faces and let them like your page of their own accord. Because they love the work, not because they know you.

My advice? Get some cards or brochures made, print some of your work, and hit the streets into businesses, art fairs, anywhere else you can get yourself in front of the public, and sell your work. Push them all through your artists website, because sales on there count for the FAA search.

Concentrate everything you have on making the sales yourself through the AW....over time, this will have an effect to move your entire portfolio up in the searches, and you may start to sell regularly to strangers.

And....even though all of this helps....it comes down to the work your produce. Its one thing for a person to like a piece of art, its a whole nother thing for them to like it enough to spend their hard earned money on it. Continue to hone your craft and learn to produce things people love and want to spend money on. That is the biggest piece.

Joseph,

Plenty of folks have fudged in this way. Or even if they have six prints they have sold the
fudge gallery has 12 prints they claimed to have sold repeatedly. Besides what
is your recourse if others do this? Zero. It is between their AW and their potential clients.

With photography or painters who have a lot of material it is a partial strategy. Still you are right
it is fudge, not reality anyways.

Dave

A best sellers gallery need not necessarily be best sellers on FAA; they can include best sellers at for instance art fairs, other pods etc. my best seller on a particular craft site is different from my best seller here (neither has sold on the other site); they are both best sellers at art fairs.

This does make mereconsider a gallery I created called "Trending Images." I was about to argue that a Recently Sold gallery probably does not help with sales since most of my sales are first timers. I have sold the same image a few times, but probably not because it was in a "Trending Images" gallery.

Edit: I deleted the Trending Images gallery and will likely replace it with a "My Favorites" Gallery later.

Best sellers and most popular images?

I really don't see how a best selling album would help you sell things.

My best seller is a Marine Corps image. Not a Marine or need a gift for a Marine? Who cares.... I have iconic images of Boston and Philly in there. Not from one of those places? Who cares....

Seriously, how does this help one sell?

More importantly, how would you know when it's next to impossible to track something like that here anyway?

That being said, I do have a Best Seller's Gallery.

""Fudge and create a best sellers gallery. "

Nope, because some cynical butthole like me will then start searching via name and title to see if someone is lying."

I'd like to address the issue of "best sellers" when there are none. When I first started here I used FAA's various sort options to look at my work. I was delighted to see that I already had several best sellers! Of course I had sold NOTHING, but FAA returns results for best sellers regardless. I contacted the Powers That Be to report the mistake and was informed that FAA's sort will return results even when there are no images that match the sort criterion. I admit I was outraged at the deception but FAA apparently sees no problem with it. Is it impossible to write a line of code so that no results are returned if in fact nothing has sold?

if you scan at 300 dpi, it will be 1:1. if your cropping it larger - like if the crop is set to 300dpi, it will enlarge it and make it blurry. if you scan at 1200dpi, it will be large but clear (depending on the limits of the scanner. if you offer something as a small size it should be ok, but if the small size is also blurry then no.


as for best sellers - a buyer won't be impressed. because people want what they want. if a real store placed in a pile - apples, steak, watermelon, beach balls, and a few other things, would that make you want to buy those things when you were shopping for bacon? no, you want bacon. so all these best sellers - the only thing your doing is telling other people what to make to compete against you. and if you only have 6 works and place 5 of those works in there, that won't look impressive. worse yet is when you have a 1000 things, have been here for years, and there are only 3 things listed.

and as well as the fact we can look up the best sellers pretty fast here.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

"Fudge and create a best sellers gallery. "

And still no one will find you.

This advice assumes you have already done the marketing to bring people in.

Joshua

Actually it is quite easy. Do a search for your name then sort by best sellers.

All good topics, I have been running a small campaign targeted to selected market in selected cities on Facebook for branding purposes for around $20 per run. Usually getting around 300 likes each run, and always posting an image in the Fan page framed and looking ready to sell, and to give the buyer a visual.

In addition, I have been starting to post a selected image framed(Screen shot from FAA and then added to FB) then I add the base price and tell the users to click on "Shop Now".
Then I have started mini campaigns with that image post and trying this week with the "Boost Post" option. Which is $20 and is more of a selected ad campaign to sell a selected image.

I will know more after the 7 days.

Finally, I have offered my fans a chance for a free 11x14 framed image once I get 300 shares of my fan page. I will select one random person who will get a framed image. I also have been promoting the same for 1000 Likes, and it has been steadily adding up without additional ad campaigns.

My next move is to direct market with some flyers. But feel I need to get into a fair/flea market to get the face to face branding. I have a Gallery show coming up and now represented by that gallery for 12 months with a group show Oct-Dec so hopefully, this will help brand myself and get my work out there.

Work in Progress always.

Why would I buy what everyone else is buying? If I wanted to buy bestsellers I would go to Walmart. Bestsellers would be the last gallery I would look (personally).