Do You Actually Get Sales On Here?

yes - most of the people who purchase from me on FAA are not people I know.

Quite a few!

I wish I could get friends and family to buy something.

None of mine are from people I know so far...

as of today i don't think i ever had a single family member buy things. family usually thinks its free. i make sales here. there are a lot of artists here, so your bound to see many sales. they aren't fake. be sure to advertise your work, and i'd increase the prices a touch.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

jc if your reading this, it's probably safe to erase the other 3-4 threads with this topic.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Yes, I do. Every few weeks I get a sale, & I really don't do any marketing besides posting to FB & Pinterest .

A few weeks is a very short time to have your work out there & settling into Google searches. Join groups here - & enter contests. FB fan page & Pinterest.

With work as lovely as this - you will be doing fine in no time. Best wishes.

Like others have said, I can't get friends or family to buy my photographs. I'm not complaining about selling to strangers though

I don't know anyone who bought my pieces. Friends and family expect it for free.

I wish I had that many friends. ;-)

I'll estimate that 1% of my sales were from someone I know.

Mike said, "...family usually thinks its free." Boy, that's the truth!

Friends think I am WAY overpriced. After all I am not an artist, I am that guy they know from .......

I've had five sales in ten months, all to total strangers spread widely across the country. I promote my work through a community oriented website I own http://www.montereypeninsula.info which has a visitors guide that attracts readers from all over. This in turn drives traffic to my AW.

From my experience, friends and family will give you the greatest praise in the world, "Oh that looks so great, etc...." -but won't buy a single thing.

All my sales have been from complete strangers and that's just fine with me. That's just the way it goes.

--Roz Abellera

yes, all my sales here are from strangers I don't even tell friends or family I sell prints here because I wanted them to buy my originals. FAA is my little secret

I started selling here not long after I joined and I've already sold a few this year.

Danielle, upload more work if you have it. Trust me, you will sell - it's very eye-catching.

I've had hundreds of sales over the years. I don't think a single one has been from someone I knew. If friends and family want something I created, they expect it for free. :P

I don't know if you can sell a lot without doing anything but uploading images, though. I have my own website and blog, send newsletters, and I post on Pinterest, FB, and other places.

No idea if my sales come from any of those sources, though, or random internet searches. It sure would be nice if FAA gave us a way to track referring URLs. :D

Thank you all so much for the replies to my question. I really appreciate your time doing this. :) As for the marketing, I am not a social network person, so I will continue to be as active as I can on here in the forums, groups, contests etc. Maybe this will help me getting more views and sales when time goes by. And I get you all with what you said about friends and family members. I can only agree that they rather expect to get everything for free. Thatīs what I thought. I can only congratulate everyone on here who has made it to get regular sales, thatīs wonderful! I will continue to work on that, wish me luck. :)

Nikolyn, thank you for your advice. I donīt have more works at the time, but I am painting like crazy at the moment. If this continues than my profile will fill up soon with more works :)

I guess I am one of the few that have had a couple of sales from friends, so it can happen! I have been on here almost a year and have had 5 sales. 2 were from friends and 3 were from people that I didn't know. I do promote on Facebook, Twitter and occasionally Pinterest. Good luck!

Being active in only these forums, groups and contests on FAA will not be enough I'm afraid. You will need to embrace social networking as a marketing tool if you hope to make sales. Much of any sales here depend on pushing your brand/products externally to this website and bringing people back here.

Justin is spot on about being active here.

Now, social media is NOT a requirement but simply one of many ways to build your name.

I do not know any of the people that have purchased my art here.

They are right in friends & family wanting it free. I'm still waiting for my first FAA sale. It's a tough market. Maybe I'm not matketing it enough. I'm not a good salesman. That's probably my downfall. Hopefully its that & not my work. I do sale locally at shows.

I don't think sales to friends or family COUNT as sales.

Almost all of my sales, here and in the real world, are to complete strangers. It's a great feeling to sell to someone you know isn't buying your work to boost your ego.

Pinterest. I have NO idea if the pins are related to the sales but this image alone has some 2600 pins and has generated ~2K in revenue for me on FAA. I DO pin.

Rarely, but yes. Covers the annual price + a bit more.

@Jc: I sell the small prints here (7*5) at 18€ with a markup of 6€, on Zenfolio i sell a fine art print of bigger dimensions (10*8) with an highest markup (9,5€) at 16€.

You can set whatever markup you like here. While the final price of the print may be higher I find the price point is less of an issue here.

I am not sure what the Euro is vs the dollar right now but my markup on cards is similar to yours on 5x7s and that applies to ten inch prints as well.

My markup on larger prints is two or three times yours and I sell well here at those larger sizes.

I believe Pinterest has been the key for the uptick in my sales recently...here and most definitely on another POD site I'm on.

Jc I know that here there are many that sell well at much higher prices of mine, but I find difficult to meet customers, which is easier with the lowest prices of the other service (with same or higher markups). What I'm doing here is trying to work better on keywords, sponsor pages etc.
One thing that limits my attempts to marketing is the absence of real discounts, only present on our markup. Is not immediate for all customers understand that the 25% reduction is not the final price, for example. But now i'm off topic :)

I've decided that Twitter is, for me anyway, probably just a big waste of time. Others of course disagree. But I might try to use PInterest based on what I'm hearing. I know very little about PInterest - most of what I've heard has been negative, focusing on the obvious copyright infringement issue.

Can anyone point me to a nice clear summary of how a photographer might profitably use it?

Very first time in this site..!!!Still waiting if someone like to buy!!!!

Persistance is everything, I have been here a yr and still no sales but plenty of views so keeping my head up and keep digging!

I've been on here a few months now, a few views and a few followers but no interest really in actually buying. It makes me wonder if I just have really average unoriginal stuff. I share work I put up on other social media too so it's not through lack of trying. I don't really know what more to do other than hope someone eventually likes what they see. Like finding a needle in a haystack.

My advice is to not get your hopes too high, and not fixate too much on sales. I started doing that, and now art has become a chore instead of fun, and ultimately not worth the trouble. It's probably best to just do what you like and not worry about getting compensated, at least while you're here on FAA.

This is always such a weird question to me... I don't think many people would be on this site if no one made sales. The company would cease to exist quite quickly.

Occasionally

Someone told me that "you need 1000 views, and then you have 1 sell"

Hire an agent. You might pay a hefty commission to an agent but it is worth it (if they are doing their job). Like hiring an ad agency to promote your product. Let the agent burn the midnight oil while you continue to create. I love my agent,

@m chiu -a 1000 views won't mean you'll get a sale.

further your text box has all your keywords and your keywords have almost nothing in them.

generally views don't mean anything only sales do. all you need is 1 view to get the sale. however what will make it really hard to sell for you is - the images are far too small to print on anything, and nothing seems to be for sale. not even as a card. plus your bio is sending everyone out of your store. after that's all fixed, you'll need more than 20 images, and you have to advertise yourself. 2000 views since 2013 - not a good ratio.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

There are at least 3.8 million images here on FAA. Some of you asking about sales have less then 25 images and most under a couple hundred.

Do the math. Unless you, yourself, does something to get your images infront of the art buying market, the chances are less then favorable that you are ever going to sell anything.

First tip is forget the views. Then mean nothing, I mean absolutely nothing because of the way the majority of them are generated. 90% or more are electronic bots, gathering information for search engines. They are not human and they never buy anything simply because it is impossible for a computer to buy something.

The vast majority of the views left ater the bots, are coming form members of FAA, and they don't realy buy a lot more oftern then the bots.

FAA is a fullfilment center, it does not sell your art. It gives you a place to show your art and will print it and deliver it to your buyers for you. But they do not sell your are. YOU have to sell your own art. You have to advertise your art OUTSIDE of FAA to the general art buying public. No one is going to do that.

Unless you have some sort of following or famous name or other unusual circumstance, there is a direct corrolation between the number of images you have for sale and the number of sales you will make. Very few of the over 300,000 members fall under the famous name catagory.

Forget the groups, contestests, likes, favorites and the threads inside of FAA. The people you will reach there may create a few views, but they are not going to create sales. Consentrate on creating art and uploading images and promoting your work outside FAA.

Floyd is right. You should expect to spend some time every day, or at the very least a chunk of time every week, marketing and promoting yourself online. If possible, at physical locations (shows, galleries, festivals, restaurants, etc.) as well.

And where do you market and promote, exactly?

I haven't sold much, but what I have sold has been to strangers. Friends and family TALK a lot about buying, but NEVER do.

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

pretty much any place. you want to spread yourself out like weed seeds. just name drop yourself where ever you can. you want to try to find places that relate most to your type of work.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

friends only want to be nice until backed into a corner. usually friends and family don't consider what you do, to be anything at all. and you would love to do it for free just for them.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I have only sold 2 things to friends/relatives, and both were to the same person.

I stopped playing the groups/liking game a long time ago. It eats up a lot of time and none of it generates sales. Social networking and getting your work out to the public is everything.

The best advice I ever got was way back when I got my first sales job. Crusty old salesman to me do not sell to your friends or family.

It is the best way in the world to lose friends and annoy family if something should go wrong.

The other thing he said was if you can not make a living without selling to family and friends, get out of the game because no one has that many friends or that large of a family.

I've only sold to a couple of people that I know personally, but neither was family. They bought their items just like anyone else--someone took advantage of a sale I was running at the time; someone else told me ahead of time, so I was able to offer a discount code. I have gifted prints to friends and family at my own choosing, which works out nicely to one part goodwill, one part advertising when someone asks about their art.

If I can't afford to buy my own work at my retail prices, I don't expect my friends and family to do so. Lots of folks I've never met have been able and willing to pay for my art, and I'm just fine with that.

1 or 2 works each year... to promote work is a hard and long way to walk

There's always a buyer out there for each fineart creation, is our work show them the right way