Tips On Selling More On Faa

there are hundreds of tips already on the site. the ones you mentioned are kind of the basics. you have to take hi rez shots, the low ones won't print.

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

the most basic tips are:

have an avatar that's in focus.
charge a bit more for the work
have descriptions about the piece, not the artist.
if you paint - scan your work (yours are actually soft up close)


always have descriptions on the work and always check to see if the keywords are what they should be - like this one is not.


this one is uploaded twice and its blurry, motion blur.


if the black is supposed to be a part of the art, make sure its even looking. otherwise i'd crop it off to prevent it from being stopped at the printer.


this looks like you stacked paintings on top of each and shot it. it looks like it needs cropping. but i see glare there as well, its also not sharp.


this would never print on any site. its very blurred, distorted, has crop issues, its folded as well.


you seem to have printing issues on most of your pieces. this one has the name cropped off.

i would buy a photos scanner and scan these in or get a pro to shoot them. if they sold there is a 80% chance many of these would fail to get there. i saw water colors in the back that should be ok i didn't see issues with those

bio looks rather wordy and not broken up. leave out all the things your not selling. welding, ceramics etc, keep it to the basics so as not to confuse. choose either the first or third person, don't use both. it seems you ran out of space and the bio is about the size of a book. keep it to about 2 paragraphs, nothing much else, just the basics. no awards, education, family life, inspirations etc. last thing you want to do is bore a potential buyer or give them eye strain. this goes for anyone's bio btw.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Mike, Sherry did Not ask for your feedback. In future please do not give it unless asked

oh my bad i read: " If anyone would like to add any more tips I would appreciate your feedback. " i assumed it meant something like that. never mind then.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Ok but this is rather vague:

"over haul your pricing and by using the Bulk Price features. "

Up? Down? What did you do? What was the results?

ROFLMAO!

Thank you, Mike! I think I have some of the same issues and need to look at my work as well. LMAO2!

Sherry, although Mike's advice is good and extremely funny, your work is good. I love how clever and colorful your compositions are. It actually reminds me of my own style in many ways. Good luck to you and keep up the great work!

And where is the beautiful painting in your gallery of work that you posted at the beginning of this thread? This is fabulous work!

it was never meant to be funny. just that if the op is giving tips to upload hi rez things, then she should have clear printable images. anyway, i can look of your work, but you'll have to start a new thread so we don't hijack this one.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

When one goes through the 12 pages of Sherry's beautifully confident paintings, one will find not only printable but images that SOLD.

An example is this version in the "Sunflower" series

Ed,

It depends on what you are selling, how you go about selling it and what else is in the market place.

I went way up on my pricing. I took down all merchandize other than cards. I now tell folks there is a problem
in the art world. If they get back to me I tell them I am the solution as the dialog builds.

I went to marketing class yesterday. Looked at 30 videos from 4 am yesterday morning till 8 am, before making a new work.

Sell the problem and have the solution. For instance if I sold machine tools and I went into a local factory, if I saw an old wonky
machine....I say, "that machine is on its last legs....I have a new much more efficient machine". The buyer needs to know he has a problem.

My response rate on Twitter....for me...is soaring. My leads are turning more into qualified interest. Totally new to me. I am beginning
to have people on the path to buying. People from months ago that reach me on Twitter I am giving varying degrees of touch depending
on past dialog. Everyone is in the funnel.

Floyd,

Your prices for volume in the print business make a hell of a lot of sense.

But go into any gallery selling very large versions of fine art photos and you will pay $1000 easily.
You well know that, but for me the whole pricing set of concepts is new.
So what the price is depends on what is being sold. I am out selling a problem that I solve.

Problem? Western culture is waning.
Solution? We know computer aided art is coming in, but who makes serious digital fine art?

Ah.....that would be me.....

oh and a word for Sean....I completely dumped my second POD because of how low priced the crap on there
was. Serious artists should get far more for their art. Depends on the artists, not another failed POD model.

Dave

Selling I understand. I just don't understand what the tip was. Products have to have appropriate pricing from the market. Its up to the individual artist to figure out what that means for their work and brand.

One of the lowest priced artists here is Anne Geddes. Although she is probably used to licensing her work so maybe compared to other licensing her print prices are high.

She sells a lot, but it is a totally different market. Selling images of someone else's baby to decorate a baby's room........

I had some business separately from my art with someone a couple of weeks ago. In their house, in the family room, they have
a couple of hot java coffee cup prints up. It is like a local coffee bar. Crazy in my book, turning a home into a coffee shop.
I had to wonder if the lady of the house paid for interior design advice. Tacky.

People will hang the craziest stuff, but everyone's tastes and opinions on art run a thousand ways from Sunday.

Dave

Selling I understand.

Ed,

I am the newbie, but I get it. Folks need to study marketing. For many of us this does not come naturally.

The ideas involved are a different paradigm.

Dave

"When one goes through the 12 pages of Sherry's beautifully confident paintings...." Yes Sherry's work is beautiful!
Maybe time to create some galleries.

David, your said your response rate on Twitter is soaring. Are your downloads just ones that you share from FAA? I am still a little concerned with social media sites and my prints being open to anyone downloading without permission. I have started to watermark them but it is time consuming.

Jayme,

I only use low rez images. I never use the full image file. That way when something is taken larger prints can not be made easily from it.

You need to have the exposure. You can not sit on your images and sell them.

People who buy and people who take the images for free are two different sets of people.
The people who take them can find them anywhere. Besides there is such a flood of images
it makes no difference. It is rarer for some of us for an image to be taken at all.

Wall art serves a very different purpose. It is a totally different product. It is like having
a Partridge Family lunch box v seeing the TV show and ads around the show. The show
was the real deal in your living room. The lunch box was for a totally different purpose.

Low rez versions.

Dave

PS Jayme, I have always liked your art.

All I am saying a tip isn't "overhaul your prices".

A tip is research and understand your place with in the market and price accordingly.

Ed,

Some folks begin a conversation with a blanket statement, not a detailed reasoning of what and why.

We would need to hear back from the OP. Her first post was merely to begin a thread.

Dave

Ed, Sherry's prices seem rather low. What do you mean by overhaul?

Seems to me that the OP was very clear and easy to understand regarding pricing. At least in my mind.

First off, it is my opinion that no one should be telling people to raise or lower their prices. And the OP did not do that. What she said was "Tip for more sales on your site, over haul your pricing and by using the Bulk Price features. We tend to forget this feature and miss updated pricing of older art."

What that says to me is make sure you keep you prices current. To me that could mean raise your prices if you have work that has been up for a long time and you have never raised your prices and YOU think it is warranted. It could also me that if you have work that has been sitting around and getting no attention for a long time maybe you want to lower your prices.

But the tip was to keep you prices current. That is pretty clear to me.

As far as others telling you what will sell and what will not.... That is mixed bag and one that is not very accurate.

I have been told several time by people here that certain images would not sell and would not print if they did.

What the people telling me that didn't know is that those images had already sold, printed, and stayed sold multiply times.

Opinions here on what will and will not sell are totally worthless as far as I am concerned unless they are pointing out glowing errors like poor cropping or other technical issues. As far as subject matter, style, technique.... no one knows and it will cost you sales if you take their advice.

Sell what YOU want to sell at the price that YOU want to sell it at.

" If anyone would like to add any more tips I would appreciate your feedback"

This statement is also pretty clear to me. Seems the OP is looking for feedback in the way of more tips on selling, not critiquing her work. That is the title of the OP: Tips On Selling More On Faa

none of that was a critique. however if the op suggests - take clear images of the work, then the op should have clear images. otherwise the wrong message is sent out to everyone else.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Maybe to the OP those are clear images. Maybe that is what she was trying for. You don't know that.

And yes, those were critiques. You need to read what you posted.

it hardly matters. the tips are confusing because of what was said. hard to know what she was trying for as she never came back. but if you post - adjust prices and don't go into it. and have good pictures, but don't have good examples, it won't help many.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

You guys crack me up. I think you all are correct in your own interpretations of the OP.
Mike, I LOVE your critiques, please feel free to start a critique thread on my work!
Everyone has provided good tips in this thread.

My tip on selling more is to promote more and stay involved in forums, discussions, contests, facebook, instagram, newsletters, flickr, etsy, blogs.....etc. I get bogged down with the multitude of ways of internet promotions so I narrow it down to my own comfort level. More views should = more sales.

I understand what Floyd is saying, but I too appreciate Mike's critiques. I've learned a lot from them.

Here's my tips on success for selling prints thread.
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2567813

Don't start guys.

I learn so much from Mike Savad. He's so honest, blunt AND correct, but when I joined FAA, I didn't like how cutting his language felt. Then it occurred to me that when somebody gets to me a bit, maybe they have ideas that could push me further down that path to success.


It takes a lot of work to create images that someone or some company might want to purchase in mass quantities. Being unique, crazy cool and offering something new isn't enough, especially if the photography isn't spectacular. Over the course of this year, my skills at photography have increased, I now subscribe to Adobe PS CC 2014 and I have struggled with purchasing more expensive cameras, two to be exact. I've also hired a professional to help me focus the camera and have proper lighting and more. So when I laugh at what Mike has to say, it's not the artist I'm laughing at, it's just that I'm a lot like her. I have images that have been cut off for example and now, when I look at these, I feel a little queasy that I need to learn some of what Mike has to share...still to this very day! His words might help us sell a print!

If I would have known what I was going to have to learn about photography, and the money I was going to have to spend on getting better images, I would have never joined. But the joy I've had learning this business has been so much fun, that I'm hooked.

My tip would be once you get more than a dozen images start to organise them into galleries.
It's much less confusing and much easier for a potential buyer to find what they are looking for.
They can still go to the images page but would anyone bother going through more than a few pages

And since the OP has never come back it is time to close this one.