Help With Selling My Work!

David -- I'm one of your Twitter followers. You'll find a number of suggestions following my post here I am sure.

On Twitter I find that when I share groups it has more interaction than posting a single image. Here is my thread about the benefits of groups.

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

When an admin features my image in a group, the first thing I do is tweet the group. I have to continue my thought as I have to go find how I once wrote it more clearly in anther thread. ... be back soon.

Sounds like, from a basic standpoint, you are doing many of the right things as far as promotion. Getting your work seen is a big deal, and remember this is a marathon, not a sprint. A few sales in the first year is a good start on FAA.

Which brings me to my critique.....who is your market? To make a sale, you need a buyer with money willing to part with it for your photograph. Who is that person for each image? How do you get an image in front of not just people, but people who want to buy it. (there is a difference).

When I look at your portfolio, I see some strong shots, and I see a whole lot of random that I think stands a low chance of bringing in a sale, let alone multiple ones to move up in the search. There are a million cat and dog photos out there, some really really strong ones.

To take the next step, I think you almost need to think of yourself as a brand. Find and identify markets that you can serve with your art, and make art that will sell to those markets, and then focus your marketing efforts to get those shots in front of those people. More focus, less random, and a lot more hard work!

You have to consider that faced with tremendous competition, any sale is a blessing.

The artists that break out and get noticed have a theme, concept, or statement that they are making. Something for writers to write about. You have to provide the market with a good story.

Reaching an audience beyond people you know requires others to spread the word for you.

David,

Welcome!

You have some VERY good images and then a few "snap shotty-ish" images, but most, 70-80% very good indeed. I think with time, you'll do well, either here or on your own domain site. Now it's a matter of quantity and maybe some keywords.

I would try and concentrate your new images,waiting to be created by you, on things that are unique to your area and just saturate the site with images and then "own" that segment of FAA.

Hope this helps,

Rich

Stop advertising the main FAA site. Only advertise your AW. No need to be spending time and effort promoting all 100k members and 2 Million images on FAA.

Think in terms of a lot more images to sell and reaching a lot more then 3,000 people with FB & Twitter. That is a drop in the bucket. Only about 10% at best are seeing any individual post.

Hi David, I would suggest you to join Facebook groups of FAA. By the way just today we were discussing the sales there - if you join you could get some useful points:
FAA Artists - Public group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/faaartists/

FineArtAmerica: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WesternArtBuyersAndSellers/

And there are many Facebook groups for art selling, dont limit yourself with only Twiiter!

Also I would suggest you Pinterest - its all to get your photography out for the views and google search!

Jenny Rainbow Fine Art Photography

re my last post ... here is what I wanted to say:

I think part or your sales comes from how several members / admins tell me that when a new image is added to the group that google finds them. They also say, when your in a group, featured or not (though it helps to be seen on the front page), your image is then associated with others. and without having to add new keywords, or spam words, people can find your image through random google searches and your image will show up in the group or contest. Never underestimate the power of groups here.

Since I've been groups moderator about a year now, I have learned from several admins and members that all they do is about an hour each day in groups and make sales each month.

I actually don't comment as much on threads like this but, I want to thank you too, David, for all the RT's you give my tweets from Flickr. I think that platform is a hidden secret, because of the size of the audience and how it is designed for photography and photographers. I noticed on you picture descriptions there that you include the link to Twitter. May I suggest you do what I do and that is include a link to your Flickr profile ( as Flickr frowns on a link to a website with a shopping cart ). You can also add the link to Twitter on your profile. I've actually been sharing from Flickr more than from FAA, because the best way to sell is to not sell at all but to engage. The shopping cart on FAA picture pages has selling all over it. Since I've been doing this the interaction I've seen have been five times more both on Flickr and what I see on FAA.

Hope this is helpful to you. Enjoy your day!

As a Bricks and Mortar business. The most important thing I've learned is people only buy what THEY want. And what they want truly surprises me. When selling at art festivals I would listen to what customers asked for. When a person walks in my shop I ask" Are you looking for anything particular? Try asking your potential customer what they would like that no one is offering.
It takes twenty years to be an overnight success.
Good luck
----John Harmon
JohnHarmon.com

Thank you all so much for the feedback - genuinely didn't expect to get so much back! So really helpful things swell. I completely agree that I need to concentrate on a particular area rather than just adding random shots. I live in the city of Cambridge and probably do most images from there. I run a Cambridge blog and should probably use that more to link in to the images.

Although I do add photos to several groups I have never really interacted with them as much as I should - this will definitely be an area I will look at as well. (Both on FB and FAA). I like the idea of tweeting about the groups as well - a good way of giving back to the group as well.

I also thought the same about promoting on my artist site rather than the main FAA one as well. I am starting to do this more.

Thank you for all your kind words as well - genuinely appreciated. Really enjoying being part of the FAA community.

David

The idea of joining others to all sell together is an interesting concept. I can't think of any other situation where this works. You want to stand out from the crowd not blend into it.

I suppose the ketchup bottles all share the same shelf but they don't share the same marketing plan.

Your work is amazing!!!!!

Edward -- Online people want to choose what ketchup bottle they want, they don't want you to tell them which one... this is the concept. T

his too is how testimonials work, third-party endorsements are always a better salesperson .. Copy and paste customer response to your work into your profile page and see what happens.

i'd leave the link out to license it. that just sends them out of the store. low prices don't attract customers. some of your galleries only have a few images in them. one has 5 total. for the most part you have a lot of race cars and so forth. if your not advertising to those people that like those particular cars. the cars are good, but the appeal is limited. you shouldn't have an other folder, place them somewhere. you have focus issues on some of these.

remove all the parts in the bio that says your a beginner. don't remind people that anything can be a photograph, besides the fact that it doesn't have a real meaning, it reminds them they can shoot pictures too.

your twitter feed has no hash tags for the FAA stuff. you should only be sending people to your artist site.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

This is the million dollar question. You seem to be doing everything right and you have a good collection of work. If you're having trouble, what does that mean for the rest of us? I work at an art gallery and am surrounded by other artists all the time and it seems a lot of the time, their work is purchased by people that they know. A lot of them are in social groups, too. One instructor not only has a big Flicker following, an FAA site, but also hosts a Meetup group on Meetup.com. Very rarely do I come across anyone who has the pleasure of not having a part-time something to keep them afloat financially.

I know that you've already done some exhaustive work to get your name out there but maybe hitting the streets might help? Maybe you could teach a class and establish yourself as an authority on the subject locally? If you teach at an art gallery or at a university, it just opens up your ability to market yourself so much more. You can leave your flyers and business cards around there. Offer up your services? I have a few cousins that do wedding photography and make a pretty penny, and the next booking always comes from someone who knew the last bride or groom. I know another artist who took a picture of a tourist spot and went into a nearby gift shop and showed them his amazing photograph. Long story short, he now sells them there.

Sure the internet is a great way to expand your reach, and zeroing in on a specific target market is okay but if you don't want to just mass produce other people's crap (if they want a picture of something, let them take it), it won't help you. I'm not disagreeing with everyone, but maybe this is your next step. There's no ONE way to success and what may work for someone else, may not exactly work for you. I wish you all the best!

@elle - you can advertise forever and have a great body of work, but if you don't have a focus of who you plan on selling things too - then you may not sell. in this case he's focused on those little race cars, with a few random images from here and there. so he would have to find people who really likes those cars, enough to hang them up. but chances are the audience for those are limited.

you create your own vision and style and work from there.

having a big following doesn't mean a person is successful or will do well.

hitting the streets only works if you have wares to peddle and if you have the ability to do that. usually artists lack that talent. some are better.

mostly selling is about producing things the common person can't make. creating something that they want to hang in their house. and to create a style where people recognize that its your work. you also want variety, and not to focus on one theme or another.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I think all the ideas of marketing and working your local market are great and wonderful and everyone should be doing that to some degree. But you can do that without FAA and should have been doing that long before you ever discovered FAA.

The beauty of FAA is the fact that it has a worldwide reach.

Getting seen outside of you local market and outside of FAA is how you are going to expand sales.

The way you do that is buy learning about selling, advertising and marketing both in your local market and on the Internet.

In the beginning I used the local market to create sales that then made my images relevant in the search. I will most likely need to do it again here since I moved.

Thanks for all the help guys - lots of ideas to think about!

Hello FAA

I have been giving my site a "spring clean" and also changed my bio to something about more specific to my images and with less mention of being new to photography. I had another thought about trying to attract people to my work on, say Twitter. I regularly post the standard FAA "I've uploaded or New artwork" preset tweets to promote certain images. Has anyone else tried making these tweets more "non FAA" - such as simply I have new artwork available called xx and the link? Do you think that would attract more people who haven't heard or doesn't deal with FAA?

Love to get peoples thoughts.

David

Remember people arent on twitter to buy things, so anything that is salesy mostly won't be interacted with. Interaction is what you want and need to be successful with social media.

Try to make them not only not FAA, but social as well, stick your sales links in there almost like an afterthought.

Very good point. I know I get fed up with all the sales spam in my emails! Maybe I should change some of the FAA for sale links to simply "have a look at my photo and tell me what you think. Out of interest and I hope you don't mind asking, but how do you promote your work? Do you get much from social media or are you more person to person type sales?