The Money Is Still In Selling Prints

I wonder if images designed to fit the products would help sell products more. For example a square version for totes and throw pillows and a 2:1 proportion version for cell phone cases. That would also give more options for prints as well. Not all images work for that treatment but I bet quite a few could be cropped to better accommodate products. Profits are much smaller for products though so it does make more sense to focus on prints if time is limited.

I think they would sell better. To me if would have to be something that would justify the time to do it.

I will admit that I have done little or nothing in the way of designing or editing images to fit the product. I have too many images to make that worthwhile on such low markup items.

I also do nothing to promote these items any more. I did when the phones first came out and the same with the pillows and totes. Then I got to thinking, why? I can advertising the much more profitable prints with the same effort. So I stopped doing it.

Some on wanted to state a thread for people to post the sale of totes in so the rest can see what is selling. That thread never got started or it died. Either way that may be an indication that there is not a whole lot of tote sales by the regular posters in FAA.

But that means nothing considering that 98% of the members never post and that include nearly all of the big sellers. But I bet some are selling significant numbers.

In the past it was prints, but my sales bottomed out about a year ago, for reasons I was not able to determine.
I have had sporadic prints sales since, and now I've been selling mostly pillows.

Print sales still earn the most money though. I haven't sold near enough pillows to add up to what I was earning in prints.

If you say so.

Wish i could say that, last month no print sales and the month before a few but more Phone cover sales and now the odd throw pillow. Would be only to glad of the input to get my print sales up. Glad your selling well Floyd.

I have 1 product sale. A phone cover. Products are less than 1% of my sales.

I wouldn't know - the last thing I sold was a pillow - Jan 1st

I sold a print and a tote of the same image yesterday...so some people are looking at all options. I decided to not go the T shirt route and am trying to pick the images for shower curtains....Don't like the placement of the image on the T and I think they are too expensive for an item that will be thrown in the washing machine and probably tossed after a season.

My last three sales were prints. I'd have to sell about 45 products to match those sales. Yet some people are clamoring for more products or want them on their fine art gallery. Keep them in Pixels. I'm all for additional products sales if they sell but its hard to ask for a premium on art prints when you have shower curtains right next to museum quality framing.

Floyd,

No sales for months. I am only now learning who I need to market towards. So who I am talking to is far more positive towards my work.
That is new to me in the last two and a half weeks.

I took all products off my AW. I left cards. I want to only sell prints. I want no confusion. Frankly products should have their own page
not aligned on the prints page. Separate. Even then I dont see how the math will ever work for the artists. It is only an extra buck here and there.

I also discontinued all comments on my AW. I think the viewers I now bring in need a fresh view of the art.

If I was going to do T shirts I would make radical hip political quips up in PNG form for the shirts. That of course would not only be different than my art, but
would throw all my viewers off buying from me at all. The two different products could not sit side by side. Business first, not political tripe.

Dave

this site is known as a print site, not a thing site. it will take years before there is an even mix. on one site i sell stuff mostly with posters now and then. when i do sell, its prints. i have sold 3 duvets, a bag and some pillows. i think i'm selling less posters since the stuff came out, i can only assume buyers are comparing sites or something. or maybe its just a timing coincidence.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

"If I was going to do T shirts I would make radical hip political quips up in PNG form for the shirts. That of course would not only be different than my art, but would throw all my viewers off buying from me at all. The two different products could not sit side by side. Business first, not political tripe."

I am conjuring up a plan to do just that... and opening a second account here for those products only.

So Mike why keep the stuff?
Addition the stuff is redundant for you.

Joseph, Neat plan, but there is a limit to how much work I want to do on DIFFERENT lines of business.
I am not successful yet in my one line of business. There is no way I should now stop and branch out.
Addition there is a site famous for T shirts. Honestly I would start there.
Is there an advantage to using Pixels for T shirts?

Dave

because a sale is a sale. that's why. it doesn't cheapen the other stuff, and having it or not having it won't stop people comparing the site as a whole. people looking for shirts aren't looking for prints, and people who want something for the couch, may not be looking for art on their walls.

people that comparison shop may not be looking at my stuff, they may be looking for anything. so even if i didn't have the stuff, it would not help increase poster sales. the site itself shouldn't have it. they should have a stuff site - and - it has to look totally different to this site. so customers aren't clued in that its the same site.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

No two sales are equal.

Dave

on another site - the shirts that sell well are the word shirts. problem is, they are easy to copy and steal. and that site allows customizations like adding words to it, this site does not. that site has a huge advantage. they can buy a dozen shirts, with their bowling team name on it. we can't do that here, so it will be a harder sell.

the stuff on the site will take a long time before its really absorbed into google. there will be some fast sales, but the long haul takes a while before its known about. and unless there is something special about the shirt, there are other places to get it.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

on this site all sales are equal. one shirt will bump you up in the search. and any money coming from anything is good. its really no different than selling things at a museum. i just wish i had better control of the pricing.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

"Joseph, Neat plan, but there is a limit to how much work I want to do on DIFFERENT lines of business.
I am not successful yet in my one line of business. There is no way I should now stop and branch out.
Addition there is a site famous for T shirts. Honestly I would start there. "

I wouldn't spend a lot of time on the shirts, really. Just need to get my computer back and learn how to make PNGs with transparent backgrounds. Good point about the other site.

this site is like dominoes right now. when i think of dominoes i think of pizza. but they are trying to expand their line into all the other fast food chains markets. chicken and a bunch of other meals. they aren't known for the other stuff, just the pizza. so it may take years before anyone will remember that they sell anything other than pizza. the same goes for this site. the ones that know, may not realize there are other things. but then the site is divided so it makes it far more confusing to find the things you want. i might want a phone cover and a poster to match, but unless your logged into the right site, you'll never see some of the choices.

so the sales for those will be lower. i'm surprised people actually found my phone covers here.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Joseph,

Looking at Mike's take on shirts, I would stay here where stealing the wording does not happen at all yet. Plus if you get someone in to look at your shirts only
page, they can not easily find a lot of other competitive shirts without leaving Pixels.


Mike, on Google all my merchandise is still up. I stopped it all some days ago. It will take some time if ever for Google to drop my merchandize images and all.

Dave

So are the sales original images (created by yourself) or images that you didn't create?
Serious question.

transparent background are easy. just cut out the background and don't compress the layers, save as a png.... however is it worth the time to do that? i'm not going out of my way.

keep in mind everyone - that your work may never sell as a poster, but might sell as a product. i have some things on other stores that only sell as a product, and never as a print.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Justin you will have to take that up with the copyright office. No one here cares any more.
But none of that is on topic.

I am going to add, the last few people that care about my production are only having their own problems.
My art should not be the focus of other people's problems with production or selling.

Dave

Joseph - when you get a computer - try GIMP - it's free - and you can easily do transparency.

My print sales have slowed down but the money definitely is on print sales. Products can only bring in a portion of what you make in prints from what I see. I am hoping that all products, trinkets, etc., will reside on pixels and this site remains an 'art' site.

Also, I wonder if Sean has considered offering original art on a commission basis. I would be willing to pay the same commission I do at gallery. On Sean's part it would be simple. He just needs to advertise and the artist ships as we do now. I've sold a few originals and know of other painters who've sold paintings on here.

there are no actual trends except size, nothing larger than a 24" print in any material. it may be because of cost.

on the C site, they dropped a lot of things as of late. they have many products and knocked off the dead weight. i think the main thing that will hurt the chances of selling many products is the interface we have here. the lack of being able to place things on the back of a shirt, or adding text or your own overlay graphic and such, will hurt the stuff sales. plus anything new will be added onto the side making it longer and longer and harder to see because they are so small there. plus, the products are spread over 2 sites, and even that's confusing me. i keep forgetting that the shirts are on a different site and its just plain confusing. it just doesn't make sense to have 2 sites especially if we are selling other things besides posters on the faa side.

i would so much rather this site expand the fine art side of it, rather than the stuff (though i would like to see puzzles because you can frame those), and umbrellas... wall murals, outdoor canvas, other substrates, maybe special shapes, and specialize in that. and if he wants a stuff site, then it should be totally apart from this one. no link backs and such.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

According to the plan laid out, we should see some site differentiation at some point. Its tough to be all things to all people, especially when everything looks the same.

Its also hard to go after the fine art market but don't have any content screening. Trying to sell housewares next to wall art. Or even trying to sell yourself as a printer instead of a gallery.

" Hopefully this place won't just keep adding for the sake of adding and become Z.'

Not sure that is an issue here like it is in restaurant. They dump things because the can't keep things on the menu that don't sell because of the food costs. They can't have food sitting around until they have to throw it away.

There is no additional cost here to have 5000 or 10,000, or 100,000 images then to have 26.

There is a direct relationship to number and sales. We see people tell us that every week in these threads.

My sales trend line is nearly exactly the same as my uploads trend line. And the quality of the images I upload have nothing to do with it.

Sean has already as much as said that is exactly what he is going to do.

"On Sean's part it would be simple. He just needs to advertise and the artist ships as we do now. '

I agree, I would love for Sean to get into the originals and signed and numbered with artist doing the fulfillment.

But is not all that simple. What happens when he facilitates the sale, money changes hands and the artist fails to ship? There are all kinds of liability issues here. It can be done. I sell thousand dollar prints on eBay and it works just fine. But Sean would have to set up some sort of system like that and he simply, to this point, has not thought it worthwhile to jump right on.

But I keep hoping. I have over $250,000 (retail value) worth of limited edition prints I would love to have another outlet for. I have some of them listed here already and I have sold a few.

Saatchi and Vango sell originals. No one gets paid until shipment is fulfilled and return grace period over. It may help to garner more traditional artists who are now a minority here. I put it in the suggestion thread - not expecting much but thought I'd throw it out there.

I agree it can be done... but so far it does not seem high on the priority list. More suggestions Sean sees, can't hurt a bit.

I am not familiar with Sastchi or Vango. But I get paid the minute the buyer pays with all my sites where I can sell originals or limited edition. And I do not ship until I get paid. I have a no questions asked, 30 day, money back guarantee as does FAA so I would not want to see any sort of grace period that would have to cover the 30 day plus shipping. A person could have thousands and thousands of dollars wrapped up.

With prints on FAA you only have the commissions being held for that grace period.

The way most of them work is they have a credit card on file that they can charge back to if there are any problems.

Like I said, it can be done but not sure I would say it is simple when you look at it from all angels.

I have stand alone websites where the burden is 100% on me. Meaning there is FAA or Amazon or anyone else involved. I use PayPal for a shopping cart and of course then the buyer has PayPal's buyer protection plan. That is one way it can be done here. But the details still have to be worked out.

I also offer my own credit card service and I stress that most major credit cards have buyer protection built into so the card holder is not on their own. When I first started, most people would rather take a chance on me and my credit card service, then on PayPal. That has nearly totally reversed now. Most people are very comfortable with PayPal. The ones that are not, pay with the credit card.

I will also take a personal check, but they have to wait until the bank clears the check. I still get a dozen or so a years that are okay with that.

Restaurant analogies.

Greek Pizza Restaurant Menu everything to everyone

Italian Pizza Restaurant Menu a very limited menu with the food done right the first time

Italian restaurants make more money.

The Greek concept is if your party of 10 has one person that dislikes pizza there will be something for them anyway,
no matter how crappy.

The Italian concept is great food.

My thinking is simple, Pixels needs a separate page for goods. Prints should be front and center and after the Galleries tab should
be a Goods or whatever tab. And the thumbnails need to be bigger for that page. Eventually with enough goods being offered,
there should be several pages of goods.

Dave

Then there is commission on accessories - this only comes along with prints (not t's, pillows and cards).
But, why is it that the tubes are not all the same. I sold three prints, each a different size and the tubes were all different prices. You'd think there would be a small, medium and large, but two of these were pretty close in size. What gives?

Nancy, maybe the paper was different.

Here is an example of you own tread working against you! lmao!

I have just set a new all time selling record for a non-holiday pay period and still 3-4 days to go. I only need one more average sale to set an all time record including holidays.

The irony of it? The last 3 of 5 sales were not print sales! lol

But the market is not soft! Keep on keeping on!

Buyers are out there. I hope the momentum stays constant into the last have of the month and first half of the next pay period. I see nothing indicating it will not.

David B. made some excellent points on reading the economy as he usually does.

Keep doing what you know that works and try something new if if that is not working.

But keep on keeping on!

Edited to add: This record includes (net) one larger then average return from last month and one cancellation the same day it was sold. These things do not matter. They are just a part of doing business. Do not let them get you down.

"the last 3 of 5 sales were not print sales!"

Didn't change the premise though did it?

Tally up my last 10 sales - 6 products (including cards phone cases and t-shirts) = less than $40

4 print sales = just under $500

I'd like for them to have check marks and let us customize our sites. I wouldn't mind having a metal print on my Pixels.com site, for instance. And maybe pillows both places. That way we could design our own sites as we like. And images we have for tee-shirts and even for licensing would not show up on our FAA site if we didn't want them too. I'm sure the programming would be too complex to do that, but it sure would be nice...

And from what I've read, you really can't trademark a tee-shirt. There's nothing to keep someone from duplicating your design anywhere. One thing I worry about here is that so many artists might just put a price on the tee-shirts of all their artwork and the site will be flooded with squares and that will turn people off. Right now, I'm only posting a few designs made for tee-shirts, and I'm uploading them elsewhere as well. I'll see which sells....It will be interesting.

"Didn't change the premise though did it? "

Nope, but I just thought it was kind of funny. :-)

"One thing I worry about here is that so many artists might just put a price on the tee-shirts of all their artwork and the site will be flooded with squares and that will turn people off."

That ship has already sailed. I have seen a lot of people say they are doing that already. I am one of them.

Why shouldn't T-Shirts be flooded like everything else?

But the thing is, there is no one flooding your AW with T's or anything else so it really does not matter. Have a little faith in the market place.

Everyone keeps saying that this and that and the other thing is going to chase people off. I am probably doing all of those no no things but I just keep selling them pictures (as the commercial goes) and so does FAA. Got to have little more faith in the buying public. I don't think that people are chased off anywhere near as easily as some would have you believe.

"I don't think that people are chased off anywhere near as easily as some would have you believe."

That is correct. :)

Having your images on any products is good although most of our sales are prints and it's how it shoud be on the Print on Demand site. We activated most of our images to be printed on products, it can't hurt and we did sell a few products.

But what worries me now is that adding all these new kinds of merchandise is clearly taking the FAA staff's attention away from the main money maker products for artists which is Prints. The staff must be overwhelmed and they do not answer to bug reports in a timely manner like they used to.

There is a navigation problem and a pricing problem with framed prints on AWs and it does not look like fixing those is a priority for them. There is also a problem with image presentation on AWs (no border for images with white background, this was fixed on FAA but not on AWs). I am only talking about a few problems that I and a fellow artist have been reporting within the last two weeks, they have still not been addressed.

Another recent issue I encountered while editing images on merchandise was I lost pricing when I hit Submit button. I could not get any help with restoring to default prices. And it happened with numerous images which I had to restore manually spending a lot of time. This same bug had been reported in the past but it is still there. There just doesn't seem to be anyone rushing to address bugs and fix them, especially if the problem is with AWs, it seems.

Everyone is so excited about new products and new venues and the rest of it that important issues such as correct navigation, correct prices, reliable editing get neglected. I do hope this changes soon and they hire more people to deal with it.

Raisa

Of course you can obtain a trademark for a t-shirt. Just ask Life is Good.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/trademark-tshirts-10246.html

Good points, all of them Raisa.

I have noticed that my default prices are missing quit often when I do new uploads. I do a dozen and some times many more and that is a real pain to have to enter them all by hand. And of course getting timed out on the multiply uploaded has been an on going problem for me. I no longer even try to use it to complete a listing. I just put the title and artist in and submit it and then come back and do the rest of the editing.

In fact, the last 6 or 8 uploads I have never completed because there was just to many problems and I just put off fixing them.

I have about 250 or maybe 350 new photos to process, decide which ones to get uploaded. I have been reluctant to get it done. I guess I should at least fix the ones that are up there. lol

Trademark for T's? Not real cost effective on a product you make maybe $10 on, imho. But I guess if some one wanted to become the T-Shirt King it would be worthwhile.

Although I'm double last August, my worst slumps have always been this month. Definitely an aggravating time of year.

Edward, I was going to bring up "Life is Good" too. I still can't believe they were allowed to trademark a common phrase.

I think you can trademark almost anything. It is enforcing that becomes difficult I bet.

I did not read the article, either my hayfever is keeping me awake or a got some caffeine in my decaf.

I am off to the beach today, it is Thursday. I will spend the entire day with my toes in the sand thinking of all of you.

I told my boss that last night and he told me, "it is going to rain". LOL

No such luck.

On topic....I thought you got the trademark, but you can put that trademark anywhere. You do not trademark the T shirt only.
Is that wrong?

Dave

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=misquamicut%20beach%20weather%20report

Life is Good holds the trademark for certain products like t-shirts. This is why people can find themselves in trouble using certain things on t-shirts and other products that they might have gotten away with in wall art.

If the company does not actively protect its trademark then it can become generic like Kleenex or Laundromat. For example Little Trees the makers of those car air-fresheners runs ads every year in Ad Age and other marketing industry magazines reminding people of their trademark. Then they have proof they were protecting their trademark.

And theres money in the banana stand