Just A Few Small Questions

views are usually bots. they don't know from likes. likes also don't mean anything. if your not actually advertising your stuff, then not many are seeing it. following people here - wasting time doing that will not promote you in any way. if anything it helps them. don't give stuff because your trading. and liking something - no one will know that you did anything at all.

you need outside viewers with money to spend. views inside don't mean much.

you should ALWAYS have descriptions on your work. photos are usually not self explanatory, people want to know what they are buying and so does google. google likes content. writing is hard for some, but its important to do so. tell us a little about the area. everything gets the image noticed. google has a thing called retention. if someone finds you there and they click on the link they may read the text and stay there longer. plus you get bonus words for google. if you can't think of a good description, the image may be boring as well.

i find the images i told a little story about got sales. over the ones that either didn't, or was a matter of fact - this is a cup on a table - doesn't hold attention like telling them about how the cup was your favorites and everyone in the family fought for it. or some lie like that. i have a ton of stories people relate too and its just all fiction.

1400 views since 2013 is a small number. i tend to get around 2000 hits a day. btw.

in any case you have to advertise outward.

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


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Thank you Mike I shall spend more time on the descriptions in future. I have had about 900 views in the last few days since going premium and uploading more images. I shall not worry about the likes and follows then just promote promote promote!

You get likes and followers by liking and following other people's work. But this are fellow artists, not potential buyers.

Numbers don't lie --

Stewart Scott
Bristol, City of Bristol - United Kingdom
MEMBER SINCE:April 13th, 2013
FOLLOWERS:0
VIEWS:1,463

compared with

Joseph C Hinson Photography
Columbia, SC - United States
MEMBER SINCE:May 9th, 2012
FOLLOWERS:238
VIEWS:90,460

And the thing is there are a lot of members with way more views than me in that same time frame and a lot of members with many more sales, too. But I do push my work out there as best I can through social media and even Flickr. I tweet, Pin, post on my Facebook accounts and lately have been posting images in Facebook groups that are relvant. When one person mentions possibly buying the shot or seeing more, I link them to my AW site (joethephotog.com)

As far as descriptions, to me it's like puncuation at the end of a sentence. I'm always tweaking my captions and keywords, anything to get the art out there a little more. An annual Santa Train has been cancelled for this Christmas, so I posted my favorite shot of it in recent years to the area it ran in. Never know when someone might want a picture of the train they were on especially if they aren't going to run anymore. Today I created a new gallery just with those Santa Train shots and am going through keywords and descriptions now. Someone somewhere will Google that train ride eventually and I want to be on top of it.

But I also feel it looks a bit lazy when I go to someone's site and see a lack of descriptions or keywords, like they're only doing part of the work they need to. You've been here for two years. Might as well jump in the deep end instead of wading in the shallow water.

WTG Stewart!

Descriptions and keywords are very important, but they are not the holey grail of getting found here. The holey grail of getting found and selling is the efforts you spend adverting and promoting your work outside of FAA/Pixels and only on your ArtistsWebsite.

The likes, follows, comments and all of the other socializing are not do anything for you at all, imho. Not anything significant. Those are mostly FAA members and they do not buy all that much from one another. Same thing with views. They are mostly FAA members and bots.

Read the following articles. Look at the first one and pay attention to 25/75 rules. Also make sure you pay attention to "Work Smarter Not Harder To Beat The Big Guys.

Response to new FAA member looking for advice
Another Response To A New Member Seeking Help
A Few Reasons Why You May Not Be Selling
Work Smarter Not Harder To Beat The Big Guys
50 Effective Tips to Help You Sell You Art

Thanks for all of your advice. I am focusing really hard on getting all of my work uploaded I still have over 800 files to go, so its going to be a lengthy process.

advertise them a bit at a time. do too much and it will be seen as spamming.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

You can't put 100 percent of your focus on uploading. You also have to market your work outside of the bubble.

If you don't like to write descriptions, try to make it a game. Here's a thread that might be helpful:

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2686063

Most of the sales I have made had nothing to do with my promoting my work.... but much to do with "tags" and lots of them! With that being said, I still tweet from time to time, and most recently I decided to really blast my work on Facebook, whereby I have added many many "friends" of whom I do not know as well as any and ALL high school and college friends from many years ago, and I am posting links to this site here on my Facebook page. I aleady made a brand new sale yesterday from someone I didn't know, but went to the same high school I did.

About Facebook - If I join a group lets say on farming because I have got quite a few images of fields, tractors and vintage vehicles how do I infultrate the group in the hope of selling when I know next to nothing about farming. This goes for any other focus group, I am just a humble photographer that photographs many subjects that is going to mean joining lots of groups I know very little about. I have just setup a new Facebook account specifically for Marketing but not surw how to effectively go about it. Are there any good social media marketing books that anybody can recommend?

i think if you join a group just to spam it, they will kick you from the group. if you happen to be a farmer and you discuss farming and you happen to have farm images, then it may sell because your a friend then. for now just post it to your page there and get on twitter and find people. the links me and floyd posted will help you out.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

That Facebook question is an excellent one, Stewart. I attempted to do this a few times in groups with themes that I felt I had lots of quality images to contribute. Yet, I never did get comfortable posting what amount to sales pitches. I always felt like it was frowned upon in social groups.

"Thanks for all of your advice. I am focusing really hard on getting all of my work uploaded I still have over 800 files to go, so its going to be a lengthy process.

Stewart, there is a very definite correlation between the number of uploads and sales.

That 25/75 rule is perfect for you.

Read the rules of the FB groups you join follow them to a T.

If you want to do something different or outside the rules or something not covered, send a private message to the person that started the group. Try to identify that founder, not just an administrator. The very often will just say no.

I have done this dozens of times and in nearly every instance, I was granted permission to do what I wanted to do.

Some groups will have limits clearly stated for all to see. Others do not. Apply a little common sense. If you spam the group, that is going to get you a lot of the kind of recondition you do not want along with getting banned.

NEVER put a sales pitch in the post. Put the likes in the back ground. And only likes to your AW. Do not use that auto post feature. Enter all of your posts into your own galleries and then share them from there.

If you use the auto post, that turns out to be a big ad for FAA/Pixels and if someone follows the link, the first click will probably take them out of your gallery into an ocean of 2 million images.

I have read your very informative guides Floyd - I really do want to crack this and learn how to market properly and effectively. I certainly do not wish to SPAM people or forums I want to provide a product that people want and are happy with. I dont care how long it takes or what I have to do its my ambition to create work that sells. I am not aiming for this venture to be my main source of income but something that gives me the satisfaction of creating something good enough that people are willing to pay for.

I have found a few decent books on amazon that should help me get to grips using social media from a business perspective instead of their typical uses. Thanks again for such informative advice.

typically people on facebook are sketchy of most people. when kids were there, they would friend anyone. adults took over and they hesitate. you have to get some friends and comment on their works so they get to know you. and then creep in that way. but in the end its a lot of work. i think its more important to get your style down and get people to recognize your work. i'm pretty sure all those groups are heavily pushed of art and all other services.

at one point i was going to go with that angle, then just gave it up. i consider facebook a place for chatting and kind of a total waste of time.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Follow this link and see how I make posts to all of my FB groups. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1473698576246013/

Five beautiful seascape images from our Favorites Collection at FASGallery.com. Please feel free to share with your friends and in groups. Click on the individual image for full details. Enjoy! - Floyd Snyder

I make sales from FB. I cannot prove, except in a couple of cases, where any sale really comes form on FAA and no one else can either. They do not give us that information. But I have had several sales over the years of signed and numbered, limited edition prints from being found on FAA via my FB group postings.

I have people ask me for pricing all the time.

I do the exact same kind of FB posting for my eBay page(s) and I do get that information from eBay and I do know for a fact a lot of sales are coming from my FB posting. If I am getting clicks from FB on my eBay page, there is no reason in the world to think they are not clicking on my FAA posts on FB.

The number of friends is maybe meaningless. FB is different than Twitter. FB it is about the groups and how you engage them.

Even if you have 50,000 FB friends including every relative and friend you ever had, that is not enough numbers. Well actually it is if you can get them to share your posts with all of their friends. I am not saying ignore them I am saying they are only a small percentage of the numbers you need to reach.

Getting shared is ten times more important on FB then likes or comments. Shares guarantee more people see your work. Likes and comments do not. But is someone asks a question or makes any comment, you have to respond and like their comment.

I have a potential reach on FB of well over 3 million sets of eyeballs. And that grows nearly every day I make a bunch of posts. I belong to a lot of the art groups because that is the way I thought when I first started using FB. Then I started looking for special interest groups.

I sell a lot of religious art... I belong to a lot of religious groups... I sell a lot of western art... I belong to a lot of cowboy and western groups.... I sell political art.... belong to a lot of political groups, of both parties... and so on and so forth.

Every time I cut back on my FB posting for any significant time, my sales slump. I posted about that several months back. I start it back up and the sales come back up. Until FAA decides to give us back tracking information telling is where sales are coming from, that is about a good of proof I am likely to get that FB woks.

I do other marketing as well but most people do not want to spend money so that pretty much limits it to SM and trying to figure out what works for you.

i think i've gotten sales there too, but they have to be a fan and you have to be friends or something. its more of a coddling thing. i'm working with a person right now in fact. i think she saw me comment on another friend of hers. or she saw my work because her friend was mine. i dunno. some people only contact you through facebook, which is annoying. because their mail system is clumsy, sometimes you get a note in your mail. and the OTHER box - you have to check now and then, they don't tell you at all if you have mail there.

same with google plus, i might have gotten sales from there. but generally i try not to push too hard in any of these places.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Thought I had heard from someone awhile back that the more views you have on an image, the further up the line it would move. For example, if someone goes to FAA and searches for red barns. If there is an image that has no views it might be on page 15, where as an image that has 300 views might be on page 1 or 2. Is this true?

Two thousand hits a day!!!! Man that's unreal. My oldest image has had a total of 81 views since 2011. But I'm not one for self-promotion.

views might have been used. but people got view bots. they had like 5 million hits a day. and then he had to block the bots. the views are more for you than anything else. the search is based on how well you sell - not always how well that image sold. its kind of unfair that way. i'd rather have the sellers up high. the higher on the search, the more views it will get because its high up. but it its not high up because of the views. its because that person sells often.

for a while i was getting 3500 hits a day. i find oddly though when i get around 1500 that's when the sale comes. not sure how that works exactly.

if you want to sell, you have to promote. not many artists like doing this. i hate it myself. that's why i take a minimal effort. i'm sure if i pushed harder i would get more, but i just don't have the stamina for that.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com