Riddle Me This? Where Sales Come From

Sales come from any where and every where. Internal search, your website, Google, Twitter, social media, news articles, blogs, etc, etc. To maximize your chances of a sale you have to be every where as much as you can.

Sales DO come internally.

What is actually said is you cannot really on that to generate sales. Between the internal search and Google there are a LOT of sales generated.

The problem is unless you are already a top seller or have a bunch unique and well done images in unique markets it is a needle in the haystack to get sales via the above methods. You cannot control that but you can control your own marketing efforts.

wish i knew, some times i get a bunch of sales, often from just pushing it. but usually its random, or then they stop despite me not doing anything differently.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Everyone knows that sales come from the Sales Fairy!

Maximum exposure is the goal yes but I noticed it is a crowded field.

and globally as a whole. the people that buy are, must do something collectively together. i find my sales come in clumps. its like they all get together and say - lets buy some art.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Oh my gosh...nobody actually knows where they come from!

Sales?

I was thinking of this with a recent sale. I don't recall marketing the particular image. Certainly not recently. There was also not s visit recently from where it was bought leading me to think it has been in someone's cart recently,

the sales you really want are the seemingly random ones. that means they liked what they saw - maybe on the one you advertised, and went through your store to find the one they liked. on the other hand i've found links leading back to blogs that i never put there, and i get lots of views of things. still no sale for it though, but that one might have gotten sales for me already, or will in the future.

now if i can just conjure up some more that would be grand.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

The majority of my sales have been to someone I know or I can figure out where they found it, I have sold a few to people that live in Scituate MA but I take a lot of pictures there and its a small town so that makes sense.... thus image I sold to someone in San Diego and I don't remember marketing it other then maybe a FB post and a tweet when I posted it but they found it somehow.....I also don't know anybody in San Diego but I hear its beautiful.

I feel the Sales Fairy coming my way :- )

In my time here I have generated one sale thru external marketing that I know of. It was purchased because she saw my work at a local co-op that I participate in , but wanted it on metal and larger size. I could have made the piece myself but this site is hassle free! I just wish the site was a little more pleasing to the eye.

I would be interested in knowing the same thing. It seems like a lot of work to not get any sales. I asked a similar question a couple weeks ago, and I was told to have patience, work hard and like you said- use other networks. I have been adding different things to see what people look at. Good luck to you too.

But how many people have had patience and worked hard and not seen any results? Seems like quite a few. All I know is the work I've done has put me at the top of the "David King" search on FAA. lol Maybe that's something, I don't know, but another David King used to show up first, now I own the first 2 1/2 pages. A funny thing though, you filter by "recently sold" on a "David King" search and it shows my art, again 2 1/2 pages worth but I've never sold anything. Wouldn't it make more sense for that filter to return nothing? Makes me wonder how useful that filter really is.

Huh, David,

You got me wondering. I must the the only Susan Vineyard out here. I have it all to myself. Now if I could just get people wondering and curious about searching for Susan Vineyard on FAA!

My understanding of it is the "recently sold" filter will filter your work if you have sold anything, if you haven't if my default to another sort option..

If that's the case it doesn't indicate it. It still shows that the applied filters are "David King" and "Recently Sold". Rather misleading, though I suspect FAA member artists are more likely to use that filter than potential customers.

The reason it does that is QUITE valid.

Say you are a customer and want an image of XYZ. Nothing there has actually ever sold. Do you want that person's search to come up with nothing at all OR default to non-sold items after the solds have been shown?

Do you want a customer to search for you, David King, and sort by best sellers or recently sold and find that you have sold nada? I think not.

Would a customer actually do that though? Do customers on this site really care whether something has sold before when deciding what to buy? Actually, I'd rather search told the truth.

Here's an idea I am toying with :

1)Set up a simple blank page under your domain name that redirects the user automatically to your FAA page.

2)Use this page to host Google analytics code.

This way you will know where your visitors came from, if not whether they bough anything (haven't sold anything, so that's the least of my worries right now :)

If you are using multiple methods to promote your site, this will tell you which ones are more effective.

i don't think customers would ever look to see what things sold. because i know for one i don't care if something sold. however i think this is either for google or artists. but i'd rather not let anyone know this intel.


you can set up the blank page, but keep in mind a few things:

1. it may take a year or more before google places you high enough in the search to actually be seen
2. a redirect is not taken seriously and its seen as spam and it will probably be sent to the back
3. the code is only on that one page, and most people come in from the side. i have stat counter on my main page, but only if people click on the main page will i see anything at all. and its actually very little data. when i tweet things it goes right to the image. and i send people to my art site, so i don't know where they come from.

google analytics is the worst device i have ever used. it has too much info i can't use. doesn't tell me what's going on in real time (only by the second). doesn't show me where exactly they came from and when, where they went and so on. its not a simple device, i can't get any useful info from it. nothing. and its all a day old... and any data we have is on the artist site anyway, i don't think i get that many people on that site.

i set up 1 goal, to show me things in cart, and i just looked and have a number of hits, and no sales. so that's a real bummer.


stat counter used to work on my artist site, and despite being able to "customize it" - i can't install the one thing that was the most important to me.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Mac,

Your ideas fleshed out are what I have done. I have GA and statscounter as well. And I put up my artist's statement and a few other pages.
The images and gallery tabs on the menu go to my AW.

http://bridburg.com

oh and always test your download speeds at GTMetrix.com You need to be under 2 seconds.

Dave

ON different site I sell on,,the pieces sold are listed and you can figure out how many the artist sold. It is very helpful because it shows me who my real competition is,,it shows me what type of photography has sold and the the price it sold at.That is important to make sure i am not too low or too high..I want to be in the middle leaning to the high side.. I guess its more important when your are starting the journey and not so much when you have been doing it for years.

I just got on from TX of an image of Vermont in winter. I'd say this sale came from someone who is home sick.