To Watermark Or Not

If you want all the watermarks removed from all your images you have to ask Abbie to do it for you. I guess some customers are confused and think the work will come with the watermark.

Seriously this comes up once every two weeks, have you never read through one of the semi-weekly watermark debates?

JC, I really haven't had a chance to read much here, I started to read some. But I was surprise about the watermark discussion.

Some people think they are part of the art, I guess.

Frankly I sell rather well with watermarks. Selling success is more about marketing and quality of product then a magic bullet like taking off watermarks.

Thank you Jessica!

I leave them off because dumb people buy art too.

I don't use the watermark because it looks messy, though some images still have it from my early days.. If I upload something I suspect will be pilfered I make my signature more prominent

I was gonna try and sum up how this was going to go before the regs started.

I will state that 30% of FAA images have the watermark whereas 10% of sales do.

Someone will state that is somehow skewed because many best sellers don't have them.

I will say that may be one of the reasons they are best sellers and point out that many potential buyers ask if it will be printed on the image. That means many more won't ask and just move on.

Someone will say they have to be idiots not to know.

I will say that no, anyone that doesn't work in the art business probably doesn't know and would have no reason to know AND not to make disparaging remarks about potential customers in the forum.

Edward will then pipe in he sells fine with a watermark. (as he already has.)

I will say that it is an individual choice of course but he might sell better without them. (unprovable of course one way or the other.)

Bradford will say don't do it.

Savad will say they are ugly and take away from the art.

Some others will talk about considering changing them on or off.

Someone will say they prevent infringement and someone else will say they really don't.

The reality is they DO discourage some sales. They prevent SOME infringement. The question you have to ask yourself is do you care more about your image possibly being used without your permission which costs no real dollars mind you, or do you care more about losing a few sales, which is in fact real money you are not going to get.

watermarks can be removed easily.

many buyers think watermarks print on there and may avoid you


watermarks don't help you get sales.
watermarks are ugly, and even if taken, they will still never find you because your name isn't on it.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Why doesn't the watermark itself tell the customer what it is? Security Watermark! ...and then explain it below the image what a Security Watermark is in bold red letters...

As for it being ugly... having been used to them for many years, I hardly even realize that they are there. The major reason that artists don't sell their work has more to do with the work itself and the lack of exposure to the right people. Looking to blame watermarks is like punching at the air.

JC that was absolutely spot on and awesome!

Glenn McCarthy made a super valid point.

Why doesn't the watermark say, "Security Watermark" instead of, "Fine Art America." That way the watermark says what it is.

Why doesn't FAA just change it to that, instead of using it as another form of advertisement over our images and thus confusing buyers. Really… does the watermark need to advertise FAA??

Oh and someone will point out that the main reason art doesn't sell is the art itself or the lack of exposure.

This is absolutely true. If an artist isn't selling at all it likely has nothing to do watermarks whatsoever. Watermarks will not prevent all buyers from purchasing art. Many know it won't be printed.

While that is true, if one buyer thinks it will and chose not to buy a 48 inch print from me that would be 400 dollars less in that payday for me. Does that happen often? For me it never happens and that is the way I like it.

For others that have watermarks does it happen? You can bet it does looking at the numbers. If 30% of FAA art has the watermark and 10% doesn't that means the watermark does inhibit some sales otherwise those numbers should be close.

Oh and while interesting suggestions, they have come up before and been considered and the watermark isn't changing.

I really enjoyed that JC. You should summarize all the typical weekly questions that way!

i think the watermark should look like a big handlebar mustache - for everyone... how about them apples?


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Interesting suggestions, while they may not be accepted at the moment, can still make their way to the top later on down the road.

The Watermark issue is obviously one that never dies. If FAA is so against them, why not remove them altogether? As long as they "are" available, why not put in an extra 30 minutes to make them more understandable for the prospective buyer? Kinda like putting in the extra effort to make sure one's work is more presentable.

Because there are artists that simply will not show if not allowed a watermark. If you look at the numbers, 90% of sales don't have them but 10% do. FAA makes it known watermarks deter sales but it doesn't stop sales. From a business perspective why in the world would FAA cut 10% of its sales by demanding no one use a watermark and then lose those artists that want one? It doesn't make sense.

Beyond that point, it is an individual choice. Use it or don't. Frankly in the big picture FAA would prefer artists do everything to maximize their own sales. It is good for them and good for FAA. That said FAA is not going to demand you don't use watermarks anymore than they will dictate that you have to market your art.

It already states the watermark will not be printed but many fail to read that. You could make it huge and say SECURITY MARK I suppose but that looks really ugly frankly and would probably deter sales further. I am not sure how it would be more obvious without being obnoxious.

Lastly, with somewhat similar logic why any artist would use one knowing that it is probably costing some sales is beyond me. Why wouldn't every artist get rid of them? Not my business and when it comes down to it maybe when they move past that watermarked image and they might find one of mine.

FAA provides a watermark if you want to use it. If you do, that is your choice and it might well fit your business model.

Oh, and with a Forest Gump quote I am out. "That's all I got to say about that."

If it is about artists "not showing" because of the watermark, why not be sensitive to their request to have a watermark that will give them a better advantage? Might get more artists to show and spend for the premium membership. If there is something I have noticed in the discussion boards more than anything, it is that artists get pretty perturbed when their art is stolen and used without them being compensated for their hard labor.

With that... I'll have a cherry chocolate and head out into the night.

It's done, no more watermarks. Lets see how many buyers take notice.

Randy,

Hope it works out for you. But with only 21,000 views since 2011, I think there is a heck of a lot more effort that you need to be putting into it. Watermarks are possibly one of the least of your problems. Marketing and Networking are the areas you need to address.

People use watermarks to prevent theft. Other people who have had art stolen that don't use watermarks often use google image search and find the people using images without permission and sick lawyers on them.
Many make more money with the lawyers than if the idiot had payed for the image in the first place.

Just sayin...
That's a pretty good reason not to use watermarks.

I'd like to meet one artist who is making money that way and happy with the scheme Jestephotography. Seems a bit of a long stretch............................ How entirely fun it must be to chase the wind.

There is a thread on it here.
More than a few people make 3k/month "chasing wind".....

While it is not why I don't use the watermark, that is in fact becoming another revenue stream for my art.

Use it illegally and my service finds it you are likely going to pay pretty well for it.

Good summary JC.

I'll add "Some will say the watermark provides a breadcrumb for people to follow back to the source."

This is one of the most important reasons for watermarks. When I pin to pinterest the watermark provides a visual clue to 1. The image is not "free" for the taking and 2. I can be found on FAA. Perhaps the watermark actually brings in sales because people know where to buy the image.

For those who are currently selling, removing watermarks may or may not boost your numbers by 10 - 30 percent but for the newbie who hasn't put in the time and effort to market their work, removing the watermark is not going to make a difference.

Another one: "Some will say: if they license their work with agencies that watermark, its their obligation to provide protection to their images."

We're so predictable! :)

Right, Jessica? We need to up our game around here. Gotta keep it interesting.

Me, I never have used watermarks and never will. And my reasoning is based on the fact that if aliens were to land and colonize earth, retaining only the digital information and destroying everything physical so they could terraform and re-populate the planet, then I will have a higher chance of having my work displayed, as they will surely peruse the breadth of human imagery and immediately weed out anything with a watermark.

Good point Cynthia, I was on the fence, but now no watermarks for me!

TL Mair
http://tlmair.com

Since I found out Cynthia and TL, no more watermarks for me. Been spying on me Glenn, lol. I am working on it.

I think it's a pretty interesting discussion so far.

Jestephotography Ltd, Where's the thread? No link.

No Randy... a few clicks to your page tells me a bit of information. I don't have time to spy. Neither do I have a service to chase others around on the net. Not in that rare air. Of course, when a watermark is added the need for a service diminishes greatly.

A good watermark may help those who are challenged with understanding what the hell that thing on there is though. I have noticed that those who generally come on to complain about theft of their images are almost always those who do not have a watermark.

I believe the thread was titled "Stopping the image thieves"

Hopefully someone someday will report back with "I saw a huge increase in sales after I took off the watermark!" - haven't seen happen yet.

Who cares how many views I have Glenn and I see Cynthia has more then you do. And to Edward I'll be sure to let you know if I am making sales. I don't know why some are on the bandwagon about Watermarks. Based on what they said, Watermarks DO discourage customers.

Randy...

Who cares? Not me. The less you promote yourself the better for others. You seem to be the one thinking that Watermarks may be hindering your progress. But a store without very many people seeing what is offered won't sell much. Cynthia obviously does more promotion than I do. We also do different work. I respect her and what she does. But I don't think that her visitations have anything to do with Watermarks. Probably no connection. You would have to ask her what avenue of marketing and promotion she uses.

I don't know why there are people who are so against making the Watermarks "better"" so that customers understand them. That argument doesn't seem to be completely rational. It would seem to be an obstacle for adding more sales to the sight since there are many that use them. That's my opinion. I'm sticking to it until another angle convinces me otherwise.

P.S. Thanks for that thread title Steve!

Any time man, glad I could help.
Speak of the devil I just located a moron who stole a pile of my work off deviantart and is selling an ebook for 119 bucks. I'm going to make him bleed.

Go for it. Hope you make a bundle!

In my first two years here I haven't sold a lot, but I've sold three times as much in two years here than I did over ten years with Shutterfly Pro Galleries. And the interesting thing is that I never used watermarks with Shutterfly, but I do use them here. In fact, I didn't make my first sale here until AFTER I put watermarks on everything, so for me anyway the watermarks don't seem to have had much effect on sales.

I do take steps to inform buyers that watermarks won't appear on prints. I put it in bold red font at the beginning of my bio, in every gallery description, and in every image description. FAA also puts a notice in small grey type on the merchandise pages. Between those buyers seem to get the message.

I started using watermarks for these reasons.

1. People can make a decent 8.5"x11" print on a home printer after taking a screenshot off of FAA's pages. Watermarks help discourage that.

2. I'm also offering royalty free licenses on Pixels Licensing that are smaller in resolution than what FAA/Pixels displays on screen. People aren't going to pay for an unwatermarked 500 pixel download if they can get a 900 pixel screenshot for free.

3. People (including one local business) were lifting my photos and posting my photos on social media without credit. These were not pros erasing watermarks to sell prints, but mostly casual users who don't have the means or desire to alter things they find before sharing them. Then they spread without any record of their origin. I found one of my photos I had for sale as a download on Shutterpoint posted on a message board. It was watermarked with my name and copyright notice right across the middle, and was posted with the watermark intact. That was as good as free advertising!

I know watermarks are not perfect, but I feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, and I actively take steps to mitigate the latter.

BTW one fellow from my town who is on FAA uses watermarks, and he regularly shows up in the recent sales pages. Watermarks don't seem to hurt his sales one bit. He sells historic images of the Monterey Peninsula and California. http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/pat-hathaway.html

In JC's summary, did he mention that unless you have a very small image, the full resolution of your image is never displayed?
The display images on FAA/Pixels are compressed and have some artifacts, and don't exceed relatively small dimensions. (900 pixels max?)
So your 1420x1600 image will never be displayed at full resolution, but WILL be printed at full resolution.

Edward no one ever said if you remove the watermark there will be a huge increase in sales. The only one that came close to ever saying it was when I said "watermarks kill sales". I regret I said it about a year ago because it did not express what I meant. I meant you can lose sales, not that you won't make any sales if you use them.That you have watermarks and still sell just shows there is a lot more to selling than whether or not you have a watermark. I would venture a guess that you would have made more sales if you made a stronger first impression by leaving the watermark off.

I think Glenn 's suggestion would not work for me. Having the word "security" and a disclaimer makes it so much worse. I don't want them thinking about legal issues. I want them to like my images and buy a print. I agree that there should be more options. Options are always good.

You only have a second to make a strong first impression. It's the distraction that hurts the sale as much as the fact of not knowing if the watermark is in the print.

Bradford...

I don't think folks are thinking as drastically when they see a watermark as they are when they are running a red light. Some people actually think about why it is there. An explanation in red writing under the image would work "better". Since you do not use watermarks, it shouldn't make a difference to you. Some who do use watermarks may like what they see or just perhaps would like to see the system modified for them. They are clients of FAA too! (like... thousands of them) Even JC acknowledged that.

We're also told that things are in concrete somehow, Why? For those who are happy to be FAA customers, but would like a bit more attention paid to the Watermark in order for their playing field to get a bit better, it would create an even better relationship with management. Win, win is always good. Getting better is "always" a good thing. And it really wouldn't take too much effort.

As it is... we are left to take it or leave it. And then we are told that we are hindering our possibility of sales because of it. Why the roadblock in trying to make it better? Is it that they think it is the best that it can be? I can't believe that to be true.

On the scale of importance... this is probably a small issue. But for some it crosses over into blaming a watermark for lack of sales when the real issue is not the watermark but the kind of effort being put out to get customers. The watermark is not a good scapegoat.

Glenn, you make a lot of valid points. Thank you.

As I've said before. Watermarks are low on the list of reasons why someone might not be selling. It certainly does not decrease views.

I understand there are a lot of people looking for a magic bullet but building up sales requires a good inventory of images and consistent marketing over a long period of time. If one has just been sitting around waiting for sales to happen with watermarks, sitting around waiting for sales to happen without watermarks isn't going to be any different.

....

James is correct. Licensing and no watermark makes little sense. There is no stock agency that I know of that doesn't have watermarks.

It is not just the watermark free artists that have their work infringed.

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2910543

The site she is complaining about has Edward's Westie on their site.

On FAA it does state, 'The watermark in the lower right corner of the image will not appear on the final print.', but only on the items to purchase; prints, curtains, pillows, etc. This however is not on the AW sites. I requested this, but still is not added. I believe I also requested it to be placed under the image on its page and no joy.

I do not watermark my personal websites images, due to the fact I have complete control over everything. I keep images at: 600px width for horizontals, 400px width for verticals, and under 60KB (yes kilobytes, not megabytes). A screenshot of them won't render anything worth while to anyone for anything, except for perhaps putting them on a website. But in every description it clearly states my copyright. Even though the images are small, it hasn't deterred sales. I have hotlinks enabled to stop theft of sites, a plugin to stop right-click/drag and drop/etc. I watch who is visiting and block IPs that I checkup on that are not good bots/people, etc. Anyone who tries to sign in to gain access to my sites are automatically locked out of site and then go on the permanently Block IP list that refuses access to site altogether. One such blocked IP from Israel tried another 93 times to view my site before finally giving up. lol

All outside sites that I have images up on are watermarked: FAA, Twitter, etc., because I have no control over them. These sites are most likely where theft would occur. So I opt for the watermarks and I have gotten sales from all of them. I stated before in threads, that if a watermark deters a sale then so be it. I'm hard pressed to believe if 2 images stood side by side, the greatest one being watermarked and the so-so one not, that a collector would choose the so-so image solely because the great image was watermarked. I also believe that if all images were watermarked on the net it wouldn't deter sales and it would inform more people that all images are copyrighted thus need permission to use. So many think, 'Hey it's on the internet so it's FREE to use!' Hell I had a professor at college tell the class the same thing.... Go to Google search for an image and use it. :shaking head:

Anyways, I read somewhere that maybe 3% of all photographers have their images registered with the US Copyright office. So 97% while they do have recourse for copyright infringement, they will get little in way of a payout. With the CO registered image, the payday could be huge. The Copyright Guys, think Edward posted a link to a vid of theirs awhile back, stated that if an image was infringed and it had a watermark removed, the payday would be greater. Why? Well it proves that the person knowingly altered the image to use it for free and cannot give any evidence to the contrary. Also from what I've read in threads, very few who have images stolen have a copyright attorney handle their infringements which I find odd. I'd never contact an infringer on my own. To go after anyone w/o a copyright attorney, only hurts ones case in most instances. Then on the other hand, if your images aren't registered, a copyright attorney most likely won't take the case anyway.

But at the end of the day, it's up to each individual photog how they want to handle their images; watermark or no watermark. It's all about what you want to do! I mean really... Would you rather have your images stolen and deal with that mess? Not to mention especially if you don't have your images registered, which I'd guess most on here don't. Meaning the difference between say for example $300 and $30K or $300K. OR... Would you rather have a few less sales using a watermark? I like others on FAA choose the latter. It would be nice if FAA respected that and put a note about watermarks not being on final print everywhere an image is to help inform customers and people at large.

As a newbie, I bought into the "Don't use watermarks or you won't sell", then with experience I made my own informed decision when and where to use them. Which of course is my choice, as is it yours not to use one. :)

~ Charly

I never said, I was going to wait around hoping for sales without the watermarks is going to be any different. It was my choice to remove the watermarks rather I make sales or not.