Is It Worth Upgrading On Faa?

Yes.

Mike Savad used the analogy of going into a shop that only had 25 things for sale. As a buyer you wouldn't hang around for very long. But if they had 250 things for sale the buyer wiuld be more interested in seeing what else they could buy.

When I joined I had to keep deleting images in order to upload new ones - that got boring fast, and then I thought ah it's only thirty bucks

Thanks Mark for your input. I am getting tired of deleting stuff and uploading new work too!

Increased views come from having more inventory and more promotion of your work to the world at large. The premium account doesn't do it by itself. $30 is small investment if you are serious about selling your work.

But nothing is automatic. You have to upload quality work, spend the time to keyword, add descriptions and then go out and find your audience.

of course, i'll get a lot more views with 3000 images compared to 25. views don't mean sales, and buying in, doesn't mean sales, you still have to do the work. you have to advertise etc. 500views in a years time is not very many.

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

and every time you erase it means you break links everywhere. and the buyer that was saving up, now goes some place else, and you lose the sale.


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

Of course you'll get more views if you have more images to be viewed.

Michel
✈ http://pics.travelnotes.org/.

"Logic dictates"

1. You have nice work and it has sales potential if you can get it seen.

2. I will assume you have more than 25 images of the quality you have posted.

3. As Mike mentioned, removing marketable work is a bad idea. Most of the work I sell has been online at least 3 months but more often it is here a year before it will start selling. That means if you rotate image through the 25 they never really have time to gain traction before they are gone.

In terms of views I get between 500 and a thousand a day but I have more than 3000 images. For many sellers it truly is a numbers game.

30 bucks a year is cheap in the big scheme of things. When I started out I was selling live at the Eastern Market in DC. It was 50 bucks for tent space on Saturday and 100 on Sunday not to mention 14 hour days and a LOT of money in real inventory. 30 bucks is nothing but a few less cups of over priced coffee and a few scones less than a year.

Thanks All!
JC point taken and thanks for taking the time to write as comprehensively as you have!

You wont be wasting your money. Your work is of a caliber that it is worthwhile to upgrade.

You have to figure out how to sell it though on your own. The forum members do give out some pointers over time.

Dave

All things being equal - if you keep everything the same - no - paying FAA $30 a year will not increase your visitor count, nor even your selling. ONLY by doing as JC and others suggest - more images and marketing - will there be an improvement.

I would say it is worth it. I currently have a grand total of 91 images for sale. A fraction of the work that others have. A week or so ago I sold an image that will pay for over 3 years of my premium dues. All told, sales of that image alone would pay for my dues for over 5 years. Again, a fraction of what some sell here, but given the amount of time I put into it, I am happy. If I were limited to 25 images, I can guarantee that that image would not have made the cut.

You never know what is going to sell. And I don't think it is uncommon for people to view an image a number of times before deciding to buy. You don't want that buyer to come back and find the image gone. You should have an expanding gallery, not a rotating one.

And as others have said, great work.

Uploading more images increases your odds of a sale in the same way that buying more lottery tickets increases your odds of winning the lottery, it's just a statistics thing, however no matter how many images you upload you may not make a sale, same as no matter how many lottery tickets you buy you may not win the lottery. I have about ninety images myself and had three sales my first year and that was with a fair amount of marketing, those three sales were small, didn't even add up to enough to pay for my annual fee. The $30/year though isn't the big deal, I'm still paying it, it's all the time spent marketing that seems to have little or no effect that gets me.

Honestly, it doesn't make sense NOT to upgrade. Assuming you can manage to sell one image at a moderate size, that alone should cover your upgrade cost for the year. And as has been pointed out, the more images you have available, the more chance something will resonate with a potential buyer, and the more views you will get. You still have to do the work as others have noted, but I'm assuming you'll be making images anyway, Why remove images so you can post new ones? $30 just is not that much money. When I signed up, I was making nothing with my images. Yes, I could have gone the free route and tried to pick the 25 images I have that I thought would sell, but what I felt were my best images, and what buyers wanted to buy are often different. As it is, my best selling image is not even my favorite from the day I took it, let alone of all the images I've ever taken. You just never know. Don't limit your chances over $30.

Like Rick, my best seller would not have made it to that 25. For that matter I didn't put it up at all for a while but then decided I might as well. Very few of my best sellers would have made that 25 cut.

I don't think the lotto is a good analogy myself. All lotto tickets have the same odds of winning. Not all images have the same odds of selling. The problem is that we the artists don't really understand the sales potential of most of our work. At least we don't when we are first starting out. I understand sales potential a LOT better now. I will shoot something and tell my wife, that image is going to pay for this trip. I am usually right now. When I started I was clueless about it.

For the record, things that don't sell for me that I used to think would sell........ Barns, they just don't sell well for me. Fall colors don't sell for me. Waterfalls are not big sellers.

What sells for me are recognizable scenes shot in unique light way or time not normally seen, often a spectacular sunrise or sunset.

Why ask because the fee is only a few dollars. When you gas up it's a hell of a lot more in a years time. I spend thousands on gas and only a few pennies on this art site.