Do You Make Money Selling On Ffa

Diane

We have a search at the top of the discussions There are a LOT of threads already active about sales

i make money here.

define decent income. its a lot of work, and decent isn't the same in all areas of the world.


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

I guess I'm just wondering ball park and I imagine one can make nothing to .... I couldn't even guess. I would say decent wages is 50 - 60k but I am use to Corp. salaries. Btw like your photos. I liked the firehouse interior specifically

Isabella - I did a search. Are sale profit #s confidential?

Yes they are confidential

Ok thanks! I found a good discussion about tagging your work and marketing. I guess I'll go invest in that fancy camera a get to work.

typically most people here probably won't be announcing their salaries, but its often pretty good. but what i can make and what you can make are totally different.

a fancy camera won't yield better photos btw.

many people have high hopes of getting a ton of money but are left broken. its a lot of hard work getting a good portfolio going, getting known and advertising on top of that.


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

And the harder you work, the luckier you (might) get.

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

Don't quit your job.

the way to look at is like this:

you just joined a company. its your first day, you ask someone - hey, what's the most i can make here? and someone says, well the CEO makes 10 million a year and the guy under him makes 8. and your thinking wow! i can make millions?

no, you just started, your an intern, you probably won't make much of anything.


on this site, you could earn the $30 back, many often get that back. beyond that its a bit of luck, skill and determination.


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

Thanks Mike. I'm sure FAA isn't the only source income for most here either. I'm just hoping to supplement retirement (in 16 years : ) I'm off to an early start. I've been doing some research on cameras so that I can photo my work for the requirements to sell on FAA. It's not that fancy but with accessories to purchase it is a chunk of change at least for me. A Nikon D3300. I agree with both of you I'm sure it's hard work.

Thanks guys! All good advice.

Edward - I'm laughing.

fyi -


this won't print. it has too much noise. if sold, the site will refuse to print it.

be sure to add keywords and descriptions. if you want to be seen in the search, you need an avatar. sunsets are a hard sell because buyers can take them, and there are millions of them on the site already.


watch for motion blur, this won't print either. be sure to add comma's between keywords or it counts as one big word.


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

In all likelihood you'll make more working at McDonald's when you figure in the time to travel, shoot, post, tag, market your photos. There are probably some that make six figures but that is the exception not the rule and it takes A LOT of work.

and posting here isn't a guaranty you'll get any sales at all. if a buyer looks at your wares and thinks - i can do that. you won't get the sale from them.


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

You might not make millions in your new job on Day One; but you can make the tea.

Yup - I was just practicing uploading with these and I was seeing what the roses would look like on a tote. That's a under a lot more paint now. I took those with my phone. And right about the sunsets. I think I drilled through 19 pages of them. I didn't think I was live yet as I didn't pay for the upgrade. Thanks for tip about the comas. Good to know!

On a TOTAL side note have you seen the ap iviewart. You can take photos of spaces (i.e. a living room) or use the rooms they have on the app and put your photos on the wall. It's a cool way to see how your art/photos would look in someones home.

tea is relaxing.


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

For me the venue doesn't matter...It's the quality of work I produce and the amount of time/effort I put into marketing myself. Doesn't matter where I list it. But I do like FAA a lot and it has some great features and a professional look and staff. I send people here for those reasons.

Two sugars, please.

Sunsets, garden flowers, feet and shots of airplane wings - these subjects amazingly have already been discovered by thousands of contributors. The chances are the typical buyer already has these on their cell phone.

So if you want to make money coming in at 2016, you are going to have to bring something unique and plan on working non-stop to get the world to notice.

Feet? Really? I am not a photographer and I DO have a ton of sunsets on my phone! I did notice that one artist here has 1,500 pieces and in her blog she said she has a goal of 3,000. I get the work hard but work hard at getting the world to notice is a great point! I was looking at some of the other sites to sell your artwork on and I have to agree with Sharon that FAA has one of the more professional looks. As a buyer I also like how the art is displayed for easy viewing.

2016 will have to be a practice run for me!

best to not shoot with the phone.


practice or not, this will not print. its blurry, very blurry.

people have odd goals. its the amount, its the quality.

and i am serious about the avatar, as far as i know, no avatar, your not listed in the search.


only upload your very best. it takes a while before your work is seen. and if you have practice shots, or blurred images, the recognition you'll get won't be the good kind. right now i'm around 3000 items. but i only send a few hundred up each year. many think that more is better, then they upload their entire drive here. and that's usually a mistake.


create a style, use it, then your recognized. it could take many years to get good enough to sell. its just the truth.

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

Yes I have all that in mind. I didn't think I was public at this point. I was just having fun seeing the images on the totes and phone cases. What do you mean by having an avatar?

No and never.

see how i look like batman, and you look like a blue thing. you want to have a face.

prices by items means they are for sale. if you want to only sell the items, then the prices should be there. though that soft, i'm wondering if they would print the items as well. mostly you don't want to have to replace each item with the sharp version. and if you don't have a sharp version, you would lose the sale if it sold.


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

JL - I thought you had turned a corner and had become more positive - creating more work and marketing it? You need to have a deep inventory to be found and start making regular sales.

and diane - you still need to have that avatar or no one will find you in the search.


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

or is this an abandoned thread now?

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

not if we keep bumping it, Mike ;-)

No, she came back.

Diane Radley19 Hours Ago

"Last night I was wondering if I had opened a can of works but it seems like a lot of good information has been brought up from this discussion. I'll def be joining if it's only to get my work organized. Thanks All!"

need more sales .....

OP are you coming back? or is this thread done?

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

Edward, thank you for your advice. I do appreciate your interest. I AM working on expanding my gallery. I know it's skimpy and doesn't have anything one could call "decor". But very tired and got the winter blues.

" I know it's skimpy and doesn't have anything one could call "decor"."

I disagree, the lions in particular should be popular, not my kind of thing but I know people that do hang that kind of artwork.

Thank you, David. That one has sold, but I'm thinking of doing another version of it - making the image more square,, and making the wolf a more conventional gray. What do you think?

Not sure you should be asking me for advice, for one I know little about wildlife art, for another I believe you've done better at selling here than me. lol It does seem the more colorful the better nowadays as far as what sells.

the only way to know is to experiment. make a bunch, see what sticks. maybe different breeds and so on, certain ones may sell better than others. and whatever has sold, make more. following this pattern you'll have mostly winning/selling designs. like if you know 80% of the room likes chocolate, because you tried a number of other flavors on them already. then you make more and are favored more.

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

"the only way to know is to experiment. make a bunch, see what sticks. maybe different breeds and so on, certain ones may sell better than others"

Many of us aren't selling enough of anything for that to be a good formula to go by. It's not what we're making because people sell similar art of the same subjects. The challenge isn't finding a good subject to sell it's finding the market that will buy it. A small sample rate is meaningless, not enough data to go on.

i didn't sell all the time in the past either. i experimented, uploading lots of different things until one stuck. i'm still doing that now. sometimes you can get an idea on views or comments alone. people don't comment voluntarily unless they really do like it.


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

Mike, What is a Avatar?

an avatar?

is a tall blue alien, easy to replicate, has an indian like culture. they can't act, made a really bad movie, that oddly many liked.


avatars are those picture thingies that represent you. like this month - i'm bat mike.


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

Avatar? You mean Dances With Wolves in Space?

yeah, the blue guys.




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

" sometimes you can get an idea on views or comments alone"

That doesn't really help much either. Of the three sales I've had two have pretty much average "views" and a couple comments each, one has below average views and zero comments. I still think it comes down more to effective marketing rather than subject matter. Most of us aren't making art that's way out there in the weird zone.

i can only tell you what i've been doing for the past 10 years or so selling things. keep making things until it sticks. and that's on all sites - not just this one. like on one site that sells tiles, i sold a number of them to one person. it was all one theme. basing it on that, i'll make more of that theme. i made that theme because it did well on other sites, getting views, comments etc. it shows a trend.

you can market all over the place, but if you don't have the wares, it may not sell that well. or, your selling to the wrong crowd. or you have the right subjects, in the wrong colors. or its the right colors, but you need a better variety. like instead of midday views, maybe in the fog, or in the rain, or snow, maybe at night and so on. something different from everyone else.

generally i don't make more than 2 of any one theme, i only go back if it sells. its a constant making of stuff. like right now i'm making sports things. i hate sports, but i had a lead on twitter with a tag i used. so i'm trying it out. i don't know what sport would be popular, if any, so i'm choosing the ones that catch my eye and doing it. it might sit dormant for years without a sale. it might attract some people as well, and i could get sales for something else. meanwhile, i'm trying another angle.


so if i were painting farmy things, i'd do the tractor, when no one usually see's them. out in a bleak snow storm, at night with the full moon, and so on. the setting provides a mood. make people "feel" for the thing your presenting. forget about midday images, just like snap shots done in midday, people may pass it by because its something they've seen already.

and the 3 sales you did make - make more of whatever that thing is, and try to narrow down a common theme.


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

"and the 3 sales you did make - make more of whatever that thing is, and try to narrow down a common theme."

There is more of those things in my portfolio, they haven't sold though. I sold originals on another site in 2014. I thought I was onto something with small rusty truck/car/tractor paintings, sold 7 of them in about as many weeks, then never sold one again, (I take that back, I did sell one to a fellow FAA artist last summer). Thing is most of them sold to one person, then that person just stopped buying. I really don't believe it's so much about subject matter, and with nothing to go on it's just shooting in the dark anyway. I'm a traditional artist and only work at this part time (more like sub-part time) I can't produce a dozen images/week, just one or so on average at most, and they don't all make it into my portfolio.

Not everybody can use your brute force marketing techniques, we don't all have 1000+ images to flood SM with, part time traditional artists never will and I see some top sellers on FAA that have about 100 images or less, so it's possible to sell with relatively few images but it must take different marketing techniques. I have studied them and most of them have two things going for them, high quality art in a consistent, unique style that stands out, and they already have a successful offline career. It's not subject matter since their subject matter is similar to much of mine. There are a couple that I can't seem to figure out, maybe they were just on FAA early enough to get noticed before so much competition and so made enough sales years ago to keep them on top of the searches thereby continuing to get sales, not that their artwork isn't a unique style and high quality, it is, I just can't see where they've done any marketing to speak of.

I can accept the fact that I suck at marketing and that my art doesn't stand out enough to get attention in this crowded marketplace but I don't buy that my problem is subject matter, or that it's JL's problem either. Wildlife art in particular is a high demand market compared to many other subjects.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, just trying to make an explanation based on my observations. I'm not in the "woe is me" crowd, I'm just trying to be "matter-of-fact" and realistic about this.

As you say David, a time machine would be helpful.

Its like when I first got into micro stock. I was about 10 years too late. The people in the beginning could throw up anything and it would sell 250 times in a week.

By the time I was trying it, these guys were getting out and writing books about it. They saw more value in selling books to newbies than to actually be selling in the market. When the advice flows freely about something, whether its an investment or the next get rich quick scheme, you know its over.

When you come into an established market you have to claw your way to the top harder than the people before you.

Mike, I know it's Avatar in the movie but I thought you meant avatar in another word for poor prints that won't sell.

J L - I've got the Winter blues too. So go paint a few more blue pieces - will work fabulous for boys rooms.
I just painted about 7 Blue pieces last week. It's a good thing that most people's favorite color is Blue. Work the misery girl.

"When the advice flows freely about something, whether its an investment or the next get rich quick scheme, you know its over"

That's why I've been leery about all these SM gurus, I wonder if people are making more money from teaching SM "secrets" than from using SM for business. The "secret" is to figure out what the next gravy train is going to be and be first in line. I'd have as much luck buying up mining claims. lol

"When you come into an established market you have to claw your way to the top harder than the people before you."

That's what I'm figuring out and why I'm not sure it's possible for a part timer to make any money at this anymore. I didn't expect it to be easy but this is ridiculous, I'm having a real hard time seeing the possibility for a pay off here, I'm actually pulling back on SM so I can spend time on doing other things I enjoy. Any sales I get will probably be a fluke.

Randy,
Avatar is your photo in the little square. He was making a crack about that awful movie. :)

David King, you are spot on. LOL!