Crated.com - still fogs a mirror?

[stockastic]

Every once in a while I post the question here: has anyone had a sale on Crated.com lately?

From my experience, it's a place where crickets chirp.

[wordplanet]

My last sale there was in August. I've had a couple.

[PaulieWalnuts]

I had a buyer buy a dozen prints a year ago and nothing since. I had high hopes for Crated. Seems well designed. But doesn't look like they promote the site. Ghost town.

[shiyali]

I closed my account there, had about 400 images, zero sales after a few years. Maybe not for my type of images.

[stockastic]

No hit tracking (view counts) on the site, no discussion forum; the content on the main page never changes .  The last post on their blog was a year ago.  The only sign of activity has been their occasional posts on FB but the last one was September 4. 

I made one small sale there, several months ago.  I'm getting a little uncomfortable about leaving my work there, if no one is home.  Who knows where it might end up if the site suddenly folded.

[stockastic]

Another 6 months have gone by, and it's time once again for me to ask if anyone has heard anything about Crated.com.

It's weird.  Nothing on FB since last October, the main page on the web site never changes, Google turns up no news or activity.  And yet the site is still there and apparently 'live'. 

Anyone?

[Jo Ann Snover]

Last sale there was the middle of December. I get occasional emails when someone has liked my images or followed me. I don't see any signs of growth though As long as they pay on time for the occasional sale, I'm happy to leave my portfolio up.

[stockastic]

Thanks Jo Ann, that's at least... interesting.  Obviously they've ceased any promotional activity and become just another POD on autopilot.

[Chichikov]

Every once in a while I post the question here: has anyone had a sale on Crated.com lately?

From my experience, it's a place where crickets chirp.

No, I have never had a sale there, as I never contributed.

[Steveball]

Not 1 sale since they started!

[PaulieWalnuts]

I had one more sale earlier this year. Their blog was being regularly updated until Oct 2015 and then just stopped. No other updates or press. Seems to be a ghost ship adrift at sea. Wonder what happened.

[stockastic]

Sometime last year, I had a sale - the only one ever.  And I had my markups set wrong, so I made $1.85.   They have a rather confusing markup arrangement so I emailed support to be sure I understood it.  I received prompt and helpful replies.  So the ship is "manned" but seems to be adrift.  I suppose I could email them again and ask what's happening, but that seems sort of rude, somehow....  I guess I'm just not motivated. 

[lostintimeline]

i had one sale last year of a print, 2.95 dollars but when i asked them why i didnt receive the money on the paypal they told me the sale was under 20 dollars.so that means they are like other agencies you get a payout if you reach 50 bucks?

[lostintimeline]

i had one sale last year of a print, 2.95 dollars but when i asked them why i didnt receive the money on the paypal they told me the sale was under 20 dollars.so that means they are like other agencies you get a payout if you reach 50 bucks for eg?

[tdezenzio]

I've been with them for over a year and not one single sale.

[wordplanet]

Seems way too quiet over there but they sold another print of mine last month (April 2017) so I'm keeping my work there. I sold the exact same one on Fine Art America last month too, which was a weird coincidence. I get followers on Crated fairly regularly, but not a lot of sales.

[stockastic]

I just tried a few keyword searches.  The results were often rubbish, turning up tons of junk.  It's obvious there's no more 'curation', everything is now accepted and added to the search.   Some of my best stuff doesn't even show up.  It's hopeless.  I should probably close the account; too often we hang on, waiting for a miracle.   But I'll leave it there for now, as a backup gallery in case FAA goes down.   I'll never get any sales through Crated, but if FAA went away I could at least point all my Pinterest pins to the photos on Crated and still be able to sell prints.

I've been thinking today that it's been a very long time since I've heard even the smallest bit of good news about microstock or POD.  Just more decay and decline, year after year.   It's discouraging.  Somehow, the game has to change; new players, new business plans.   

[Jo Ann Snover]

I just received payment this morning from Crated - I had apparently made a sale March 10th (I did find the email but hadn't noticed it at the time).

The timing of the payment is a bit off though - it is supposed to be by the 15th of the month for all sales made by the 15th of the prior month.

There's some wording about the date of shipment to the customer, so let's assume that pushed a March sale past the 15th as a shipment date. Even so, I should have been paid by May 15th and they've pushed that out to the end of the month this time.

I did get paid, so that's good, but moving out payment schedules is never a good sign (and I did check the FAQ which still says the 15th)

[stockastic]

Part of the dark side of online sales is that there's no easy way to check on the health of a business.  If this were a physical gallery in my town, I could just stop in.  Obviously if the door was locked, something bad had happened.  But how can we find out what's really going on at Crated.com?   

[Jo Ann Snover]

They're pulling the plug July 31st.

http://support.crated.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003221606?mc_cid=839fb95626&mc_eid=8a2f9d9ede

[stockastic]

Just got the email. No surprise.

It's bad news, though, because FAA is already a creaky mess that's going nowhere, and seeing the competition folding only makes things worse.   

I totally expect that at some point FAA will take the next step, and force their contributors down to tiny fixed markups like Zazzle did.   And if that happens, that's it - I'll have no place to sell.   No doubt the FAA guy (Sean Broihier) is licking his chops right now.

Their other site, CanvasPop, is about buying your own photos as wall art, pillows etc.  Apparently that's where they think the POD market is going.  What people really want is a giant framed photo of their kids, or their dog, or their vacation. 

[PaulieWalnuts]

Just got the email. No surprise.

It's bad news, though, because FAA is already a creaky mess that's going nowhere, and seeing the competition folding only makes things worse.   

I totally expect that at some point FAA will take the next step, and force their contributors down to tiny fixed markups like Zazzle did.   And if that happens, that's it - I'll have no place to sell.   No doubt the FAA guy (Sean Broihier) is licking his chops right now.

Their other site, CanvasPop, is about buying your own photos as wall art, pillows etc.  Apparently that's where they think the POD market is going.  What people really want is a giant framed photo of their kids, or their dog, or their vacation.

FAA may have some quirks but I'd say it's pretty impressive that he built it and runs it with a handful of people where other companies need dozens or hundreds to do the same thing. I sell pretty well there even with higher than average markups so I'd prefer he leaves it mostly alone minus more facelift changes and fixing bugs. I think if FFA went to forced small margins and rock bottom pricing the longterm outcome wouldn't be good for anybody including FAA.  My images that sell very well on FAA never sold at all on Zazzle even with way lower pricing. Same with RedBubble, CafePress, etc. They seem to attract people who don't spend over $100 and mostly buy a couple dollar refrigerator magnet. FAA has somehow found buyers who are okay spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on prints. Those are the buyers I want.

I liked Crated. Seemed very well designed. Not that I want FAA to do badly but yes would be nice to have a couple more sites to help diversify income a bit.

[stockastic]

FAA being a one-man operation is both good and bad.  It depends I think on whether he's satisfied with the business.  If not, it could go sideways real fast, as has happened elsewhere.  Right now, the site is getting zero maintenance, there are some long-festering problems that people keep bringing up in the forum, they never get fixed.  His wife just had their first baby and who knows what that means for his involvement in the business. 

I just got the 'exciting announcement' email about how he's signed with Conde Nast to bring in their 10s of thousands of images to compete with me, and how he built them their own dedicated site on FAA, which is 100 times better than what we get for our $30 dollars a year.   Wow, I'm so happy about that, um, thanks.

So whatever time and energy he has for the business is not being spent on making it better for tiny fish like me.  And bringing in big commercial sellers only reduces my visibility in search.  I suppose that on the plus side, he's not going out of business, and doesn't need to drive down our margins to increase his sales.

[PaulieWalnuts]

Yeah who knows. Baby could mean he'll want to sell FAA for money and family time. Or want to get out of the house to work on FAA because he cant sit still. All speculation.

And the Conde Nast site seem to be the exact same platform as FAA with a different skin. I think the Conde Nast site looks nice and clean. FAA should use whoever did the design to refresh FAA.