Fine Art America - sales increasing nicely since September

[steheap]

I don't know if this is happening to others, but my sales on FAA have really picked up this last quarter. All of 2012 (before taking the premium account) I made $27 in profit, but since September 2013, I've earned $416 in margin on the prints and accessories. It does seem to be that sales possibly generate more sales - either through the extra visibility of their sales announcement pages, or maybe the search has started to favor more popular images?

As I don't talk about Shutterstock earnings now on my blog, I decided to do a full review/explanation of how I use FAA, and how I price the images, so if you are interested, you can find it here: http://www.backyardsilver.com/2013/12/fine-art-america-increasing-sales-photo-prints/

Anyone else seeing a recent increase? I'm definitely going to upload some more images as a result (which will probably destroy my run of luck, but who knows.) Beats uploading to Most Photos....

Steve

[Gunter Nezhoda]

Great Blog, Steve
I love FAA


Linked to it here, hope it is ok
http://qthecollection.com/qtalk/index.php?topic=248.new#new


All the best
Gunter

[Snufkin]

No increase for me and unfortunately FAA terminated the deal with amazon.com.
All my images except one are gone from amazon.com.

[Gunter Nezhoda]

No increase for me and unfortunately FAA terminated the deal with amazon.com.
All my images except one are gone from amazon.com.

I think it was the other way around, Amazon got tired of the poor quality of some images coming from FAA and limited every account to 5 handpicked images. I and most people have 5 on Amazon now.

[KB]

I think it was the other way around, Amazon got tired of the poor quality of some images coming from FAA and limited every account to 5 handpicked images. I and most people have 5 on Amazon now.

I don't seem to have even one on Amazon. 

But there are still 237,283 files there, which would seem to indicate to me more than 5 per person for many contributors.

[noodle]

How do you see which of your prints are available on Amazon?

[stockastic]

There is all sorts of confusion regarding FAA images on Amazon.  At this point I'd say it really doesn't work, maybe give it some time and FAA/Amazon may get it together.

[montydad5000]

I don't know much about FAA but I do have it bookmarked as one of the sites I'm going to be checking out soon.

I'm fairly new at this, but I clicked on your link, signed up to your newsletter, and bought your eBook over on Amazon so I could read it on my Kindle for iPad app.

Cheers!

[steheap]

Thanks - hope it gives you some good information! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me.

Steve

[montydad5000]

Will do.  At the moment, plans are on hold as it looks like a DSLR camera is not in the works for Christmas.

I may have to pick one up after the holidays.  I'm trying not to spend a mint on a camera...hoping to start with something under $500.  Haven't found anything yet, but still looking!

 

[ShadySue]

^^ You might get an OK body only for that price, and budget a lot more for a very good lens.

[montydad5000]

^^ You might get an OK body only for that price, and budget a lot more for a very good lens.

That's what I keep hearing.  I've got one daughter going to college next year and two more in private elem school, so I'm trying not to break the bank.

I'm hoping I can start with something small, then make enough to upgrade down the road. 

Not sure that seems entirely possible looking at DSLR prices, though.

 

[ShadySue]

I'm hoping I can start with something small, then make enough to upgrade down the road. 

I suspect these days are gone.
Look at what you're competing with already, i.e. check what the agencies have already, and consider what you can offer, which buyers will want to buy, that hasn't been done to death already, in higher res than you'll be able to offer.
Your competition already has a far stronger position on any site's algorithm.

[montydad5000]

I'm hoping I can start with something small, then make enough to upgrade down the road. 

I suspect these days are gone.
Look at what you're competing with already, i.e. check what the agencies have already, and consider what you can offer, which buyers will want to buy, that hasn't been done to death already, in higher res than you'll be able to offer.
Your competition already has a far stronger position on any site's algorithm.

All good points.

Perhaps it would be better for me to just save up for a few months and purchase something of higher quality.

Something to think about.

[PZF]

How do you see which of your prints are available on Amazon?

Anybody know?

[ShadySue]

A friend emailled them this week and was told that program has stopped though a few files may still be up there.

[djpadavona]

This is good to hear Steve. I wonder if some of it is holiday gift buying for the arts community. I always have a spike at Zazzle in the last quarter too - totally different buyers, but unlike microstock, I would guess that gift buying factors in to both.

[PaulieWalnuts]

How do you see which of your prints are available on Amazon?

Anybody know?

Try searching for your name or FAA account name.

[Ron]

Set Home & Kitchen category and search your FAA user name

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dgarden&field-keywords=semmick%20photo

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dgarden&field-keywords=USERNAME

For a space use %20

[ShadySue]

The official announcement that the deal with Amazon is over is here:
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1600312
Scroll down until you find a post by Isabella F Abbie Shores on 12/15/2013: "I am sorry but, Amazon and FAA no longer have the arrangement for premium members, so we have removed the Amazon link from our premium package http://fineartamerica.com/membershipplans.html
We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused."

[sharpshot]

I still haven't sold anything with FAA.  Think I'll dump them, as I get some sales on several other art sites.  Might as well spend the time working on sites that make me money and don't charge for their services.  This is the third time I've paid a site and ended up losing money.  Don't see much point in carrying on with that.

[steheap]

I get some sales on several other art sites

Hi Sharpshot

Which Fine Art sites are you successful on? I've tried Smugmug without much success, but haven't ventured further.

I don't really understand why my sales have taken off in the past 3 months - most of them shots of Washington DC, funnily enough. Maybe I'll be back in 3 months saying that it was a flash in the pan and sales have dropped to zero!

steve

[sharpshot]

I'm not really successful but I doing better than my zero sales with FAA   Zazzle is the one I've put the most time in to and I've sold quite a lot now.  Sold a few with Redbubble but I've spent no time on that.  Got my first sale on Saatchi online with just a few uploads.  Sold a few with Photocase with not many uploads.  So I think I'll forget FAA and concentrate on the other sites.

[stockastic]

How does Saatchi work?  Acceptance/Juried/inspected, or just pay-to-play?

[Ron]

How does Saatchi work?  Acceptance/Juried/inspected, or just pay-to-play?

Just open an account and submit. No IPTC and you need ITIN. No FTP. 70% royalty. But its not really geared towards digital work, as they ask for LxWxD which you need to put in for every single image manually. No batch editing.