A Few Reasons Why You May Not Be Selling

These are not in order, but I believe they all play a role in how much you are or are not selling.

The number of images:

As the old saying goes, you simply cannot sell off an empty wagon. Common sense would tell you that. Unless you have some sort of unusual circumstance, you need to have as many images as possible, hundreds or even thousands, not dozens.

If you are a high-profile, well-known, big-name artist, maybe you get away with a small number of images. But if you look at the largest sellers here, most of them have hundreds of images, and some have several thousand.

I built Five Power Stores with over a million dollars in sales on eBay before I ever joined FAA. There was a direct correlation ot the number of sales and the number of listings (uploads) in all five of those stores. I found the same thing to be true when I joined FAA.

I have heard all of the arguments; I only post my best, and different variations just run people off, I am going for quality, not quantity. Okay... if that is your position, then accept that fact of lower sales for what it is and why. If you hope to make money selling artwork, there are certain compromises you HAVE to be willing to make. I am not suggesting anyone upload bad images. I am suggesting that a lot of artists are the worst judge of their own work. I am sure I am not the first person you heard say that. You have to trust the marketplace and the buyers to know for themselves what they want to buy and what they will pass on.

Watermarks:

The combined artwork sales of Amazon, eBay and FAA probably are higher than the next ten sellers of art on the internet combined. They will all tell you the same thing; watermarks will discourage buyers. That is the bottom line. I don't care about all the arguments that go against that opinion. If the largest sellers of artwork on the internet, people that have spent millions if not billions of dollars to maximize sales, tell you that watermarks will hinder sales, then watermarks will hinder sales!! If you hope to make money selling artwork, there are certain compromises you HAVE to be willing to make. If you want to buck that system, then more power to you. Accept the fact it will mean lower sales for what it is and why.

Search Engine Paranoia

People are paying way to much time over worrying the search engine and keep saying how horribly bad it is and offer up 60,000 ways it can be improved. Get over it!! It is what it is. Only Sean knows exactly how it works and has made it abundantly clear that he will not tell us.

The thing you have to understand, THE SEARCH WORKS FOR FAA!

It works just fine and is selling artwork for Sean. Business is good overall and on the upswing for FAA. Sean is always working on the site, and he has his own priorities as to what he wants the site to be or not be. We are tenants here, we are not partners. We do not get to tell the landlord how to run the everyday business of running the mall.


If all of the suggestions of what the search should be were installed, it is STILL not going to make everyone happy. It is still only going to return so many images. If you are not one of the big sellers, you will still not be found in the search as often as you would like. Amazon and eBay both do the same thing. They want to tilt the scales in their favor to maximize the opportunity for a sale. They don't care who it is. The only favorite sellers they have are those that sell the most images. I would do the same thing. So would you if you were in their position.

You need to do the best you can to maximize your tags and descriptions to be found in the search and then forget about it. Spend more time advertising and marketing direct links to your AW/Premium Site images. Stop living and dying on the search results. Reach out as far away and as far outside of FAA and reach the general art buying market. That is how you are going to improve your sales. Not via a new and better search anywhere near as much as you think you are.

Stop looking at seasonal swings or economic conditions that may or may not affect sales. You can't do anything about it and you don't even know if they are really the problem. Stay positive, and don't let others talk you into a funk by saying things like, "we always see lower sales in the summer" or other such things.

Little Fish In A Big Ocean

The fact is FAA is growing. New images, hundreds if not thousands, are being added every day. Sellers, some with huge portfolios of images, are joining all the time.

This also goes hand in hand with living by the search, both FAA and Google. This is pretty simple stuff. The individual artist is increasingly becoming a little fish in a huge ocean. That ocean has huge sharks and whales consuming sales at a rapid rate.

If you are going to get found, you must go out and drag the buyers into your AW. This is going to continue to be the case.

Most see that as a negative. I don't don't. I see it as competition. If some of the best artists, galleries, and museums see FAA as "the" place to be, then so do I.

I don't care about all the complaints that "stock" is the problem. First, don't underestimate those referred to as the "stock" companies. A lot of their images are very, very good, fine art images. And they sell every day. This tells us all that there ARE buyers out there every day. You just have to figure out how to compete and get your fair share.

You can not depend on "the search" to do that for you. I don't care how much improvement is done. You will still be seen as a very small fish in a huge ocean as far as the search is concerned.


So let's recap:

Load as many images as you can. Consider different variations of existing images such as black and whites, sepia tones, details and other variations. Some people will tell you that that will discourage buyers. I have been selling variations of my photographs successfully for 50 years by doing it. That is exactly what the large sellers that are uploading image every day are doing.

Get rid of the watermarks. They DO discourage buyers. The protection is not as much as you think it is. The low res image loss is not a hard money loss. The lost sale of an image because of it IS a hard money loss.

Stop living and dying by the search. Do what you can to maximize your potential to get found using searchable titles, tags and descriptions. But then more on and stop worrying about it. Do something about it instead.

Expand your reach as far outside FAA as possible. I do not believe that the contests, groups, image dump thread or spending too much time in the threads in general is of much if any, value. Spend that time advertising you work OUTSIDE FAA.

You need to go beyond FAA and reach out and be seen in the greater art-buying community. The marketplace is so much more than FAA.

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and others are a place to start because it is free and easy to do. But they, too, are very limited. You have to consider other means of advertising. Direct email, press releases (with mass circulation, not the FAA-supplied press release system) banner ads, pay for clicks, trading links bounce back pieces and any other way of mass marketing you can think of.

Get Educated

Go to school and learn something about selling and marketing. Take advertising, marketing, and salesmanship classes at your local Community or Junior College. You do not have to be some silver-tongued salesman. Just knowing the basics will help you do marketing.


All that said, you HAVE to keep a positive attitude. Block out the negative Nellies and stay positive. I have never met a successful salesman that spent a lot of times in the "woes me" state of mind. You got to stay positive!!

Be aggressive with your marketing/advertising. Remember the words of Zig Ziglar: "Skinny salesmen have skinny kids."