What Has Happened To Sales?

Yes, most definitely.

With all the bad weather out there,, plus so much serious down time here, it's no wonder ! And google links to each of us have also changed....
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1259952

I have also noticed visits to my art down. I think it is just the economy.

Depends on how long term or short term you look.

Last year during this pay period I had a week long gap from May 15th to May 23 with no sales and then another from June 1st until June 11th. It still ended up being my best pay period ever at that time.

This year, it was similar from May 16th to the 22nd but have been hitting my daily average since then, though the average amount is smaller. With six more days in the pay period including today, the jury is still out as to whether I will meet the month's sales goal or not but I have at least exceeded last year's revenue for the same period.

So, the answer is yes and no on a very short term basis but on a monthly (fiscal month) it is too soon to tell.

Looks like maybe a number of factors are causing it then...i know the economy has been bad for some time now but hasn't stopped sales on my other web sites....@Vivian, i didn't know the google links had changed.

Wish my sales were so frequent JC, lol..one greeting card this month...other months very erratic..last years overall sales were better up to this period though.

Even "I" had a sale on RB & Zazzle and I haven't visited those sites in over a year - much less put anything new up. Let's not be blaming the economy or anything else - sales are simply slow on FAA for most of us - and somewhere there is a reason. I use several social media outlets + email + handing out 'business cards" all over when I travel for my AW site. (no, I still don't use facebook). I haven't done ANY advertising for RB or Z. go figure.

vivian's link

june is a terrible month for selling. i think in may at the end, people go get their kids from college dorms and go to graduations cross country. in june, i think people plan for parties and such and go on vacation. june is terrible on all site for me. last year is fitting in just like this year, didn't get a real sale for like a week and change. i think i made 2 during that time, but not at the rate it was going at. but last year showed i started getting sales from the 10th on, so i'm hoping that trend is true. july is only a little better and august did really well last year. it's slow on zazzle as well. i do seem to get more sales from bubble as of late. and artist rising is a total waste of time for me right now as the only sales i ever got there was in july of 2012, then never again.


---Mike Savad

i do know that my hits haven't dropped much. so my guess is they are shopping for now, buying for later?

---Mike Savad

I never check Zazzle but was curious and low and behold, I had a sale there. First one since Nov of last year. (My stuff died when they redid the keywords and frankly, it just wasn't enough return on my time invested to reload everything I had on there.)

Here, I have had 8 since the first of June and 17 for the pay period. They ranged from a few greeting cards to a 40 inch print. I need ten more (assuming average revenue per sale) to meet this month's sales goal, which is revenue not sales number based.

The upside of that is the 10-15th invariably seems to be my best week in most pay periods.

Well, as soon as spring started almost every weekends are the out door art fairs. buyers are buying from artists directly at those shows no shipping required.

Well, we have thousands of artists here all trying to make a buck or two. I am surprised so much stuff is purchased through FAA....The only knock I have about FAA is that it brings in so few viewers to our images. I average about 20 visitors to my photographs (this, in my opinion, is pathetic). I get more than that just by having a Facebook page, just by being on twitter. In fact I've made the same amount of sales thru Facebook as I have through FAA...

For me FAA is a very well organized on line photo/artist club (and I mean this as a sincere compliment). I enjoy being on FAA but the overwhelming majority of us here are not going to earn more than a few hundred dollars a year if that....Correct me if I am wrong...this is just my opinion....

The other factor is...are you really that good of an artist? I am a good photographer but not a great photographer. In my opinion, we do have a few great photographers here on FAA and I can see why their images do sell (check out Mike Savad/ JC and others)...

If you want to make money with your art, you need to start a small business which means you will be working 24/7 promoting your stuff. It can be done....but do you have the time/desire/talent?

Look at my images...They don't sell at all....Are you a better photographer than I am???? Just asking...

@ Robert,

Being a "better" photographer than you does not seem to matter much on this site. Check out the recently sold page sometime. I see things sell and I wonder how.....

Sometimes it comes down to how well you can market yourself and who you know.

(then again, some of those images could be artists buying their own work)

if you buy your own, it won't show up there. however if your mother buys it, it will be there. but yeah, you never know what will sell there. bad hdr, crooked, blurred (Though many of those will hit the page, the printers can still cancel it if it looks bad.)


---Mike Savad

I wouldn't know, I've never sold on any other site and just one greeting card on here!

I currently only sell my art as prints here...but no, my sales are not going down...they are going up.

I'm close to hitting what I made in all of 2012.

I agree...that best images don't always sell. Consider too that someone's family member or friends are making purchases....something that is foreign to me. :)

This year is better than last year. It could be better. I'm trying Google+, Twitter and Pinterest and haven't noticed any difference. I've been posting but am still trying to figure out the Twitter stuff more completely. It's just so incredibly boring to me.

Bottom line is...it's wise to have another source of income.

May and June are huge graduation and wedding months. That could be a reason for less sales.

summer is almost always the worst. before and a bit after tax time isn't great either. but over the course of the year it balances out. it's just a bummer not see the sales. but since i have other sites, i can see if the yin and yang balance out. and they do. both are low. but it will come back. i looked at my stats, at least on stat counter my main page is getting the avg 200 or so hits. but my uniques are way up on yesterday - i didn't do a thing that day. i wasn't even home for the most part. so as long as people are looking, then sales will come back when they have the time and money to do so.

---Mike Savad

I had a few sales earlier in the year but the last couple months zilch. Conversely my views are running 3x higher than prior months and double those of my previous best month. It's all rather frustrating.

Mine died = no sales in two months. Hope things pick up by October. good thing I have a rich wife!

Usually Sean or Beth will post on these threads confirming that sales continue to increase every month. I believe it b/c when I get a sale it sometimes takes me 2 or 3 refreshes to find it on the recently sold page. Last year, I recall seeing it on the first page every time I looked.

I'd say more and more artists are joining here since it does offer great potential profits and some of the others are dying (imagekind). Those who joined before 2011 had a natural advantage of getting early sales but are now competing with much more work. Personally, I have tried to pay close attention to what sells and spend more time shooting specifically for those types of buyers. It helps to find a niche to get most of the sales for that interest (pinball and the Seahawks for me).

I started getting one or two sales a month without even trying to market my work here, which was nice, but that came to a shuddering halt three months ago. Hopefully it will pick up again sometime.

Benjamin,

You are spot on that the site's overall sales are up but that may or may not be of any comfort to individual artists.

I think it is somewhat of a balancing act because the overall traffic on the site is rising but so is the competition each artist has. Since FAA's traffic as a whole continues to rise the question is how to use that to each of our own advantages. For me the overall site traffic increase works to increase my overall sales because of what I shoot and I play in some relatively uncluttered sandboxes on here. When I started on here my first sales came from a place that returned 7 hits in the internal search. That same search now has ~400. That "Abilene" well has somewhat dried up for me but all that means to me is I must continue to look for and find undeserved markets and produce new money makers. Success will always be duplicated so I need to stay in front of the trends and never be comfortable resting on my laurels and past successes.

At least that is key for me.

Site traffic is down almost 10% over the past 3 months.


http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fineartamerica.com

John's info is more current than what I based my statement on.

Normal is "down" for me. There's no where to go but up. :)

You seem to be ignoring the fact that serious glitches are experienced by visitors due to ?? The need to reprogram this place to avoid those embarrassments is essential.

@Andrew.......re google.......a current thread here

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1259952

The drop-off in traffic is due to the changes that Google implemented on Google Images. Websites no longer get to count "visits" when someone views one of their images on Google Images.

That effects our visitor numbers, but as it turns out, the Google Image visitors weren't actually generating any sales.

If you do an Alexa search for any website that has a lot of images (e.g. 500px.com, cafepress.com, art.com, etc.), you'll see big drops in visitors since the beginning of the year.

Sales of FAA are continuing to grow just fine. May was our biggest month ever... and June will be our biggest most ever.

Sean

I guess from the artist's perspective, the sales/artist matters most. FAA could be earning more simply because they have more artists each year.

i made a sale today, and lost a sale today that i made a few days ago... :(


---Mike Savad

That's a real downer, was it one of the old images that you haven't reprocessed yet?

I made a sale on May 14, and havent got another until now.
These days I feel more and more that i am born to work in this area.
Just want to be a full time one, for me it is a long way to go.

no it's one that sold in the past. i don't think there are problems and they didn't fail it. i can only assume that he ran out of funds or something.

---Mike Savad

Or found the same image on Redbubble for less....

Even if you average 15 to 50 sales a month here, it not enough to be statistically significant. It's very hard to tell what's happening when your sales are small numbers to begin with.

Right now my Zazzle and RB sales are up and I haven't had a FAA sale in weeks. But I often haven't had a FAA sale in weeks. Zazzle I can count on about once a day, but they pay much less.

I just sold two 36X24 canvas prints in 3 days, greeting cards and another 2 other prints earlier this spring.........Here are the canvas prints.

Hi All,
I joined less than a month ago.
So far no sales, very few views.
It does not help that I am no social-media-butterfly with 1k of followers. :)

While it is tempting to take photographs tailored to the style or subjects that sells the most,
for me personally, that would only make the sale less meaningful.
So I'll stick to how I see the world.

Any advice from long-standing members with lots of sales, is welcome.

For all that - my views are down - even having expanded my following and followers on twitter - which is where most of the outside views come from. My AW site has gotten about 247 + hits in the last thirty days - so that's mostly folks from outside. What isn't selling - digital abstracts/illustrations. I'll keep putting up new ones - but I suppose I better work on my photo's or go back to painting - cause that is what is selling.

The only thing meaningful about a sale is the money. Sure - it strokes your ego that someone likes your work - but I'm almost tired of the words - let's have an open wallet.

My sales for this year have been up, but erratic. I may get a few sales in a day, or over two to three days close together, then there'll be nothing for a week or two, then a number of sales again, and repeat... All from different buyers so the close numbers aren't due to the same buyer taking a number of prints. There must be some reason why there's volume then a gap... I just haven't figured out why yet, or how to close the gaps.

My views are up lately, my sales are too sporadic to say if they are up or down....but I've really only been at this for a year or so. I certainly getting a decent amount of traffic to my images.

wow, Jenny i'd be more than happy right now if my sales reached 15 a month..lol...let alone 50.

Andrew, I think your work certainly has the potential to do that.

There are a few artists on here that are on my "If I ever have disposable income AND space to hang stuff I will buy ________" list and you are one of them. This is not the, I am going to buy statements that I get on FB as all that may never happen for me again but I really really do want a couple of your portraits.

Thanks so much JC for your kind words about my work, Ah yes i think i know what you mean about FB, i forgot the number of times people say i want a drawing and when i show them my prices they are never heard of again, lol..a few have thought i was doing the work and giving it away for free.

@Roy,

I hear you, at the end of the day, if someone unsolicited is willing to shell out money for your artwork,
that is pretty high up there on the compliment scale.

Thanks Vivian, Only just noticed the thread.
Also noticed the google links are down, i think i only have the main webpage link for faa and one other for an individual piece. Not great that.

JC, he is on mine also!

Blush! Blush!! why thank ya!!!

my sales came back, so i'm happy.


---Mike Savad

I had a sale at the end of April, since then nothing. I'm selling at my Zazzle stores though.

My sales on FAA are still zip, but other sales are good (abt $750 last month). I'm just getting started and haven't been able to give much time to online promotion. I'm so far back in the learning curve on digitizing work and the print market that I'm thrilled with these results so far. FAA is more teaching me this stuff and storing files, than being used as a store. I have a zazzle store but again it's used to stock inventory to sell in person instead of the internet. But I do have a living business plan that includes all these things.

Good news Mike.
Yay, i just made a sale too a few hours ago...excuse me while i just do my usual leaping over furniture and a little happy jig.

Good luck Mary Ellen, i'm sure things will get started for you soon...good on your other sales though.

I was thrilled to make a sale on Tuesday night. It was an image of Bermuda. Congrats to those getting sales.

Yep JC that's the one i sold..."tha hell it was!"

Oh, just sold a greeting card of the same image, Great! an extra jig today then....weeeeeeeeeeee!!

Congrats Janice on your sale...hope they'll be many more!

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But, lovely comments,thanks