How To Make My Work Stand Out On Faa?

you have to promote it yourself. there are promo canvas options you can do, but they are pain to use and only last a week. if you want to stand out more - upload more work. being here for only a couple of days, you should give yourself more time. add better descriptions and more keywords. and tweet, facebook, goog, and any other way you can tell people your here - do that. in the tags be sure to mention location if it has one and fits - like that barn might sell better if you mention where it was.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

That is disappointing, at least with Etsy I have the option to put out ads to show up in search results. I will try out the promotions you mentioned.

there are so many people here that it wouldn't be practical. you can sponsor words, but if they are common they may not be seen.

Marketing 101 by Mike Savad
Why Your Work May Not Be Selling - By Mike Savad
Evaluating Your Own Work To Sell – By Mike Savad
How To Critique And Edit Your Own Work For Better Sales

like everyone else you need to advertise. and you'll need a larger selection.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Kevin;

Add descriptions and relevant keywords. Also, your prices are very low. Your 30 inch prints are priced like my 10 inch prints

Kevin,

Welcome!

You need to invest some time in adding better keywords to most of your images. I just went and "liked" all of your images,which I think only one had a like. Every time you upload images, go and "like" them yourself,which I believe helps in the search results. Most of your images are very good and you need way more than 9. This place is really "all or none" when it comes to selling and if you want to sell here. you will need many more images, as good or better than what you have now and pay that $30.

If you have a flower photo, then find out what flower it is, all the names,common and latin, same with a mountain, where,what's it called,what country etc.

There are no guarantees here that anything will sell, so think about that before you invest time and/or money,

Good Luck,

Rich

Welcome Kevin good luck.

First, you have to be willing to go to prison for a while and maybe even risk facing the death penalty, because in order to GUARANTEE that you stand out here, you will have to kill all the rest of us and force the deletion of all our images.

Second, you have to figure out how to get us all in one location at the same time, so that you can take us all out in one fell swoop.

Third, you have to figure out how to explain the big mess you made with all those body parts and such.

Fourth, you have to figure out how to evade arrest and prosecution.

Fifth, you have to figure out how to live with your conscience after the massacre.

I hope that this has been helpful, and best of luck.

You can also sponsor pages to make sure your images show up on the 3rd line of the first page of a search of that page at least some of the time. Sponsoring isn't what it sounds like, it does not involve money, just putting a link to the page on another website. Obviously popular search pages are sponsored by a lot of artists so you won't show up much on those. For example, "landscape paintings", I sponsor that page but even after 30 refreshes didn't see any of my paintings. However, on get a little more specific and you might show up every time. I sponsor "ford truck paintings" and my work shows up every time, in fact I often own the whole row.

I always wonder, if everybody tells everybody else their techniques of standing out, and everybody is doing the same things to stand out, then can anybody, then, stand out?

It's like asking a race car driver to tell you how to win a race. Do you really think that any race car driver is going to reveal personal secrets of moving ahead of the crowd?

You are asking the very people from whom you wish to stand to tell you how to stand out from them.

At some point, generosity flies in the face of competitive reality.

If everybody is doing the same thing to stand out, then do something different to stand out from THEM.

Applauds Robert..... For both posts

Agree. Following the crowd and add yourself to millions of other hungery souls trying to sell the same old stuff.

Create an outstanding portfolio and you'll be found. I don't see the point of wanting to promote nine images. What are the chances you are going to find the perfect match between nine images and nine buyers?

I don't believe the OP was asking specifically how to "Stand out". That was the title of the thread but the actual post was more of a marketing question. It's amazing to me how many people around here don't seem to read beyond the title of the thread before posting.

I agree with David; this was a marketing question by a newbie just looking to find his way around. He's so new that the comments about adding more images is probably premature, and the sarcasm uncalled for, IMHO.

"I have to do my own promotion offisite" - correct

"How To Make My Work Stand Out On Faa?" - create outstanding work and a lot of it.

"Is there a way to promote a listing ($)" - no paid ads here on FAA

I "second" & applaud Robert K....LOL! But is correct in a way.

Another said, NO guarantee of selling anything on FAA. True, yet ...we all are here!! The only promotion on FAA is as the owner wishes and being in business means those who already do sell will get some promotion here. And that varies, too! This art site offers other products now, so types of promotion within FAA may progress to happen in the near future. This is a "growing" art site!

So Good Luck, find all the ways you can to let others know your art is here and to buy it! Still does not mean you will have sales, nor get any promotion on this art site. Set up your own art site and do links to FAA, start your facebook art page, link often, add twitter and any other you can find to join.Do as much as you can to promote your art. Best of luck!

I don't believe the OP was asking specifically how to "Stand out". That was the title of the thread but the actual post was more of a marketing question. It's amazing to me how many people around here don't seem to read beyond the title of the thread before posting.

I assure you that I always read meticulously "beyond the title of the thread before posting". And having so meticulously read, I continue to stand by my comments 100%.

Whether you call it "standing out" or "marketing", isn't the premise of marketing to position a product in such a way that it STANDS OUT?

The point is the same, even if we use your preferred interpretation and term, "marketing". If everybody is trying to "market" in the same way, then is anybody really going to position themselves any better than anybody else to sell, if they are all doing the same things, and all the work being "marketed" is on the same level of appeal?

The top post was absolutely about marketing. In fact how to spend money on the site marketing or advertising the work to stand out above all of the other members.

It was a very good question and one that is asked often but not normally as bluntly :)

However, Robert's answer was spot on

One thing though. many people here DO share their experiences and try to help to the best of their ability. You will see though that only a few who asked actually follow said advice.

Be careful what you wish for on the idea of paid placement.

When pay per clicks first came out, I was Johnny on the spot and bought a huge schedule of PPC ads. I paid .01 to maybe .05 and occasionally as higher as .25!

A year later these same "key words" or "tags" were bringing .25 minimum. Then a year or so later you could not buy the good ones for $1.00 or $2.00 each. Most of this was on Google because they had best search of course.

I still buy some PPC's from some of the off breed services and but they are still .35 to $1.00. So If I had an ad budget of $1000 and Art.com has an ad budget of $10.000, who is going to get the clicks?

I have said that I would be willing to pay up to $300 a month to belong to FAA. So I would certainly be willing to pay that much and more on a PPC schedule that was only directed at the FAA internal search.

Lot of people here would be totally out of the pool if FAA went to a PPC program.

As I said, it's a noble intention to want to help others, but, in what amounts to a very tough competition, that nobility might have negative effects.

The threads that I have started about extreme artists support my contention, in a way, because they show people going to ridiculous extremes to try to "stand out" or "market" themselves.

I give away many of my techniques for a few reasons.

1. Many are location specific and you are there too no competition.

2. No matter how much I espouse something, most will never follow through and do it anyway.

3. Even if you are in the same area and we end up head to head I feel my art is in fact good enough to take the sale more often than not.

Presenting the "unique selling proposition" (a.k.a. "the hook") good copy writing, as in ad copy, good visual presentation, good understanding of the market place, good penetration of that market place and knowing how to put all of that to together is what makes you stand out. Oh, an having a decent ad budget certainly doesn't hurt.

Watch those blue back ads on TV. That is billion dollar industry. The have if fined tuned right down to the nitty-gritty.

And yes, I keep a few things to myself

Floyd S.,

You just told EVERYBODY else here how to do it. Now if everybody else starts competing with your words, what effect do you think that this will have on their effectiveness in the long run?

All you have demonstrated is that people who spend the most money get the most results, and this is not really anything new in marketing/advertising. So, .. to stand out, spend lots of money, ... but be able to ACCESS lots of money first.

THAT's the clincher - "Standing out" costs money, and if you cannot afford to spend money, then stand back.

Affluent people stand out. Non-affluent people get lost in the crowd.

standing out doesn't have to cost money. usually the art can win if its well done and unique enough. thus far i haven't paid anything in advertising.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

"You just told EVERYBODY else here how to do it. Now if everybody else starts competing with your words, what effect do you think that this will have on their effectiveness in the long run? "

Everyone is not doing the exactly the same thing. Go back and see where I talked about the "unique selling proposition".

Advertising has been around for years, trillions of dollars over the years, billion yearly are spent. If the PG's and the MSN's and the Wal-Marts didn't think they could stand out, why would they be spending the money? They do it and they do it every single day.

It don't make any difference how much the art stands out if no one sees it.

There is no decent ad agency in the world that could not take a product that is selling with out advertising and sell a whole lot more of it with a decent, cost effective ad campaign.

The idea that you have to make money to make money is more an excuse then anything else.

I started out in the gallery/framing business zero money to speak of. I borrowed $1500 and launched my first enterprise, a co-op gallery with two other guys. That could not even borrow $1500. They both fell by the way side because they thought working for them selves meant a 40 hour week. I prevailed because be I worked 7 days a week 12 hours a day and EARNED the money to buy them both out. One of them became a teacher and the other became a drunk.

... and yet I see post after post by NEW artists entering the market asking how they can compete with all the thousands of other artists, and I look at all the artists, period, who make little or no money, and HAVE been making little to no money all their lives, ... looking with hope to these same newcomers with the same questions about how to compete with them to stand out.

An exception to the difficulty of being seen as an artist does NOT offer a model of success for EVERYBODY else. It merely reports one instance where somebody beat the odds.

It's sort of like star athletes coming in here, telling everybody to have faith, keep on plugging away, and you will succeed as a star athlete. Or a movie star. Or a popular singer.

Some ventures offer little real chance of standing out from the rest, except for the very talented, the very lucky, and the very well funded.

Again, there are exceptions, but these exceptions do NOT dictate the rules for everybody else. They merely indicate those who are in the minority speaking out, ... standing out even more.

The art being good enough is just not enough. Otherwise we would not have the hundreds of people we have come in to the threads and report few if any sales and can't figure it out.

Some of these people have art that is 10 time better then what I see selling every single day by people that have figured out how to get it sold. Those people have figured out how to make their art stand out while others, even those with superior talent are not getting it done. We see it every day in here.

Just having the art never was and never will be the answer if you are looking to make decent money selling art.

The US census tells us the median household income is at $50,500 per year. To me, if I was working full time at it, that would be the minimum acceptable level to strive for. But that is just me. Everyone has to set their own goals. I am talking sales from all over, not just FAA.

As for paying for advertising, there is no doubt that if anyone is selling any significant about of art without any advertising, a good ad campaign, done probably, would be able to at least double the sales. A good ad budget would be no more then 15% of the total sales, again assuming a decent sales level to begin with.

The old saying is, it is easier to make good business better then it is to make bad business good.

If person is selling $50,000 a year with no advertising, that is good business. That would be easy to double, maybe even triple if handles right.

If a guy is not advertising and is only selling $500-$1000 a year, I am sure we can all agree that compared to the $50,000 that is bad business.

If a guy is advertising and still only doing $4500-$1000 a year then the that is really bad business and it is either a product that lacks in sales appeal or a really bad use of the advertising dollars.

None of this is directed at anyone in FAA or intended to represent anything that may or may not be happening in FAA by any individuals or any number of individuals.

There is only guarantee in business. If you do not try, you will fail.

"An exception to the difficulty of being seen as an artist does NOT offer a model of success for EVERYBODY else.'

There is no model for success for EVERYBODY in anything! There is only the model stated above. The model for failure.

Why artist continue to think that the art business has some sort of special relationship with the market place is beyond me.

Good old fashion businesses practices that have been around for centuries can be applied to ANY business! Sure there has to be some tweaking and adjustments made but the same basics apply.

You would not use the same specifics to promote Geritol that you would to promote Red Bull or Five Hour Energy. You would not promote roller skating to over 80 market.

Kinkade should have taught every artist that you CAN promote art and apply common business and marketing strategies with the appropriate tweaking to sell art.

How about all of the mass producers (publishers) of millions of artist's work to their network of dealerships, their channels as they are referred to in the retail business. The same a Maytag or Ford or any manufacture. None of these people just produce a product and then decide not to tell people about it.

How about all of the high end print publishers? How about art.com, and print.com, poster.com, FirstArtSource and dozens of other publishers, distributors and retailer? How do you think they push product? The make sure everyone that is a potential buyers knows about it.

My two largest, high end print suppliers send me an email every time a new print is released. That is at leas once a month. The not only send me the email but that email is formatted so I can put my own gallery name on it and resend it to my own mailing list. That is fee of charge. These email are first class, high quality, ad agency work. If they didn't know it sold art, they would NOT being doing that, you can bet on that.

As stated above, the only guarantee is failure for not trying.

Creating the product is nothing. Getting it sold is everything.

I can give some people a free product line of high class merchandise and they will fail with it for lack of trying.

The art market, to me, seems more saturated (at the level most artists want to operate in it) than any other market I see.

Sometimes failure is a good model, actually. It indicates a limit, and, perhaps a need to change directions or attitudes about what one is doing.

I agree that a person has to be driven to put in the time and some money BEYOND what is needed to make the art itself. People who make canned tomatoes, for example, cannot stop at just canning the tomatoes and expect to sell them. There has to be a plan to sell them, an avenue, a distribution line, a process. Ideally, for artists, there needs to be a separate person figuring all this out. But, this, of course is what would cost big bucks to hire such a person.

Most artists have no other choice than to work BOTH roles - creator/producer and marketer/seller. THAT's why standing out is probably more difficult than in any other area. To take art this seriously (financially) requires more effort than I think most artists have the energy to exert. It cam become too exhausting to keep up this double duty by yourself.

It's got to be,...... doing the exact opposite of what I'm doing. ;-((

Well, I have a queue of 30 commissions at present which was by NOT standing out on FAA but actually getting off my bottom and meeting people face to face who may want my paintings.

Social sites, online networking etc can only do so much. The rest is manually meeting people to give your work the human touch

Yes, ... step AWAY from the computer, ... to stand out in the real world of art.

30 commissions ... how scary, ... in a way.

thanks for the help. but i am closing my account. this site is a waste of time, i have better results just putting art on my website and driving traffic through google adwords or twitter. you have one less person to compete with in the search results. good luck to you all

I will just say a few quick things I learned. If you do what everyone else does you will never be found because they were here for a long time already doing that. Maybe that is why they keep telling newbies to do it. Smart move.

JC has the best advice for new people, also find a phrase that people write the wrong way {a lot) or misspell, and try that. (A lot) is the key.

Don't shoot landscapes that everyone else shoots.

Don't spend all day, everyday on the computer trying to do something that is overdone already.

This is my advice just for this site.

Apparently, the OP has left the building....and closed their account.

Every once in the while we are blessed with the presence of genius. People that are so smart, so brilliant that in just a few days, they can know everything there is to know about something as complex as FAA and see immediately that: "This site is a waste of time."

Never mind that there are over a hundred thousand artists here with thousands of them making good money. But in less then of a week, these geniuses see through all of that success. Wow! I am impressed! NOT! lmao

I wonder how such brilliance missed that point that he can do everything he is doing with his own site here, plus have all of the benefits of FAA.

Well, that just about sums that up.....

And before I close the thread, see reason two I "give away" my advice.

2. No matter how much I espouse something, most will never follow through and do it anyway.