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Lynn-Marie Gildersleeve

7 Years Ago

If You Could Choose 30 ....

At the end of September I have to make the hard decision to down size my offerings to the minimum 30 and cancel my premium account. If you had to do the same, how would you make your choices of what stays and what is removed? The number of views? Personal favorites? What's the most commercial?

I'm just curious to know how would you make the choice?

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Cynthia Decker

7 Years Ago

I would choose my best sellers, and most popular images, based on views and comments here and elsewhere.

But if the issue was the fee, I would give up something else to help pay the $30 a year. only have to save $3 a month.

 

Nikolyn McDonald

7 Years Ago

Good advice from Cynthia though I would be unable to resist a personal favorite or two, regardless of the "popularity" of the image. One coffee per month, maybe?

But 30? I thought it was 25?

 

Mark Blauhoefer

7 Years Ago

I just couldn't do it. I remember my brief period of 25 pictures and how boring it was having to constantly delete in order to upload new. Looking back on it now it was pointless. What if you took the one particular one down that someone was about to buy? How do you promote something one day if it might be gone the next?

Never again...

 

Val Arie

7 Years Ago

I couldn't do it either. The yearly fee is very low...I agree I would give up something...save change...whatever. I do delete stuff from time to time, I don't have a problem with that...but almost all of it?

And if I had to I don't know how I would choose. What Cynthia said makes sense if you are determined to do this but for $30 it seems a little drastic.

 

Mike Savad

7 Years Ago

its 25 actually. the $30 is the payment. and as far as that goes... i would not do that. you never know what will sell. old stuff has sat around longer, new stuff may be good as well. if you have old stuff that isn't selling, fix it up or advertise it again. constantly stir it.

if your not selling well, perhaps an avatar that doesn't have a leaf on your face will attract more attention. you want more choices not less choices. but if you had to choose at all - you choose the ones that sold already.

personally i would ravamp the images, asking for a critique and dumping the ones no one likes.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

 

Roy Erickson

7 Years Ago

Great advice from people who are selling - not so great advice if you are not selling and your account cannot pay for itself in a years time.

 

Mel Steinhauer

7 Years Ago

I agree with Cynthia if your only reason to delete images was the $30 annual fee.

I would think it would be very easy to save less than $3.00 per month to pay the annual fee, by putting some coins in a jar.

www.ScenesFromFarAndNear.com

 

Sharon Cummings

7 Years Ago

I just sold one last night that has sat in my portfolio for 3 years...first sale. You do never know. And 10 cents a day isn't much. Most people could find a way to do that.

 

Jazz DaBri

7 Years Ago

8.22 cents per day. Even on Christmas morn...............

I think I would have one of my heart to hearts with myself on what would make me far more productive and happy. On what would create sales and make me happy. I think the inner dialog needs to come first.

Dave

 

Toby McGuire

7 Years Ago

There is no way I could reduce to 25 at this point, but trying to would be painstaking and at this point pointless with my current portfolio as my strategy is to have a large and varied portfolio. And like others have said $30 over the course of a year is really nothing. It only takes a sale or two to make it up.

 

Roy Erickson

7 Years Ago

Great advice from all - even from some who aren't selling - but then some people find it hard to save 10¢ a day - none of you are walking in her shoes. There are days I don't spend even 10¢ a day; not everyone buys coffee at starbucks; It is so easy to say that someone can do something - when they really cannot; you don't know their circumstances - medical bills, food and a roof over your head, water, electricity, sewer, car payment, gas to make the car go, insurance, and the list goes on and on. Everyone wants just a few cents of the pie that they think is in your pocket. Nor do they give consideration to what is truly important to you. Yes, $30/year is a total bargain - unless you cannot afford it. If all you are doing is using FAA for storage - ??????

Let me reiterate - this is a Print on Demand, a fulfillment center - a place that prints your images that others purchase - which puts a little money, perhaps, in your pocket - if it cannot even support itself - and you've been on here 6 or 7 years - don't start with the marketing stuff - some people do the best they can with what they know how to do - some people never get it down (that's me) on how to market on the internet - and if it costs money ??? that is just another loser for a person who doesn't have the 10¢/day to go on.

It's like - in this county in which I live - they cannot manage their budget - the obvious thing to do is to raise the gasoline tax by another 5¢/gallon - this is the highest cost / gallon of gas from any of the surrounding counties now! One county up, in GA, you can buy gas for 20 to 25¢/gallon less, even the counties to the south east and west of us have it 10¢/gal less. So there goes your 10¢ a day theory.

 

Heather Applegate

7 Years Ago

To answer your subject question - 2 hangry rabbits and a hangry cat.

 

Heather Applegate

7 Years Ago

In all serious though - I'd dump the images that have a zillion others in the same category here - unless they were really something special - so goodbye flowers for sure, waterfalls, the majority of landscapes - I'd keep only what was really unique to what I shoot and what has been selling.

If nothing is selling, you need to start re-evaluating your work and marketing efforts.

 

Alfred Ng

7 Years Ago

if I have to face this tough situation I would remove all of them and then carefully upload one image per day till I reach 25.

 

Diana Angstadt

7 Years Ago

I have over 2,000 images on FAA. The more you have the more likely you will sell. The more you sell.... the easier it is to pay the $30/year for membership!

 

Jazz DaBri

7 Years Ago

Roy,

Between soap, water and a shave, I am pretty sure I spend 25 cents per day to get out of bed.

Dave

 

Floyd Snyder

7 Years Ago

"Great advice from people who are selling - not so great advice if you are not selling and your account cannot pay for itself in a years time."

Roy has an excellent point.

The OP has been here since 2010 and only has 85,000 views. It is obvious that she has done little to promote her work for what ever the reasons.

If the account is not generating $30 a year and there is no interest on the part of owner to promote enough to generate that $30, then why keep paying it?

First I would leave anything that may have had multiply sales in the 6 years you have been here. Then I would start with all flowers and abstracts with the exception of those that may have multiply sales. Realism or images people can relate to, day in and day out, that is what sells most often based on over 40 years of selling art, all kinds of art.

I am going to step over the line and beg your forgiveness (and Abbie's) and do something I rarely do and suggest you change the avatar. I normally don't think it is that big of a deal because if you are advertising individual images, it is fairly insignificant.

 

Joseph C Hinson

7 Years Ago

Lynn-Marie, I thought I was going to have to do this very thing and start culling images. I was coming up with a strategy of which ones to keep. There are the best sellers, of course, but I have a number of best sellers that just haven't happened to sell yet. I firmly believe they will and, in fact, one of them did just sell.

$30 is indeed a great price, but sometimes even that seems a lot. The whole "walk a mile in their shoes" is very appropriate here. You don't always know what folks are going through unless, like me, they post on FB and FAA blogs about if all the time!

 

Oh what a great surprise and I have to say I'm so very happy you have all given me food for thought.

Roy you are spot on. I'd be overjoyed if my work would pay the $30 fee. Anything over that I'd get a fat head full of pride. lol

Floyd thank you for the straight talk. Through out the years I have spend a gazillion of hours promoting from my acct here. I use social media (I'm a social kind of gal) and I have a blog on Wordperess (nice view count) where I post my artful adventures and links back to my artist website. Sadly, probably 95% of my "visitors" are bots. One or two images have only been viewed by the Beverly Hills and Sunnyvale bots. Lately I see China on the visitors and start to hyperventilate thinking about those lovely large images we give them. *shiver*

I am stretched thin, my attention floats between three pod companies. One free company I sell well with, the second free is new and I have some hope for and then there is FAA/Pixels. My goal was to try and not duplicate my work across the board... to add my paintings and better photography to this company only. Knowing that is what FAA/Pixels excels at I thought I had some chance and selling. It's been a pretty dismal six years.

There is still time for me to make a final decision. I can certainly put my face in full view in the avatar. There's always hope.

Thank you again, feel free to keep a conversation going.

 

Mary Bedy

7 Years Ago

Lynn-Marie, for what it's worth I LOVE your lino cuts. I tried that a couple of times and found it interesting but yours are much nicer. Other than that, I don't really have any words of wisdom for you....I finally broke a dry spell since December and sold a print a couple of days ago, so at least this year's fee is paid now.

 

Jazz DaBri

7 Years Ago

Lynn-Marie,

You are not alone. Many artists find financing their profession difficult.

I wish you well. I hope you are like a cat and land on all four feet.

Dave

 

Mike Savad

7 Years Ago

i still say you should stay, add more work, a whole lot more work and advertise. if your letting it sit, it will simply sit.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

 

Jazz DaBri

7 Years Ago

Lynn-Marie,

I just read your addition.

I only use one POD. Free or not just one. My energies are then not in reposting my work across multiple forms of this, but promoting my art across SM. My view counts here are doing much better. I am in front of people. Beverly Hills is not just bots.

I think if your view totals are low at least 80% of your traffic is bots, but if your view totals are well over 100 per day you are getting well beyond the bots. JMO

Perhaps if you dump the other pay POD things would be much easier? Keep the quality, the sizing and the products for sale here? And possibly dump the free POD to lessen the repeat work? Or leave it up but stop adding to it. Stop working on it.

Dave

 

Mary thank you for your compliment. I really enjoy working with printmaking though my achy fingers don't always help.

Thanks Jazz. :)

Mike, thanks for the encouraging words. I won't make any rash decisions and go on a massive deletion binge.

One thing I have noticed today is upon Googling myself the images are all showing up from FAA. This is a big improvement since I tried the same search last year. But I seem to be paying $30 a year for a site that doesn't show up in Google search under sties either. When I promote it is directly from my AW. Yet not one link in Google search goes there or to my Pixels acct for that matter. Do you have to secure a domain name to make these AW sites profitable?


I'm going to hit the acrylics today.

 

I see I've cross posted with Dave. I wish we had preview options on this forum. :(

Dave I could easily neglect my other PODs but there is one site during Xmas I bring in a couple hundred dollars. I'd have to think about that.

Views... These days I am bringing in about 60 to 90 (12 hours into this day I have 42 views... some from FAA members many from said bots/people) views. Those bots/people are keeping the images from FAA in Google searches under my name. Now if I could get the images on "normal" keyword searches that would do the trick. :)

 

Mike Savad

7 Years Ago

that site isn't for google, your actually paying for the ability to upload what you want. the site itself is to make you look more professional and its what you send people too. if you do send people and advertise well enough it will eventually show up. but only as your url name. like mikesavad.com does show up now and then in google.

i'm not sure what hitting the acrylics mean... you can't remove just those.


send people to the your paid for site - get a vanity url, so if this place ever vanishes the places you left that url, will send them to a different page. if you send people to the long version of the site name, then your only advertising this place and all the links will be void if you leave, or this place goes away.

to get into the main search you need to sell things. to sell things you need more work. work that you would buy for your own walls if you saw it in a store. if you upload random things, you probably won't get buyers looking for that long. on average i get around 3000 hits a day, and i don't push it that hard. the more images you have, the more hits you have, the longer people stay, etc.

you have to build an audience as well.

---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

 

Abbie Shores

7 Years Ago

It's 25 on the free account

 

Thanks Mike, just as I suspected I need to grab my name for a domain. I would feel more in control if I had done this from the start I suspect.

Regarding the "random things" that is the hard part of being a part of FAA and Pixels at the same time. The audience can now be all over the place. That is of course why I have patterns and such ... just trying to grab those cell phone covers sales and the like. I like Pixels... I really do, but it makes it harder to focus.

"hitting the acrylics" = painting today.

 

Mike Savad

7 Years Ago

it can be any name, but i chose my own simply because i could and it made sense.

pixels and the art site has all the stuff faa has. but it also sells the other things.

personally i push for posters, because the covers - there are so many around the world to choose from, and they don't get you a lot of money, even at the price i have them set for.

focus only on your own art site. you want people in your store, and not migrating outside of it.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

 

CHERYL EMERSON ADAMS

7 Years Ago

Lynne-Marie,
I guess the question is... why are you here? Not asked in the mean way, asked in the thinking through why you're here way. You say you have a number of other places on the internet where you post / display / sell your art.
It sounds as if cutting down your portfolio here on FAA isn't really going to affect your online presence as an artist that much, so it shouldn't be that much of an angstful big deal for you to cut down your portfolio.

This is how I would do it, if it were me:
Preserve the ones that somebody has "favorited," with (if the heart icon has a number in it, that's how many people saved it in their favorites area, here on FAA. I'm pretty sure (not 100% sure) that if someone's favorited an image of your art, and you delete that image, the person who favorited it doesn't get to see it anymore in their favorites area.

Preserve the ones that have sold here.

After that, preserve the ones you think are better art.

After that, assign numbers to the art and roll the dice, cut the ones that lose the dice game.

 

Rose Santuci-Sofranko

7 Years Ago

Lynn, I hope you stay! I know what you mean about being spread too thin...but I have about 15 POD stores and I try to duplicate much of the same work on them. Right now I am STILL working on fixing my FAA keywords and getting rid of the horrible black 'frames" I put on most of the ones I added when I first joined. It is tedious but looks so much better and my keywords are turning out a lot better.

 

Roy Erickson

7 Years Ago

About the end of September - I myself will find out how difficult it is to reduce to 25 - http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=3112092

 

Thank you Mike, Cheryl and Rose for the extra words of thoughts and suggestions. I just took 10 minutes of my time to secure my personal domain name for my artists site. I've decided to give it much more effort for another year. building my base of followers is my goal and I am so encouraged to give it 100%. I've even decided to give my blog a refresh too.

Roy, I'm going to give your thread a good looking over and respond. Right now I have to run.

 

Edward Fielding

7 Years Ago

I'd pick my most popular niche and the best sellers within. But since one sale basically pays for premium so I don't think I'd have to make this choice.

Plus the possibility of getting any sales with 30 images is so slim -- if I got to this point I'd probably just yank them all and take up knitting or something.

 

"Plus the possibility of getting any sales with 30 images is so slim -- if I got to this point I'd probably just yank them all and take up knitting or something."


Or . . . set up my own free website and/or blog and put all my promotional and marketing efforts toward that. POD is not the only game in town; many of us were showing and selling our work online l-o-n-g before ever joining (or even hearing of) a POD site. You can still use your favorite POD for print fulfillment and shipping.

PS - Lynn-Marie, I'm breathing much easier with the advent of your new avatar. I wouldn't be surprised if that single change impacts favorably on your business! ;-)

 

"Plus the possibility of getting any sales with 30 images is so slim -- if I got to this point I'd probably just yank them all and take up knitting or something."

Dude, I already knit. lol Thanks for your straight talk. I am planning to add more work. There was a time I just didn't upload paintings I loved after painting them last year. I need to make a better commitment to this venue. And step up my game as a whole.

Wendy, I had thought of just going it alone but now I will do my best to promote from my newly converted AW.com.

I want to say the silent members who've watched this thread have been such a huge moral support in the past 24 hours. I've received comments and favs that I never expected. This community really has opened my eyes to many changes I have to make, commitments to the crafts I so much enjoy and the importance of supporting my fellow/sisters in the arts.

Thank you so much.

Now if I could just remember how to make my blog tab public again. *scratching head* lol

 

Jack Torcello

7 Years Ago

It would seem that the sage advice of Mike Savad is so true
...that an attractive thumbnail makes for greater viewing - if
that means greater sales for him, I hope that's true.

For me it means that material which I do not consider my best
is viewed countless times over and over because the thumbnails
look oh so seductively attractive. Alas it does not translate to
sales!

I guess my 30 would include those 'thumbnailers' alongside
what full-sized works I really do like :)

Happy downsizing!

 

Randy Dyer

7 Years Ago

At this moment, I have about 250 images here and I have been a member of this site since Feb 2015. I have sold 5 images and made enough money to pay for the next 7 years here on FAA before I start paying the $30 again out of my pocket. However, I do sell on one other site which is free and I have made about $60 from that site. It would be hard for me to decide which 30 shots I would choose.

 

This discussion is closed.