Fine Art America – test with new pricing
There is something very satisfying about selling a photo as a large art print and I have had some great high priced sales on Fine Art America in the past. My latest one, of course, netting $287.
But I was looking at similar images of this same place on FAA, and noticed that other artists were reporting more sales than I was seeing (you can tell by looking at the comments as you almost always get a comment when you have a sale). I didn’t think his images were better than mine, but when I looked at the pricing of the larger images, mine were much higher cost. So I did wonder if people saw the available images of a place like this and chose one that “looked OK” but was a lower price?
I’ve decided to try an experiment for a while – I’ve drastically reduced my margin on Fine Art America so that my prints look “cheaper” on the initial search results and also look significantly lower priced on the larger sized prints. Of course, this might be throwing lots of money away (well maybe not with a sale every 2 or 3 months!), but it will be interesting to see if I can sell more copies and probably move higher up the search results.
My old pricing was like this:
These are my margins and are added to the cost of the print. My new pricing is here:
As you can see, dramatically different!
I also created a collection of my best selling prints so that people might browse that. I’m not sure if many people would do that (apart from other artists looking at the competition!), but you never know. If you feel like browsing it and “liking” one or two images, please feel free to do so!
I’ll let you know how this experiment works out in the coming months.
That is something I have been struggling with. .Setting up parallel sites with links from eBook to direct traffic. Book should be published later this month, noting low quality for both ebook and print but full resolution of those and more at…. The problem is Zenfolio (MPIX) is significantly less than FAA. Granted, MPIX is standard professional photography quality (weddings, etc) with limited paper and other choices where FAA is archival quality papers in multiple finishes and pigmented inks. Most people wouldn’t know the difference though. It creates a delima.
I’m not sure I’m following…But it is difficult to know how to price a piece of “art”. If I am happy to sell the underlying image for $2 on some stock site, why do I need to get $500 when someone orders a very big print? Interesting question!
Traffic? You may get 500 for a large print but to make 500 on cheaper prints may take a long time. Shutterstock sells every day so you can make money out of licensing the same image many times. Not a choice at FAA!
Note that I also don’t know how to price my art and have struggled with that also. I try to post on FAA things that you cannot find in my stock and which represent a whole lot more work than the stock photography. In the FAA forum, people have made me aware in the past that I was selling for much less than the average and I think that bothered those who derive a percentage of their income from that site.
I think the reason I don’t sell there is not my price. Either my work interests no one, or else, I am very bad at marketing.When I search for my images there I often find them in the last pages of the search results. It would probably be best to be on the very last page, than where I usually find myself, “near the end”. Someone searching for something specific may get tired and choose something before they even get to my image.
I try to participate in the forum and that generates a few bot visits, sometimes a real person will visit as well. I also post on twitter but there I don’t think anyone sees it. Every few days I promote a large image to a profit of 20 bucks and post on twitter. Neversold. My last month’s visitors count was about 3,000 visits, mostly bots.
If you know a way to generate more traffic to that site pls let us know. I would rather pay a small commission for them to advertise. I have other things to do.
https://alessandra-rc.pixels.com/
Hi Alessandra
I had another look at your portfolio – you have some great “art” shots! I think the biggest issue we all have on FAA is that it is extremely difficult to keyword or describe an art piece in a way that someone would firstly be searching for it, and then would come up with words that would find it. Many of them would be great on a wall, but someone needs to see one and be moved by it enough to buy it. I doubt if anyone starts with the idea that they want an image similar to your purple clove painterly picture and start to search FAA for it. However, if they saw it, they might think – that would look great in my study. What I’m getting to is that my images that sell are of a specific place and although I have lots of other more arty shots, they never sell. So I’m imagining that someone goes to WVU and wants a gift, so they search WVU and sees a range of images including mine of Woodburn hall. I’m on the first page of a WVU search. I can tell that other artists sell those type of images so there is at least some “passing trade”. So my task is to persuade them to buy my version and I’m trying to see if price makes a difference. It was easier to reduce my whole portfolio than to go to specific images to change the price, but I might do that later. For now, I want to see if I can convert an existing visitor into a buyer of my specific image rather than someone else’s.
Steve
I get you. My best selling image is a water tower with the name of the local university on it. It’s also my least artistic image. But it is a memory of the UC Davis and probably brings in the nostalgia of student times. Who knows. I am going to add more photographs of places although that’s another game and competition. I am thinking some photos of small towns west coast.
Also to elaborate and to be clear, the impression I get from frequenting the forums is that most traffic at people’s pages is from direct advertising rather than random searches.
That’s interesting. It might be the case that someone advertises an image of WVU and the customer comes along, but then decides to see what else is available. I think I would do that. So someone’s advert might drive some traffic to my images of the same place. They key is that my images have similar keywords to the one advertised, I guess, which is more likely when it is of a specific place.
Hi Steven,
I want to follow your idea and want to set the prices on FAA down – same as you, even my prices were already cheaper than yours. But your new settings are also drastic for me and wanna give it a try. I have one more reason to do it than you: I did not sell any print yet and I am still new on FAA. I also did not promote my images on social media yet, but want to do it after the new price setting. If I get some sales, I could go to premium and upload more. Because my principle is to get the fee for premium from my 25 images first.
I changed the prices in the default prices, but after that the prices from online images did not get changed. I could not find yet how to apply the new prices for the online images. Okay, 25 images, I could do it one by one, but for sure there is an easier way to do, isn´t? Please tell me.
Thank you very much for your help.
And for sure: If our strategy works fine for me, I would let you know.
Yes, you can change any or all of the prices in the Bulk Edit Prices icon in the Behind the Scenes area. Make sure you read the comment discussion I had with Alessandra about the type of images that I think sell as prints on FAA. You may have to wait quite some time unless your images are particularly popular with only having 25 online.