Fine Art Print Sales through December 2025

I decided to split my normal earnings report into two this December and cover print sales in this article together with a review of 2025 for those activities and then a separate article about stock photography earnings through 2025 which will also report on total online photography earnings. I might create a video on YouTube of this article, but it is pretty text heavy. Please let me know if you think that might be helpful.

What are Fine Art Print Sales?

In this first report, I’ll cover all the categories of what I call Fine Art sales. That word is a little loaded as some of my sales of prints might struggle to be called Fine Art, but it at least shows where I am aiming! In this category, I count sales from the three shopfronts I maintain – Fine Art America, Pictorem and now Etsy. These are sales that are driven by someone finding my work online and deciding to purchase a print or other product (a jigsaw puzzle, for instance). Then I have private or local sales where someone I know locally, or someone searches me out to buy a specific print or perhaps to buy a license to use an image of mine. If you are interested in signing up for Pictorem, I have an affiliate link here.

And I should make clear that “sales” in this report refers to the margin that I am left with after production and marketing costs are deducted. Margin is probably a better word in some cases.

I also have a selection of my best work on two sites who approached me a few years back having seen my portfolio. One leases prints to offices and the other offers them as wall murals. I have around 150-200 of my best pieces that I think would make great prints on these sites.

December 2025 Fine Art Print Sales

Not surprisingly as December is the month for gifts, I achieved one of my best months ever in terms of sales of my work. A total of $1884 in profits from sales. For some sites, I just am notified of the margin that is included in an order that they are processing. On Etsy, I see the full price the person pays, and I have to create and ship the print to them out of that overall payment. As a result, I have a spreadsheet that shows the various fees that Etsy charges and then I include my own print production and shipping costs to work out the margin.

Fine Art America Sales

The major source of this income was Fine Art America, with a total of nine sales in December with total income of $1010. Five of them were jigsaws, but I had four big print sales, including three framed prints of the Morgantown WV area that were ordered at sizes up to 66 inches (165cm) wide. Talk about a statement piece!

I do know that the buyer lives in Oakland, MD and clearly has an affinity for West Virginia University. This highlights an important part of my social media activity. Of course, it is possible that they just came across my work at random, but it is much more likely that they have seen the articles about WVU that I have written on my companion site, BackyardImage.com If you check out that link, you will see some pages that simply are portfolio pages. I mainly write illustrated articles about locations and those are visible in recent posts and also in the menu system for the site under “West Virginia” in this case. But I also created some pages that are simply intended for Google to follow and index. They show the images available for a location and each one links to the page on my Pictorem portfolio where that image can be purchased as a print. I don’t really expect people to wade through a page of images, but if they search for WVU prints on Google Images, there is a better than average chance that my images on Pictorem and Fine Art America will show up in the early results. What is interesting though is that these were bought on Fine Art America even though a lot of linking has been to Pictorem for the past couple of years because of the free shipping. To be honest, though, I’m glad they have gone to that site because of the terrible delays that prints at Pictorem have been facing since they move to a larger site a few months back.

Pictorem Sales

Pictorem has been a real problem in the second half of 2025. I have been using them for both my portfolio with almost 2700 images there and I also use them to fulfil metal and acrylic prints that I sell via Etsy. They were normally both reasonably priced and offered free shipping in the USA and Canada but from mid-summer onwards, their normal 5 business day turnaround has rarely been met. I had one order that someone placed on 5 November shipped on 13 December and now I have two more prints ordered by people finding my work that have been stuck there for 3 weeks now. I did contact one of those offering to have the image printed elsewhere, but he didn’t want to be a bother. This was a canvas print of a scene I “painted” of Ketchikan in Alaska. A wet miserable day, but a touch of watercolor and a replaced sky made it much brighter. The buyer mentioned that they had visited on cruise and didn’t find a print they liked in the town, but this one was just perfect to remember their vacation.

Etsy Photo Print Sales

December turned out to be great on my Etsy Store. I don’t have many images there yet, but I keep adding them from time to time and now have 45 of my favorites there. A key thing I have learned is to make sure that people can imagine a print on their wall and so my thumbnail is always a print shaped photo, and I create examples of the various print sizes I have displayed in various types of room with clear labeling of the size. have created a series of Photoshop template files for each of the sample images and it now takes me around 15 minutes to get a new photo online in the store with its own images.

I have also become a regular user of discount codes – from 20% to 30% depending on how I feel! I have had a holiday sale running through December at 30% and also announced it in the shop header. I also use Etsy Ads pretty continuously. I budget $3 a day and some days the spend is less than that, as you pay based on the click through to your product. I’m bemused by which images are shown to potential buyers though. The views are roughly related to previous sales on Etsy (which I guess makes sense) but you would have thought many more people would search for a Manhattan Skyline Print over Seneca Rocks? Perhaps what I am seeing is that some of my images are appearing under less popular searches and so I get a higher share of views of the results of that search? Hard to say! I’ll have to try pausing the ads on my most popular images to see if others pick up the available budget.

In December, I had 11 sales on Etsy, and six of those were the results of someone clicking on an ad. I print my own images for 10×8, 14×11 and 16×20 orders, having bought paper from Red River when a particular luster finish was being discontinued. The two smaller sizes I put in a card envelope with a piece of cardboard for extra support and I have some 20-inch paper tubes for the larger size. All of them are mailed with the USPS Media Mail service for $4.47. I include a letter with them, with some background on the image and I offer a 40% off coupon code for their next order and in December, two of the orders were repeat purchases using that code. Building this rapport has naturally resulted in more reviews of my store. As a result of all this, the total order total from Etsy in December was $893 which resulted in a margin of $437 after deducting fees, taxes, production costs and marketing expenses.

Etsy is definitely more work, but there is a higher level of satisfaction in directly dealing with someone interested enough in my photos to put them on their wall. One of the repeat customers included a photo of his WVU wall he has created in his office which now has two of my prints.

This image of Woodburn Hall at WVU at night sold twice in the month on Etsy, including a 40×30 inch canvas print ordered on 23 December and delivered on the 29th of December.

Social Media Efforts dedicated to selling prints online

The thing that many artists hate, is pushing their work on Social Media. If you think about it, a portfolio on Fine Art America is like the world’s biggest hard drive filled with all the images that over 500,000 artists have uploaded. You certainly don’t sit down and scroll through those photos somehow deciding which one of the millions of images would be just right for that space above the fireplace. Online galleries are massively different to entering a gallery in your hometown or in a vacation resort. There, you see a print that appeals to you, and you can decide if you like it enough to purchase. The only way someone sees my photos online is if I send them there in some way. I do that by trying to increase the popularity of my images in a Google Image Search in ways I have discussed above, but I also try to get my best images in front of potential buyers using social media. I have tried Instagram (mainly other photographers), BlueSky and Mastodon (again mainly other artists and a lot fewer of them) and finally Facebook. My own profile with 415 followers does get some traction, sometimes, but it is hard to get much visibility, especially if you add a link, but the Facebook Groups seem to still work. I think my sales are over-weighted towards West Virginia images because I joined two groups, Growing up in Morgantown and I Grew up in West Virginia, and have got a little bit of a following there. The first is a traditional group properly run by an admin who deletes commercial posts, so I simply post the images like the one above with a clear watermark but no mentions of any online gallery. I can get 600 likes and maybe 40 comments (plus ones I add, especially if someone mentions a print). My own profile header image tells people where to find my work if they take the trouble to look.

Even though I no longer live in West Virginia, I do mention major sales (carefully to avoid annoying the admin) and that raises my profile among the members of the group. It is hard to pin down a sale to someone seeing my work here, but I’m pretty sure it happens.

The other group is of a type that is unfortunately becoming more common on Facebook – a pseudo real group. It used to be a regular one run by regular people, but along the way it was taken over (or sold to) a team that posts my images sometimes under a different name, posts questions that are solely intended to get a lot of comments such as “Prove you are a member of this group by posting the town you grew up in” and then 800 comments appear with the names of West Virginia towns. Then they offer some product or other in among the other posts. I also see comments such as “I have a question I would like to ask you” which will certainly lead into some scam or other. BUT they do let me post my photos and I’m pushing the envelope a bit by mentioning my print sales as well. Those posts get a lot of traction and comments so there are certainly real people seeing the posts.

I’ve been on some Kauai groups as well, but I do need to find others related to photos that I think might sell. It is a balance though – do you want to spend your life on Facebook groups, or do you want to get out taking interesting photos? I’ve seen it recommended to create “hero” type stories that are included in the description of your Etsy prints – they are in the “Learn more about this item” in the detail about my print. A typical one is:

The air bit at my face as I stepped onto the frozen trail leading to Cucumber Falls. My goal was clear—to capture the icy waters of this Pennsylvania gem like it had never been done before. Not just another winter shot, but a photograph that bottled the silence, the shimmer, and the raw chill of the place itself.

The waterfall lay ahead, half-frozen in suspended motion. Icicles clung like crystal daggers to the rocks, and mist turned to frost on my jacket. Every step was treacherous—the stones beneath the snow slick as glass. My breath hung in the air, mingling with the smell of pine and mineral-rich water.

I edged closer, searching for the perfect angle. The sound of the water resonated in my ears. I crouched, adjusting my tripod, the metal biting into my fingertips through my gloves. Just as I pressed down to secure it, my boot slipped—one foot plunged into the icy stream.

The shock was electric, shooting up my leg, but instinct took over. I steadied the tripod, teeth clenched, refusing to let the moment slip away.

Then, as if nature rewarded my stubbornness, I saw the composition I wanted, pressed the shutter for a long exposure to smooth the water but leave the icicles as sharp as they appeared!

Later, my family and friends were stunned. The photo seemed alive—the cold, the power, the fleeting perfection of winter itself. I had faced the ice, the danger, and the odds—and won. That image was more than a picture; it was proof that determination can turn even frozen moments into drama.

ChatGPT, of course! But the reason I mention that is that you could just post that text plus your photo in the Facebook groups and then just respond to a comment that ask about a print. Ignore all the other comments just saying “Wow”. That would reduce the time spent on Facebook considerably.

Annual Results from selling prints online

As it is the end of the year, it is worth looking at the results of my efforts through the years. Here is a historical graph from way back in 2013 and I started taking selling prints seriously in 2021 or so.

Definitely the sort of graph that you want to see! And this might be a good time to mention my book on selling your prints online! There is even an audiobook version so that you can listen to it on a long car journey!

So, 2025 ended with total income from print related sales of $11,240. When I do the full earnings report, I’ll include how the stock photo income has been changing over the years, but I am certainly glad that I decided to branch out into other markets for my work back in 2021.

Inside that total, Fine Art America contributed $2148, Pictorem was $938, Etsy, $1149 and local sales were $682. The company leasing prints earned $3047 (with the sale of 10 prints to a financial services company adding a fair chunk of that.) And, finally, my wall murals earned about $3000 although I will not really know the final results until they report quarterly earnings late in January.

This final chart shows how the four main outlets for my prints have changed over the years. 2025 doesn’t look just as good in this graph, but still pretty impressive compared to where I started. The drop in Pictorem direct sales is worrying and perhaps some of that is related to their production problems, but I’m not sure why that would make a difference to orders. I can picture orders being cancelled because of long delays in seeing the print, but I haven’t seen that.

I hope this extended article about my thoughts and approaches to selling fine art prints online has been helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know using the comment feature, and, if you choose to sign up to Pictorem, here is my affiliate link! Their CEO told me they should have production back to normal at the end of January 2026.