Update on my Fine Art approach

It has been quite some time since I updated my thoughts on how to sell your images as prints. I, of course, need to mention that I wrote an eBook about this and much of the information in that is still valuable (I believe) to anyone thinking of trying to sell their work as prints rather than stock photos.

As I will report next week, December will likely turn out to be a pretty poor month in terms of stock photo sales and pretty good for selling prints. At the moment, I am at around $1576 from print sales at the various sites I am supporting. The ones I am focusing on at the moment are Fine Art America, Pictorem and Etsy. I have a few prints back in galleries in West Virginia, and I have my work on display here in Texas with the opportunity for people to contact me to buy one, but that is a bit hit and miss as you can only display a few images in the various locations around Georgetown.

Currently, I have 3733 images on FAA, 2349 images on Pictorem and 18 on Etsy. Why so few on Etsy? It is quite hard work adding each new product to Etsy and takes around 20-25 minutes I would guess for each new image. I wrote a post earlier this year explaining how to go about creating the store itself and then adding products to it. I still follow that process and haven’t really found any reason to change.

Sales of Prints in December 2024

So far, I have sold 10 items on FAA for a total of $518 profit, 3 prints on Pictorem for $183 profit, 4 prints on Etsy for $147 profit, and one print for just over $100 from a site where I generally upload Washington DC images as their main business is leasing out prints to offices in the DC area. I do have some images with a wall murals company (they contacted me to ask me to join them) and that averages about $80 a month. Why the big discrepancy in these totals from the amount I claimed? I was also approached mid-month by a big magazine publisher who wanted to put two of my images from the Mississippi cruise in their upcoming magazine. Strictly speaking this is a stock photo sale, but they found the images in one of my articles over on Backyard Image which I write specifically for people who might be interested in buying my best work for prints, so I am stretching the point a bit and counting them as fine art sales.

What prints have sold in 2024?

While it is interesting to identify what prints sold in 2024, a look at the full year might be more instructive. This is pretty hard to do! With stock photos we have a great tool in Microstockr Pro that can summarize the best sellers at the click of a button. With prints, this is much harder. FAA allows you to download a spreadsheet that includes all transactions on your account, but it is not formatted in any useful way. I created an Access database in 2022 to analyze this, which took over a week to create, and now I can’t really remember how to add additional years to the reports it produced! So here is a snapshot of a spreadsheet it can produce that I have sorted for 2024 sales, and I have added a note about my efforts to publicize the image. I generally do that by either writing an article about the place or topic on BackyardImage.com, and/or I post the image and some comment on Facebook, LinkedIn or BlueSky. I’ll talk some more about that later in this article. What is interesting is that the articles are intended purely for people interested in my work and potentially buying artwork based on it. I try to make them interesting and use my best photos to illustrate them and I link back from a comment under the photo to one of my Print on Demand sites where that image can be purchased as artwork. Starting in 2023, I linked through to my Pictorem portfolio rather than to my FAA account – partly because I wanted to support a newcomer, and also to try to get traction on a relatively new account on Pictorem. I repeated the process for the Pictorem 2024 sales by copying their list of sales and pasting them into Excel.

I’ll add one more chart – the total sales at FAA and at Pictorem since I opened my account at the latter in 2021:

What is this all showing? I think there is undoubtedly some level of sales to people who search for a subject on Google and browse the images that result. For instance, two sales on Fine Art America for the Pabst beer sign in Colorado could have resulted from someone searching for “Pabst beer sign for mancave” and seeing the image from my FAA site (it does appear partway down the results page) and buying as a result of that link. I can’t really tell if FAA is better than Pictorem at appearing in the results – that is why it is probably best to have both. I also use personalized URLs for both sites – steveheap.com for Pictorem and steveheapphotos.com for my FAA/Pixels sites – I think Google sees them as separate sites (to some extent) and the link to the beer sign actually uses my own URL for the search result. Should you use both FAA and Pictorem – I am sure the answer is yes. I can’t say that one is better than the other, but they are different, and I am sure having different approaches to Search Engine Optimization will end up with your image in search results in several places in most cases.

Publicizing the products

The tables also show that my efforts at publicizing my own work does produce results. As I mentioned above, I write articles about places that interest me where I have some photographs that are worthy of being displayed on a wall. I did a lot of articles about West Virginia and the Morgantown/WVU area, and more recently have written extensively about Viking cruises. I then mention each article on my own Facebook pages (which doesn’t do much to be honest as FB does not show posts with links (even with a link in the comments) to many people. They really do not want their eyeballs to leave the site if at all possible. But the Facebook groups seem to be different. I get a large number of views for my articles in groups dedicated to particular areas or activities. So, my Viking Cruise articles are pushed in the groups focused on that activity and I get many likes and also comments from people who have seen and read them. Good photos do well there in terms of engagement. I try to reply to all comments as a new comment from me pushes the post higher in the group page. I am able to link directly to my article in these groups (although some admins are wary of that because they can see that I sell prints from my site). With my photo posts, I include a watermark that mentions steveheap.com which links to my Pictorem portfolio.

What I would caution against is just throwing posts at the wall and hoping they stick. I only do one or two posts a day – I see other FAA artists who post maybe 10 or 15 posts on BlueSky basically saying “look at this image that you can buy on Fine Art America through this link” and, in my mind, the images are boring and not particularly memorable at all. I’ve blocked that person now as I found it so annoying to see these things day after day. So, while you should upload as many images as you can to these Print on Demand sites, please only upload work that you would be happy to see on your own wall, and don’t bombard people on Social Media with multiple views of the same thing.

What is encouraging this year is that from the summer onwards, I did relatively little in the way of articles and Facebook posts because I was moving home. And still the sales came in. I get about 50 visitors a day to BackyardImage.com to various articles I have written, but that can rise to 300 if I post a new article on the Viking cruise groups, for instance. And, while I haven’t sold a print of the places mentioned in these cruises, it definitely helped (I think) with the licensing for the magazine article about the Viking Mississippi cruise.

Overall Sales of Fine Art Products

Before I leave these two Print on Demand sites and look at Etsy, it is worth looking at the overall trends in selling my work as prints as well as for stock photo licensing. Here is that chart:

This is showing some great results, with 2024 being significantly above previous years in spite of my reduced efforts in both uploading new images to those PoD sites and in publicizing the images there. I’m going to continue to upload my best images to both sites. If you think you might want to add Pictorem as a new portfolio site, I do have a referral link which will give me a bit of a reward if you sign up for one of the paid accounts there.

Etsy Sales of Prints

I tried to sell digital downloads on Etsy in 2023 but had no success. So, this year I changed tack and deleted all those to add prints instead. It is much harder work than adding a new image to a PoD site as you need to create individual images showing each new photo in different room situations. It seems to be really important to help people visualize what they are going to buy. If there are too many options, they will freeze and probably buy nothing, so I make sure that I create images that show the main sizes in some sort of room environment. And I include labels to show the actual size of the product I am showing. I have created templates in Photoshop that makes creating this product images relatively easily, but it still takes 15 minutes to create the collection. I have standardized on my product offerings, so each of the products are basically the same and I can copy one of my older listings to form the template for a new one. All I need to do is to change the title, delete the old images and add the new ones and then link the product variations (basically the sizes) to the new images so that if someone selects 24×36 inches, the appropriate image shows so that they can get a feeling for what they are buying. I read that it was important to create a story around each product and I use ChatGPT or the Microsoft AI to write about 1500 words or so. This is the sort of thing:

The roar of the helicopter blades filled my ears as we soared above the lush, rugged landscape of Kauai. My heart pounded with excitement and a touch of fear. I was determined to capture the Na Pali coast like it had never been seen before—from the open door of a helicopter. The wind whipped through my hair, carrying the scent of salt and tropical flowers. Below, the emerald cliffs plunged dramatically into the sapphire ocean, a sight that took my breath away.

As we approached the coast, I leaned out, my camera ready. The sensation of the wind against my face was exhilarating, but I had to be careful. One wrong move, and I could be in serious trouble. I adjusted my grip, feeling the pull of the simple seat belt against my shoulder.

With renewed focus, I leaned out again, this time more cautiously. The cliffs were bathed in the golden light of the early afternoon sun, casting long shadows that added depth to the scene. I framed the shot, my finger hovering over the shutter button. Just as the helicopter began to turn away, I clicked the shutter, capturing the perfect moment.

The trip back was a blur of adrenaline and relief. I couldn’t wait to see the results. When I finally reviewed the photos, my heart swelled with pride. I had done it. The image was everything I had hoped for and more. My family and friends were amazed, and I felt a sense of accomplishment that words couldn’t describe. It was a dream come true, a testament to my determination and passion for photography.

A bit cheesy I know, but it probably helps with the search results!

Getting Traction on Etsy

Once I had 10 or so products, I decided to push my friends to buy some prints. Some of them were persuaded to order a print they didn’t really have a need for and I gave them a big discount which meant I either broke even or had a loss. Others really liked my work and the discount meant that they could stock up on Christmas present at a bargain price. I read that Etsy needs to see some good performance in shipping the products and wants to see perhaps 5 good reviews before they push your store higher in the search results. So focus on trying to get those reviews. I had a sale in mid-December which I fulfilled via Pictorem. They printed it in good time and shipped via USPS, but it stuck in their system and the buyer wanted it for a Christmas gift. After she contacted me, I worked out that I could print the image in her local Walmart and she went to pick it up as an insurance policy if the real print didn’t arrive on time. Sure enough, USPS did not deliver on December 24th as promised, but she left me a great review for my efforts to solve her problem. So, less profit certainly, but a happy customer.

Trying Etsy Ads in December

To capitalize on the Christmas gift market, I decided to offer a December sale of 25% off the normal prices and also spent $5 a day on Etsy ads to boost my work. Basically, you pay for clicks to your products and they place your work in appropriate searches. This is the graph they provide:

As you can see, the ads increased my views tremendously and I had 119 clicks to view the products which resulted in $138 in sales. Of course, my profit was less as I have to produce the prints, but I certainly made a profit of $147 in the month from these and other ones that people found without the ads. Etsy is definitely more work, but quite satisfying dealing with real people!

Summary of selling photos as prints

There is a lot more satisfaction in thinking that your work is good enough for someone to place on their wall, and having to keyword and describe your images for stock agencies means that the effort to sell them on Print on Demand sites is not that much work. But you need to do more than that. My eBook gives a lot of detail of my thoughts on what sort of images might sell and the ones that sold in 2024 reinforce my thinking about that. My Etsy store is a work in progress, but the results from using Etsy ads now that the store has already got some traction seemed to be worthwhile. It will be interesting to see what the results are once the December gift season is behind us.

So, if you think your work is worthy of being on a wall somewhere, give it a go!