Fine Art America site

[Flo Smith]

It's probably been going for ages but I've just noticed Alamy are selling prints through the Fine Art America site. Just wondered if anyone has used that site for their own images and is it worth a punt? It looks like they sell similar stuff to Redbubble which I've been selling moderately on for years, but FAA is more geared towards art prints. I'm on Fy! which started off well but I think they overstretched themselves so sales have tailed off quite a bit. Any info or experiences would be appreciated. Cheers dears!

[Paul Thompson]

Hi Flo, I have been on FAA for about 2 and a half years and have had 62 sales of varying amounts, https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/17-paul-thompson?tab=artwork

You add your own mark-up, but they say that they are just a fulfilment centre, and you have to drive your own traffic to your pages and images.

I'm in the UK and almost all have come from America and I didn't send those sellers, so they found me through my descriptions and tags.

Certainly worth the $30 a year, but it has been hard work and intermittent with the sales.

I am also on RB and do much better there.

[Flo Smith]

21 hours ago, Paul Thompson said:

Hi Flo, I have been on FAA for about 2 and a half years and have had 62 sales of varying amounts, https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/17-paul-thompson?tab=artwork

You add your own mark-up, but they say that they are just a fulfilment centre, and you have to drive your own traffic to your pages and images.

I'm in the UK and almost all have come from America and I didn't send those sellers, so they found me through my descriptions and tags.

Certainly worth the $30 a year, but it has been hard work and intermittent with the sales.

I am also on RB and do much better there.

Thank you Paul, that's really good to know. You have over 2000 images on there, that does sound like a lot of work! I find the back office on RB pretty straightforward and easy to line images up with designs.  Whereas Zazzle was a nightmare and I gave up! Is FAA quite easy?

[Paul Thompson]

Yes, FAA is very easy but it lacks the options of RB whereas you cannot do patterns by duplicating the image. You can upload 25 for free, so give it a go. You have to have a bio, tags, descriptions and over 10 images to appear in the search.

[Flo Smith]

1 hour ago, Paul Thompson said:

Yes, FAA is very easy but it lacks the options of RB whereas you cannot do patterns by duplicating the image. You can upload 25 for free, so give it a go. You have to have a bio, tags, descriptions and over 10 images to appear in the search.

Thank you, that sounds good.  I'll give it a whirl! 🙂 

[David Fowler]

Flo, just to add another thumbs up for FAA. I sell more in quantity at Redbubble but FAA tends to be better at getting higher priced print sales. That said, I have also sold a range of other things - T shirts, mugs, greetings cards, tote bags etc. Other than the odd Tweet (X!) or Facebook post I do not bring in customers myself and buyers obviously just find stuff through tags and descriptions. As Paul said, you don't have the option to repeat images to create patters like you can on RB but, that said, it just makes things quicker on upload. There is a little bit of customisation of positioning on some of the products available. Final word - don't bother with the free option (your 25 uploads will just get lost in a sea of images). Try the paid option (about £28 or so in our money) for a year. You can always cancel after that if you are not happy with the results - watch out though as it is an automatically recurring charge if you take no action!

Best of luck!

[Flo Smith]

On 11/08/2023 at 17:53, David Fowler said:

Flo, just to add another thumbs up for FAA. I sell more in quantity at Redbubble but FAA tends to be better at getting higher priced print sales. That said, I have also sold a range of other things - T shirts, mugs, greetings cards, tote bags etc. Other than the odd Tweet (X!) or Facebook post I do not bring in customers myself and buyers obviously just find stuff through tags and descriptions. As Paul said, you don't have the option to repeat images to create patters like you can on RB but, that said, it just makes things quicker on upload. There is a little bit of customisation of positioning on some of the products available. Final word - don't bother with the free option (your 25 uploads will just get lost in a sea of images). Try the paid option (about £28 or so in our money) for a year. You can always cancel after that if you are not happy with the results - watch out though as it is an automatically recurring charge if you take no action!

Best of luck!

Thank you David, that's really good to know. Just had a look, you have a lot of images on there too. I think I only have about 125 on RB! I'm just getting back to thinking about it all and getting to uploading again. It's good to know FAA is another option that's worth all the work. By the way, I like your ID image, lovely cat!

[Phil]

I had an account on FAA for a few years with around 600-700 images.  Probably not nearly enough but results in no way reflected the time and effort expended.

 

After being on their site a while and spending time in their forums and seeing feedback from other FAA'ers it became fairly clear it was a difficult row to hoe. 

 

The FAA search engine algorithm was heavily biased in favor of those who were top FAA sellers.  Very biased compared to the Alamy algo.   This heavily favored those who had been on the FAA site a long time with lots of images including large commercial galleries with thousands of offerings.     Those trying to get started were at a very big disadvantage in trying to gain any traction.     Attempting to drive traffic to our FAA portfolios was of little help due to being drowned out on off-site social media with no noticeable results from trying to generate some traffic.

 

Closed my account and haven't regretted it - way too much effort for very little return.   YMMV!

Edited August 14, 2023 by Phil

[Allan Bell]

I had a similar experience to Phil. Quite a few years ago I joined in the fracas and paid to put up a lot of photos. Did all the like me and I will like yours bits.

After two years with zero sales and it was time to pay for another year I pulled my images and dropped out.

 

More recently I joined in on Photo4Me. A British run pod sight which does not charge a yearly fee and put up some images early 2021.  The first sale came in May 2021 and since then I have had another 6 sales. I have 471 photos on the site at the moment but I have not uploaded any more since about 6 months ago.

 

I do hardly any promotional work. The last sale was 12th August this year.

 

Allan

 

[Flo Smith]

2 hours ago, Phil said:

I had an account on FAA for a few years with around 600-700 images.  Probably not nearly enough but results in no way reflected the time and effort expended.

 

After being on their site a while and spending time in their forums and seeing feedback from other FAA'ers it became fairly clear it was a difficult row to hoe. 

 

The FAA search engine algorithm was heavily biased in favor of those who were top FAA sellers.  Very biased compared to the Alamy algo.   This heavily favored those who had been on the FAA site a long time with lots of images including large commercial galleries with thousands of offerings.     Those trying to get started were at a very big disadvantage in trying to gain any traction.     Attempting to drive traffic to our FAA portfolios was of little help due to being drowned out on off-site social media with no noticeable results from trying to generate some traffic.

 

Closed my account and haven't regretted it - way too much effort for very little return.   YMMV!

Thank you Phil, good to have another experience and perspective. 

[Flo Smith]

1 hour ago, Allan Bell said:

I had a similar experience to Phil. Quite a few years ago I joined in the fracas and paid to put up a lot of photos. Did all the like me and I will like yours bits.

After two years with zero sales and it was time to pay for another year I pulled my images and dropped out.

 

More recently I joined in on Photo4Me. A British run pod sight which does not charge a yearly fee and put up some images early 2021.  The first sale came in May 2021 and since then I have had another 6 sales. I have 471 photos on the site at the moment but I have not uploaded any more since about 6 months ago.

 

I do hardly any promotional work. The last sale was 12th August this year.

 

Allan

 

Thank you Allan, I'll have a look at Photo4Me too. I only have 4 images with King & McGaw from years ago but they consistently sell. I guess it depends on the subject as well.

[John Mitchell]

3 hours ago, Phil said:

I had an account on FAA for a few years with around 600-700 images.  Probably not nearly enough but results in no way reflected the time and effort expended.

 

After being on their site a while and spending time in their forums and seeing feedback from other FAA'ers it became fairly clear it was a difficult row to hoe. 

 

The FAA search engine algorithm was heavily biased in favor of those who were top FAA sellers.  Very biased compared to the Alamy algo.   This heavily favored those who had been on the FAA site a long time with lots of images including large commercial galleries with thousands of offerings.     Those trying to get started were at a very big disadvantage in trying to gain any traction.     Attempting to drive traffic to our FAA portfolios was of little help due to being drowned out on off-site social media with no noticeable results from trying to generate some traffic.

 

Closed my account and haven't regretted it - way too much effort for very little return.   YMMV!

 

I have a handful of repeat sellers, which still makes the FAA site worthwhile for me, but I seldom upload new images. The competition, etc. is overwhelming now. Tried Photo4me as well. However, it's very UK-centric. I've never had any sales there.

[Marianne]

I've been on FAA since 2010; started with the free account but soon went for the $30 (I don't think the price has changed in all that time).  My print prices are on the high side there, so my margins are good. This year, I netted $270 on my first print sale in January, days after my $30  fee came due, so to me the fee is well worth it, but it took a  lot of time and effort over the years to get there.  

Sales seem to be strongest when I'm active on social media, but even, like now, when I've been absent from social media and the FAA groups most of the year, sales still tick along. That activity seems to boost sales, but it's very time-consuming, so right now I'm okay with a lower volume of sales and more time to make art and do other things with my time.

 

Despite its name, I've met UK photographers through the FAA groups who sell consistently, and it looks like @Paul Thompson and  is doing well there, so it's not completely US-centric. That said, most of my sales are to the US, as are most of my images, though I've had a handful of sales to the UK and elsewhere.

 

About 12 repeat sellers account for the bulk of my sales there. My most popular one sold as a jigsaw puzzle earlier this month, but most of my sales are prints, unlike Redbubble where it's mostly small stuff. (My bestseller on RB sold 89 times -  they featured it for a while - it still sells but nowhere near as often these days ). We are all at the mercy of sites' algorithms. 

 

 I've had twice as many sales on Redbubble as I've had on FAA over the same time period, but I've always made significantly more on FAA. In fact, since 2017,  I've netted as much or more in each single year on FAA than on the sum of all of my hundreds of sales on Redbubble combined. I believe it's the ratio of prints to other stuff that makes a big difference in earnings. I've got a Premium account on RB so no fees to eat into earnings, but I do much better on FAA. Small portfolio on Photo4Me. Only sale was an image from Sweden. Too UK-centric as my Canadian pal @John Mitchell says. But as @Allan Bell notes, it's a good bet for you UK photographers. 

 

My FAA earnings usually jump in November and December (I usually make as much in those two months as I do in the preceding 10 months), so if you're going to give it a go, I'd suggest you start uploading now in time for the holiday gift giving season. Then, go through a couple of holiday more seasons before you give up. It takes time to build momentum. Social media makes a difference in holidays sales, so it will be time-consuming, but hopefully worth it. And 25 images is just too small a portfolio - it's worth the $30 for a few years to see how you do . The bigger investment of course, is your time. Good luck! 

 

I've got a little over 900 images.  And that's really too small. 

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by Marianne
Clarification

[Bryan]

I continue to persist with FAA as the income has so far covered the fee, though not by much. I don't promote my collection on social media and don't get involved with discussions within FAA so that might have a bearing on the results. Also I guess I am tuned into Alamy editorial shooting, and I know what sells here, but I don't have a good idea what would do well on FAA.  My relatively few sales have been a diverse collection, no clear pattern.

 

I guess if you go in for arty stuff, sunsets, using a tripod etc you might do better, but that's not me !

[Ric Holland]

A useful way to learn what sells on FAA is from FAA Recently sold prints

 

BTW, I have a FAA free account with just 14 images in it. Two have sold, admittedly over a period, the last being a jigsaw puzzle in December 2022. 

[Flo Smith]

On 14/08/2023 at 21:26, Marianne said:

I've been on FAA since 2010; started with the free account but soon went for the $30 (I don't think the price has changed in all that time).  My print prices are on the high side there, so my margins are good. This year, I netted $270 on my first print sale in January, days after my $30  fee came due, so to me the fee is well worth it, but it took a  lot of time and effort over the years to get there.  

Sales seem to be strongest when I'm active on social media, but even, like now, when I've been absent from social media and the FAA groups most of the year, sales still tick along. That activity seems to boost sales, but it's very time-consuming, so right now I'm okay with a lower volume of sales and more time to make art and do other things with my time.

 

Despite its name, I've met UK photographers through the FAA groups who sell consistently, and it looks like @Paul Thompson and  is doing well there, so it's not completely US-centric. That said, most of my sales are to the US, as are most of my images, though I've had a handful of sales to the UK and elsewhere.

 

About 12 repeat sellers account for the bulk of my sales there. My most popular one sold as a jigsaw puzzle earlier this month, but most of my sales are prints, unlike Redbubble where it's mostly small stuff. (My bestseller on RB sold 89 times -  they featured it for a while - it still sells but nowhere near as often these days ). We are all at the mercy of sites' algorithms. 

 

 I've had twice as many sales on Redbubble as I've had on FAA over the same time period, but I've always made significantly more on FAA. In fact, since 2017,  I've netted as much or more in each single year on FAA than on the sum of all of my hundreds of sales on Redbubble combined. I believe it's the ratio of prints to other stuff that makes a big difference in earnings. I've got a Premium account on RB so no fees to eat into earnings, but I do much better on FAA. Small portfolio on Photo4Me. Only sale was an image from Sweden. Too UK-centric as my Canadian pal @John Mitchell says. But as @Allan Bell notes, it's a good bet for you UK photographers. 

 

My FAA earnings usually jump in November and December (I usually make as much in those two months as I do in the preceding 10 months), so if you're going to give it a go, I'd suggest you start uploading now in time for the holiday gift giving season. Then, go through a couple of holiday more seasons before you give up. It takes time to build momentum. Social media makes a difference in holidays sales, so it will be time-consuming, but hopefully worth it. And 25 images is just too small a portfolio - it's worth the $30 for a few years to see how you do . The bigger investment of course, is your time. Good luck! 

 

I've got a little over 900 images.  And that's really too small. 

 

Thank you Marianne, that's really good to hear about your experience on FAA. I would like to sell more prints as RB doesn't seem to work for that & FAA sounds like it would be better. I'm not sure I'll make it to 900! But I'll give it a whirl with the images I have on RB and see what happens.