I offer prints and products on Fine Art America / Pixels, which are print-on-demand sites, "FAA" in my shorthand. They are two sites, same company, practically identical, but Pixels offers a few more products than does Fine Art America.
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| A few products available from FAA: acrylic print, throw pillow, tote bag, and pencil case |
People often ask me if I like the way FAA sells my work. I read this as emphasis on THEY. Are they (meaning FAA) doing a good job for me? They, in this case, are not doing anything to sell my work other than provide a (fabulous, in my opinion) platform and process for me to sell prints and products.
In the question is embedded a little confusion about marketing. A gallery markets your work - they get the potential customers in front of your pieces and try to match buyer with artwork in a satisfactory fit. I see this as a kind of highly-skilled matchmaking. It takes experience, insight, and knowledge to match the right client with the right artwork. And it takes serious curating. A gallery will not show just anything - they will show work (and dedicate resources to) that they believe they have clients for.
FAA and other POD (print-on-demand) sites do not do marketing. They offer a convenient platform for the artist to offer prints and products. It is up to the artist to get the clients to the site. They also do no curating, so the platform is open to anyone.
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| Framed Print of "Line of Fire #1" |
If you have work up on FAA or another POD site and nobody is buying it, it is not because the site is not doing its job. It is because you are not doing your job. Don't give up on POD if your work is not selling. Send people to your POD page via links on your website, social media posts, newsletters, etc., and see what happens.
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| This is a screen shot of my new website's navigation menu. |
I personally love the POD concept. For me it means that people can have images of my work in whatever form suits them, for very reasonable prices. Not everyone who likes my work is in the market for original pieces of art. I love it that they can have phone cases, notebooks, tote bags, etc. as well as fine art prints at a size and price that works for them. It's not for everybody, and it doesn't pretend to be original art.
I would like to hear your thoughts on print-on-demand, and to know what kind of experiences you have had with this kind of platform.
I'm just now considering POD as a way of selling my art, for all the reasons you mention. Plus, I have chronic sickness and disabilities, so art fairs, exhibitions etc., just aren't possible. Being in the UK, I hadn't really considered FAA. I assumed they offered exclusively American-made work, but I may be entirely wrong about that!
ReplyDeleteLove your new website, by the way.
Thanks. I think FAA is world-wide. But I am sure there are loads of POD sites to choose from. If you are diligent about promoting your page and adding new work, it can be very successful.
DeleteHi Jane, it's not quite true to say that FAA does not do marketing. I don't know if you saw it at the time, put Sean, the owner made a rare appearance in the forum a few years back. https://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=4294579 He wrote:
ReplyDelete"Myth #1: FAA doesn't promote our artists.
If you're reading this, you're probably an artist. As a result, you're on our artist e-mail list, and you get artist-related e-mails. You don't get the buyer e-mails.
If you're on our buyer e-mail list, then you'll see that we're promoting individual artists, groups of artists, and themed collections all the time."
Also, FAA has the yearly billboard competitions with 20-odd large billboards across major US cities. And they advertise on Google.
However, I agree that it is nonetheless very true that we have to promote our work ourselves as FAA/Pixels obviously places their emphasis on top sellers. I've done okay on other platforms (Society 6 and Redbubble) but find it really hard to gain a foothold on FAA. The competition is enormous. The internal search favors work that has sold already, so for a newbie it's hard to even be seen in a keyword search until you sell. Catch 22. The admin has stated many times that a lot of sales there come straight from Google searches too (~35% of visitors to the site), so good descriptions are key to be found. And good keywords for the internal search. It ain't easy, for sure. I think it was a bit easier for early adopters like your good self. But the print quality is fabulous and it frees us from holding inventory, framing, invoicing, shipping etc. It's a win-win.
Thank you SO MUCH for adding this information. Sounds like FAA/Pixels does do some marketing, but they are not going to do YOUR marketing for you. If YOU get people to your FAA site, that has a lot more impact on your sales. My point is to encourage people to market their POD products rather than be passive about it, and to set realistic expectations. This is useful information, though!
ReplyDelete