Turns out that selling Print on Demand is tougher than I imagined. It’s been 6 months since I’ve signed up to Fine Art America and one month since signing up to Photo4me. So far, no sales on either despite loads of views / comments / praise.

A little refresher, Print on Demand (POD) are websites that display your artwork digitally and from which customers can purchase prints if and when they desire. This is different to licensing since the images are not/should not be used commercially or for re-sale. I wrote about my experiences with POD a few months ago.

The POD site handles all the admin including accepting the payment, making the print, shipping the product and handling any returns/complaints.

Update on Fine Art America / Pixels

If you sign up to the premium subscription on FAA costing $30/year, you get access to your own website on the Pixels platform included, with work duplicated from the FAA portfolio. Until quite recently, I never bothered with Pixels, but some veterans have been pushing me to invest some time developing that part of the website.

Some of the benefits are that:

• The domain name is easier to remember (even an additional option for bespoke domain). I always felt a little awkward giving away Fine Art America url to European-based customer and now it’s a much cleaner-looking alexandre-rotenberg.pixels.com
• The site can be customized to your liking. I’ve included a blue background to match my logo, as well as nice-looking galleries to guide customers;
• Visitors only see your work and none of the other FAA artists;
• Additional products not available on the FAA website, including iPhone cases, apparel.

Galleries Galore

I’ve carefully curated a dozen or so different galleries, with each gallery having between 15 and 100 images.

In fact, I’m looking to even out the number of images per gallery at about 30, which is tricky since I have a lot more fine art images of Italy than I do of Paris for example (great excuse to go to Paris). In total, I have 500 images but looking to cut down to 300.

Anyway, that’s all secondary if I’m not getting viewers and conversions.

About those views

Views are an interesting metric. I’ve gone ahead and deleted about a dozen images which had fewer than five views over three months suggesting they’re no interest and probably won’t sell. The ones that are getting lots of views are the following which would make for fantastic prints:

Having a go at Photo4me

Two months ago I decided to start submitting to Photo4me, a UK-based POD agency. They’re much smaller than FAA but on the upside there’s no annual fees. From a buyers’ perspective, since many of my contacts are UK-based they’re more interesting since shipping within the UK is free.

What I’ve liked about them so far is that they seem to take technicals and keywording more seriously with a strict QC. The downside is that it’s not possible to arrange images into separate galleries.

I’m uploading a few images a week and currently have 136 images. The following are showing up as “most popular”:

Marketing POD – I need a favour!

Unlike stock photography where your work is essentially done after uploading and keywording the image, with POD, it’s mainly about your own marketing / word of mouth. Which brings me to this post where I would like your help!

In the spirit of brutal honestism, I understand that since this blog’s audience are composed of stock photographers, I won’t get much business from you guys since you rather print your own images!

Please keep me in mind if you’re looking to offer gifts to friends/family/colleagues. I would greatly appreciate your support, not only are they beautiful prints, but you’ll be helping me as I keep working hard to bring you useful and free tips on making money with your stock photos.

Again my POD links are:

• Photo4me
• Pixels

Thanks in advance and until next time.

Alex

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P.s Helping you sleep safe: