Tag: settings

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Art Sales as a Hobby or a Business

Selling art online can and should be a business.

There is a lot of belly-aching and complaining among artists at just about any online art sales site. Usually the gripes are about something the “site” is not doing that hurts the artists’ chances of sales success – or – something the site should be doing to help the artists achieve sales success.

There was recently a long thread about how poorly the site’s internal search is set up. The is always (these threads crop up periodically) griping and finger-pointing and very little in the way of constructive ideas. There was a detailed response by a moderator and this is likely the most salient sentence in the entire thread over at the Fine Art America forum/discussion group. (Originally stated by Abbie…)

If you’re in the business of selling art, then you have to treat it like a business…”

A breakfast of blueberries and shredded wheat in whole milk can provide energy to give you a great start to your day.

To that I am adding important concepts to help achieve that goal. Like having a good breakfast is the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, having a foundation in “the basics” provides a healthy start to your online art business.

Do these. Seriously!

  • Read the Terms of Service (TOS).
  • Become familiar with everything in the admin interface (at Fine Art America the admin area is called Behind the Scenes). If you do not understand something there, THEN ask questions, usually in the forum.
  • Accept responsibility for your own actions.
  • Act and present yourself and your work professionally. (Grammar, spelling, punctuation are important.*) To do less hurts your credibility.
  • etc…etc…etc…

Let me repeat: Accept responsibility for your own actions.

* If language skills are not your forte, do not be afraid to ask for help. A friend, neighbor, and even online sources can be of assistance.

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Artist Metrics for Fine Art America Colleagues

Not for the faint of heart but a good source of sales data.

A recent post on the Fine Art America forum/discussion group gave me reason to take another look at the data available for people with an art business at FineArtAmerica/Pixels. It was suggested that having more sales data in the on-board analytics would be helpful in marketing one’s art. The following is what I had responded but, later on, realized it may reach a larger audience here…

“There is a work-around for obtaining some of that information – but it does take some effort. The “Export to Excel” feature, available on the “Balance” page in Behind the Scenes (the user administration interface) provides info for:

Date (Transaction) – Date (Reporting) – Pay Period – Description
Image ID – Order ID – Artwork Name – Artist Name
Buyer City – Buyer State – Buyer Country
Deposit – Withdrawal – Balance

The caveat is that one must have an understanding of spreadsheets to be able to manipulate and interpret that data. My knowledge is meager, at best.

Having that info available in Analytics would be helpful to many of you with numerous sales. With my dozen or so sales a month average, I pretty much have – in my head – what has been selling the best.

With that said, here is a very basic example: a “sort” on Column D, Description, gathers all of my titles into groups. I can refine that sort by date – but, keeping it simple, I see that my best selling image of all time is this: https://bill.pixels.com/featured/indian-river-inlet-bridge-twilight-bill-swartwout-photography.html – with dozens of sales. I can look at smaller “groupings” in that column and see that seven (7) of those sales were puzzles (5 – 500 Pieces and 2 – 1000 Pieces). I can also see that four of them were sold with a Discount Code, what that code was and the amount discounted. I can also see the sizes of prints that sold and the variety of other products (face masks, beach towels, etc.) on which this image was sold. It is also interesting that with only one exception, all of my sales over the last 7+ years were within the United States (we can see City, State and Country, but no buyer-specific detail).

I can also see that in 7+ years here I have had four “Cancelled From Order Prior to Shipment” and two “Returned for Refund Within 30 Days.” What is good to see here is that there is no pattern – not like I might have a bad image that was returned multiple times. Of the two that were returned one has been sold (and NOT returned) several times.

What I cannot see, and would love to know, is which platform made the sale – My Premium Site, my profile at Fine Art America or my profile at Pixels.

I added later to say: “BTW – in my example above – about the Export to Excel feature. I do not have the actual “Microsoft Excel” software. I use the FREE Apache Open Office version and it works just fine. It costs nothing, other than some time, to do this.

The down side is that it takes a bit of work on the part of the artist to obtain those extra metrics. I don’t believe the online FAA Analytics screen is meant to do all of that.”