I recently created a gallery on Fine Art America to allow people to purchase prints, cards, etc. of some of my photographs. I first researched various such POD (Print On Demand) sites, and selected this one because:
– You keep ownership of your photos
– You set the profit you make for each order
– It’s only $30 a year to place unlimited photos
– It seemed to have good flow and generally good user reviews.
– You can “sponsor” pages by having links to search pages from your website, which in theory prioritizes your photo to the third line of the search results. Though of course with popular searches you really just get a higher chance to be on that third line, we’ll see how well that works out…
At any rate, it’s an intriguing next steps to my photography adventures, so we’ll see how that goes… You bet if I sell something I’ll be all sorts of excited and you’ll hear from me here… If you have had experience with Fine Art America I’d love to hear of your experience, please drop me a comment, thanks!
Susan Montgomery Photos 
Good luck with your new port at FAA Susan. It’s a site I like and have now made part of my regular upload workflow. So far (over a couple of years) I have had around four print sales and a couple of greetings cards – not many but more than enough to cover the modest $30 (about £18 in the UK) fee with profit on top. Worth mentioning that with the paid account you also get a small percentage (5%?) of the materials/frame costs etc added to your sales fee for any prints. Don’t forget to look at the other selling opportunities there are such as iphone cases and throw cushions which you can opt into. They also now offer regular style image licensing -which again you set your own prices for (though I haven’t had any sales as yet).
My top tip with FAA is not to set your prices too low which is an easy mistake to make to anyone new. If someone is buying a framed print they want it to seem of value – not just like a cheapo print from the local decor store (just my view!).
Do make good use of the automatic Twitter postings for new uploads as these do bring traffic to your port. Be more sparing with the Facebook posts (unless you want to Spam your friends to death with them). You can also do further Tweets of images at any time (say if you have a subject that is in the news for example). Google+ is another tool for marketing which I have just recently joined and seems to be driving traffic.
If there is a downside to FAA (and other POD sites) it is that the watermark is easy to crop out and the risk of copying is higher. I take the view that this is just one of the inherent risks of placing your images on the internet -they’ll be totally safe on your computer, but you won’t sell anything! Best of luck with FAA and keep us updated with any sales. Kind regards, David.
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David – Thanks for the comment, great to hear from someone with experience with Fine Art America! Thanks for the tip on pricing, I THINK I’m in the range, but will make sure to double check that, and thanks for the reminder that I get a commission on the parts as well… I appreciate the other suggestions too.
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