Almost Five Years In

Well, it's been quite some time since my last blog post. I've been a "participant" on Fine Art America for nearly five years now. To say I'm happy with the experience would be a huge over-statement, yet I still feel like if I could just flip the switch in some way, perhaps things would be different.

At one time, I had nearly 900 pieces in my gallery. I read a post saying that you should only put your very best on. So, I tried to be honest with myself. I looked at each photo and asked myself, "is that really a marketable image"? Would I personally hang it on the wall"? If the answer was "no", or "probably not", I deleted the image. I felt bad erasing many hours of work but that was the advice of somebody who claimed to have lots of sales.

Well, it did nothing to improve my sales. Over the last four years, I would say I might be a little bit ahead (total sales - annual membership to FAA = a positive number anyway) but it's barely been worth the work. Yet I do see some folks with very good, massive galleries, do make some sales and probably make money.

But yesterday, I spent some time adding some images to my butterfly gallery. I've been on a Big Year of sorts trying to see how many species of birds, butterflies, etc., I could chase down, photographing as many as possible. So I have LOTS of good images to upload over the next months. But I also took the time to look for some local artists/photographers to connect with. I did an artist search by distance from me. It seemed that there were lots of local, or nearly local artists. But then I went into their galleries and looked at their most recent work/submission. Most of them had not posted any new work in months, even years. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that those artists had had the same experience I've had... that it's barely worth the effort.

So, I'm not one to give up and I'm committing to a renewed effort on FAA. I'll update my gallery by posting more images. My 2017 relocation from the midwest to Colorado has allowed my portfolio to acquire a western flavor and that's never a bad thing. My ability to travel more in the last years should aid in acquiring some nice images. But, we'll see. It does seem like FAA needs to rethink where they are. Perhaps they need to flush out a good portion of the inactive galleries giving those artists who are working hard more exposure.

Either way, I'm here to stay. I'll look into other tricks, work on being more social, more active, perhaps working on a different editing style for FAA content, etc. I just hope the work I'm committing to has some payback.