I am in it with all my heart~Vincent van Gogh

I've had a fair amount of success selling my work through FineArtAmerica (FAA) and its mirror site pixels.com, a popular print-on-demand company. I often have artists asking me how to make sales on that platform. 

I want to start this off by being clear. I do not make a living wage from selling on FAA. I make anywhere from 1000 to 5000 US dollars a year. It took me many months to start making regular sales on FAA, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I spent 25-40 hours a week for a time learning the ropes of the site. I was there before I was on Facebook. For a great many artists this cost to benefit ratio is hardly worth the effort. Since my own goals in painting are centered around having my work reach a broader audience like-minded people, FAA is very much in alignment with my journey as an artist. My time there has been rewarding and it feeds my soul knowing there are reproductions of my paintings being enjoyed all over the world, even if they are just in face masks. If you too are interested in putting in the work to reach a broader audience for your paintings, then read on.

There is no magic recipe for succeeding on FAA, but I can guarantee you will NOT succeed if you don't utilize the following tips.

1) Use clear high-resolution photos or scans of your work.

FAA has a 25MB limit on jpg images, so you will want the largest and highest quality that fits within that limit. The images need to be saved in an sRGB color space, having brightness and saturation bumped up just a smidge to compensate for inherent losses in the printing process.  check the edges of your images to make sure you have cropped out everything except the painting itself. Make sure the painting is lit and in focus even at the edges of the work. 

You can check the clarity of your image on FAA by clicking on the box that appears as you hover over the painting.

Notice how my image at full resolution is 4050x5400 pixels. That means I can print this image through FAA at a maximum of 40.5x54 inches. FAA gives you an inch for every 100 pixels. Anything bigger and there will be pixelation. One of the things I like about this company is that they simply won't fulfil orders on inadequate images. FAA will contact you, the artist, and ask you to upload a better image within a specific time-frame if they get an order for a blurry or badly cropped image. There is nothing more disappointing than losing a sale due to improper photography. Sadly, I speak from experience. 

Getting good reproduction photos of your work is an entire deep-dive in and of itself, and maybe I'll write about it someday. It takes a little investment into equipment, some time, practice, and general knowledge of photo editing software. I've learned how to document my own paintings through a lot of research, trial and error.  But I have found that for the purpose of reproduction it's just better to have a pro do it for me. It's totally worth the cost, and I have never regretted getting a professional photo of my work, while I have had many regrets about selling works that were not documented adequately for reproduction. I now go to Dave at Pixel Point Artistry to get my paintings photographed. 

2) Use descriptive image names.

This might be even more important than a proper image. It has nothing to do with what you have titled your painting. I'm talking about what you name your actual jpg file as well as the title you have to fill in when posting work to FAA (and frankly anywhere else online). Be descriptive and specific. In the above example, I named my painting Redemption. But that name has an abstract meaning that has nothing to do with what is in my painting. Search engines can't “read” a picture, think of them as blind curators. They can only read words, and match words.

One of the biggest SEO advantages to FAA is that they put the name of your painting in their URL! This is prime real estate and you would be wise to take advantage of it. Describe what it is in your painting. In my case, I added “fall birch and aspen”. The URL is https://fineartamerica.com/featured/redemption-fall-birch-and-aspen-talya-johnson.html?product=art-print To be perfectly honest, it's still not quite adequate, but it's loads better than just Redemption. Many of my early paintings on FAA are not titled descriptively, because I hadn't figured out this important tidbit, and if I were to retitle them on FAA now, It would break all the links I have carefully cultivated over the years. Notice on my regular website I have named it more descriptively https://www.talyajohnson.com/works/1881036/redemption-treescape-birch-aspen-trees-oil-painting#/  This may not be as apparent on the user end looking at the shortcut URL  https://www.talyajohnson.com/workszoom/1881036#/  But FASO (my website provider) does create canonical urls for every artwork which includes the title. Having your titles in the url is a vital component to any artwork website and FASO creates a good sitemap ensuring titles and descriptions of your work are readily searchable and readable to search engines. From the very get-go FASO provided a way to incorporate FAA shopping widgets into their site (although it's important to point out the two companies are not affiliated). I highly recommend FASO subscribers who are on FAA utilize this bonus, as well as add direct links to each image on their FASO portfolios to the same specific FAA print page. Just be sure to make the link open in a new window as to not direct viewers away from your primary website.

I've learned to make things easy on myself by naming my image files properly (descriptively) from the very beginning. So the image file I use on my hard drive should be named redemption-treescape-fall-birch-aspen-trees-oil-painting-talya-johnson.psd from this original photoshop file, I can export to jpg of any size I need and am always sure that the metadata in that original file will always point viewers back to me. 

3. After the title of your work, FAA will have you fill out a description.

While this is a great place to add a little story about your work connecting with your audience, you still need to describe the piece. Yes, again. Look at my first sentence: “A large palette knife painting of my back yard trees in their autumn glory.”  There are some important keywords there that signal what this painting is. A better chosen sentence could read: “Enjoy an original oil palette knife painting by Oregon artist Talya Johnson of her Alaskan backyard birch and aspen trees in autumn.” OR “Bright fall foliage of orange and yellow contrast vibrantly against a clear blue sky in this original palette knife oil painting for sale from Oregon artist Talya Johnson.” It feels redundant since the picture is right there, but remember you are writing for a blind curator—a robot that cannot see your picture, but will determine who will see it online depending on the words you choose. No pressure.

4. The next vital information FAA will ask for is keywords.

This is where everyone gets tripped up. Yes, it's absolutely redundant and annoying but you really really must do it. Again, be descriptive and specific. All those great words you used for the name and description? Use them again, and add more. FAA gives you 500 characters. Separate keywords by commas with no spaces. Here is my current keywords for the above painting:

impressionist,impressionism,palette knife,trees,grove,birch,aspen,fall,autumn, looking up,canopy,leaves,star of david,blue sky,thick paint,impasto,bright,colorful,colorist,expressionism,abstract,light tali,talya,johnson,art,oil,painting,alaska, alaskan,spiritual,healing,inspirational,vibrant,christian,jewish,nature, woods,landscape,treescape,forest,light,passion,orange,blue,yellow,wallart,inspiration,happy,uplifting,contemporary,artist,abstracted,colourful,modern,popular,best seller,home decor

This is just the bare minimum you need to do to succeed on FAA. There is so much more to it. Slow and steady wins this race. I keep my descriptions and keywords handy in my notes on my computer, iPad and phone. Everything can be edited once you post your work, except your title. I don't recommend changing your title unless you want to do a whole new listing. I visit my works every once in a while to fine tune my descriptions. That's not to say that is all I do, nor is it all there is to cover. There is the question of pricing, participation in groups, copyright concerns, integration with websites, not to mention marketing and advertising which FAA will not do for you. However, the nice thing about cutting my teeth on FAA is that it taught me some good professional practice habits that have been with me ever since. I've met and learned from many generous artists on FAA. For me, it was well worth the learning curve. If your customers and fans have started asking for prints, FAA might be worth exploring.

Feel free to ask me questions. If you find this article helpful, please remember I do accept tips! By subscribing to my Patreon page at Patreon.com/tali you enable me to continue sharing information freely. Thank you for your support.