Sponsor Faa

I don't think that is a thing anymore. I could be wrong but it has been awhile that I have seen that.

It's a new thing again. If not I have some weird thing popping up.

That program is dead. There was some glitch making it appear it was working again but it is not. Just ignore it.

Hi Rebecca,

I do not know if they are trying to revive that or not - but - no, it does not work at this time.

Kinda frustrating, spend an hour trying to set it up and it's not even functioning and that's why it doesn't appear to work.

Probably legacy code turned back on when they rediscovered that old war bunker in the basement of the site, the one from the 1940's... They bumped into a switch which turned on old functions we no longer use... That's my best educated guess.


----Mike Savad

It is working for me, I have sponsored multiple pages, e.g. Winter, photographs, Greece, throw pillows. There is a limit of 3 sponsored page links to each of my web pages, but so far I have not hit a limit on total pages sponsored overall.

So does this mean the links we all set up years ago are going to work again? Assuming of course the web pages even exist.

ETA: I just checked and my old blog links bring me to a sponsored search where 1 of my pieces appears on the first page of results for each link I checked.

It never worked all that great, to begin with. It was also very high maintenance for no return.

My web pages are long gone. It became very fussy when each and every single thing had to be linked, mike posters, mike framed prints, mike this, mike that. It became old. Then it was limited on each page etc... And in the end, I put them all on blind pages anyway, the google didn't know they were there, only the site. Its a lot of work to be seen only on that line. So many fighting for that space. It worked better when there were less people, but now? Boy that would be a long line.


----Mike Savad

Rebecca, I should have said in my previous post - sorry you have been feeling rough, and welcome back! Re "what are you missing" - I see your site is a blog, and as I don't have one I am not sure how you edit this - so, dumb question; did you insert the FAA code in the blog's HTML source code, rather than copy and paste it into a page as if you were writing text?

@Paul
I remember a problem when I used the sponsorship years ago ... try to do the search both when you are logged in and when you are not or simply from another browser ... you will see that your sponsored words affect only when you are "recognized" : /

Thanks Stefano, I just checked and my sponsored search results do show up when I am logged out. I tried both Chrome and Firefox on my mobile phone. On some searches I was not visible, but it looks like that is because other artists were also signed up for those searches - in which case FAA will rotate the artists, as it were. I don't know if there is a limit to how many artists can sign up to each search.

If anyone wants to verify my results, try a search for "natural abstract" and you should find me there in some or all of places 17 to 20.

@Paul It goes into a widget. Building a blog is much easier these days. You just plug things in and add your text. A widget is one of those things you just plug in where you want it. So where you see the code, that's one widget. It is a code widget. Then where you see the word "landscapes" that is a short code widget. I inserted the FAA code into the widget, saved it and it placed in the word "landscapes" which is working and does link back to the appropriate FAA page.
However FAA gives me a big warning saying they can not find the code.
Just had a thought, that widget is in the side bar. I am going to put it on a specific page and see if that works.

The number of sponsorships per webpage kept getting reduced back when. It was a total headache. Made zero difference for all that work.

It did serve FAA. It was a reason to spend a lot of time on FAA's pages. This changes how FAA ranks in search.

adding sometimes the gurus think backlinks help. Other times the gurus say backlinks are meaningless. This becomes a massive number of backlinks for FAA.

This is the message I get after I posted the link on a specific page. Same I got when it was in the side bar.

OOPS... SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT We could not find the link on the page that you provided: https://beyondessential.com/weekend-in-death-valley/ Please double-check the page to make sure that the link is present. Only it's all in RED. The link is there and it works. Go to that page and it says "landscapes art". It's clickable.

@David That very thought crossed my mind. Having link backs to FAA does them a ton of good. So far they have a backlink from my page but I have nothing.

They would also stop working, and you had to be updating them constantly.

But the more significant issue for me was they sent people to a page where I was only two (?) images on a page full of other people's artwork. You are advertising for FAA's 500,000 artists, NOT for yourself.

It goes directly against the idea of only promoting your Premium Web Site where you are the only artist.

It was and still is my opinion that the time spent to keep those things working would be significantly more successful posting links from specific images that go back to your Premium Site where you are the only artist.

@Rebecca I looked at your source code and it looks to me like a copy and paste error - the first character of the FAA code is missing.

@Paul, this is the code I was give:

landscapes art

This is the code I see in the source code:

landscapes art

What do you see? Which character is missing?

Shoot it doesn't allow the code.

Floyd is absolutely right. It does you no good to advertise FAA and all the other artists who come with it. Create your own marketing link or banner that leads to your own AW to put on your other sites.

It worked like a charm for me. I never considered it "advertising" because it was just for the bots. It moved my images to the top at least some of the time, which is way better than none of the time. There was really no downside. There was no reason for anyone to click on it if they even found it.

@Bradford, that was my thought exactly. Couldn't care less if anyone clicked on the link, it just got some of my images to the top.

" Couldn't care less if anyone clicked on the link, it just got some of my images to the top."

That's very confusing. Then why go through all the effort?

It only gets you image on the one impression, the one the person clicks on to go to that page. They are the only one that sees it.

You can create the same thing with a thumbnail of the image in the same place but with the link only showing the image on your own website.

Or am I missing something here?

Floyd, I think the point is that those of us who are doing this do not mind if the links to FAA searches, that we place on our websites, are ever clicked on or not. Putting those links there gets us some exposure near the top of some search results on FAA, irrespective of whether anyone ever clicks on the links on our own websites.

This from FAA after I emailed Tech Support yesterday

"Hi Rebecca,

The sponsorship program has not worked for over a year now.

You only happen to see it if set up properly, but nobody else will."

Sooo, it was a fluke that the FAA promo started showing up again and if you are seeing your art and think it is because of this not real sponsorship, well you aren't. :{

That's a bummer, Rebecca. But I agree with Floyd...your time is probably better invested in marketing that leads to your own premium website and not to FAA. I used to have plenty of sponsored links on my blog (when it existed) and I don't think it did me any good at all.

"Putting those links there gets us some exposure near the top of some search results on FAA"

I just don't see how it works that way. In fact, I don't think it works that way at all.

I think we should be asking Abbie to answer some of these questions.

I am only trying to find if people are putting time and resources into a program thinking it does something it doesn't do.

Look at what Rebecca posted above from Tech Support.

The program does not work.

@Floyd, Rebecca got an email from support stating that the program doesn't work anyway so it's all a moot point now.

I saw that Peggy, thank you.

I was trying to suggest that was the case.

Rebecca,

Even if it was to work every time it gets updated it does not work till you go through it all over again. That was the experience. The system did not stay stable.

Sorry you may have put some effort in.

Oh well, still frustrating that it even showed up first thing when I logged in, like it was something new. Apparently I wasn't the only one who saw it, because there was a discussion about 2 weeks ago about and Abbie had not been informed (obviously because it wasn't real). So must have been some sort of glitch or error. A time waster but, things could be worse :}