Is It Better To Keep Images To A Minimum Or Load Up?

People have success doing both.I think there are some people here making a lot of money on a very small subset of their collection, be it big or small.

Quality should be your first priority. If you have a ton of quality images to load up, then by all means...load up :)

Hi Leah,

It is better to have as many quality images as you can upload - give your potential customers a chance to browse around your store.

But Jason is correct - there are artists with 25 high quality images that do very well.

Unless something is really wrong with an uploaded image - I wouldn't delete them from the site - it takes time for some images to become popular with potential customers - you may have taken images off when customers had them marked for future purchase.

More is most definitely better, but quality is more important than quantity. Don't shoot for volume at the expense of the highest quality that you can deliver. It takes time.

Numerically speaking, I don't know what constitutes loading up, but the people here with the largest hit numbers also seem to have lots of images and presumably, lots of sales. I don't know which numbers are responsible for sort rankings on keyword searches, but hits and sales must be up there among them. Part of selling on line means that when someone searches for "beach", it's better for your images to rank, e.g., 4 rather than 42,000 because nobody is going to browse to 42,000.

The other thing is the unpredictability of what people like. About half of what I have sold came from my "what the heck" images, as opposed to the "they gotta like this" images. Don't rule that out. If I knew the answer to what sells reliably, I'd be happy to have 20 pictures and then just rest on my laurels, but you gotta make your way up the rankings for this sort of thing to work at all.

Doug - I agree; I find it interesting that, although I don't sell often, when I do it is seldom one of my personal favorites.

Having a niche is more important.

Upload only your best and let it build up. If its all good, post all of it up. If every 5 are good, post those. Ask walmart if less is more... I'm thinking they will soon stock the aisles with cars soon.

That said, try not to post a dozen views of the same thing taken from the left, right etc. That becomes annoying fast. And confuses buyers. Mostly you want a lot of subjects.


----Mike Savad

Getty has over 2 million photos here. You're not going to win on quantity.

Leah,

Welcome! Yes and NO! LOL!

As mentioned, having 25 GREAT IMAGES "trumps" 1,000 mediocre ones! My "focus", pun intended is cars and I have quite a few! Helps when an owner of a particular car or truck is looking for his/her's own car.

As Dan' says above, having a niche can be more important! So, in your case, the Emerald Coast of Florida would be the target. First, right now, go and add some keywords to your beach shots, emerald coast, Destin, gulf coast, gulf of Mexico, panhandle, etc......and then in the next week or so, see if the number of visitors/views increases. Most of these will be bots, but that's good! The bots go back to Bot's Town and tell ALL THEIR FRIENDS! Mr.Google especially!

NOW, some MORE HOMEWORK! You have been here since 2014, and have only 1544 views/visitors! That's about 200/year!!!! And NONE of your images had any "likes"! Likes/Fav helps in the search results. I just went through your images and "liked" them all, but anytime you upload a new image, go back and LIKE. Then ask your friends to visit and like TOO! I just got about 1300 views just yesterday and I'm a slacker!!! Of course, I have a few more images than you and they are mostly bots, but still...

So dust off the camera and start creating NEW images of your area, one of the best beach areas ANYWHERE and start shooting. Tourists should mostly be gone and especially during the weekdays, you should have the beaches to yourself. Maybe start with Grayton Beach, ALWAYS one of the top 10 beaches in the WORLD!!! Shoot the hell out of that beach and then keyword the hell out of those beach shots and see what happens. Then maybe Destin and then, on and on, until YOU are the main source for these beaches!!!

FAA does NOTHING for your stuff here, other than provide a shelf, in a VERY FULL warehouse. YOU need to bring people to YOUR SHELF, NOT stopping at MY SHELF or anyone else's shelf, and then just shop in your "store". You haven't been doing that, so, do some research here in the Discussion Forum and see what people suggest about "marketing" and then start making some changes.

Do a search here for "Destin" and see what shows up, 2880 or so. NOW do a search for "Grayton Beach" and NOW, ONLY 269 and MANY aren't even about the BEACH!!!

My fingers hurt now from so much typing! But one last thing, WHEN you start selling, take a minute and read my tutorial on "pricing" and then maybe adjust your stuff.

https://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=5127197

Good LUCK!

Rich

People won't go through 42,000 images, just like they won't look at every item in a store. They go to what they want, type it into the search and find the 12 things you have a location. As long as its your best quality, while some disagree for some reason, you only have your work to advertise what you have. If the work is ever poor, people will rate the rest of your gallery as poor if that is the image they landed on.


----Mike Savad

Long-tail marketing - something for everyone.

As long as they are quality images, put them up. If they are boring, dull and commonplace - put them in the recycling bin.

Unless you've done a good job building name recognition, no one really cares about the artist. They want the image.

The Internet is not wandering around Home Depot looking for plumbing flux. The Internet is walking into Home Depot and asking an employee to show you exactly where the plumbing flux is located.

"People won't go through 42,000 images, just like they won't look at every item in a store. "

No, they will not. I agree.

But they will search and search on things like boats, cars, sunrises or sunsets, cats or dogs, and any of million other keywords.

It is simply common sens that the more images that you have, the likelihood that you will have one of the things people are looking for

I can not think of anywhere in the Retail universe where less is better than more when it comes to choices.

Your art is fantastic... You are probably more qualified to pick the level of quality of your own images and decide for yourself what is worthy of uploading than anyone else in the world. No one here can tell you what to offer and what hot.

Again, your work is fantastic and you have reached a level where just need to get as much of it as possible exposed to as many people as possible and let them decide for themselves what they want to buy.

Every image you upload increases your chance of selling, but without good marketing is only about as effective as buying a lottery ticket.

Thanks, everyone! I appreciate the help. :)

If a member has 10,000 quality images of various interests and subjects, and a possible client is "searching" for "something", are the chances better for the FAA member with 10,000 decent images, or the one that only has 25?

Also... We never know what appeals to others, so it's best not to judge by our own tastes and preferences. Just try to make everything you upload, decent quality that will print and as mentioned, focus on marketing so your work stands out. It takes time, but all the roads lead to one destination. Pave your roads with a good reputation and more people will travel them.

Remember that most people are not coming into FAA and then browsing every image manually. They're doing an internet search to at least get in the ballpark before hitting that home-run. The search is a means of "filtering" that in effect eliminates the images they're NOT interested in. So... there's no such thing as having too many good images in your portfolio.

I always try to upload high quality...Some sell within hours (I love when that happens!) and I've had some that have taken 5 years to finally sell. I only take images down if I think the quality just isn't there. Usually some older images that don't reflect where I am today quality wise.

"If a member has 10,000 quality images of various interests and subjects, and a possible client is "searching" for "something", are the chances better for the FAA member with 10,000 decent images, or the one that only has 25? "

That's a question answerable by the developers. I asked it once and it seems to be not revealed, at least in part because people like me would want to game the sort order so that my stuff is always on top. Basically, in a big database like this, what you see is a product of a query and a sort order. We know what query we do, but in what sequence the images on all those small result pages show up is unknown to us. In my little brain, it's hard to imagine that number of purchases, both of the image and artist would not be among the primary factors.

If that IS true, then lots of images and lots of hits might help, but sales would be the most important factor. It seems to be borne out by the results I see when I search.

"Every image you upload increases your chance of selling" - have to disagree. Some images uploaded (photos of drain ditches, out of focus deer butts, crummy flower photos) have no chance of selling - ever.

Edit your images to your very best efforts. Better to have 25 sellable/desirable images than 10K dull and boring commonplace images

As Jason said right back at the beginning, people have success doing both.

It is up to you how you wish to do it. As Edward says, "Better to have 25 sellable/desirable images than 10K dull and boring commonplace images".

I go even further. Having one awesome image will do better than 25 okay ones

Abbie
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Abbie Shores
Site Manager, Fine Art America | Pixels.com

To me, it all hinges on marketing.

You give me those 25 just okay with a great marketing plan I will give you 100 of the best here with no marketing plan. I have no doubt the marketing plan of 25 just okay images will sell more.

I was careful with my 400 to do one other thing that people kind of in a limited way saying, cover ground. Avoid being overly repetitive. Cover many subjects. I get for the people here advising that is a given. Most of the time. For the person asking they are often not fully aware of it. No one ever suggested to me use another subject, but we see people arrive with too narrow a focus.

I've seen one person sell just 3 images, but before that they had more. I don't see a strong advantage in having less though, unless you are all over the place. Sort of the difference between a fine boutique and an off highway farm antique store. Both thing sell, but the farm store will have a lot more random things which might be hard to go through.

My theme is mostly vintage, and I started with a small amount, and it just keeps growing as I make more stuff.


----Mike Savad

Images uploaded is one thing. However; I wonder how many a given person actively markets and how they chose these. Of course you can also market the account as a whole.

You advertise what you can, where you can. But you can't advertise them all usually. So you do the ones you can and hope people find the rest. Like they may come in on one image, then see the rest and buy something else. Some push just a collection or a series as well. It depends what you make.


----Mike Savad

I put my thoughts on this in a blog post:

https://jimhphoto.com/index.php/2021/10/16/make-even-more/

No marking plan can sell crummy art. People don't want to be embarrassed when their friends come over and say "ohhh, so, ummm, what compelled you to buy that?"

The first P in the four Ps of marketing is PRODUCT. Without a good product to sell, anything else is just a waste of time and effort.