FAA - The Largest Art Site in the World?

[stockastic]

If you look up the suggestion thread you can back up my suggestion or add you own.

Where is that? All I see are "General Discussions" and none seem to be about the business per se.

[CD123]

CD = There is no review, it's up to you to edit yourself. Needless to say there's a lot of dross on the site.

I know, I have my 25 images up there already. Was answering the "how do I see my uploads?" question.

Sure there is a lot of rubbish on the site. If I remember correctly, they said they have somewhere well over the 100 000 contributors. That should sound some big alarms already...

Will wait patiently for the next 4 months to see if anything happens with my 25 

[sharpshot]

On the front page, they have 145,205 artisits and 4,028,438 images.  Luckily their artists are some of "the world's greatest living artists and photographers".  Didn't know I was that good

[CD123]

On the front page, they have 145,205 artisits and 4,028,438 images.  Luckily their artists are some of "the world's greatest living artists and photographers".  Didn't know I was that good

At least we are in good company then 

[stockastic]

On the front page, they have 145,205 artisits and 4,028,438 images.  Luckily their artists are some of "the world's greatest living artists and photographers".  Didn't know I was that good

Well I'm "living" anyway ...   with 145,000+ accounts, some of the people who created them have certainly passed on by now.

[Poncke]

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=254264

Suggestion thread

[CD123]

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=254264

Suggestion thread

Your link changes into this:
http://fineartamerica.com/discussions.html
So can not see which you are referring to?

PS Sorry - just needed to be logged in first. 

[Poncke]

Probably members only then. I click the link and the thread opens for me.

[rimglow]

Is anyone concerned about how large the unwatermarked previews are?

[CD123]

Is anyone concerned about how large the unwatermarked previews are?

Not only that, the watermark in the corner does not actually offer much protection either.

[luissantos84]

have opened a topic at FAA (http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1043494)

and emailed them too but I have heard their communication ain't the brightest...

[sharpshot]

I doubt they'll change the watermark, as lots of people there won't want a watermark that could put buyers off.  One solution could be to change the image so much that if it's stolen, it's easy to know where they got it from.  Overly photoshopped images seem to sell quite well.  It would then be easy to spot if someone had stolen it from FAA.

[luissantos84]

I doubt they'll change the watermark, as lots of people there won't want a watermark that could put buyers off.  One solution could be to change the image so much that if it's stolen, it's easy to know where they got it from.  Overly photoshopped images seem to sell quite well.  It would then be easy to spot if someone had stolen it from FAA.

I don't understand really, what is the issue about a big watermark on the middle of the picture? when a buyer buys a print/frame they take it away no? buyers can zoom in and check everything before purchasing it, hope that FAA isn't trying to get traffic by showing big pictures with ridiculous small watermark...

[Poncke]

Its art not stock. artists dont want a watemark defacing their image, it does take away impact of an image. i dont do it either because I want sales. If someone takes a screengrab of that image for a blog or facebook so be it, they can never get a 40*60 inch print from a screengrab. It might just be enough to stick it on a postcard.

[luissantos84]

Its art not stock. artists dont want a watemark defacing their image, it does take away impact of an image. i dont do it either because I want sales. If someone takes a screengrab of that image for a blog or facebook so be it, they can never get a 40*60 inch print from a screengrab. It might just be enough to stick it on a postcard.

I am not very worried too but I don't see why not having an option for those who doesn't want that tiny watermark? they could introduce it to buyers also, like a checkbox next to searches, not worried if buyers that like to see art or stock without trademark don't see mine

[rimglow]

If someone takes a screengrab of that image for a blog or facebook so be it, they can never get a 40*60 inch print from a screengrab. It might just be enough to stick it on a postcard.

The problem is that a lot of my sales are of the small size. The screen grab is bigger than the small size on most stock sites. So, if you can grab an unwatermarked "small" size, for free, why pay for it from a stock site?

[CD123]

I will not upload my full port ever to this site. Your images are not protected at all. I will hand select a few which can be considered as art and know I am going to run the risk of getting blog images stolen from it. It is just a fact. 
So you either have to make your peace with it or do not upload. This is a different game than the one we are used to, with different rules and buyers. So personal choice, either get onto their scheme or do not get on altogether. We will not convince them to apply micro-stock principles here , to satisfy us. 

[ShadySue]

How long does it take for images to be searchable?
My earlier ones have been up for 44 hours and don't show up in recently:added.

[luissantos84]

How long does it take for images to be searchable?
My earlier ones have been up for 44 hours and don't show up in recently:added.

I have pictures from today, yesterday and Jan 31th still not showing up, from Jan 30th they are live, there is a topic at FAA about this matter, they had an issue a few days ago, believe the usual is 24h

[ShadySue]

How long does it take for images to be searchable?
My earlier ones have been up for 44 hours and don't show up in recently:added.

I have pictures from today, yesterday and Jan 31th still not showing up, from Jan 30th they are live, there is a topic at FAA about this matter, they had an issue a few days ago, believe the usual is 24h

Thanks, haven't found their forums etc yet.
Just wanted to make sure I hadn't done anything wrong.

[luissantos84]

Elizabeth Edwards (admin at FAA)

There are no plans to change the watermark as far as I am aware

[ShadySue]

I see to my sorrow that spam, ignorance and careless copy-and-pasting is as bad there as it is at the stock sites.
It give such an unprofessional impression.
 

[stockastic]

I have 50+ images up there now, and I siigned for the $30/year so I can offer them all for sale at once. 

Impressions so far:  it all works reasonably well, given that you can only upload 5 at a time.  You can set pricing defaults, and change prices later for all your images at once (a big plus).  The visual presentation - of framed prints, canvas prints etc. of your image - is pretty good.  You get hit tracking, which at least shows you signs of life during the endless wait for a sale.      They offer prints at reasonable sizes, given the size of your images.

The big letdown is the "artist web site".   It's way oversold in terms of customization - the reality is you can change the background color, upload a banner for the top, and write some introductory text.  And that's it.  The page isn't much different from the "free" version and is still cluttered with stuff you wish you could get rid of - like 'blog', 'events', etc.   The most grating thing is that it appends "Art" to the names of all your galleries (the free site does not) which looks pretentious and tacky.  For example, if you create a gallery named "Homeless in Manhattan" the site shows "Homeless In Manhattan Art". 

My 'artist' site got a domain name of "1-[first name]-[last name].artistwebsites.com" which no buyer could ever remember or type in correctly.  I do recognize the difficulty of assigning domain names but hey - this is an important feature if you're selling web sites to artists.  There has to be something better than "1-". 

I'll suggest changes via their "suggestion thread", but as with the other POD sites I get the feeling no development goes on here any more, and it's running on autopilot.

So, some good and some bad.  I'll give it a few months but if FAA isn't producing any buyers I'll probably drop it and maybe go to SmugMug, where I can at least (I think) create a site that doesn't embarrass me.

[ShadySue]

A smallish disadvantage is that the greetings cards are only in the 5x7 format, so if you have a square or panoramic format photo it gets cropped. There are controls so that the buyer can choose their crop and zoom, but it's a pity that some other formats aren't available.
Still, it is easy enough, and I'm tagging #50 right now.

[stockastic]

A smallish disadvantage is that the greetings cards are only in the 5x7 format, so if you have a square or panoramic format photo it gets cropped. There are controls so that the buyer can choose their crop and zoom, but it's a pity that some other formats aren't available.
Still, it is easy enough, and I'm tagging #50 right now.

That's really a drag;  I have a bunch of images formatted at 4x6 because that worked well at RedBubble, which alse prints them at 5 x 7.5, which is the same aspect ratio.