General Issues

Thanks!

Please also invite others. I tweeted the link as well.

No team member left behind!!

There are going to be some benefits to forming this group.

You can post 1 image a day to the group, and I can feature images, which is one of those 23 things or so that helps in the FAA algorithm.

Also please use this space for our general discussions like we had on the previous thread Abbie closed.

Thank you to those who have joined thus far, keep spreading the word, keep moving forward, and keep buying into all of our art!!

Melinda

Thanks for letting us know, Melinda... So appreciate!

Thanks! Much appreciated!

Thanks Joan, Lorri and Sheila.

No need for thanks -- just all of your support in getting more positive people involved who want to participate in a proven method to increase the eyes on their work and the potential for more sales.

Let's keep moving forward, the only thing that has changed is our discussion space is now here! And we get an image a day to submit here.

Thank you Melinda.

This should be a good group to help promote our members in different place. Let's rock !

Thank you Melinda!

Many thanks,hopefully all onboard.

*comes walking from across the dunes* Yay, I found you. I'm still on vacation, but on the 10th I'm back and will be more active in boosting/retweeting again. I'm sending positive vibes mixed in with some sun to whoever needs it :)

I'm here for the mutual help in getting our art/photography seen by more people. I will use #BIA as the anchor once I'm active again, but also will keep using #AYFA for 2023 as it seems fitting for my personal path right now - so it's an "and" for me rather than "either/or".

A big thank you for starting this new group. I know you don't want the praise but you get it nevertheless. Here to continues support and success of our group.

Thank you Melinda for starting the group!

Thanks for setting this up, Melinda.
I'm sorry you had to go through behind the scenes stuff.

Moving on - let's keep this positive and full of support!

edit: RT'd the notice about hashtags and this group

I am receiving DMs from those not on FAA, and have reassured them and you (and you all should your contacts too if asked), NOTHING HAS CHANGED!

This "group" replaces our general FAA thread.

This is where we come to share info, be a little social, help each other with some something specific, discuss trends etc. The real team is out there RTing, boosting, sharing, following etc.

One benefit is the ability to post 1 image a day here, and I can "feature" it and that helps the secret sauce on FAA. Make sure to utilize this benefit! You all can also use the images featured to run through and like and favorite them, and even make comments as that stuff all helps too, but we are not going to be like other groups here and do a bunch of those tit for tat drills.

As before, and as always, of course use the hashtags that work for you.

I rt'd the notice re hashtags as well

"The real team is out there RTing, boosting, sharing, following etc."
-------
Very well said, Melinda :)

Hi all,

Melinda, thanks for taking on this task! :) I appreciate all you do. And thanks to everyone who has boosted or favorited any of my posts!! You're gems.

Noting for everyone here that I'm pretty much 100 percent Team Mastodon--I rarely venture onto Twitter, 1) because I get far fewer views/visits/hits there; and 2) because I just don't seem to have time right now to do both consistently.

I use several group-related hashtags: AYFA, BIY (just started), and SpringIntoArt. When I go on Mastodon, which is my primary promotional SM outlet, I actually do put those hashtags in the search field to find you all--I also will favorite or boost others (not on FAA) who are using the hashtags if I like their art. (With the non-FAA folks, I will favorite but not necessarily boost, unless they have a link in their post.) (I also search for MastoArt and ArtistsOnMastodon, which brings up a wide variety of artists with which to connect.)

Just another quick thought based on some emails back and forth with a few of you...

this group is DIFFERENT from all of the many other groups which many of us belong to on FAA.

We are welcoming to all who are team players.

We recognize this space is for sharing and being a little more social etc.

Let's not have this group morph into what all these other groups do: mutual tit for tat promotional threads, thank you for featuring me threads, etc. Spend your time out on SM platforms, building your own network -- which helps ALL OF US, but especially you. Spend your time RTing, boosting others on this team. Remember the majority of the team are not even on this platform to come into this thread! Oh, but those of you here, don't forget to add an image a day here too! That is the one aspect that will mimic other FAA groups.

We have a core who have joined here, and I hope that will continue to grow, please contact others not here yet as I know we have not reached out to everyone.

@All... Good morning! Not sure which of our 3 Discussions to post this in... Just wanted to share that my views have been up and down for the past 2 weeks, and then all of a sudden yesterday, they went way up. I'm not on Mastodon, just the usual Tw, FB, IG, P... Anyone else's views go way up yesterday?

Thanks, Melinda! Good to see many familiar faces already here.

Re: your point above about staying on track within this new group, can you as administrator limit member's ability to start extraneous discussion threads that take us off track? I'm not a group admin so don't know what controls are in place, so just a thought.

Hi, my name is Angie. I thought I'd introduce myself since I don't think I ever commented on the forum even though I've been participating since almost the beginning of this team (I'm more of a lurker on the forum). Anyway, I'm not always as consistent as I'd like to be due to some health problems, but I'm sure you'll see me around.

I know this was talked about in one of the previous threads by HH but I think its a good reminder to check on your mark-ups

I forgot to check when she had mentioned it and only looked at it yesterday as I have been uploading new work.

I discovered all my markups on apparel were blank!

Good Afternoon Team!

Melinda thank you for helping the team move forward and getting this group going.


Tuesday Tip/Suggestion: Do you have a boatload of files of old photos you didn't know what to do with at the time or they just didn't 'work'? A half finished painting that is collecting cobwebs in the closet or sitting in time out in the corner? Time, gaining new skills/trying new things and/or a fresh look at it might uncover a hidden gem. Maybe a different crop or adding a new color scheme might make that photo/painting sing!

Hi everyone, glad to see we are back up and running. Thank you Melinda for your persistence and fortitude in continuing and leading the group despite all the craziness going on. Nice to see familiar faces on here. Have a great day all!

same as @Jon, no way to re-arrange. i gave up trying to fix it. not sure what happened

I too have given up, you can't fight city hall sadly. It must make sense for someone, just not sure it's the artists

@All, thanks. I'm still baffled by the discrepancy between the number of images in that collection when viewed logged in (141) vs not logged in (102).

Jon have you reached out to FAA to get to the bottom of this? I know through the years certain images of mine simply disappeared.

@Iris, not yet. The images themselves, thankfully, have not disappeared, but some of them don't show up in the collection when viewed without being signed in.

I do wish that we had say over our own artist websites in terms of what we show potential customers. For our profiles on FAA per se, sure--show visitors the images in the order that the algorithm sets, but for our own sites, it seems we should be able to determine the order that others see.

PS apparently this is something of a hot topic in the main forum: https://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=9346063

(The ability to sort as we see fit--not a discrepancy in the number of images list in collections depending on being signed in or not.)

Thanks for posting that, Jon. That's an important thing to me, too. To many of us, from the looks of it.

I just checked several of my collections both logged in and then logged out...they are each in the same order of my choosing and have the same numbers...

@Debra, try using a different browser from the one you usually use and not logging in.

I mainly use Edge, but when I look at my Most Popular Collection in a different browser and not logged in, the order is different. I think that cookies might also have something to do with it and Edge somehow remembers because at some point I DID log in to Pixels via Edge. If you can't see or access the image below, the password is 123456. The Allis-Chalmers tractor IS my best-selling image, and I also placed it first when I ordered the images in the collection, so that is why both views show it as my #1 image.

Anyone using an etsy shop?

I'd like to present the following:

-- galleries of 10-20 images, eg https://cascoly-images.com/image-galleries-wildlife-of-the-oregon-coast/ - for download as royalty free images
my etsy gallery listings would have no external links

-- sell framed prints, etc using FAA for POD (without referencing FAA in etsy)
is there a way to allow choice of image and then choice of product? or does each image require its own posting?


any suggestions welcomed.

@ Chad I hope you are feeling better!

@Lori, I am sorry to hear about the medical emergency of your family member. Sending good thoughts and I hope that they are doing ok and will get better. Please take care of yourself too as that being a full time caregiver can be exhausting.

@Jon, I do hope that FAA takes the suggestion to return control to the artists to arrange the order of art/photos in their collections. It used to be that way and I can't understand why they would change it. Especially when the roll-out of Pixels celebrated that artists could arrange the order of their collections to showcase new or art pieces that they wished to shine a light on.

you can set sort order to manual

go to Default Settings

DEFAULT TAB AND SORT ORDER

How would you like your images to be sorted?
Show the best selling images first.
Let me manually set the sort order.

then edit & you can change the placement of each image (eg change #5 to #10)

@Steve. I’ve set up an Etsy shop to sell prints of different sizes and types and have written a long article about how I did it. https://backyardsilver.com/selling-physical-prints-in-an-etsy-shop/

I’ve tried to sell downloads in the past with no success. It’s not that hard, but getting people to buy when they probably can find the same images online for free is not easy.

Steve

@Steve E, I do have my Default settings as you describe. When I go to another browser (esp. one I have never used to sign into FAA) the order is completely different--some of my oldest images first. In other words, the order of images we choose does not carry over to a person who has never logged into FAA going to our page and clicking on a collection. It will show them what FAA wants them to see and not what you want them to see.

The graphic I included above is a screen shot from 1) my main browser and 2) an alternate browser (Duck Duck Go) that has never logged into FAA.

#Steve H, thanks for that info.

Same here Jon, the order is not what I want it to be and have changed it back many times. I have my defaults the same.

yes, your article sparked my interest in reviving an etsy shop & i'l be adding framed prints

is there a way to use a martix of choices?

eg, for a framed print product, choose image, then size of print

or

for an image, choose a product and size

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@jon, renata

i get the same results whether i'm signed in, or with a clean login

for https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/steve-estvanik - it decides it knows better than me

but for
https://steve-estvanik.pixels.com shows my decisions (this what i had been using when i made my previous comments)

Steve - Go to designerprints.com and type your name in the search bar - OR - go to an incognito page and go to the FAA or Pixels and type your name in search.

Do not log in - go to your collections and see if the order you want them is still the same. For example, when I go to my bird's collection it shows my best sellers first and none of my new stuff.

Jon/Renata - Each collection I go to shows my best sellers first. I do not have it set up that way in default settings.

@Chad, thank you for mentioning viewing your page in Incognito or private mode. I'd forgotten about that, and it shows exactly what I am saying. All of my collections show bestsellers first, unless I haven't sold anything from that collection yet, such as my new collection titled "Most Recent," in which it shows the oldest upload first. (Numbers of views and/or visits does not seem to factor in at all.)

I'm not embarrassed by (most of) the earliest images I uploaded here 11 years ago, but I think I'm a far better artist and photographer today than I was then, and *that* is the face I want to present to potential customers or just curious friends.

I understand FAA wants to hedge its bets, but it amounts to sefl-fulfilling prophecy showing already sold images first so that they are seen before our others and thus are, um, more likely to sell. I do wish they would let us choose what customers see first when they log into our Pixels sites.

I set Most Recent up to combat that--it's the first of my collections, so it at least gives the new images a fighting chance.

thanks Chad and Steve. I have to try that and see what happens

I agree Jon. I wonder at this point whether to just go ahead and promote those images that have sold in the past.

Not sure when I'll be back to full time promoting yet.

Everywhere I was looking, all my images were in my selected order until I went to Designer Prints and there I finally saw that it was images which have sold that are shown first and no specific order of the remaining images in each collection.

@Chad, for the most part I don't promote the best-selling images--I figure they don't need it, and I need to give newer works the best possible chance I can give them.

I just noticed #GiftsForMom trending on X this morning...guess I'll use it for things that would be suitable for a Mom

Just to let everyone know, I will be traveling for the next week, so I may be able to stop by our sm sites a little bit this week, but will be back in force on Monday.

Safe travels Deborah

Wishing you a good time - Safe travels Deborah!

Have a great time wherever you're traveling to Deborah.