Deep South Dead – By Charlotte Moore

Well, I guess technically it’s more like my third book cover since I have done a couple of self-published photo books. In my metaphorical book, this is different since those were my own productions. I designed those books and covers on my own. This one was very much a collaborative effort with the author. We went through several iterations before arriving at the final book cover.

It was a fun collaboration, at least from my side of the fence. In school, I was that person who never much enjoyed group projects. It always seemed that the work fell more heavily on the shoulders of some. So I have to admit I was surprised how much I enjoyed the artistic direction provided. Perhaps it was the need to rise to the challenge?

I don’t have immediate plans to hang out a new shingle as a book cover artist, but I will explore the possibilities, and if anyone out there has their eyes on a given image for a future book, you can always drop me a note to discuss.

In the meantime, if you like mystery novels and have a kindle or other device that allows you to read Kindle books, be sure to try Ms. Charlotte Moore’s new book Deep South Dead!

Book Description:

Looking for peace and quiet to write a novel, Hunter Jones left Atlanta for a job at a weekly newspaper in Merchantsville, Georgia, a town so small that everybody knows everybody else’s business. She quickly discovers that gossip travels faster than the press can run, and she’s a bit of an outsider looking in until she goes to a grand old mansion for an interview with the president of the historical society, only to find that a murderer got there first. Now, if she can only get Sheriff Sam Bailey to take her hunches seriously…

Update: Art Print Site Re-Born

Look Kids, Big Ben, Parliament, New Work to share! Okay, so that wasn’t really my news, but this new London print gives me a good excuse to show off something else. If you were to click the picture below, it would take you to a page on Beautiful World Art, my new art print gallery!

New Work! – Palace of Westminster Glowing On The Thames

This re-branding of my print gallery had been under consideration for awhile. But I had a hard time deciding on a new site address. I can’t tell you how many times I discovered someone else had already had my really cool idea for an art-related domain name. In the end, I am glad I kept having to don my thinking cap as the new domain name is very much a description of my mission statement, to find and present our beautiful world through my art. And from the search engine perspective, I think my new domain will have more prominence than it did as a sub-domain of my main site. That last part of this update is still a test in progress.

I hope you’ll take the opportunity to kick the tires a little on the new site and share it with your friends. I’m really proud of the general presentation of it and this change has given me the impetus to begin re-thinking the presentation of some of my larger galleries. For instance, my Mexico galleries were previously divided by location.  Now you’ll see they are thematic or subject based. I’m certain there are a couple of other large collections that I’ll take a similar approach with in the future.

Update: New Design Project

In the past month, I’ve also had the opportunity to work with someone who was decorating a large new office space in the Atlanta area. I can’t provide a lot of details about their project but they did discover my Atlanta prints because they had seen my work at Jack’s New Yorker Deli. A tad ironic considering I still haven’t seen that in person! I’m quite glad that my artwork was ultimately selected as it was a fun experience and the largest one-time purchase to date for my art prints! The experience also led me to add a new page to my site to make interior designers aware that I’m willing and eager to work with them on their projects.

Just so you all know, I’m willing to work with any individual who has something custom in mind. I’ve just found it more common that designers buying multiple prints are more likely to have specific requirements for their job. Nonetheless the welcome mat is always out for your questions and ideas.

Four Years of Life Lessons

You know that adage about life being what happens while you’re making other plans? It’s amazing how much truth there is to that. It’s now right at four years since I left my job as a project manager. At the time, my main plan was to take a career break and travel. I wanted to see the world now rather than later. And I have traveled some, but in the midst of all that came the crazy dream to do something I love as my livelihood.

Like many big dreams, they tend to take on a life of their own. I’m happy to say it hasn’t evolved into a nightmare, but it’s quite true it’s never quite the same when you do something as a hobby versus doing it to pay the bills. The most challenging part for me personally is not that transition but getting used to the income roller coaster after years of steady paychecks. For anyone who dreams of doing this, let me tell you that staying motivated on the down months is an inevitable test of your character.

Your Support Is Valuable

I’m constantly exploring new ways to level off that roller coaster ride. It turns out that life is one large learning lab as I get daily lessons in products and marketing. That said, I’ve seen firsthand that there’s nothing quite so valuable as good word of mouth. I know many of you out there have helped spread my message, and I appreciate it greatly. For those who may wonder ‘what can I do?’ It’s truly as simple as telling your friends and family. You may have purchased a print in the past or simply enjoy what you’ve seen. Either way, you never know who among your friends may have a bare wall. Or it may be you are unaware you have a friend of a friend who is an interior designer. I know I have benefited from crazy chance associations more than once.

For everyone who has decided to join me on this trail from the outset or only recently, my most sincere thanks. Here’s hoping there’s plenty of road left ahead to report on later! I’ll do my best to get back to a more evenly spaced update cycle in the months ahead. Here’s hoping for more really cool news to report.

Unconnected to Selling Art Online – New Work from Quebec!

Most of my tips for selling art online will be fairly general but some will be with an emphasis on my experience with Fine Art America. I’ll do my best to note where any suggestions are specifically for that site. I guess the reason that Fine Art America is on the top of my mind right now is that I’ve been working on uploading all of my work there for months now. In fact, it’s become one of my over-riding projects simply because it has proven profitable. I won’t say that I’m going over blockbusters just yet, but my work continues to pay me back for the time invested.

Fine Art America is also on my mind because I frequently encounter visual artists who have used the site and complain bitterly that they have had no sales and some suggest that the site is simply too large and perhaps even rigged against newcomers. And when I’m able to take a look at what they are doing, they very often fall into that if you build it they will come school that I commented on last month. You will almost inevitably fight a losing battle if you try the Field of Dreams method of selling art online.

Titles Matter When Selling Art Online

I’ve touched on this most important tip for selling art online before. The title is one of your most important decisions. But not in the way artists often think. We’re encouraged in society to choose metaphorical titles, titles with hidden meaning for the viewer to discover, etc. This decision while poetic makes your art exponentially harder to be found online. If you doubt this, go to Google right now, type in a phrase in the search box and look at the results. Notice something? Unless Google is struggling to find relevant results for your search, virtually all of the bold titles you see in your results will include words from your search.

So, let’s think about what this means as an artist or anyone trying to be seen oline. If I have a picture of a sunset on the beach, my title needs to be literal and should at minimum include that it shows a sunset and a beach. I would recommend if it’s a particular place, you include that detail as well because someone out there may well be searching for a specific locale. If I called my theoretical beach sunset, I don’t know, Exploding Orange, it might be a more noteworthy title, but two things happen. One anyone searching for your particular beach will be unlikely to find it, and secondly people searching for exploding oranges will be disappointed. I’ve actually see this in action. Several years ago, I had a piece in my gallery named what I thought was a fairly poetical title. I later noticed in my stats that I was getting a ton of visitors, I also noticed they were all leaving quickly. No one who found that work stayed to look through the rest of my art. I decided to search for that title myself and discovered that I had inadvertently used a title similar to the name of an -ahem- adult actor. Oops! While I changed that title after my discovery, I regret it took me longer to put the puzzle together and realize the positive value in a properly selected title.

It’s unfortunate that no print on demand site I’m aware of allows one to have an artwork title that is separate from a page title. As it stands on sites like Fine Art America, when you choose a title for your art, you are choosing the words that appear in your browser bar and in the bold title location in search results. When I’ve shared this observation with artist friends in the past, I’ve gotten a mixture of reactions. Some are too attached to their poetic titles. While others like the idea but do a lot of work in one specific subject area and fear that all their art will end up with the same title. On the former concern, I have no solace to offer. On the latter concern, this is actually increased opportunity. I might only have one beach sunset to describe, but if you have dozens, you have more chances to be found. You might use colors, places, etc. to describe the work in further detail in each of your chosen titles. Maybe someone was looking for a picture of a golden sunset on the beach, but another was looking for a print of a fiery red sunset on the beach. I’m being a bit simplistic here, but you get the idea. The title is an important decision whether you are selling art online or trying to be visible in any endeavor on the internet.

Yes, descriptions are also important for selling art online

It doesn’t stop and end at the title, though. Think of it this way, you’ve gotten their attention. Google or pretty much any other search engine has categorized your artwork as being about the subject you gave in the title, but if your description does not echo those terms, it becomes a bit more dicey. Could it be you were misleading people with the title – kind of an internet bait and switch? You said it was beach in the title, but maybe your entire description centered around how much you love the coast. The search engine will likely decide that your offering is of lower value and place you behind other similar results.

Your description is both a place to continue the theme of your title and your chance to connect with a potential buyer. For me, that’s often my account of being there at that moment. I might explain why this particular moment caught my eye. But whatever you do don’t fall into the let the picture speak for itself trap. I can’t tell you how often I discover artists who have left the description box all but bare. Even a few words doesn’t cut it. I’ve read that a round number to aim for is 300 words or more. And in this one area, as someone who is verbose, I have it made as long as I can actually stay on subject!

Sadly but honestly, the person who stops to admire the art you’re selling may never read your words. Yet the words in your description are so important to being found. The search engine needs that text and that text needs to reinforce the subjects in your title. But it should sound natural so that when a person does take the time to read it, they don’t feel as if a machine somewhere churned them out. Think of the exercise as being similar to the paragraphs you learned to write in school. Your first sentence is your artwork title, and it should contain your subject. The description is the rest of the paragraph. It should stay on subject and reinforce that your work pertains to the subject given in the title.

As a side note, for those who are keen to copy text from Wikipedia or the local tourism office’s site, you really don’t want to do that. Aside from the moral conundrum involved, based on everything I’ve heard, you will get dinged for having duplicate content as it appeared elsewhere first. You need to write your own unique description, and if you’re selling art on multiple sites, make sure that text differs from site to site. Now you see why I’m not uploading everything at once, writing all new descriptions takes time!

How Important are Keywords when Selling Art Online?

I guess the answer is, it depends. I see artists on various print on demand sites obsess over keywords more than any other subject. And keywords are probably the subject of more abuse than any other aspect of selling art online on the various sites I’ve used. Some sites have greatly limited how many keywords one can use as a consequence. It’s a result of the mentality that I’ll use every keyword tangentially related to my art (and maybe a few that aren’t) in the hopes of simply being seen and then maybe someone will be wowed and buy my art. The problem is if they were searching for something specific and you didn’t come close to fulfilling that desire, they will probably be like the people that were disappointed in my art with the unfortunate title. It’s not simply a game of getting in front of someone, it’s getting in front of that someone who is looking for what you are offering.

That said, keywords on Fine Art America are important in so much as you should be decisive in your first five keywords chosen. If you look at any given artwork page on Fine Art America, you’ll notice that those first five keywords appear as part of the text immediately beneath your image. Given how physically close they are in the code to your image, that makes those keywords important to search engines like Google (which assume those words describe the picture). I personally make a point of echoing my subject here. If it’s a beach picture, I make sure I include that as one of the first five keywords. More simply, your strongest keywords should be the first five. If you feel you must use every keyword at your disposal, just make sure the less important ones are further down.

So where are keywords important? Aside from those first five, they are important to being found on the sites themselves. I.E. a visitor to Fine Art America types a phrase in the search box on the site, you hope to be in those first handful of results. That’s not easy on any site. Unless you’ve somehow cornered the market on a subject before anyone else has, you will encounter competition. And despite the clamoring I hear from new artists, you can’t expect these sites to have no algorithm for what appears first. From the site owner’s point of view, they should put their best foot forward for customers. Artwork from an artist who is new to the site is not vetted in any way and quite simply may not be salable. On any print on demand, their search logic onsite naturally veers towards proven work. It might make us all feel warm and fuzzy if they were more egalitarian, but it were your store, I suspect you’d put the most likely to sell art out front as well.

In the end, you won’t win wishing your stuff to the front page of any given art site. You have no control over how Fine Art America or any other print on demand site chooses to present results to their potential customers. So, in my opinion, you’re wasting your time obsessing over their internal search results. Unless you intend on starting your own site, you’re unlikely to get a say!

There is no Magic Bullet for Selling Art Online

I know it may feel like this goes against the whole topic of this article, but I’m just sharing the tools that have helped me improve. I’ve ridden the roller coaster on my own site the past few years, and I started selling on Fine Art America about six months ago and have had consistent sales starting after having been there a couple of months. And now that I’ve got those sales under my belt, when I do search for my work onsite, I’m also coming closer to the top for some of the keywords for my work. The way that site is constructed, it’s sort of a natural progression of getting sales to place closer to the top. That still presupposes people came there to search for your art rather than simply found it on the big search engines which remains my personal top concern. As much as I would like for my own site to place as prominently and will continue to work for that, I have seen the light that you are better off taking advantage of the natural lift created by having well-titled and well-described art for sale on a major player like Fine Art America. It places my art that much closer to the top of the results for someone using a search engine like Google.

I’m not saying this is the the only way to get your work seen. It’s where I place more of my eggs because I’m slowly getting the knack. If you’re a social butterfly, of course, there’s always the chance to interact with people on various social networks and forums. I won’t be writing any novellas on that subject in the foreseeable future, though! Although it probably just scratches the surface, I hope the practical tips I’ve shared has helped some of you who are aspiring at selling art online, though?

Along with ending traditions, 2012 was about changing focus and strategy where it comes to my photos and photo-based artwork. I mean, I can be a slow editor, but it’s unprecedented that 2012 is nearly over and I’ve yet to turn my attention to the photos from Quebec and New York City. I know at least a few of you have noticed that!

Quebec City Ice Skaters – Conclusion to 2011

As some of you know, I have spent all my time optimizing past work. Put simply, it would do me no good to continue adding work that few people saw. I needed to work on beefing up my presence, to improve descriptions, to improve the titles of my work. I’ve learned a lot about making my art more visible online at least. We should always be learning after all! There are many of us artists who are guilty of trying to let our work speak for itself. It’s a very Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come sort of outlook. And unless you have an incredibly lucky stroke, it doesn’t work that way. Your art has to have words that describe it so people may find it, and you have to work on using any channel you can find to promote your work It’s the latter that I know I still have to work on. I do not find tooting my own horn remotely easy. Still, I’m glad to report by year’s end, views on my site were the best they’ve been.

2012 has been a full year. It began on a high note with the first time I licensed any of my work for use in advertising. If anyone happened to see a L’Oreal ad that included a red London phone booth, that was mine! It was used for the back-drop in a counter display. I saw photos earlier this year, but you’ll forgive me that I never actually saw the final product in person. I’d love to hear if any of you did! It was a first but hopefully not a last as far as licensing my work. It was a highlight I kept meaning to share but never found the time.

And as you all know, part of my exercise in learning how to make my art visible online, I added another venue. And I have nothing but good to say about that. If you had suggested it a year ago, I would have had misgivings, chiefly a concern that I was spreading my eggs to yet another basket. And there’s no doubt that it’s taking me time to get my work added, but there’s been a definite bump in sales that has not come at the expense of my other venue. Taking advantage of a site that is well placed in Google’s rankings is akin to putting your work in a store front that is on a busy street. Maybe one day I will be able to build that sort of draw on my own, but at this stage of the game, it works well for me to have my work on display in a visible location like Fine Art America.

So, 2012 had a broken foot and a broken tradition, but it included highlights as well. I guess I could complain, but I won’t! I’m happy to be able to follow my dreams how ever long I can, and I appreciate every one of you out there who have supported those dreams either by hanging one of those dreams on your walls or by spreading the word to your friends or simply a pat on the back when I may have needed it.

Thanks and I hope we all have an excellent 2013 ahead!

What spurred me to sit down and provide an update is oddly enough a poignant little graphic I stumbled across that eloquently explains better than I could how much small business matters.

I wish I knew who to credit for this, but it arrived without attribution in my inbox. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it? While the money you spend at the big box store may help our economy a little, nothing has the impact of shopping with the mom and pops.

The Gift of Art – A Gift Times Two

Thus as a visual artist my very specific appeal to you this season. Give the gift of art this year! Whether you find something among my work or from one of my many peers, it’s a meaningful gift on all accounts. Each gift of art from an independent artist or artisan is a gift that helps those of us who are trying to live our dreams stay afloat another day.

I have lost count of how many times I have received messages from other would-be-full-time-artists. And the common subject always seems to revolve around advice that would enable them to take the leap I took. I never know how to respond. I personally have no regrets. I love what I do, but it’s also a daily financial roller coaster that is not for the weak of heart. When I broke my foot, as I sat in the Emergency Room, my mind revolved between the pain in my foot and the pain in my wallet. If you love the predictability of a paycheck, this life may not be for you!

I suspect you’ll also find that the gift of art is one that has much meaning to the recipient. For me anyway, it’s rarely the hottest gift of Christmas Past that I remember or still have in my possession long after. Giving a gift that your loved ones can’t find on the shelves of a big box store is much more likely to be something that is remembered for years and possibly even passed down one day.

And it truly is a gift with twice the impact. It would mean much to my bottom line this year if you decide to give the gift of art from the offerings in my portfolio, but I will be happy if I hear I’ve convinced you to shop small this year from another artist or artisan. I would also be very appreciative if you take the time to share my message with your friends and family. Even if you are unable to directly support my work right now, your kind word of mouth is utterly priceless! There are many ways you can help us mom and pops!

My Small Gift to You

I can’t provide the deep discounts and such that the big guys are offering you right now, but I did want to do something for Small Business Saturday this year. So, if you give the gift of art from my main gallery, you’ll get a little discount that should at least pay for standard shipping plus some change. The discount code is entered on the page where you choose shipping. The code is:

SB2012

In the US and Canada, this is good for $10 off your purchase. If your currency is British Pounds, it’s good for £6, and if your purchase is in Euros, it’s good for €7. This discount is good until Midnight in the Eastern US time zone on Nov 24th! Just a small window, but this discount is a heartfelt thanks for each of you that has helped me one way or another follow my dreams. Whether you’ve purchased in the past or have shared my work with your friends, I’m in your debt.

If you’ve stumbled across this message after the discount ended, I still hope you’ll wander through my print galleries and see if you find the gift of art you’re looking for this year.

These are the main sites where you can find my visual art:

• Tisdale Print Gallery – my Zenfolio Shop.
• Mark E Tisdale on Fine Art America
• Mark E Tisdale on Redbubble

The prints on offer and the substrates available for printing are not the same between these sites, so if you find something on one site that’s not available on the site where you’d prefer to purchase, or if you have any questions or special requests, just drop me a note.

Background

Over the course of  many months, I started working to improve the descriptions that accompany my visual art, trying to balance my descriptions with enough detail to make them useful to search engines and at the same time enough background to be interesting to viewers who take the time to read them. It’s only recently I came to realize that the names, or titles, of my art work was just as important. If you doubt me, do a quick web search for a phrase and see how many of your results include that phrase in the bold title line of the sites! I’ll wager a lot of them unless you’ve searched for something truly obscure. So, a catchy, emotional title is well and good. I like them myself, but I’ve come to realize online that the title is valuable literal real estate. Even the newspapers once known for catchy headlines have largely abandoned that practice online in order to be among relevant search results.

Abstract Photography – What do I call thee?

Photon

This example of abstract photography is not remotely new. In fact, it’s far enough back to be considered a classic Mark E Tisdale picture. And it’s a photo that has never failed to attract attention. What is it? is a common enough refrain. Well, it’s a classic example of experimentation meeting with opportunity. I was waiting for a friend during DragonCon several years ago admiring the hotel elevators passing. It was only natural I started taking photos. First trying to set a high enough shutter speed to freeze things but after seeing a few shots I realized I much preferred the feel of motion from a long shutter speed. The more observant might even notice the odd shapes of the figures in the elevator. They’re barely visible but almost alien looking for a good reason. This was after all DragonCon where there’s no telling what costumed alien species they may have been!

I have always called this photo Photon, as a nod to the properties of light that make it possible as well as the light streams trailing behind the elevator. But when you think about it, that’s not an overly descriptive name. And even my description for it is probably lacking so far as connecting with people who’d like this framed on their wall. I doubt it’s only me, but this is something I struggle with for many photos. Give me a good familiar landmark, and I can describe it in detail. The who, where, what and why are obvious, but the more abstract the subject, the more the well dries up for good descriptive text and titles.

What Would Someone Searching for This Picture Type?

So, there’s the big question, but I’d love your help reverse engineering this one. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who’d love to hang this piece of abstract photography on their walls if only they could find it. What phrase(s) do you think they’d type into their favorite search engine that could lead them to this piece of art? Clearly we have abstract photography covered in those phrases, but are their feeling words like happy, excited, exhilarating? Is there a term that leaps out to you the moment you see it?

If so, sound off in the comments or drop me a note. I’d love to hear your helpful suggestions! They may influence a name change for this print and will definitely help me in better describing it.

Background

I pushed my first photo book, Egyptian Dreams, into the world in September of 2009. Of my travels, there’s no doubt that my trip to Egypt is still a highlight. And I’m still quite proud of that first foray into books. The folks who purchased it were a mixture of people who dreamed of going to Egypt and those who had been there as I had. From both groups, I got plenty of positive feedback.

By June of the following year, I had put together my second photo book, Coming Home. The second photo book was based on images I’d taken around my small hometown of Montezuma, Georgia. Despite the exotic nature of the first book, Coming Home was probably the one of which I am most proud. There are and will be many photo books of Egypt, and I do hope my images have their own unique style. Still, I doubt there will be many photo books documenting my small town. Of the handful of copies that sold, I do hope a few survive to show how Montezuma looked at the dawn of the 21st century.

Why?

Moving on to the burning question of why I’m discontinuing these two photo books. Inevitably, it boils down to cost. Blurb, who is responsible for printing these books, has raised prices several times over since I initially offered them. In case anyone has looked at the prices in the past, I hate to say you’d laugh if you knew how little my part in that price is. The mass market books we buy in stores are profitable because of the high volume that are printed. Blurb doesn’t print in that kind of volume. In fact each book is printed only when a copy is ordered! The Blurb photo books I’ve purchased have been beautiful without fail, but the prices are now just too high for me to continue to promote them, never mind create any additional books.

The Future

Over the past several months I’ve looked into offering eBooks, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that front. I could basically write an entire article about my concerns with photo eBooks, and I may write it if there’s enough interest. The short version revolves around the resolution I’d need to supply and the lack of any sort of protection for those files. I have a better understanding for music DRM these days. There should be some way to protect content creators and not make life difficult for consumers, but I don’t see it and I’m not ready to go there at this time.

I’m sending this message rather than just taking the books down straight-away. This  gives any of you who may have thought about buying one of these books a little warning. If you thought you might buy one later, then later needs to happen by the end of September!

And to those who have purchased one of my books in the past, I do want you to know your patronage is much appreciated, and you’ll own something fairly unique! Even if I were to create another book down the road using the same images, the format will be completely different next time since I used Blurb’s proprietary software to create those books.

If you’re sitting out there with an affordable but high quality alternative to Blurb for print books., by all means, speak up! I have enough irons in the fire right now that I’m not ready to explore it myself, but I always appreciate the odd bump in the right direction.

Preview and Order Photo Books Here

• Coming Home – Montezuma Georgia
• Egyptian Dreams

Background

I’ve been utilizing various print on demand sites for over 5 years now. For part of that time, I also did show and sell some work in gallery shows and art festivals, often with other artists. There’s something to be said for being able to meet an artist and look at their work in person. While I generally enjoyed that experience, I was never a fan of having a closet full of prints and mats and bags, i.e. inventory between those events. Maybe if one participates longer, their inventory becomes more focused? Or perhaps there’s always that one art print that you drag from show to show until the person who loves it finally discovers it?

At any rate, those shows and festivals felt even less practical when life found me in a rural setting once more. That was partially the impetus to focus more on print on demand sites. And the POD industry is quite honestly an ever-changing game. The sites that are rising today can easily be passe next year. At times I’m a little stunned by the fast rise and fall of internet businesses, to be honest. Are we that fickle or is there really some inherent reason that so many internet businesses fail to keep the momentum with which they start?

Imagekind

I’m going to go somewhat in chronological order in this print on demand overview, so that means we start with Imagekind. I hate to say for me personally Imagekind was essentially a POD write-off. Five years ago, their platinum package for artist’s cost about $100 a year! I don’t remember the particulars of the discount I got at the time, but I paid $25 and it was the only year I subscribed at that service level. At the end of the year not only hadn’t I recouped the cost of their platinum print on demand service, I hadn’t made enough to even qualify for a pay out! I remained for three more years as a basic (free) subscriber before I sold a few more prints, qualified for a payout, and promptly marked my remaining work as not for sale! It is really a shame, though, as I was truly bowled over by the beauty of their prints. Even with those fantastic prints, I personally was never able to drive any business through their site.

Redbubble

Redbubble, who I joined later the same year, was a completely different print on demand story. Artists can upload and sell work for free, but there is no free lunch. Redbubble obviously has bills to pay to stay in business, and that free status comes with what I regard as high base prices for the various prints and t-shirts they have on offer. As with all these sites, the artist profit comes from their markup over that base price. It’s attractive to artists to have a free account, but the longer I’ve been on print on demand sites, the more I appreciate the ones that have some type of subscription-based service that pays to keep the servers running and the base prices perhaps a bit lower.

Redbubble was a strong print on demand service for me for several years. However, two years ago the site revised how it handled keywords in a very ham-handed way. It was the push I needed to see what other print on demand sites were offering. I still like the quality of their products, which is why I retain a presence on Redbubble. However my personal take is that they seem to have peaked. The changes over the past two years have felt like little more than the equivalent of a few coats of paint without any real functional upgrades for artists using the POD.

High on my want list when changing my focus from Redbubble was to still have a print on demand service but to have fine tuned control over the look and feel of my portfolio. At the end of the day, I prefer making art with my camera and Photoshop, not printing and shipping it and generally handling the fulfillment end of things. You’ll find artists all over the spectrum on this issue. Some would rather manage absolutely every aspect of things, but for me, my desire to control things mostly revolves around creation and to some degree online presentation.

Zenfolio

I reviewed several sites, but I ultimately chose Zenfolio for one major reason. I had been using Mpix, their main vendor here in the US, to do my own prints for several years. Each package I receive from Mpix has surpassed my expectations. I actually discovered Zenfolio through Mpix’s website and that put them at the lead of the pack. Two years with this print on demand portfolio and no regrets!

Zenfolio has multiple levels of membership. At the bottom end, it’s a simple portfolio site, and as you move up the ladder, you get access to print on demand services from a host of vendors. In fact artists and photographers can allow Zenfolio to act as their shopping cart but handle fulfillment on their own terms. A perfect scenario for you major control freaks out there! With each of Zenfolio’s Vendor partners around the world, you can specify whether or not you will use that vendor and what products you will offer. In fact, the pricing tool that comes with Zenfolio is one of my favorite features and the strongest I’ve encountered to date. Most print on demand services seem to just allow you to markup the POD products in one way. Either the site allows you to set a percent markup or a dollar markup. With Zenfolio, you create a price list and you can make it as sophisticated or as simple as you want. And you apply that price list to however many of your images you want. So, you can have a price list for new prints, and a different price list for best sellers, etc. There are probably far more ways you can use this sophisticated tool than I have imagined so far!

The look and feel of a Zenfolio site can be customized to a degree, but if you’re looking for a print on demand site where you have intimate control over the design of the site, you may want to keep looking. I know this is the reason some artists and photographers choose Smugmug, but I have no personal experience to offer there. When I chose Zenfolio, I wasn’t interested in getting dirty with the CSS side of things. I love Zenfolio’s simple clean page layouts to choose from. And I have been more than happy with the level of control offered over the general look of the site through background colors, background images, fonts, font colors, what appears on the menus, etc. I think the average photographer or artist who isn’t an armchair web designer can more than make their Zenfolio-powered site their own style without having to know the inner workings of their site. There have been hints that more ability to customize the site may be coming, but there are already so many features I don’t use that I’m not waiting with bated breath!

While Zenfolio can both be your portfolio as well as a print on demand service, you are something of an Island on the internet. It takes a good deal of effort for visual artists to make their work visible on the internet on any site. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but on the internet, we still use words to search! Maybe something like Google Image Search will eventually turn this paradigm on its head, but right now, a potential fan or even collector of your work will enter a word or phrase into a search engine. And you may have a perfectly suitable piece of art to match that term, but search engines will deliver your work to them only if those words or phrases are in the content on the page surrounding your image! If I had a penny for every artists who has included very little in the way of descriptions around their artwork… That diminutive description scenario leaves it up to that artist to drive all their traffic. Search engines will rarely find their work to show it to the person searching for it. After a year of writing and re-writing my content, both to make it more easily found and more personal, this is a subject near and dear, but I’m beginning to digress from the subject!

Fine Art America

There was a reason I was going there, though, because it explains my decision to expand and offer my work on other print on demand sites. While I am beginning to see some fruit from my labor of re-working all those descriptions, I also recognize that there’s a benefit to being on a high profile print on demand service that ranks high in the search engines on its own accord. Because a POD like Fine Art America has a high web ranking, my artwork with similar quality in descriptions and titles, has a better chance of rising to the top in search engine results. I wouldn’t count on any of these sites to generate results internally. Yes, there’s the possibility that a customer may come directly to the site and plug in a keyword that leads them to your art, but there’s a lot of internal competition for those results. I picked Fine Art America for the additional visibility for my work as well as a great line up of quality print options, some of which are not duplicated through my Zenfolio POD.

My feedback on Fine Art America as a Print on Demand service will, understandably, be brief right now, but I’ll try to follow up on this in the future. It is funny, though, that one of the features I was most excited about is one with which I’ve been least enchanted. What feature is that? It’s the ability for customers to preview 100% crops of my work. I spend a lot of time zoomed in on my work in increments far greater than 100% in order to fine-tune the details of anything I want to offer for sale. Yet when I see it at 100% in a customer preview it feels a bit gimmicky and unrealistic to me. This is not the way people observe artwork. At least, I can’t recall the last time I personally stepped up to a photo or painting and put my eye an inch from the surface. I’ve left the feature enabled. Perhaps there are potential customers who will appreciate it far more than I do, but for me it does little.

The one challenge I’ve found with Fine Art America is with its pricing tool. And here-in lies one of your challenges if you choose to offer work on multiple print on demand sites. Just as an example, Redbubble allows you to set a percent mark-up, and until only the past year or so it was a single percent for each artwork, be it greeting cards or canvas prints! Fine Art America by comparison allows one to set a dollar amount markup for each print size the artist chooses to offer, but there’s no way to choose whether or not you offer a given paper at that size or to charge a different artist markup for a given substrate. Combine this with Zenfolio that has an entirely different level of control and it quickly becomes complicated! My goal, of course, is to keep the prices as close as humanly possible despite these different pricing mechanisms and different base prices. Still, there is no way to keep multiple print on demand sites completely in sync in regards to pricing. I can only dream that at least Fine Art America might beef up this one area and give artists a little more control over the pricing of different substrates, or for that matter whether an artist even wants to offer a given work on a given paper. This has been the only thorn in my side thus far with Fine Art America.

There are only two account levels at Fine Art America. Currently with a free account, you can upload an unlimited number of images, but you can only offer 25 of them for sale through their Print on Demand Service. To offer more of your work for sale, you’ll need a premium account for $30 a year. There are some perks that come with that price including an artist portal similar in concept to Zenfolio’s portfolio. The benefit of the artist website is, of course, that you can drive your traffic to a site with fewer potential distractions while still making your work available through the main marketplace. Fine Art America allows far less control over the look and feel of their artist website. You can modify the header and choose from a handful of color schemes, but beyond that your control over how the site looks is very limited. In fact, you can’t remove menu items you don’t intend to use. There are tools like the built in blog and mailing list that duplicate my main site. Now, if you don’t already have those features elsewhere, you’ll be excited to have a print on demand service that includes them, but I’d still like the power to hide the tools I’m not currently using.

Zazzle

The only print on demand site I have a presence on but haven’t covered in depth here is Zazzle. Chronologically I wasn’t quite sure where to place it, and I’ve also had a waxing and waning relationship with Zazzle. There’s not enough control over the prices and substrates of prints for me to utilize them for regular prints while offering the same work on other sites. I would never come close to similar prices based on my past attempts. I have experimented in the past year with offering some collage-style posters through their POD site but honestly haven’t created enough work in that genre to report on that one way or the other. Most of my sales on Zazzle have been through t-shirts and products like their iPhone and iPad covers. I find the great bulk of my sales on Zazzle occur near Christmas. Zazzle offers a dizzying array of products, though, so it’s worth checking out. Perhaps I will find the time to build more of a presence there, but that’s about the extent of my feedback for them. If you have more detailed feedback on this POD, feel free to sound off in the comments!

Summary

Aside from Imagekind, I would recommend any of the above for the visual artist who aspires to offer their work via Print on Demand. Heck, assuming Imagekind’s products still match what I got several years ago, I’d even recommend their products. The thing is there is no one size fits all option. Despite liking their products, I slowly found Redbubble to be an ill-fitting shoe for me. You might have a different experience. My top two POD choices at the moment should be obvious from the above, but it really does boil down to what fits you best. If you’re good with a Print on Demand site that has a great reputation and ranks high in the search engines, and you can live with an artist portal that you have little ability to customize, you can hardly beat $30 a year for Fine Art America. If you need more control over the look and feel of your site and the products and prices you offer, then Zenfolio could be your ticket. My main hope is in the end I’ve offered some insight that will allow you to get a better handle on what print on demand will fit you!

Links:

• Imagekind
• Redbubble
• Zenfolio – If you try Zenfolio and like it, if you sign up using the following referral code, you’ll get 10% off your first year and I’ll also receive a credit! The code is M3E-ETM-NDE
• Fine Art America – If this helped you in deciding, please use this link to sign up for a Fine Art America artist website and I’ll get a $5 credit.
• Zazzle

Note: Have your own experiences to share concerning Print on Demand Sites? Please share them in the comments, and feel free to link to articles on the subject you’ve written or found particularly helpful. This is one post that I was hoping would be beneficial to others trying to follow their dreams, and the more input the better.

Those who’ve never read my about prints section may not realize that my existing main gallery is handled by Zenfolio. At the same time two years that I made that my venue of choice, I also looked closely at Fine Art America. There are a variety of reasons that I went with Zenfolio, but I also cut back on the time I spent on places like Redbubble and Zazzle. It wasn’t a dig on those sites but a desire to have a place to show my work that was less art community and more me-focused. I can’t say anything bad about that experience and I have plenty of nice things to say about Zenfolio. In fact, preparing this post has convinced me that I need a separate post later that may interest everyone but is more aimed at artists to discuss my experience on various art sites over the past few years – my own little knowledge dump that might assist other visual artists with choices about where they want to concentrate their own efforts. There really is no one size fits all in this category.

Long story somewhat shorter, I realized that as nice as it was to have my insulated oasis, it makes perfect sense to have more exposure for my work. More venues equal more potential eyes. Someone who goes to Fine Art America and searches has a potential to find my work while they might not have known about me otherwise. Even someone searching via a search engine has a better chance finding my art on a site that will inevitably ranks higher in those search engines. Since Fine Art America was my next in line choice two years ago, and a site about which I’ve heard plenty of good word of mouth, it was a natural choice. As I’ve already had a couple of sales after a very short tenure there, I’ve got a good feeling about this additional online gallery.

Now, you awesome folks who have followed my work for awhile may be wondering in the future if it matters whether you purchase via my Fine Art America site or my existing Zenfolio-based print gallery? There’s actually not a concise answer to that question. Quality wise, I’m happy to say, any of the above, but beyond that, there’s not a one for one match between the sites product wise. You will find products and sizes from one site to the other differ. Just as one example, Fine Art America offers more canvas print sizes and options. So, you may find that the products on offer coupled with your decorating needs make the decision for you. And as always if there’s ever a question I can answer that will help you, you need only drop me a note.

I’m still uploading to my new account and will be for the foreseeable future, but I’ve managed to  set up print collections for New York City, Atlanta, and London – plus a handful of pictures that aren’t yet in their own collections.

Hope you’ll all give the new site a little tire kicking and heck, even the existing gallery has had a minor facelift recently to warrant a virtual stroll.

And I was absolutely floored! Before even knowing that the artistic director for the ceremonies was director Danny Boyle, I commented that the event was incredibly cinematic. How close to the truth could I have been? From the Queen parachuting in with James Bond to Mr. Bean in Chariots of Fire and around 40 odd years of popular music, there really was a little something for everyone as the opening ceremony built to a crescendo with an innovative torch lighting.

It may well be the only part of the games I come even close to catching in entirety, but even I was quite struck by it. Yet, you may be wondering what I meant by surprise? Well, that would be seeing a mockup of none other than Glastonbury Tor at one end of the stadium! Wow!

Beautiful Glastonbury Tor

The stage version of Glastonbury Tor looked a wee bit different versus the reality, but I felt an instant connection that’s hard to describe seeing the Tor there, real or idealized. Glastonbury is of course the site of the massive annual music festival, but the tor is also believed to be the mythical Avalon from the Arthurian legends. Before the lands were drained for farming, the massive hill would have stood in a lake which might better explain the connection with Avalon.

The interesting thing is maybe this explains a small surge earlier in the year of T-shirts featuring another version of this photo? As best I recall all those sales were in the UK and although no complaints on my part, it was a puzzling blip in sales of the shirt. Seeing the Tor featured so prominently tonight immediately made me wonder if there was some connection, but maybe it was something else entirely?

At any rate, Bravo to London on a huge spectacle to start the games! Even if seeing the city did make me a bit wistful to realize it’s closing in on four years since I was last there! What’s up with that? I’m slipping!