Any artist knows that getting your name out there can be incredibly difficult, even if you’re good and have talent. Logic would say that in this day and age of digital media where the world is literally at the tips of our fingers it should be easy. Right? Not Quite. Even in this digital age, if you don’t know how to market yourself then your just another artist in the crowd.
I’m no big name in the art community but, I have learned some valuable things along the way both from friends and self discovery. One of those valuable things just so happens to be, “Fine Art America“; for ease of reading, I’ll be referring to this website as FAA. A new friend (thank you Barbara!) recently recommended this incredible tool to me that can be used by any artist to help get their work out there.
FAA is one of the fastest growing art websites out there right now; there are over a hundred thousand artists on this site. That’s a whole lot of competition you might be thinking. Yes, true. But, FAA has a bunch of tools that can help you stand out among all the faces in the crowd.
When you sign up for FAA you’ll be asked if you’re either (1) an artist/photographer, (2) galleria, or (3) a buyer. Obviously, choose whatever you identify with but, for all you artists, the choice should be obvious. Once you select the artist/photographer option you just put in your info and your done; it’s rather painless.
As a free member, you get most of the same benefits that a premium member gets but, if your serious about selling your art and putting your work out there, premium is the way to go and its extremely affordable. The cost of a premium membership is only $30 a year; if you do the math that’s $2.50 a month. If you’re trying to build your own art website and that’s all your doing, then FAA is well worth it considering that traditional websites have other costs you have to worry about; subscription fees, hosing fees, plugins, etc.
If you opt to do the free membership then you are limited to 25 image uploads, you don’t get your own website, and you don’t get all the cool shopping plugins for your external website if you have one. This is great if you just want to try it out but, for the serious users, go premium you won’t regret it.
Once you become a member (premium or not) you have instant access to the FAA community where you can participate in discussions, contests, create products, and follow friends. With such a large group of artists, and the networking capabilities FAA gives to you, you literally have a massive art community at your fingertips.
One particular thing that really stood out to me was that you can participate in an image licensing program! What this means is that you can set the price on your images and allow other’s to purchase the license to use it for advertisements, blogs, tv advertisements, physical merchandise, and the list goes on. It’s an incredible tool that more artists should be taking advantage of!
Licensing your images does come at a risk since your trusting that the buyer is only going to be using your photographs for what they bought it for but, there are legal implications should the buyer decide not to do the right thing. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t deter any artist from considering the idea of licensing their work. There are a few different options as far as licensing is concerned; non-commercial rights, exclusive rights, first rights, non-exclusive rights, one time use, rights managed, and royalty free. If you end up doing this then you will have to decide on which one works the best for you.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the added perks to being a premium member is the fact that you get your own website where you can sell your work exclusively, and you can put the plugins on an external website if you have one. FAA uses a sister site called pixels that hosts their premium members; its all the same content just under a different name.
If your going to be using FAA and decide to become a premium member, you can upload all your images and set your default settings through FAA; it will all link over to your pixels webpage so you don’t have to do anything twice. The website that is created for you is rather impressive and quite professional looking; you won’t be disappointed! Click the icon below to check out the website that came with my premium membership and maybe I’ll see you on Fine Art America one day. Cheers!
