Newbie Curiosity

We get spammers who jump in and make a mess.
Voting for members only keeps people from soliciting votes outside of faa.

Also, I think it means, you .. cannot...open/make a contest until you are a member of 30 days' standing......or it should, 'cause, yes, newbies make a mess of it, lol !


love this: welcome to FAA........"f.v"...........

it probably is easy enough to make fake accounts just to vote in the contests, and this would help cut back on that. and the spammer thing as well.

---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Huh.
All makes some sense....
I guess I don't quite understand the significance of "a contest" other than recognition ....
So, lol, a "newbie would make a mess" of the process.
Thx all.
Looking forward to continued learning curve.
This is quite a group, and quite an adventure.
Darby

"I guess I don't quite understand the significance of "a contest" other than recognition ...."

Hardly even that really, they are just another potential opportunity to get your image seen by buyers. A few have claimed to have sold due to contests, seems to be quite a rare occurrence though, it's never happened to me that's for sure. I have received "likes" "favs" and followers due to participation in contests however and that activity does help with ranking in FAA search (very little) and perhaps Google.

I enter any and all contests whose theme I have images to fit. I see it as a way to expose my work. Beyond that, I think there is little value in the contests. The only recognition I want is sales.

I think mostly the contests are viewed by other members. Many will say that it does little good to expose your work to other artists here, but I disagree. Some artists by work created by other artists, and they surely share work that they think friends and family will enjoy. Especially if it's in a medium they don't work with. If an oil painter has a friend who is looking for a seascape photo, they may share one of my pieces with them if they see it in a contest.

It is so easy to scroll through the contests and enter the ones you can every few days, anyway.

For people who sell face to face, nothing perks up the ears of a potential buyer like saying "this won 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place" in an online contest. Wallet's open a little easier because in the mind of the buyer, they are getting something that has appeal, and that has the power to disarm their financial guard and make a purchase. I know because I do it and it works. Not every time, but some of the time. People want to feel as though they're getting something that has been approved by others. Psych 101.

You have to be willing to sell face to face and be good with people, otherwise contests won't do much as others have stated.

To me,

The purpose of contests is to have something to do, while waiting for a response to that brilliant, concise, cojent comment you made here on this forum

Abbie mentioned in another thread a few days/weeks back that contest placement, along with likes and favs do have some impact in ratings, if I recall correctly...
They also get picked up by google too.

~Richard
http://www.reevephotos.com

Members who are brand spanking new can create/devise contests. They cannot, however, become an admin of a group for 90 days.

And, contests DO bring sales!

Thank you, David and Andrew for your reasoning and feedback! You make interesting, valid points.
John, yes, of course, Psych 101--thx for that great reminder (duh, I hadn't considered bragging rights until your comment.)
Roger, you made me giggle! 🤗
May I inquire more about "ratings and picked up by Google, Richard, please?
CJ,
Every contest I've read about says "may not enter contest until 30 day membership has been achieved"....
(I can't imagine starting or admin'ing a contest as a new member.) Thank you for added info.

Contests are helpful, if nothing else, as a source of feedback. It's one thing to post images you like, but others have to like them too, so contests let you know how your pix show among in the huge number of images that can be seen here. My experience is that contest results don't correlate to buyer's tastes, but they're useful and there' some encouragement when you get some votes.

Doug,
Great point!
Thx. D

Darby,

We can focus on creating sales internally, which gives FAA a dynamic. I think this was a primary function designed into FAA early in FAA's development. Smart.

Or we each can decide how much we want to focus on developing sales externally, which is difficult, but matters a great deal.

I focus much more on the latter. Others mix it up. Some focus on selling to other artists primarily. We each decide in our own ways depending on what we produce.

Dave

Members who have not had their profiles up for 30 days cannot vote. You can certainly start a contest and enter a contest from day one.

Dave,
Thank you for bringing up another dynamic of FAA I was not aware existed--Opportunities within and without.

CJ,
Thank you for clarification! So I can potentially join in entering a contest; however, that would be the extent of participation. That is the exact info I was wondering about.

Thanks to all!
Darby

Darby,

I used to use Compete.com to get very rough traffic numbers on different websites. FAA has in the last few years run at roughly 1 million unique visitors per month. The really number? We have no clue, but using compete over several different websites I would get a bit of a feel for size. Meaning if I saw an opportunity where no one was going, how much of an opportunity was that? One million ONLY for the sake of argument matters. Pinterest at Christmas was around 160 million. Amazon claims 2 billion visitors per month US only, but that is because Amazon is running a server farm. LOL

Using Alexa you will get very crude numbers, but it still matters that Google is 1, YoutTube is 2 etc........

Those things of course are not the nuts and bolts of running a campaign. Not at all.

Compete.com got folded into another company that now sells other products.

Some numbers might be available elsewhere.

FAA's possible 1 million might include 400k artists showing up. Then some part of their family and friends. Even without the actually numbers you get the feel for who you target on FAA. Or you can target FAA's search features and much of that will not be artists, their families etc.......Or over the long haul at FAA become featured on the front page....slight chance. But huge traffic if it happens. The 100s of thousand that do come here monthly CAN be coming to shop for prints. Unlike other internet traffic going elsewhere.

It all goes in the hopper.

Dave