pandabukkake
Newbie
- Jul 17, 2012
- 15
- 0
My wife is an artist, we are from Russia and moved to the USA last year where we are trying to build an art business online. One of the hardest things I have found in SEO is how to get organic traffic for her art. I want to know how to better monetize her art.
The current format is Blog + Painting, and the main site attracts about 100 organic visits a day, PR2. The artworks are mostly of a political nature and of current events so sometimes there have been 3-5k vistor spikes depending on who has linked in. These spikes have converted to a few big money customers willing to spend thousands on originals. Unfortunately it is few and far between with these types of people no matter how you market in the art world, especially online.
The goal however is not to convince people to buy original work, but prints which have an unlimited supply and the highest of ROIs of anything. Here's a list of things we have tried:
? Ebay
We had moderate success relative to traffic on eBay selling a couple hundred poster prints of some works. Unfortunately eBay slapped us frequently with bogus complaints due to the controversial nature of the artwork. Extremist political groups in Europe got our listing removed for no reasons, and corporations filed bogus takedown claims. All of these matters took too long to resolve (always in our favour at least), and the traffic went continually down in our store. eBay made a bunch of changes which made being a TRS impossible for us, and if you are not a TRS you get no traffic. Our profits were very moderate, but it did lead to some new fans. We have removed all eBay listing as of now as etsy is much better.
Fun fact eBay: People buying art there are very fickle. I have put an original work (that I wouldn't actually sell for less than a few thousand) as a test for $75 next to a poster selling for $20. The posters and original received reasonably similar traffic however 5 poster prints sold and the original remained unsold. I believe this is because the psychology of people who buy original art online is so different from those looking for a fun poster. Also, the poster buyers think it must be good art if someone made a poster of it, and they couldn't possibly afford an original of such quality (actually true).
? Etsy
The site is mostly sellers and not buyers, but it's not all bad. Etsy is spending plenty of money to attract buyers and we turn a profit on our listing fees because for every 20 cents takes from us, we see about $1.50 worth of organic incoming traffic from google and other referrals they are paying for. Our conversion rate is very low on Etsy though compared to eBay (4% of clicks bought on eBay). We have had only 23 orders in some 25,000 views worth of traffic. I imagine this is actually pretty good compared to most etsy sellers who go a year without a single sale. Etsy SEO is exploitable in the tags, but I keep it white hat because they can easily ban you and there is no point in risking that.
Etsy has also lead to a lot of cool stuff, magazine covers, contact with art directors from major production studios, and other international coverage which has brought in offline business.
Etsy buyers won't pay more than $200 for anything, no original has sold directly on the site. The people who buy spend a long time reading the site before making their decision and with etsy sales the people are browsing both etsy and the homepage even if they don't buy.
? Selling Direct on the Homesite
Experimented with listings on the site, created a satellite store as well which ran ad campaigns directly to it. It didn't work out and was a huge money loser. Selling directly on the site has proven to be a poor choice from the integrity and duplicate content standpoints. The idea of buying organic traffic just to read the blogs on the site doesn't work either.
The organic side of things I can't figure out either. Google doesn't know what to think of the site as evidenced by the keyword traffic. Some of the referring words are really hilarious, like "winning roulette strategies", and "gay sex when married".
? Facebook Ad Campaigns
Facebook ads are great and easy to target an exact demographic. I had conversion rates on some campaigns above 2%, and CTRs and .0250 (which is triple what I would expect). The problem hoever is that the traffic only converted to singleton poster purchases which did not offset the campaign costs. I started off at -90% ROI and made ads that "only" lost 40%. I think the pricing of facebook makes sense for only branding and hooking people in long term to a product or subscription given the rates.
? Demographics
I have found no logic to the profile of the customer besides being male and under 60. The majority orders come from the USA, but we have had orders from almost every nation now. The non-USA traffic buys at 5x greater rate per capita.
What does everyone think of adwords as a product showcase campaign? And what about directing paid traffic to etsy? Any advice for making steady money out of this online?
*The site is: nxdixkhuzinx.com Replace the x's with a's. It has a link to the etsy store in the left sidebar as well.
The current format is Blog + Painting, and the main site attracts about 100 organic visits a day, PR2. The artworks are mostly of a political nature and of current events so sometimes there have been 3-5k vistor spikes depending on who has linked in. These spikes have converted to a few big money customers willing to spend thousands on originals. Unfortunately it is few and far between with these types of people no matter how you market in the art world, especially online.
The goal however is not to convince people to buy original work, but prints which have an unlimited supply and the highest of ROIs of anything. Here's a list of things we have tried:
? Ebay
We had moderate success relative to traffic on eBay selling a couple hundred poster prints of some works. Unfortunately eBay slapped us frequently with bogus complaints due to the controversial nature of the artwork. Extremist political groups in Europe got our listing removed for no reasons, and corporations filed bogus takedown claims. All of these matters took too long to resolve (always in our favour at least), and the traffic went continually down in our store. eBay made a bunch of changes which made being a TRS impossible for us, and if you are not a TRS you get no traffic. Our profits were very moderate, but it did lead to some new fans. We have removed all eBay listing as of now as etsy is much better.
Fun fact eBay: People buying art there are very fickle. I have put an original work (that I wouldn't actually sell for less than a few thousand) as a test for $75 next to a poster selling for $20. The posters and original received reasonably similar traffic however 5 poster prints sold and the original remained unsold. I believe this is because the psychology of people who buy original art online is so different from those looking for a fun poster. Also, the poster buyers think it must be good art if someone made a poster of it, and they couldn't possibly afford an original of such quality (actually true).
? Etsy
The site is mostly sellers and not buyers, but it's not all bad. Etsy is spending plenty of money to attract buyers and we turn a profit on our listing fees because for every 20 cents takes from us, we see about $1.50 worth of organic incoming traffic from google and other referrals they are paying for. Our conversion rate is very low on Etsy though compared to eBay (4% of clicks bought on eBay). We have had only 23 orders in some 25,000 views worth of traffic. I imagine this is actually pretty good compared to most etsy sellers who go a year without a single sale. Etsy SEO is exploitable in the tags, but I keep it white hat because they can easily ban you and there is no point in risking that.
Etsy has also lead to a lot of cool stuff, magazine covers, contact with art directors from major production studios, and other international coverage which has brought in offline business.
Etsy buyers won't pay more than $200 for anything, no original has sold directly on the site. The people who buy spend a long time reading the site before making their decision and with etsy sales the people are browsing both etsy and the homepage even if they don't buy.
? Selling Direct on the Homesite
Experimented with listings on the site, created a satellite store as well which ran ad campaigns directly to it. It didn't work out and was a huge money loser. Selling directly on the site has proven to be a poor choice from the integrity and duplicate content standpoints. The idea of buying organic traffic just to read the blogs on the site doesn't work either.
The organic side of things I can't figure out either. Google doesn't know what to think of the site as evidenced by the keyword traffic. Some of the referring words are really hilarious, like "winning roulette strategies", and "gay sex when married".
? Facebook Ad Campaigns
Facebook ads are great and easy to target an exact demographic. I had conversion rates on some campaigns above 2%, and CTRs and .0250 (which is triple what I would expect). The problem hoever is that the traffic only converted to singleton poster purchases which did not offset the campaign costs. I started off at -90% ROI and made ads that "only" lost 40%. I think the pricing of facebook makes sense for only branding and hooking people in long term to a product or subscription given the rates.
? Demographics
I have found no logic to the profile of the customer besides being male and under 60. The majority orders come from the USA, but we have had orders from almost every nation now. The non-USA traffic buys at 5x greater rate per capita.
What does everyone think of adwords as a product showcase campaign? And what about directing paid traffic to etsy? Any advice for making steady money out of this online?
*The site is: nxdixkhuzinx.com Replace the x's with a's. It has a link to the etsy store in the left sidebar as well.
, but I have seen a few such artists online. Always interested in networking with those who do things and are interested in making money, rather than the usual artist mindset that they must die before having success. We have rule in house about critique of artists, if they make more money than us, they are currently better than us.