FAA New Ideas Time to Beat others at their game

I am continually amazed by the dedication that the FAA staff has to making this site a place for art to be bought and sold. You have put in a lot of work here and it is showing, and you should be noted for your dedication to both art and your business. It is making it easier for all of us artists and we highly appreciate it.

Ebay has had its spot in selling art for years and has gone out of its way to make certain that it's getting rich off the sales of the artists (just try to list something there - you're talking about $30-$35) every new ebay feature comes with a price tag and they are so lousy at making it user friendly, you just can't get enough sales to cover the price you pay to be seen.

Fast forward a few more years and along comes ArtByUs.com. I have no complaints about this site, started by artists for artists it's a great place to showcase your artwork without the fees that come along when you use ebay. It makes it easy to sell there, but I'm not certain that they are growing quite enough to become the place to be when showing your art. I go on this site everyday, and the owners are stickler's about making certain that the site is for artists (I turned in someone recently who was showcasing factory made jewelry from China - heck, I could go to WalMart and get that! Needless to say, their auctions were closed and their accounts frozen.) But the drawback is that the quality of art just isn't there. Compared to ebay, you just can't find really really great stuff there and I worry that the site is not going to show the increase in traffic that it needs to in order to be a highly successful tool for artists to use.

Fast forward another few years and I get an email from FAA. I was skeptical. I signed up anyway.

I can only say that in the few years that FAA has been here I've been impressed at how much versatility they have put into the site and it continues to get better all the time.
The only thing that I worry about is that the marketing has not been strong enough to bring in the potential buyers. But all good business plans take time and the more I am here the more I am willing to wait it out.

That being said, I would like to take the time to note that I would love to see an auction area on this site. I think that some buyers - most notably the occasional ones, not art collectors - but those looking to just put a solid piece of art into their homes - really like the auction idea. I think that they are spending their time mostly on ebay - largely because, again, the quality of art isn't there on ArtByUs.com. I think the buy-it-outright option here scares them a little and they feel a sense of anonimity with the buying options on ebay. I think that an auction area here would be a great way to give buyers choices on how they want to purchase art.

I look at this site and scan everyday and I am amazed by the quality of art here. It's literally everywhere and there should be no reason that most artists are not selling on this site.

A feed back function for buyers is also a good idea. People live and die by those recommendations on other sites. There are many more advantages to doing this - I could probably write another page about it, so I won't go into now.

I'm not asking FAA to become ebay - but borrowing a few great ideas from another successful business is done all the time. I know this because I work in retail advertising, and sometimes much of my job is looking at what our competitors are doing and then improving on the technique.

Thanks FAA for your dedication to the art world and collectors alike. I look forward to being here for many more years.

Laura Swink