These are all posted to my tombloodart.com ASF website and promoted on Insta and FB - yet I've never had so much as a nibble on getting prints of any of these. Meanwhile, I sell prints almost daily of some of these images on other sites that I don't even promote. What am I doing wrong?
I had a similar thing happen when I first tried selling direct from my own site. Spent months pushing Blue Ridge sunrise work there, nothing. Same prints moved steadily on third-party platforms I barely touched. Took me a while to realize people were browsing those platforms with intent to buy, while my site visitors were just looking. The traffic quality mattered more than the traffic volume. Have you checked where your site visitors are coming from versus where the actual buyers land? Sometimes the answer's in the behavior gap, not the images themselves.
Hey Tom! This is actually a really common frustration, and the fact that you're selling prints daily on other sites tells you something important: the work connects with buyers. That's the hard part, and you've already got it.
The difference is almost certainly traffic source, not the work itself. Sites like Fine Art America, Saatchi, Singulart (wherever those other sales are happening) have millions of browsers already searching for art by subject, style, and keyword. Your ASF site only gets the traffic YOU send there, and social media followers aren't the same as art buyers actively searching for surrealist prints.
A few moves that tend to close this gap:
- Look at what's selling on those other platforms and reverse-engineer WHY. Which pieces sell most? What keywords are buyers finding them through? That tells you what your buying audience actually wants, which should shape what you promote on your own site.
- When you post on Instagram or Facebook, link to the SPECIFIC piece's product page, not your homepage. "This 24x36 print of 'The Plot Thickens' is $X, link in bio" converts. "Check out my website" doesn't. Every post needs one piece, one price, one link.
- Your social audience may be other artists, not collectors. Check who's engaging with your posts. If it's mostly fellow painters, you're building community (great) but not a buyer pipeline. Collector audiences come from hashtags like #surrealistart #magritteinspired #artforyourhome, not #artistlife or #stlouisartist.
- Run a simple print sale on one of your best-selling pieces from those other sites. Pick the piece that moves the most on the marketplace, post it with a 72-hour 15% off code, and promote it three times across Instagram and Facebook with a direct link to that product page. That tells you whether the issue is traffic, pricing, or presentation.
The prints selling elsewhere prove the demand exists. Now it's about getting that same buyer intent flowing to your own site instead of a marketplace that takes a cut.
Want me to look at your collection and figure out which pieces to lead with for a print push on your site?
Other resources you might find helpful:
- Sold 14 pieces in my first Open Studio! — In-person open studio events with community connection significantly outperform online sales; concrete strategy for converting viewers to buyers through physical access and local engagement.
- Beyond Galleries: Pooling Our Reach for Direct-to-Collector Art Sales — Artists pooled their reach through newsletter and blog swaps to move from social-only validation to actual buyer inquiries and sales.
- What Arty Said! - May 22, 2026 11:19 AM — Specific strategies to increase print sales: pair work with personal narrative, create video content showing texture/scale, and use room mockups to help buyers visualize ownership.
Arty is our artist super-assistant. Trained on all things related to art business & marketing. use @arty in a post or comment to ask Arty directly. upvote & downvote to provide feedback.
I had this happen with my lampshade series. Posted them everywhere, sold nothing through my own site. Then someone licensed one through a stock platform I forgot I'd uploaded to. Sometimes the work finds its audience through paths we don't control, which is frustrating when you're trying to build your own storefront. The pieces themselves have real atmosphere, especially that orange-lit skull. Maybe the sites where they're selling have different traffic patterns, people browsing with buying intent already turned on. Your own site might be getting lookers who aren't in purchase mode yet. I don't have a solution, just recognizing the same weird split I've experienced.