Does pimping up your profile really help with sales? by Natalie Manuel

Great question Natalie . . . you have a real way with words!! I have not put any extra effort into my profile or home page or any marketing of any kind, so I will be watching this thread closely to see what others have to say.

Those people that have studied this through stat tracking have found that a large percentage of their traffic comes into pages other than their “Profile” page. Which means that allot of people are bypassing it and going directly to a specific photo, writing or journal. Also, one needs to ask if your redbubble “profile” is what is being used to send potential buyers to or is it your bubblesite. If it’s the bubblesite, then “pimping your profile” would be a waist of time. If it’s your rb "profile’ then it may be useful but you run the risk of the buyers going off and looking at (and maybe even buying) someone else’s work.

Also, I don’t remember where it’s at but rb put out a compilation of info from some of the higher selling members on the bubble. One of the things that was sait by many of them was that they kept their :profile" simple and uncluttered.

People check me out here, and other sites, and enquiries result from it.

I don’t think it mattera great deal. I have ‘pimped’ mine up from a while ago, but not to the extent of some others, which just look cluttered in my opinion. If people like a photo, they will buy it, regardless of the profile page..

I’m curious about this, too. I have noticed I received more comments when I am most active, adding several new art pieces, visiting and commenting on others work, and entering challenges and such. Factors contributing to selling my art seems totally unpredictable to me, however. Friends on my watchlist have bought work before when I’ve posted something they really liked. So, I know in these cases it was probably due to people responding to activity feeds for New Work on watchlist. I’ll be very active and not have any sales for a couple of months, and then check my sales after being away for a few days, then wham! I get a sale from a mystery buyer. I do feel that it is extremely important to put my best, eye-catching, and sometimes colorful work on my profile page, something that is easily dicernible as to what it is in the square format. It is my feeling that when people get a comment from you, or like a work that demanded their attention, they will often take a quick glance at the artist profile page to see what else they do. I know I’ve done this. If they like what they see, they make take ime to browse sme other works, if not, they go on to something else. That is why I always keep some of my best work on the front page. I will leave 2-3 newer works up or a short time, and then move them down on the list based on the initial response. If I think there are works not getting enough love, I wil check to see if there are other groups or challenges I may have overlooked to give it another chance to get some attention. If it still gets little attention,I may remove it, or move it to the bottom of the list.

I am curious to see input from others on this post, to see what seems to work for them.

“That is why I always keep some of my best work on the front page. I will leave 2-3 newer works up or a short time, and then move them down on the list based on the initial response.”

Couldn’t agree more. I order my folio based on comments, and views. So the front page should have your best work, which in turn will probably have the most comments etc. After a week of adding a new work, I also move it down the list after that, takes forever sometimes!

I agree Lisa, can seem very random to me. Also out of most of my sales, I still have no idea who bought them so can’t get any relevant info.

Pimp it!!!!…….

Having artwork people love enough to spend money on it does help an awful lot!!!
But thats why most of us have dayjobs… so we can create art/photos/writing in our spare time. Tags are really helpful. Think how many times you do a search for someone or something… if there’s not tags on the artwork then it won’t be found.
I know a few sales of mine are from friends, but I’ve had many anonymous buyers and I don’t know how they found the work. The work that’s sold hasn’t been on the front or first page either.

But as for pimping… some of my favourite artists have stuff all over their profile page, and their artwork flies out the door. Other faves have a clean simple profile page and also have work flying out the door… so its not the profile page, its the work (and the ‘who it is’ helps too sometimes).
I have found if I come across a page that takes too long to load, I’ll just click back and go in through another way (like directly to an artwork) unless I really want to see the whole page. Pimping a page with loads of extra images does that… so again, not always helpful. I do pity those on dialup too… because everything takes forever to load, whether pimped out or not.

I was thinking last night about just putting a few of my most popular works as clickable thumbnail images on my front page, as I tend to not keep the most popular ones up top. I know some people just like to come see what I’ve been up to lately, so I want the first images to show my latest. If something gets no love after a few weeks I make it invisible. But there are people who have way too much going on, I think – you could be scrolling forever.