Does Anyone Sell On Instagram ?

Instagram requires building a following of real people interested in your art which requires catering to the algorithm and playing the usual SM games. Post and forget won't work there.

I have been wondering about Instagram too. I only recently started using it and see they have a shop feature - wondering if anyone uses that?

As I enquired about using Facebook or/and Instagram myself, I just react asking what David means by catering to the algorithm and playing SM games.

Regarding Insta -- If you have a few minutes to invest, here are a few videos you might want to watch. To put it simply, Insta is NOT -NOT - NOT what it offered to the art genres and artists 10 years ago. David K brought up a good point a few posts up, being "requires building a following of real people INTERESTED in your art --- catering to the algorithm." Excellent point, and you need to be aware of your Return On Investment (ROI) and yes, your time is $$.

The Tara Wagner video (#3) below goes into ROI deeply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LqIoFB62Rw&ab_channel=KelseyRodriguez

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vesOlrVo3xc&ab_channel=CatGraffam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKjRGiRo4NM&ab_channel=TaraWagnerCoaching

Juergen, as Thom has shown, there are a lot of videos on YT about how to gain followers and work the algorithm in order to be successful on IG. Bottom line, it's a lot of annoying, time consuming work IMO, I'd rather spend my time making art. The algorithm keeps changing also, what worked a few months ago might not work now. I know of a few artists that had a significant following that just gave up on it because it became so time consuming and have focused their efforts elsewhere.

All that said there are artists that have been successful with IG, it helps a lot if you have a good niche.

Instagram is about posting stuff and creating a pile of people that then become familiar with your work. I think people that sell food have a better time with that than art. They post their latest creation. But you also have to out and gush over the junk people post there. I think its too much work, and I don't know if they changed things, but you can't add a link on the image, making it totally useless for me.

I think if you have the personality for it, and you can attract with charm then maybe it will work out.

I tried it, I hated it, I stopped. Never got a single hit. Still seem to get friends, no idea why. I haven't posted in over a year.


----Mike Savad

What form of SM does work for you, Mike?

I'm using facebook groups that are very carefully selected. So many don't want spam. And others have hidden spam rules. Others have spam rules but don't mind related posts. But mostly facebook.


----Mike Savad

You only get one live link with Instagram up in your profile (you can add 'dead' links to your images that people would need to cut & paste).
If the live link points to your personal website here AND you have Google Analytics set up, you will be able to see if any sales come through from Insta.
Anything else is a guessing game.
I have Linktree as my live link, which in turn links to FAA/Pixels and other PoD's, so I'll never know.

My answer is: No, I don't sell on instagram, but I do share some of my work there.

Here's my answer to the IG question I posted in a different thread.



I just started an Instagram page just to see what it is all about...

I committed to giving it until I had 250 posts and 2000 followers before I made a decision as to rather I can sell art there or not, However, It is not going to take that long. I don't think it is worth the effort. The big problem is you can not post a link on Instagram and all the people have to do is click on the link to go to the sale page as you can do on Facebook and Twitter.

I am leaning towards giving up Instagram to spend my time in places I think are more worth the effort.

Western you can actual do a lot with that one link.

It can in fact become many.

You do that by using what is called a smart link.

Look up Linktree on google.

It allows you to link to as many sites as you want; bearing in mind the more link you add the more people have to scroll.

You could say have a link to your FAA account then separate links to individual images on it, focusing on the images you want to promote.

You could also add the same link to twitter ,,,,, .

This is my smart link;

https://linktr.ee/scorpiondesign

I also have a domain name that points at it

scorpiondesign7.space

My twitter account is @scorpiondesign7

If you look at my pinned tweet it is in fact a link to my link tree account.

For those who do not want to use link tree; buffer has something very similar, they call it a start page; if is available for both the free and paid for versions of buffer.

Yes I sell on IG and I do not post often, 330 followers.

I will admit, what I sell are music photos, not a lot of my creative art work.

So I post those music photos and tag them with the proper hashtags and it brings them to pixels/faa.
How do I know, they reply underneath my post that they purchased something or messaged me.

I have a few followers on Instagram, but feel that it is a waste of time.

I have a page on Facebook and started following a group that boosts my style of art: half a million subscribers.

They love me, but i cannot advertise... I must work myself into the confidence of the group... first.

Local scenes, tagged and sold locally, originals. Works for me.

Yes.

I have two IG accounts, one for my cat paintings and another for anything else, mainly my Portugal Paintings.

I sell faa items and also get custom orders for paintings on my IG accounts.

I was wondering about the same related to Pinterest..because I just dump and then nothing.. but then a lady contacted me recently, that she found me on Pinterest and asked me to paint her cat 4 times in different positions
:))

Similar on twitter.. and LinkedIn.. seems nothing happen but I got orders from all SM so I sure that it was from that particular SM .

And Facebook is still the best..

So even if I wonder sometimes if I should drop one or two SM to have it easier, I wont because I know that all work.

So If I post, I post to FB, page and profile, 2 IG, TW, Pin, LinkedIn, and eventually all paintings will end up on ny WP blog too..

All this works. (And I dont do automatic anything anywhere, and I dont pay for anything on any of them) .... tyring and boring .. :D but works so I do it all

It works better if you link your Facebook Shop with your Instagram account. That way you can tag your Facebook shop's products in your Instagram posts.

Like this:


https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd0nrFPuAuG/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=