Hej guys,
I would like to ask some questions here regrading your concept, which I think is really nice and makes many people happy...but some things are puzzling to me

1. Why is the voting necessary at all if your goal is to bring art to peoles homes? Why don't you let people, who actually buy these peaces to choose among all the submitted works?

What if a person likes an art piece which was not voted into the best 24 or the winner of teh week?

2. As far as I remember the prices for the works in teh shop should be 8 EUR...I see prices around 2000 DKK for the winning peaces...how well does this go with the concept of "bringing art into peoples homes" ?

3. Who is financing this whole thing? Did you get a grant from a foundation or do you all volunteer your time for free? Is this a for profit or a nonprofit organisation?

I ask these questions simply because I am curious and I when I am curious it bugs me unless I get an answer :o)

Hi danalisa99,
Thanks! - And you're always welcome to voice your opinion. I’ll try to answer one by one..

1. As I wrote in the other post too: Voting is a central element of the concept behind YayArt. We need a selection process, people were having enough difficulties with the amount of art we had after just a few weeks online, if we continued like that, potential buyers would drown in art. So, we made what we consider to be the most fair selection process, with is the democratic model.

2. The actual pricing hasn't been published prior to our lunch, neither has the product details. We could easily have made a much cheaper print and sold that for a fraction of the current price, but we have chosen to make a quality product on real canvas, which is very expensive. It goes well with the concept of bringing art into peoples homes, if people don't consider cheap prints as art.

3. YayArt is financing everything. Its a privately owned company, like Deviantart and Threadless. We do it because we care, and because it interests us. This whole thing started because we had difficulties finding cool stuff for our own walls, and meanwhile we saw a buch of very cool stuff online. So we thought that was an great match and we created YayArt :)

Hi Sune,

thanks for the reply!

I have some further comments:

1. I agree that some sort of selection helps buyers to get an owerview and get some kind of guidance...but! I don't think that it is very democratic to take away the option to buy an art work from a person if his taste is not in line with the majoriy.

My suggestion with regard to voting is that it whould only be a guideline for the buyers. They can see the oppinion of the majority - the show, but at the same time they can choose for purchase any other piece if they want to. Don't you think it would be fair?

At least it would provide guidance and at the same time recognise the freedom of the buyers and his independance of the "djudgement" of other people. I thnk this model would be more supportive of your core values, which is to bring art to people.

2. I remember when I signed an online contract with YAYART at the submission of my work, it said that prices for the works will be at 8EUR and 50/50 split of that revenue between artist and YAYart. So, I am not sure what you mean by "prices have not been published prior to launch"?

3. Sounds great! This menas that you ARE actually interested to sell as many works as possible. Well, in that case I would strongly recommend you to change the sellection process based on random votes, since it is not very reflective of the sellability of the art you have in your shop.

Let the buyers choose and voting can provide guidance to them as to what peaces are popular, but not limit their choice. You can also improve the layout of the site by sorting the art into categories such as "photo art" and "graphic art" and "cartoon art" and "illustrative art" or what ever...I am convinced people have strong preferences with regard to what catory they find most attractive

I am just very very skeptical about the voting procedure - it creates the bottle neck for art not a democratic platform...

what do you think of this?

Sure, my pleasure :)

1. Its a very fundamental part of our concept you are adressing here. I can only say, that people have enjoyed voting, and everyone I've shown the winners find a piece they love, so I think the concept is working. However, your opinion has been noted, and we will consider your idea for the future.

2. It said that artists would be payed 8€ and that we were aiming for a 50/50 split of revenue, which is very different from pricing it at 16€. We will actually hit close to a 50/50 revenue sharing, depending on how our sales effort works out the next few months.

3. I disagree with you, I believe the voting gives a great picture of what pieces are attractive for buyers. Also, there are other sites with tons of art in different categories, and I think it only makes it harder to find something you like.

Its okay to be skeptical, and I appreciate your feedback, but you must understand, that what you are suggesting is a very strategic decision, and not a casual overnight upgrade.

hej Sune,

I appreciate you considering my concerns and doing it publicly - it just shows how much good will there is in YAYart!

1. I definately agree that voting is fun, and I think it brings some life into the website...competitive spirit is present in all of us. But as I said, I think that if the voting is done as a popularity contest the fun will stay, but the bottle neck dissapere. Glad you will consider it...cos I am thinking of all the artists who could sell something withought being a winner in the voting contest (including myself) and I don't understand why would you forego this possible revenue?

3. I guess it is a fundamental question here - are people who vote potential buyers? or do the tastes voters reflect the tastes of potential buyers?
How do you answer these questions withough being subjective...is there a way to measure it?

I think tastes regarding art are very very fragmented and it is not a mass market here. However I would undesrtand you wanting to print only those works which would have highest sales, if the costs of printing 500 peaces would be much lower than printing 30 or 40...but is it?

but even if it is, I think you could make up for it, by having higher prices or accepting lower profit for the peaces that sale at lower quantity.

If your profit per poster (say) 5 EUR if all 500 copies are sold

and only 2 EUR if 100 copies are sold

why say no to 2EUR by refusing to sell the works that are less popular????

Now, regarding the difficulty of shoosing among many works:

it is true that looking through the tons of works can be confusing to people, but the Show room, where the "winners" are placed will allways give them a guidance as I said...so from this point of view you don't loose anything if you allow buyers to choose among all works, and still keep the voting as a "popularity contest"...

I understand that it is a change of concept, but I hope you will consider it, because I think YAY team and artists will only win from change ;o)

my best to you

Hi,
I would like to suggest that people be given the chance to vote "YaY!" but not "Nay" on each image. This would eliminate participants' friends from voting Yay for them and Nay for everyone else. It's one thing to be a loyal friend and another to skew the results of contests...and that makes it not a contest of artistic ability but one of who can get the most friends to vote for them. And how many of those friends will be buying prints once the contest ends?

I really don't want to sound cynical but we all know what human nature is. Voting only Yay lets peoples' friends be loyal to them, but doesn't additionally give them the power to effectively eliminate other artists by giving them indiscriminant Nays. This will frustrate the artists who don't engage in such practices into not bothering to post art at all. Then YayArt will eventually be left only with posting artists whose large group of friends will win them the contests but who may or may not bother buying the art prints. This will be sad for people - like me! - who love digital art and having a forum to post and sell.

I also agree with danalisa99 that people should be able to buy the art prints they like, not just of the winners. At the same time I understand that an art print must be shown to have a good chance of selling well to go to the expense of printing up a batch. So how about letting people reserve a print for themselves when they are voting (something a lot more committed than the "let me know when it's available" checkbox currently in use). If an artpiece gets X amount of "I will buy this print, what credit cards do you take"-type statements (X being better than break even of course), than YayArt can print up a batch of the art in question.

Sorry to make such a long statement. I guess you could condense my thoughts into "Let them Yay but not Nay, let them buy the prints they want, and let them eat cake," the last statement being acceptable in any situation.

Cheers,
bjlloyd

Hello bjlloyd

Thanks for your input.

Regarding the problem with friend voting then that is a problem we are very aware of. We have a system in place that makes sure that we can identify and calculate the number of friend Yay's or Nay's art pieces have received. So when we do select the winners we take this into account.

Thanks for your input again danalisa99, we might be able to figure something out a little down the road, let see what happens :)

Danalisa99, Bjlloyd, why can you not Understand that if you let free decision and free choice without voting, this website in just 2 weeks will go to die and will be full of shit art, already now with voting, is very difficult that the best art will be choice.. but is better then nothing.

Suggestions

1)Yayart team you might split the voting: 50% people voting and 50% yayart team voting...

2) I repeat sorry, but 250 dollars is not art for everyone, really I coundnt find any of my friend or as well people where I Work (all designers) won't buy a art like those for 250 dollars, I don't know how much you earn in your country, but actually 250 is very expensive and is a Elite price just for elite people, in fact you see you sell just 5 arts in 2 months...

Those kind of website online work beacuse usually they have very cheap price...

Danalisa, Bjolloyd, look around on the web you can find really great artist... thousand of really greats artist... and none of those still partecipate to yayart website.

3) Yayart Team I think you must make a selection of art, after the people've submitted, thinking to those parameters: Concept, quality, composition, innovation, art???

look on threadless, you know the website where they sell very good art on T shirt, the prices are very cheap, the art on the t shirt are so great, and they in few year
became a big very big company, with a Shop in New york as well!! so they accept all the submission, but they make a little selection before to approve and then they let the people voting! but only in what Threadless have selected before!!!

The voting:
I think, the way the voting system works doesn´t matter as long the YayArt team keeps the final decision to themselves and I think, this is already the case, am I wrong?
The pricing:
It is ok to offer the art as a high end quality product (there is a similar concept in UK which was about to close for the lack of sales though...), but in the long run I see two options for Yayart (just my personal opinion of course):
Keep the high level pricing, but start selling in galleries (I agree to Dario, there are not many people ready to spend so much money in internet, I would prefer to "fall in love" with a "real" artwork in a tasty surrounding before spending 250 EUR)
Or: Add low price prints on quality paper as a buying option.

quote!! Amarillo!! Add low price prints on quality paper as a buying option! yeah tis is the better solution

This is very interesting guys, and I belive you have good points. We've had great respons in real life, when people see the product, and everyone accept the price without questions. However, as an online shop it may be harder to show the value of the product. Also, Denmark is quite an expensive country compared to the rest of the world, so the situation might be different in other places of the world.

We got exhibitions lined up from August, where the art work will be exhibited at major companies in Denmark for 3-4 weeks at a time, it will be very interesting to see the effect of this.

We could introduce an alternative cheaper version of the works as well, but wouldn't this lower the value of the canvas prints and the brand? Also, would it be an attractive product? I'd love to hear some opinions..

Sune if you thin that in Italy the general Salary is about 800 euros and maximum 1.200 euros at month, with a range of taxes between 37% and 57%, you can imagine that nobody can afford to spend too much for a print how good is it.
But Anyway you keep going to advertising those products and in the End of Semptember we'll figured out what's wrong and what's right!

i like amarillos sugetion of selling art through galleries..well all the best for next exhibitions..well i havent hgot my yayart prize pieces till now..

I also think the idea of selling through gallerys is charming.

hello there yayart
m facin this problem till now i havent received my yayarts frre artworks ..where should i enquire about them..are they struck somewhere..i hope any new info about that will help me..

Abhaysalve, why you still writing those things in the wrong place? c'mon send them a email and that's it...