Need help with Sports Sales

kelleejeandesigns

** MOD EDIT - moved from another thread.

I also have questions regarding sport individual photos and how to sell, package, present and that sort of thing. Could you direct me in the direction of valuable information on this sort of thing?

thanks
kellee
www.kelleejeandesigns.smugmug.com

Montec

I found the only way to make any significant money with sports photography is to get the contracts from the various sports league administrators for the Team and Individual shots. The actions shots are a very hard sell and difficult to market.

Even when you are the exclusive photographer for an event or tournament you must have on-site printing to make a go of it. This involves a fairly significant investment and extra staff.

I have sold action shots for Provincial tournaments from my SmugMug galleries ( I created a separate gallery for each team) and my sales were not great. About $1000 for a weekend and over 2000 images shot. About 700 posted. You need to learn what is the 'money' shot. It is not always the highlight reel diving catch but more often the isolated head shot of a player.

Shoot 2.8 and 1/1000 if you can. Frozen action and isolated subjects sell. Busy images do not.

I will not put my action shots up on my SmugMug galleries any more. I had huge amounts of views but very few sales relative to that number. The images are good, but it seems like it is enough for them just to view them online and not purchase.

That's my 2 cents... hope it helped.

MLP Photography

I'm quickly finding out that my action shots results are similar to Montec's. I have over 21,000 hits and 10,300 image views so far this month and zero sales. People love to look but refuse to open their pocketbooks.

As far as team and individual packages and whatnot, I use a lab called Sports America. http://www.sports-america.com/

There are many other labs that do the same thing but I use Sports America because they are local to me. They offer a wide range of products (keychains, bagtags, trading cards, digital memory mates, etc...) and will give you advice on photo packages and pricing. In the past, what I have done that has worked well for me is to have the lab print me order forms that I distribute weeks in advance of "picture day." I give the order forms to the league director to pass out to all the coaches and players. On picture day all orders are prepaid. I have table staff to keep take the prepaid orders and to keep everying orgranized.

Hope this is the kind of info you are looking for.

kelleejeandesigns

MLP Photography wrote:

I'm quickly finding out that my action shots results are similar to Montec's. I have over 21,000 hits and 10,300 image views so far this month and zero sales. People love to look but refuse to open their pocketbooks.

As far as team and individual packages and whatnot, I use a lab called Sports America. http://www.sports-america.com/

There are many other labs that do the same thing but I use Sports America because they are local to me. They offer a wide range of products (keychains, bagtags, trading cards, digital memory mates, etc...) and will give you advice on photo packages and pricing. In the past, what I have done that has worked well for me is to have the lab print me order forms that I distribute weeks in advance of "picture day." I give the order forms to the league director to pass out to all the coaches and players. On picture day all orders are prepaid. I have table staff to keep take the prepaid orders and to keep everying orgranized.

Hope this is the kind of info you are looking for.

Thanks so much for all the advice!!
With the preorders, you are assuming they will get prints of just ONE image, correct? What if I take a couple good images they like? Or do they not get to choose? Is it my job to just pick MY favorite?? What if what I like, they don't??

kellee

timgangloff

team and individuals
I am pretty much a novice at this, but if you want to be like the big outfits or the cookie cutter ones, you just use whatever image you like best. If you want to get more creative and provide a better customer experience, you can let them choose, but since smugmug does not have the ability to easily sell packages or use coupons without significant "hacks" to their system, you face a bit of a issue. For me, being a small outfit, I can interact with the customers as the shots are being taken and can show the images to the client and make notes about which ones to use. However, most customers simply trust you to pick the best image although I've had some tell me that they want "the good smile one" or "the tough one" or something along those lines. All that being said, many customers just want a pic of their kid and don't really expect anything of great portrait quality in these settings.

Once smugmug gets with the program and offers packages, it will be much easier. However, if this is something you really want to do and you want to give the customers a better choice and make you life easier, put your images on a photoreflect type site where customers can easily place package orders and you can send the orders to the lab of your choice. I don't think waiting for smugmug to come out with new features is a good idea if you really want to do this now since we have no idea on the time table as to when or even if smugmug will implement packages and coupons in the forseable future.

kelleejeandesigns wrote:

Thanks so much for all the advice!!
With the preorders, you are assuming they will get prints of just ONE image, correct? What if I take a couple good images they like? Or do they not get to choose? Is it my job to just pick MY favorite?? What if what I like, they don't??

kellee

timgangloff

smugmug stats
Oh, a couple of more things.

1. Actions sales stink compared to pre-paid team and individual stuff.
2. Don't be deceived by smugmug stats. I started using google analytics and got a much more accurate view of actual visits, page views and the like. Smugmug may show 40,000 picture views, but it is probably a small fraction of that amount. Follow the tips on this site on how to install it and you'll be much happier with the stats you see. Of course, it won't help with sales.

unknownphotography

Has anyone tried putting a notice on galleries that the shots will only be up for a certain period. Lets say 30 days. perhaps this will give the consumer more incentive to purchase the pictures now, since they wont have the option of pulling them back up again. Thats just the economist coming out in me, might give that a shot.

Montec

unknownphotography wrote:

Has anyone tried putting a notice on galleries that the shots will only be up for a certain period. Lets say 30 days. perhaps this will give the consumer more incentive to purchase the pictures now, since they wont have the option of pulling them back up again. Thats just the economist coming out in me, might give that a shot.

I have done that, Doesn't seem to matter. I usually have flyer's printed and all over the event with instructions on how to find the images they want (I make sub-categories of each team) and upload them each evening if I am doing a multi-day event. Get tons of compliments on the photos at the events but few sales.

I normally have a 24 inch screen running a slide show of images from the previous day that gets a huge crowd. I am only doing these types of events now if it is associated with a school or league contract I have. Too much work for too little in return.

timgangloff

not sure about time limits
I sometimes get customers who order prints from galleries that were posted many months earlier. Who knows the mind of the potential customer.

jfriend

unknownphotography wrote:

Has anyone tried putting a notice on galleries that the shots will only be up for a certain period. Lets say 30 days. perhaps this will give the consumer more incentive to purchase the pictures now, since they wont have the option of pulling them back up again. Thats just the economist coming out in me, might give that a shot.

What I've seen frequently is people telling the customers that they can buy now at price X and after some period of time (like a week), the prices will go up by Y%. It's used as an incentive to get them to get off their duffs and decide what they want now while they are more likely to remember and buy. It makes some sense to me.

If/when Smugmug has expiring coupons, this would be a great use for coupons too. Set your prices 15% higher. Then pass out 15% discount coupons that expire in two weeks. People definitely respond to buying while they can get a deal.

I know there are event photographers that have higher web prices than ordering at the event as an incentive to get people to buy right then at the event.

TonyL

just bumping an old thread to see where smugmug is with this.
I have sports packages that I offer but it is a pain to have the clients fill out order forms, packages etc and use a company outside of smugmug.

I am seriously exploring photoreflect/ expressdigital because I do not think clients want to be directed to various sites for different products.