Direct Sales or Mainly Referrals

jandrewnelson

Do most folks here sell mainly from their smugmug site or doest most of your business come "referrals" i.e., people seeing your website/pictures adn then contacting you.

What percentage of your $$$ comes through your website vs. referrals from yoru website.

Thanks
Jerry Nelson
www.Meesoon.smugmug.com

Cygnus Studios

jandrewnelson wrote:

Do most folks here sell mainly from their smugmug site or doest most of your business come "referrals" i.e., people seeing your website/pictures adn then contacting you.

What percentage of your $$$ comes through your website vs. referrals from yoru website.

I don't know about most, but less than 1% of my income comes from the website. I get some random sales here and there and that is fine, but not really the purpose of my site.

I use the site to direct clients to view their images. They pick the images that they want, and then I have them printed. The vast majority of my commercial clients never visit the website at all. I have to hand deliver the proofs to them and they choose the image(s) based off of those proofs.

I would love to get more clients to use the website, as it would free up so many hours each week, but they like to see the prints vs a web image.

Snowgirl

Ditto. I sell next to nothing directly from SM but I do direct clients to the site to see their 'proofs' etc. In my case, a large part of the problem is that I'm in Canada and the prices are in US $. If it's a small order, the cost of shipping and the time delay (compliments of the Canadian border) can be prohibitive.

Those that have ordered (or for whom I've ordered directly) have been delighted with the quality of the prints - but it's the shipping cost that's a killer and the exchange on the $. If SM is ever able to offer pricing in various international currencies, life will be much simpler I think. Like you, i don't want to be a fulfillment house.