What Sports have been most successful for onsite?

Glort

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termina3

Send the promoters a hand-addressed letter on your company letterhead. Consider including a couple of prints of previous work to showcase yourself. Ideally you'd have photos from one of their events ("I hope you enjoy these prints I caught at last year's competition. These are the types of prints I'd like to produce on-site for your participants.")

Follow-up a week after you post the mail with an email politely asking if they spotted the letter.

Extra points for a nonstandard envelope size.

If possible get exclusivity (at least for sales on-site).

ColoradoSkier

Glort wrote:

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]I have been doing onsite event ( sports) work now for 6 months mainly in the equine sector.

I'm fairly convinced that I can't do much more to up my sales in this area ( and they aren't where I want them to be) and I'd like to try some other sports to see how they go, particularly indoor sports as the weather can be a real pain with outdoor work. [/FONT]

I plan on pursuing competitive young women's softball next spring/ summer. My wife's cousin told me firsthand how she'll buy a pic if someone has them on-hand at the event. But if the fulfillment is not immediate, she isn't interested. It's totally an emotional impulse buy.

MadisonPhotography

Sporting events
One of the things that we have learned shooting sports is that not many people that say they will buy photos ever will. They'll use their p&s cameras and try to take a shot, know they can get it printed at Costco or some other place for $.19 and have no idea why we charge $6.99 for a 4x6 of a clear, sharp and in focus shot.

We shoot swim, a lot of swim. Doing the state championships, the regional championships and the largest urban outdoor meet in the Midwest. We have learned a couple things:

Pre-registration is a necessary evil. We charge a nominal fee, usually $20 for a weekend but provide $25 in credit towards purchases of over $50..We sell a lot of over $50 deals.

The host club needs to be involved to the point of having a link on the event website, at the minimum, so that people can find where the images exist on the web. We advertise with banners, in heat sheets and by passing out 4x6 cards.

We have tried on-site printing but not sure the pain is worth it. At least a couple computers are needed, at least two for "viewing stations" and one really fast and good one for processing.We use macs and like them. We did printing with Sony printers and after all was said and done the best business model for us was to forget about about on-site printing but yes, do on-site ordering....in the moment sales are always good..people forget when they get home or will "wait until the next meet".

By far our best customers are parents with children 10 and under..a few older but not a majority. Being at an event has helped us gain more business such as senior portraits, family portraits and a few weddings...

Glort wrote:

The thing I'm looking at is not the first buy but the ongoing ones.
I think with a lot of sports they are basically the same thing. Softball for instance would have the same uniforms etc so you need to grab an awsome shot to get a sale after they have bought a few pics and in experience, there just aren't enough spectacular plays in every game to get enough killer shots to earn a living off. You therefore need numbers to get the level up to what you need.

I think some sports like cheer would be a little different because the routines vary and so do the costumes so there is always something different they haven't got before.

I think something that is regular and people will buy pics of frequently are the real winners in this game if you can find and hook into them.

smc1972

We do an absolute buttload of event photography and have for the last 5 years. About 2 years ago we gave up on site printing. It didn't seem to make any difference in sales. We are actually going to move to prepaid shooting only after the first of the year on larger tournaments. We have one coming up in janurary the will have over 85 elementary basketball teams - best age group with the highest sales, hands down. But if I were to have enough staff to cover every game, it would be over $1,000 in labor. I've done it and sometimes the sales are there to cover it and sometimes they aren't. Why spray-n-pray when we can focus on parents who want photos? We have learned a lot, and my best advice is this:

1. The younger the participants, the better the sales. I think it's be ause they tend to still be new to the sport and are still excited about it.

2. If they are older, concentrate on the girls, not the boys. Boys could care less if they have photos. I challenge you to find a single 13-15 year old girl that doesn't like having herphoto made. Trust me o. This one. Two tournaments, one week apart. HS boys one week, total on site sales, less than $300. Next week, same place, only girls, sales were over $1,200.

3. Don't over saturate. It's neat the first time, but by the tenth time you've shown up to shoot sally's softball team, they don't care. You can only take so many photos of Sally batting, running to base and playing out field.

4. Be visable. We all wear neon green and purple shirts. We get stopped all over the place - once even 3 hours from our home site - because they recognize us.

5. Plan to shoot events with down time. If it's a single elimination tournament, don't waste your time. Every round you lose half of your potentail sales. In double eliminations, they have to do something between games, why not come check out photos?

Anyway. This was just off the top of my head. Hope it helps someone.