No Sales: Have Been on SmugMug for over 3 weeks

MonkNocity

I have been on SmugMug for over 3 weeks with over 3300 hits on my concert pics, but no sales yet. Smugmug is my secondary site; I have a link from my main site: www.leftyvintageguitars.com
that directs over to Smugmug. I also have posted several threads on guitar-related sites and have received many compliments on the pics:
http://leftyvintageguitars.smugmug.com/Music

What is my next step? Should I drop prices, set a promotion, look for better web sites to link back to mine, etc.?

chrisjohnson

Interesting collection.
You have a lot of traffic and now you need to convert the curious into buyers of something they can hang on their wall. Perhaps a photo of a vintage image actually hanging in a cool place - maybe your own store or home - would help people imagine what they could do.

To me the quality is suspect on many of the images; it looks like they cannot be enlarged to make a great poster. So I would make a small selection of the best images and promise a quality result for those - show only the very best.

Your prices are rather low for a statement piece of nostalgia art that I might want to hang in my home, if that is what you are trying to sell.

denisegoldberg

I don't think that's unusual at all. Sales just don't happen - you need to work at getting the exposure you need to drive them.

Definitely links into your site from other sites would be a good thing, but I suspect that will not be enough to drive sales. You appear to have no keywords - those could also help.

Start off by following the suggestions in these help pages:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/search-engines
http://www.smugmug.com/help/marketing-online

Go back and upload better quality images or remove the option to purchase the larger sizes. Currently the two galleries I checked show the image is too small for any size above 16x24.

While I realize that the watermark is probably needed for the market you are in, I'd recommend reworking yours. It obstructs the photos enough that it may stop some folks from purchasing.

Also - the look on your site says "thrown together" to me. While it won't drive sales, changing to a more professional look, maybe matching the overall feel of your other site, may convince someone to stick around.

--- Denise

JimKarczewski

Happens. I've been shooting HS basketball and I've had several people come up to me and tell me they check out my site every day and look at the pictures, however, the sales.. have been less than spectacular. It's all about pushing it to more and more people. Just because they are looking doesn't mean they are interested in buying. Also, as usual, make sure you have your images watermarked (sorry, didn't check before I started writing this..) because I know some people love to just "borrow" pictures without actually buying them.

zoomer

Stop and ask yourself why the customer would want to buy the photos.
Are they better than other concert photos available universally on the internet.
Do they have a personal connection to the photos?

People will not randomly find your site and buy photos....