Online Event Non sales Mystery.

Glort · February 24, 2011

A few months ago I decided to do an experiment and go against my establised practice of doing onsite sales only and put the images online as well.

I have now put up about 10 events and while the onsite sales have been going fine, I have yet to get one, single online order!

I know it's not a case of people not knowing they are there. For most of the events I have printed flyers and given them out to the audience and put them under the car windscreens in the car park.
The people we have covered the events for have put links on their website and we had announcements made at the event they would be on the web and given out card with the web address to those whom asked at our trailer.

I have felt that the order later online excuse has made onsite sales suffer to a small degree and be that the case or not, the online certainly hasn't improved our takings.

The last event I did about a month back I got a lot of people emailing me if they would be on line which I didn't intend to do with this event.
The organisers emailed me and said they had complaints the images were not online and asked me if I could put them up.
I mucked around with the uploading which is never quick or easy with my net connection and put them up and let the association know whom put a notice on the front page of their site and emailed the people that " Complained".

I also got back to the dozen or so people that emailed me and let them know due to popular request I had not put the shots up.

After almost a week, I have yet to get an order!

Frankly, I'm not all that concerned as I now have a valid reason not to put the shots online in the future but I can't help wonder why my experience with this seems to be so different to everyone elses and why over all these events whre I have had at least 100 people in total email for the gallery link, that I have yet to get a single online order?

Maybe it really is that people only want to lift the images for face space or something or just an excuse not to order on the day?
I put a broad watermark on the pics and made them small and low res enough to be pretty useless to print and not much better to save. I also have an online ordering form which can be directly emailed at the click of a button so I don't know what else I could have done to make it work.

I can't see that I'll be wasting anymore time with putting pics online.
From now on, if people don't have the time or money to buy on the day, they will have to catch up with me at the next event and find the time to order at that one. :rolleyes

JBHotShots · February 24, 2011

Yep I am definitely understanding you there. Just this past Monday I posted some pictures and with Google Analytics I have seen almost 8,000 visitors, 7,7713 to be exact and 4,694 of those is direct traffic, in 3 days and not one sale or inquiry of purchase. I too doubt I will be putting many more of those types of pictures up anymore.

My biggest issue is I don't have the means to print on site so at least there you are better off than me.

As per your face space comment, I put a few up on Facebook, low-res and watermarked, last night and tagged a few people in them. In less than a minute after posting the pictures someone had used one as profile picture and cropped the watermark off. I sent them a message saying I am "honored but can you please leave the watermark." No change in picture nor response

Cygnus Studios · February 24, 2011

Glort wrote: »

A few months ago I decided to do an experiment and go against my establised practice of doing onsite sales only and put the images online as well.

You didn't mention how long after the event it took to get the images online. You have to treat everyone as if they have A.D.D.

When we do events where we are printing on site, each image comes with a business card attached to the little cardboard holder. The images from the event are put on the website within 24 hours of the event and only stay online for 72 hours.

As a teaser, all purchases entitle the buyer to download web size images for their facebook or email sharing. (We keep web size images in a hidden password protected gallery). After the purchase, we email the link and password. This boosted our online sales considerably.

Online sales are never going to equal or surpass point of purchase, but they are worth it.

mercphoto · February 24, 2011

I have always known from day one (back in 2005) that I would sell much more if I could do on-site sales but I've never wanted to invest that much effort into things, or invest in the display stations and a merchant account to make it all happen. Back when I was doing this very seriously (2005, 2006, parts of 2007) I would get photos up within 24 hours. I would get the bulk of sales within the first 3 days. The fall off would be rapid after that, both in terms of sales and traffic. IT IS KEY TO BE VERY QUICK ABOUT GETTING IMAGES ONLINE. Its also key to for clients to be able to find their images quick and easily, so organization, keywording and search are crucial.

Late 2009 I got back into things and I've noticed that things are mostly the same as before, though I do get late orders more frequently than before. You need images up fast, and the bulk of orders will come in the first 7 days.

I tend to keep galleries up for a year but honestly I think that's a big mistake. While 72 hours, in my experience, is way to short, I think I could knock it down to two weeks and not have any negative impacts, and probably only positive impacts.

Glort, it could simply be that all your customers are buying at the event, and those that didn't buy at the event are not turning into your customers period, even online.

Cygnus Studios · February 24, 2011

mercphoto wrote: »

I tend to keep galleries up for a year but honestly I think that's a big mistake. While 72 hours, in my experience, is way to short, I think I could knock it down to two weeks and not have any negative impacts, and probably only positive impacts.

Three days won't work best for everyone, you have to know your audience. However, allowing the galleries to stay online for an extended period of time doesn't force the idea of "buy it before it's gone" which is what you want.

For events, you have to treat the online sales just like the on site sales. Make it feel like a point of sale. If you keep it online, they can share the link with friends and it is the same as sharing it on facebook. It defeats the purpose of buying it.

zoomer · February 24, 2011

Photos need to be up that night, they will look for them in the morning, if they are going to look.
Leave the photos up for 5 days.
People don't want to have to keep checking, they are on to the next thing. Make them buy the first time they look at them, no coming back whenever, they won't.

People have a VERY short attention span for this type of thing.

This is just my opinion, I have no real world experience to back this up

.

Glort · February 26, 2011

I have been trying to get the pics up asap but simply the net connections don't seem to be what they are in places like the US and it can take 24 hours to upload the gallery and more if I have dropouts or errors which are common.

I put on the flyers that the images will be up Tuesday morning to try and give myself some space and people a warning. That may not be right, but it's about what i'm stuck with unfortunately.

I'm glad to hear i'm not the only one that has not had a roaring success witht eh online. I have spoken to a few guys here but doing what I am in a very similar market and they all reckon they did well which is why I tried it but maybe their idea of doing well and mine are different.

What really makes me wonder now is just what sales a couple of competitors get that do online only. I know what I get with onsite and everything I have read tells me that would be better than online so if they are getting maybe half of what I am, I really wonder why they bother with the work in the first place.

I have another event next week which we covered last year and the organisers were very keen to get us back down there again. I didn't do online for them and we did well from the event. I think the only thing I'll change this year is to put up some signs that the images are not online to save people having to ask.

I spose I am a little dissapointed I didn't get a better result with the online.
I would have prefered to find out the I was was wrong and missing something earlier and make an improvement in takings than find out I had it as good as it was going to get from the start.

Snowgirl · February 26, 2011

Hi. As you know, I don't have the capability of printing on-site or the 'woman power' to both shoot and edit/print and sell. So, I have no choice but to go with the on-line model. What I am changing this year, however, is that in addition to only shooting pre-booked competitors I will be limiting the time that the on-line galleries are available to a maximum of three weeks. After that? They're gone. (into my archives). If someone comes to me after the three weeks, there'll be an additional fee to retrieve the files from the archives for them. So hopefully that'll put a little pressure on them to BUY NOW. I'll let you know how that works - if it does - or not.

Glort · February 26, 2011

I think a 3 week time limit is a good idea. Possibly it's a little long, possibly not. The thing is to get over the complacency and the " I'll get to it later" mentality so what the sweet spot is that inspires urgency without being too quick is the magic question. May as well start with 3 weeks and test from there.

Its a good idea and one I should have done myself. Given my complete absence of orders though, I doubt much would have changed.

How do you reach and let the competitors know about the pre- booked only coverage Snow? I think this is the way to do events but in having tried to encourage people to do it myself, it has met with minimal success.
I can't access the competitior list before the event to do mailings but I suppose I could try and get the organisers to let the people know and direct them to a web page with a form on it.

At the last event I did, we all shot on the Saturday and covered every kid.
We opened late in the afternoon and made it known that we would be shooting by request only on the sunday. We had about a dozen people request we cover their rides and subseqently they made up the bulk of our sales $ from the event as they had a much higher than average spend.

The thing was with this one it was a state event and the riders all wore numbered bibs and had alloted times for their ride. In a lot of events I do, they run a class and the riders just show up and their name is marked off and they go in no specific order. With these events I have put in a tender with the association that all riders will automaticly get pictures on a pre-paid basis so we get 100% sales anyway.

If I could work out a way to cover the other events on a prebooked basis, that would be great.
Given the reduction in manpower to cover the competitors and the amount of images that have to be handled, it's definately the way to go.
I'd really love to push this more in future.

Snowgirl · February 27, 2011

Hi. I work closely with the event organizers who, in turn, distribute my information in advance of the show. Then, the night before the show I am on-site and place promotional flyers on each stall door to remind competitors to catch me in the a.m. to pre-book.

There are still those who will see me shooting and come and ask if I have shots of their kid - and I remind them that it's pre-book only. Usually they will then pre-book for the second day.

After that, as time permits, they can view the files on my laptop and either order then (doesn't happen much) OR they can go on-line starting on Tuesday after the event and see their images.

Speed is the important thing. I usually try to get Saturday's images up Sat. night so they can see them Sunday or Monday at the latest.

This will be year two of this system and I think it's catching on. It's certainly making my life better.

ColoradoSkier · February 28, 2011

Glort wrote: »

I can't see that I'll be wasting anymore time with putting pics online.
From now on, if people don't have the time or money to buy on the day, they will have to catch up with me at the next event and find the time to order at that one.

I did the same thing last year during baseball season. Had all the pics online the same night of the game. Lot's of tirekickers, no purchases. I still firmly believe it is an impulse purchase, and the more time people have to think about it, the more they think they can get the same picture from a friend for free at the next event.

Glort · February 28, 2011

Hi Snow,

Sounds like a good way to promote the pre bookings.
Unfortunately with all the events I do people roll in the day of the comp and there are only a few stalls at most events with most horses simply being tied to the floats in the car park.

The entries are all done through the club secratary or online these days so it's difficult to even get the info out through the organisers.
I'll have to spend more time thinking about ways I can attack this.

I still firmly believe it is an impulse purchase, and the more time people have to think about it, the more they think they can get the same picture from a friend for free at the next event.

I'm not sure how much pure impulse buy I get but I wholeheartedly agree that the more time delay you give them to purchase the better the out they have.

I'm definately going back to the "Now or Never" approach.
While people have always compalined they don't have time to look at the pics or money or whatever, they don't order given the opportunity to later.

My initial thoughts on this were that I'm never going to please everyone and someone will always miss out but -I'm- going to miss the least sales by making the pics available on the day only.
Recent experience has certainly confirmed this.

What I will be doing from now on is putting a Vstation aside and having the past event pics loaded onto it. If people missed out at another event they can see the pics at this one and if they still don't have time ( Baloney!, they sit round chatting 90% of the day) then they aren't going to have time at home either.

ONe thing that always strikes me as curious is that when we do events like Equitation and dressage where there is a significant delay while the judges add up scores and the subsequent presentation of awards, even though people can be sitting 3 ft from our Marquee, the Vstations will be empty till the presentations are over and then there will be a bun rush and we are over run with the same people that were sitting there looking at us for an hour before!

Haven't figured out an answer to deal with that particular aspect of human behaviour yet.

Snowgirl · March 1, 2011

After years of studying human behavior in university, I have decided that there just ain't no way to figure it out!

Reuel · March 4, 2011

I've found that a coupon with an expiration date helps get people moving.

Glort · March 5, 2011

Reuel wrote: »

I've found that a coupon with an expiration date helps get people moving.

Not a bad idea.

If I am forced to put shots online again to pacify an association, I will try that. Maybe offer a 3 for the price of 2 deal or something so they make the coupon thing worth my while as well as theirs.

Mark Dickinson · March 5, 2011

Glort,

Do the coupon for X amount of days, then the gallery expires x amouont of days after that.

Rocketman766 · March 5, 2011

Wish your online sales had gone better, I go against what everyone here does... I still have my original images up. I will be taking them down soon,(for other reasons) but I will be leaving each prior seasons shots online. Right now I am getting enough "back sales" to cover the cost of the website and the hosting plus a little extra. When that stops, then I will only keep the current season's images up. Something that works for me is having some prints from previous events set up around the viewing stations. My wife looks at the competition lists and picks shots from those teams that will be there to place on the tables. There is also a sign telling people they can find more shots on our website. I didn't like the idea at first, but we have sold quite a few pics from the table, probably a couple hundred $$$ worth from that idea alone. I only mention this because it helps the online sales, especially from past events.

I really have no idea why you are getting absolutely zero sales online. Is the ordering process a simple one? It could be just as someone already mentioned, your customers have already purchased....

Glort · March 6, 2011

Hi Rocket,

I have spoken to a few people that keep their old galleries online and they reckon its very worthwhile for them as well. Some keep them for a little over a year, others never delete.
One guy told me he regularly does events and sees a spike in the sales from the last years event as people are reminded of it and will buy pics from that as well as the one they just did.

I'd be happy to keep all my galleries online as well as I have unlimited server space but to make it worthwhile, I have to at least get my first online order!!! :cry

I did an event on the weekend which has convinced me the problem is absoloutley with the Clients.

Between my wife and I, we had about a dozen people come up and ask us if we were the shooters that covered the last state event. We said yes and they asked if there was a way of seeing the pics as they didn't have time at the event.

We told them that we had the pics there today and to just go to the trailer and ask whoever was there to see them and they would put them on a Vstation for them and they could see and order today.

Everyone we spoke to seemed very pleased and excited that we had them there and said they would go over and look.
I told my son that people were going to come and look for these pics so he went and set up 2 Vstations with the pics in anticipation of people comeing to see them.

Not one single person came to look at those pics all damn day!

Some people walked up to the Vstations and he would tell them they were from state and the other pics from today were on the other Vstations and straight away they would go to another machine.

I had one lady come up and said she looked on the website and couldn't find the pics. She said all she saw was the orderform and a notice saying the pics would be up tuesday. I said they went up then and when did she last look? She told me on the monday after the event. I said did you look on the tuesday or thereafter? She said no. She just thought there must be something wrong and they weren't working.

Now it would be easy to think she was a twit, but this is not the first time this has happened. I put the notice on to tell people when they would be available because initially I was getting people tell me they looked and the shots weren't there. I found out that they were driving home from the event and looking for the pics pretty much before I got home myself.
I thought putting a notice as when to come back to see the pics for those quick on the draw would solve the problem.
Seems I made a mistake there.

The bit that gets me now is, even when the pics are available at the event where they come up and ask me and they can see them, they still arent' looking for them so I'm really at a loss now as to what I can do. Maybe I'll have to start carrying an Ipad with the pics loaded and hand it to them so they HAVE to look then and there?
I'd think people just don't really want to buy but that being the case, why approach the shooter in the first place and ask about them???

On the opposite side of the equation, we had people hanging around for an hour waiting on pics yesterday after we had a software glitch and one card of pics didn't go up. Some people came back to the trailer 5-6 times and I told them that I would put the missing shots online but they prefered to wait.

When we did get the shots up and they were choosing the ones they wanted, I told them just to write down all the image numbers and I would give them a disk with all the pics for the base price of a 5 image disk as a small compensation for them having to wait.
They were all really thrilled with that and very thankful.

I guess some people are of course more into photos than others but geez I still don't get why people will ask about pics and then not bother to look when they are right there and yet others will wait seemingly endlessly to see them.

What I'm going to do this year is keep the gallerys of all the past events on the server and probably also load them direct onto one Vstation and promote that to see how it goes.

After the weekends experience, it will be a real interesting exercise.

Snowgirl · March 7, 2011

There's no figuring people. I think, in a lot of cases, people feel they HAVE to say something about wanting to see your photos, whether they really do or not.

On another note, I try not to leave my event albums up for too long, on the theory that some people just want to keep looking and not buy. That said, I have had sales happen as much as 18 months after an event. Go figure!

Glort · March 7, 2011

Perhaps I base too much on my own thoughts and ways of doing things.
I sure wouldn't think to approach someone about something i didn't want i'd feel like the pressure was then on for me to buy something or at least come up with an excuse not to.

Having so many people ask and none come to see them just seemed very odd. If there is something I'm doing wrong, I'm buggered if I can figure out what it is.

As far as the length of time galleries are online, I think it's a 2 edged sword.
I would think that not putting a time limit on them would lead to procrastination and reduced sales but I can't ignore the amount of people whom have told me they get a worthwhile amount of sales from old events.
Perhaps it really comes down to the crowd and even the way you market it.

I think If I did do online I'd be telling everyone they would be online for a limited time and then leaving them there. If anyone said anything I'd be saying it all depended on my server space and once the time has expeired I can take them down at any time I need to make space and once they are down there is a re-upload fee for putting them back up.

It seems it's all very hit and miss.
Do onsite only and you'll miss some people. Do online and onsite and you give people an opportunity to not buy at all buy also give the people that do like to take their time or look at a later date the opportunity to buy.

Which is best may depend on the sport your covering and the mentality of the crowd.

mercphoto · March 8, 2011

Glort wrote: »

As far as the length of time galleries are online, I think it's a 2 edged sword.
I would think that not putting a time limit on them would lead to procrastination and reduced sales but I can't ignore the amount of people whom have told me they get a worthwhile amount of sales from old events.

Middle of last year I used Exposure Manager's email blast mechanism to email all the visitors and past customers of a gallery that I was going to archive, seeing as how it had been up a year. I got two orders from that. One was for a CD, a customized paper print, and a large metal print. The other was for a CD and four metal prints. Definitely I made out great with that! Two months ago I sent out another blast about a gallery about to get archived. Not a single inquiry or sale.

This is an impossible question to answer: how many sales were not made because the customer had no built-in urgency or simply looked at their images online, versus the two sales I did make. That question cannot be answered. One can never know, if I had a two week or one month time limit on galleries would I have ultimately made more sales in the end? All I know is that most car/racing photographers I know of keep their galleries up for quite some time.

Perhaps it really comes down to the crowd and even the way you market it... Which is best may depend on the sport your covering and the mentality of the crowd.

Probably very true.

John Patrick · March 10, 2011

Just the other day, I received an order from an event the first weekend in February.

Included in that order was also a print order from December, an order from last April, and an order for two photos from the same Feb event, but 2010 one.

I find that often people come to the site looking for photos from the most recent event, then see older events and remember they didn't buy from that one yet, so they look.

I used to remove the event at one year, but was asked at the 2011 February event by parents to leave the 2010 up until they ordered. Two parents asked, four have ordered from the old 2010 event.

I have more to discuss on this aspect, but feel a public forum may not be the best to continue.

John

Glort · March 12, 2011

Hmm, I'd like to recieve an online order too.

Even just one!

Mark Dickinson · March 13, 2011

cmon guys. Im not sure what I am doing honestly, but you gotta be able to do it... I give away cd/dvd's on weddings and events, and still doing at a minimum of my deposit transfer each month. my biggest sales month was 1200.00, and this past month was 750 something.

Sell yourself, its your work, make yourself deadlines, and give coupons say this is for the month. I did an email blast to my clients and immediately sold 250.00 in two days. WITH COPYRIGHTS GIVEN.

The double edge sword.. put them hidden or private, and when they do come back looking for it, don't charge them but give them a hidden link and say you have today and tomorrow to order. gotta be a jerk sometimes.

John Patrick · March 14, 2011

Mark Dickinson wrote: »

Sell yourself, its your work, make yourself deadlines, and give coupons say this is for the month. I did an email blast to my clients and immediately sold 250.00 in two days. WITH COPYRIGHTS GIVEN.

I hope this is a typo.

You don't give your copyrights away.

You should LICENSE the USAGE.

My CDs say (paraphrased): The bearer of this CD is licensed unlimited personal, non-commercial printing rights.
It then has (C) 2011, My Company, All Rights Reserved

I am keeping all copyrights, but I allow the person who purchased the CD to print whatever they want. Still my photos, though.

John

Mark Dickinson · March 14, 2011

John Patrick wrote: »

I hope this is a typo.

You don't give your copyrights away.

You should LICENSE the USAGE.

My CDs say (paraphrased): The bearer of this CD is licensed unlimited personal, non-commercial printing rights.
It then has (C) 2011, My Company, All Rights Reserved

I am keeping all copyrights, but I allow the person who purchased the CD to print whatever they want. Still my photos, though.

John

Nope, I know some don't like it but with liability and already full with a 10tb server from events this and last year We delete the files after 1 year and retain a small jpg res for screen usage unless its marked as marketing or a full keeper.

It does say that in my contract, personal use, non commercial printing rights, but it is still releasing the copyrights to them to get prints as you mentioned on a personal use only.

But what we are talking about really is that the sales are not working for them, and I am showing that even when I give them a disc, they are ordering from me.

mercphoto · March 14, 2011

Mark Dickinson wrote: »

Nope, I know some don't like it but with liability and already full with a 10tb server from events this and last year We delete the files after 1 year and retain a small jpg res for screen usage unless its marked as marketing or a full keeper.

It does say that in my contract, personal use, non commercial printing rights, but it is still releasing the copyrights to them to get prints as you mentioned on a personal use only.

But what we are talking about really is that the sales are not working for them, and I am showing that even when I give them a disc, they are ordering from me.

If you truly are giving them the copyright then you cannot restrict them from using the photo in any manner they choose. You have let them own the copyright, after all. So the wording in the contract that they cannot do this or that isn't going to hold water.

If you are retaining the copyright yourself and simply giving them a license to reprint the image then you can restrict what they do with the image.

You cannot place restrictions on images that you do not hold the copyright on.

Notice I'm not telling you that deleting files altogether after a year is bad, or that selling digital files with reprints rights is bad. I'm simply saying you seem confused about copyrights and licensing and it might come back to bite you.

mercphoto · March 14, 2011

John Patrick wrote: »

I hope this is a typo.

You don't give your copyrights away.

You should LICENSE the USAGE.

Exactly!

Glort · March 14, 2011

Without wanting this to get too off track with another copyright discussion, Here in Oz, the CLIENTS already own teh copyright for any image made for domestic purpose WITHOUT a contract that specifys otherwise.
Now as I'm not about to run around to get contracts signed by 1-200 parents at every event I show up to, this is a non issue for me.

While the client actualy owns the copyright, there are restriction of use laws that mean if they want to sell or allow use of the images say for a commercial addvertising campaign which is a use the images were not created for, then there is a restriction of use clause and basicaly they have to get me to sign off on that.
If I don't, they still own the copyright in the image but can't use it for anything other than the purpose it was created for which is Domestic.

In any case, the discs I do have the files straight from the camera on them and are in full res. I know this flies against waht a lot of shooters preach in retaining your files and not letting files out of your grasp that haven't been worked to death in PS but that is not a concern to me.

Years ago when I was doing over 50 weddings a year the thought was don't let the negs out of your sight and 10 years later I was paying money to dispose of hundred of Kilos of negs at the dump.
I rang the clients before hand and offered them the negs for the price of the film and I had very few takers. Back in teh day I did have a few people twist my arm and buy the negs from me and I got a good monetary bonus for it.

From now on I take whatever I can get for the pics when they still have value to the clients because thats what i'm doing this for, to sell pics not to worry about copyrights and all the other hoo haa that I think the wannabees are very vocal in shouting about but the shooters that are interested in a profit know better.

I don't think giving away pics per se will help my online sales any more nor will making any mention of copyright. anyone buying a disk would assume they are allowed to make prints etc because thats the reason most buy them in the first place.

Right now I'm looking at sidestepping the whole issue of onsite and online sales by talking to some organisers about providing Prepaid CD's to all the competitors in an event so everyone has all their pics straight up.
lots of positives in that for me and them!

Mark Dickinson · March 14, 2011

That does sound good. I'm mentioning my copyright release because even though they do have printing rights with cd they are ordering.

I hope it works out for you!

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Online Event Non sales Mystery.

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