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Selling in a digital world
BrianKy
Registered Users Posts: 4 Beginner grinner
A general question please: I'm a photographer in Lexington KY, shooting mainly events. The problem I'm running into is generating actual sales in a digital world.
Just one example; I shot three beauty pageants last week. I've thus far got two of them posted on my SmugMug site (www.jbmyers.smugmug.com). That project involved three trips to the location (2 hours each way), several hours there plus several hours of post-production. As of this morning I've had over 20,000 views and not a single sale. I've got everything copy-protected and obnoxiously watermarked and still nothing.
The way I see it. it's got to be one of two things; either people are stealing them with a screen-capture (watermarked or not), or, they're just using my SmugMug site as their personal image-hosting site and really don't see any advantage to actually purchasing anything.
Obviously we've got to showcase our work somehow, and it needs to look it's best, but when you do, you're making it available for anyone to steal (screen capture), or to simply view whenever they wish. I don't know if the answer isn't an even more obnoxious watermark, or just not make them available at anything more than a thumbnail.
I would very much appreciate any thoughts out there.
Just one example; I shot three beauty pageants last week. I've thus far got two of them posted on my SmugMug site (www.jbmyers.smugmug.com). That project involved three trips to the location (2 hours each way), several hours there plus several hours of post-production. As of this morning I've had over 20,000 views and not a single sale. I've got everything copy-protected and obnoxiously watermarked and still nothing.
The way I see it. it's got to be one of two things; either people are stealing them with a screen-capture (watermarked or not), or, they're just using my SmugMug site as their personal image-hosting site and really don't see any advantage to actually purchasing anything.
Obviously we've got to showcase our work somehow, and it needs to look it's best, but when you do, you're making it available for anyone to steal (screen capture), or to simply view whenever they wish. I don't know if the answer isn't an even more obnoxious watermark, or just not make them available at anything more than a thumbnail.
I would very much appreciate any thoughts out there.
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Comments
1. Your sizes are way too big. Keep them at medium or large.
2. You allow sharing.
3. You allow anyone with a smugmug site to collect photos.
4. You have every possible size offered.
I have found what works best for us is letting the clients know how long a gallery will be public.
Keep the sizes to standard sizes that everyone knows and can get frames for easily.
Never allow sharing or getting a link, this just defeats the purpose.
Keep the viewing size small enough so they can't print if they do screen capture.
You will always get more viewing than orders, that is just the nature of the beast, but it will limit some of this silliness.
Website
Wrong!
It's probably both things! :0(
While I admit I seem to be worse at online selling than anyone else, I think it's day for profitable sales has well passed.
these days kids can go to the site on their iprone and show other people the pics as if they had them loaded in the phone itself. i also see heaps of models with pics from a guy that covers a lot of runway shows and completely covers the shots in his water mark with them on their folios seemingly being completely oblivious to what they are doing and why the image is covered in the watermark in teh first place.
Onsite sales with Vstations work well for me and reduces the opportunity for people to take advantage of you. We have had the ocasional kid trying to take pics of the screen with their phone but other than that, it's buy onsite or you miss out.
If I couldn't sell onsite i wouldn't bother with doing an event in teh first place as you get nothing out of it anyway, for me it would be a loss gauranteed which seems to be what you ahve experienced as well.
If you want to make this worth your time you need to get paid up front: have people hire you to shoot and buy ahead of time. The only way you're going to sell images after the fact in decent qty is to have them available immediately so you get the impulse buys - not a week later - a day later. Even then, don't expect it to be worth your time.
Consider doing that and reducing image size on the website.
I don't think people want to pay the shipping cost for small number of small size photos.
In the Java Customization dgrin post there is a method to include "Download Photo" customization that may help too. As I think of it I may emphasize that more and perhaps not even include the print option. What do you think? See http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=135068&highlight=java+customization
Phil
"You don't take a photograph, you make it." ~Ansel Adams
Phil
I have reduced the size of the images on the site, (for the latest events anyway), good advice, thanks.
The "impulse purchase" element is also a valid point, we've explored the option of being set up onsite to sell 5x7's mounted in an event card, but have not as yet invested in a quality event printer. May be the way to go...
Your keywords right now are at least partially unusable since it looks like you allowed smug to automatically generate keywords based on file names. Look at http://jbmyers.smugmug.com/keyword/ to see what I'm referring to.
Your home page has an announcement that a set of photos are up, but that announcement doesn't include a link directly to the gallery. Ah, I see that image is from your slideshow - in my mind using images in the slideshow to announce availability of a set of photos isn't very effective.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Thanks!
Don't get onsite SELLING confused wih onsite PRINTING.
You can sell onsite without having to print onsite.
As was explained to me by the best in teh business, onsite selling is getting the order and making money.
Onsite printing is just the delivery method.
Getting the order onsite will allow you to cash in on the impulse and emotion that is at its highest and most profitable then and there. If it has faded a bit when the pics arrive, dosen't matter, you have made the sale.
Onsite ordering is still the way to go even if you can't print onsite.
You are better off putting manpower into the SELLING of your work by assisting the clients finding their pics and choosing them along with advising of packages or deals etc than just delivering them which only comes AFTER the sale is made.
I had suspicions that if i didn't print onsite it would affect sales. i was told it wouldn't. At a BIG event I did in January this year we had some technical issues and couldn't print even though I had been before. Even when people were used to getting their prints off me on the day, when they couldn't nobody even questioned it. The orders were just the same and people were content to wait.
I realised it was an advantage on that job because we got slammed and keeping up with the orders would have been difficult.
I reccomend you get yourself some cheap laptops and use them as Viewstations. All you need is something that will run windowns XP.
Download Jalbum which is free and use a decent machine or get yourself an old server better still and use that to create the galleries and network the machines together. You run Internet explorer in "Kiosk Mode" ( look it up) and point it to the gallery you made in Jalbum and that's it.
There is software for shopping carts for that but I have found -MY- clients are far better with pre Printed orderforms I make up.
I do print on site normally but I have the benifit of family slave labor so I can put 2 people on helping people with the (12) vstations, one person taking orders and another doing the printing and burning of the disks.
If we get real busy I can also jump in on another machine and do burning or whatever we are behind on.
As for event printers, it's an old chestnut but I think people go too much on getting hung up on equipment rather than what does the job. I have been using Canon inkjets with a bulk ink system and the prints are great and the printers are cheap as. I won't start any more of an argument than that other than to say you can get printers that will do the job very well without having to spend a lot of money.
I would suggest you get the Vstations set up first though and only do onsite printing if you have at least 3 people on the team all up.
As the guy whom is the most successful in the business and shoots tens if not hundreds of thousands of kids a year does, get teh orders onsite and then you have all week to take your time printing them and sending them out. He uses inkjet printers as well BTW.
Onsite ordering avoids SOOOO many problems that come with online and it's almost gauranteed that your sales will shoot straight up when you do onsite ordering.