How much business have you done on SMug?

Markjay

I'm just curious how many successful print sellers we have here on Smugmug.
Well, my curiosity is not so much now many specifically but, more a request for a show of hands and an overview of your success on Smugmug in selling your prints.

It would be really helpful to all concerned if you could list..........

1. what's the most you've sold in prints in a given month on Smugmug?
2. assuming these were not sales from say a wedding shoot but, rather just promotion of your prints for sale to viewers / consumers or business people...
how would you describe your forumula for success here at Smugmug?
3. How do you promote your Smugmug site and, get it "noticed"?

Thank you in advance for your feedback / information. I'm sure there are others who will benefit from this type of info.

Best regards, Smugmuggers ;-)

Markjay

Chase

I have made about 360 bucks directly through print sales on smug mug. However, my most lucrative work is in big packages which I have printed out and sell for cash in person, and contract shooting where I give away digital files. Easily have made 1000 bucks doing those things, so the smugmug is suplimentary, but its primary purpose is to show customers my stuff.

Markjay

Thank you for your reply........
As the lone responder, I appreciate your taking the time to reply / respond

How do your customers find / find out about your website?
Do you promote it in any way and, how so?

Markjay

Chase wrote:

I have made about 360 bucks directly through print sales on smug mug. However, my most lucrative work is in big packages which I have printed out and sell for cash in person, and contract shooting where I give away digital files. Easily have made 1000 bucks doing those things, so the smugmug is suplimentary, but its primary purpose is to show customers my stuff.

Andy

Markjay wrote:

As the lone responder, I appreciate your taking the time to reply / respond

mark, have patience, please
and also remember that i'd say that only a small percentage of smugmug pros are using dgrin, too. it's growing all lt the time, but still it's a small-ish percentage.

hang in there.

StevenV

been "pro" for a little under a month, got about $50 in the reports so far. shoot high school sports and events, pass cards out to everyone i see. for a recent marching band competition, i got the directors to send emails out to every parent. i don't expect every month to be that good. but i'm willing to be pleasently surprised.

Baldy

I get a lot of requests to post links to the top-selling pros on my blog and though I'd love to, I somehow cringe a little, hoping I'm not violating anyone's sense of privacy.

So I'll post a few here who do well, but not necessarily the top 5 in order or anything like that.

We have a few who sell thousands of dollars/month, hundreds who sell in the hundreds/month range, and a few thousand who have set prices but get occassional sales. Here are some semi-random examples from the first two categories:

(Note that for some of these they have many more galleries than are showing because they place photos in private galleries.)

http://bodley.smugmug.com/
http://polaroidpat.smugmug.com/
http://expressive.smugmug.com/
http://leebrubaker.smugmug.com/
http://savannahga.smugmug.com/
http://erv613.smugmug.com/
http://markus.smugmug.com/

Amazing how quickly they've picked up on themes!

Bodley

Baldy wrote:

So I'll post a few here who do well, but not necessarily the top 5 in order or anything like that.

We have a few who sell thousands of dollars/month, hundreds who sell in the hundreds/month range, and a few thousand who have set prices but get occassional sales. Here are some semi-random examples from the first two categories:

http://bodley.smugmug.com/
http://polaroidpat.smugmug.com/
http://expressive.smugmug.com/
http://leebrubaker.smugmug.com/
http://savannahga.smugmug.com/
http://erv613.smugmug.com/
http://markus.smugmug.com/

Guess this means I'm doing okay - http://bodley.smugmug.com/ - Kinda fires me up to shoot football this weekend - been taking a break since baseball season ended.

Greg

tony larcombe

Bodley wrote:

Guess this means I'm doing okay - http://bodley.smugmug.com/ - Kinda fires me up to shoot football this weekend - been taking a break since baseball season ended.

Greg

Nobody yet has mentioned the 'how to promote ' question, I'm eager to learn all the tricks on how to do that ! I've signed up for a company that monitors all my hits (for free), so I can tell if any one marketing strategy is working better than another, I have new business cards coming sometime this week, I'll pass them out to 'everyone'. My sales so far ? umm, right

My site http://larcombe-photography.com

Tony.

3rdPlanetPhotography

I just upgraded to PRO this week. I'm hoping to have a success story for you in the near future. I have some nice gigs on the horizon.

Bodley

tony larcombe wrote:

Nobody yet has mentioned the 'how to promote ' question, I'm eager to learn all the tricks on how to do that ! I've signed up for a company that monitors all my hits (for free), so I can tell if any one marketing strategy is working better than another, I have new business cards coming sometime this week, I'll pass them out to 'everyone'. My sales so far ? umm, right

My site http://larcombe-photography.com

Tony.

I mainly shoot events so most of my business is Word-Of-Mouth and I also hand out business cards. My web site isn't fancy but seems to work okay. Maybe I'll learn how to truly customize it one day.

Also, I'm not exactly raking it in. I'm really hoping to cover cost (which is high since I'm just starting out and I'm a gear junkie).

Good Luck,
Greg

Chase

Markjay wrote:

As the lone responder, I appreciate your taking the time to reply / respond

How do your customers find / find out about your website?
Do you promote it in any way and, how so?

Markjay

Business cards. Word of mouth, and delivering a solid product. If you do good work, and people actually figure out how to get to your website and order, youve won 90% of the battle right there. Now you just gotta have the right prices.

mercphoto

tony larcombe wrote:

Nobody yet has mentioned the 'how to promote ' question

The answer to that questions is something people pay thousands of dollars in college education for. Called an MBA.

I've done mostly sports, and most of that has been motorsports. Either karts or motocross. And it has taken me mostly a year of doing this to finally start to get enough business to make it worth my while. Word of mouth, talking to racers (i.e. customers), getting face recognition with them. But granted, this is mostly a repeat business in the fact that I can repeatedly get myself in front of the same people once a month or so. They slowly get to know who you are and get more comfortable with buying. Enough so that I have started to be able to pre-sell photo packages before a race is even run.

Now, how you go about getting the word out to people that you don't run into repeatedly, as a portrait, wedding, or product photographer would have to do, I have no idea.