One year at SmugMug - where am I wrong?

fabthi

Hi everybody
I have been here at Smug Mug a bit more than a year now and it's time to make a point of what I have done so far.
Which is, the least I can say, quite disappointing.
I'd like to have some feedback about the way I am carrying on my venture.
Stats say I had about 27.000 views of my images since October 2010, which is roughly a bit more than 2.000 views/month for a total of 1 (yes, one!:dunno) sale.
I followed the basics of SEO from SmugMug support; to check out my SEO settings I did run some Google searches for these keyword phrases, which I consider relevant to the content and goals of my website, and I got these results which I'd like you help me judging:
fine art photography of venice for sale > 1°+2° place
fine art photography of venice > 5° place
fine art photos of venice for sale > 1°+2° place
fine art photos of venice > 2° place
black and white photos of venice for sale > 2°+3°+12° place
black and white photos of venice > 12° place
venice black and white photos > 20° place
venice black and white photos for sale > 3°+4° place
venice color photos > 2° place
venice color photos for sale > 1°+2° place
color photos of venice > 6° place
color photos of venice for sale > 2°+3° place
photos of venice for sale > 8° place
I don't know what to think, search results don't seem too bad to me but they do seem strikingly in contrast with the general outcome of my web presence :scratch:scratch:scratch:scratch
Any suggestion, critique, help will be more than welcome!!
Fabio

zoomer

180,000 views in the last month. Sold 1 print. Those are my numbers.
Selling prints on the internet is not going to be a thriving interprise...more than likely.
I did not look at your work...because it really doesn't matter. Good or bad, selling prints on the internet it tough.

JimKarczewski

You have 24 images total? That's it? I'd be documenting the hell out of Venice and then putting a good amount of them online, not just 24... That's crazy. At least to me it is..

Mark Dickinson

On the flip side when you work directly with clients, (EVEN GIVING THEM COPYRIGHTS) last month I sold 1k in profit. up to 550 this month so far. I charge very little for prints, 10.00 for 4x7 and then they get a 70 percent off coupon! so around 3.00. Its always clientel. MAYBE when you do hit it big and have a corporate company want 100x your prints you can charge, or if someone like ikea or other big chain wants to license your work then you will sell big, its really hard to sell prints, In 3 years i've sold 3 landscapes. 10.00 print of a lighthouse.

fabthi

JimKarczewski wrote: »

You have 24 images total? That's it?....... ..

Sure that's part of the problem, and I am working on adding more images.
However, quantity is hardly a benefit when selling (any kind of) art work, for two reasons:
1 - it affects the customer perception, giving the idea of privileging quantity over quality
2 - the more choices you offer, the more difficult is to choose for a customer
Most photographers involved in selling their work as fine art prints have portfolios not exceeding 50-60 images, and sometime even less.

fabthi

Mark Dickinson wrote: »

On the flip side when you work directly with clients, (EVEN GIVING THEM COPYRIGHTS) last month I sold 1k in profit. up to 550 this month so far. I charge very little for prints, 10.00 for 4x7 and then they get a 70 percent off coupon! so around 3.00. Its always clientel. MAYBE when you do hit it big and have a corporate company want 100x your prints you can charge, or if someone like ikea or other big chain wants to license your work then you will sell big, its really hard to sell prints, In 3 years i've sold 3 landscapes. 10.00 print of a lighthouse.

But I don't understand, what kind of images you are selling for 1K (1.000$?)?

zoomer

So I went to your website and looked at your photos.
If you want to sell pictures of Venice, then take pictures that say Venice.
Pictures of walls, pigeons, etc. are not going to take you very far.
Work on your craft....get better. Once your photography reaches a level where it is marketable then do some target based marketing to direct potential clients to your website.

In the meantime while you are working on your craft ...try to get some local venue or business to let you post some photos and/or participate in local art fairs.

johng

I don't see anything in the images on your site that says WOW. Nothing that I could see throngs of people who didn't visit Venice lining up to buy to hang on their wall. Now, let's say I'm a person that likes Venice or Italy in general. I could buy a calendar or coffee table book and get some nice images.

Now, let's say I'm a tourist in Venice. Am I more likely to search the internet for prints or buy something at a gift shop if I just want inexpensive?

Otherwise, if I just want shots of Venice for a visit, I'll take the shots myself. Honestly, the only time I've seen successful business where photos concentrate on just one city/area is in small tourist towns where the photographer has a gallery. Then people are making impulse buys. But they're buying based upon the visual of the print on the wall.

I don't know a single person that blindly buys "fine art" from the internet. To me the two are mutually exclusive. If it's "fine art" it's in a gallery where I can see it mounted/framed and on a wall.

Your work is nice. I just don't think there's any market for photos like that selling just on the internet. As photographers we may wish it were different. But it's not.

Mark Dickinson

October, I received a check from smugmug for...Direct Deposit SMUGMUG INC $1,160.50 .

What I was saying is, it is VERY hard to sell pics to random people VERY HARD. I wish ANDY would let us know if he sold any this month, he has amazing work landscapes.

Ok so yes I sold 1160.50 in prints, who cares. But what I was giving as the kicker, is that is my profit, AND... AND AND AND, I give them a disc with copyrights. SO, it is a hell of a lot easier to sell to clients that 'want your work, or need it' so how can you make them want it, and how cna yo umake them need it.

Im not selling ANY prints for 1k per image, im selling at 5.00 here, 5 there, + i get my sitting fee, and I sell a license for digital images.

Mark Dickinson

I disagree with Johng, there are some nice shots that made me say wow, and very artsy shots that I would buy if I could get it in a 'thin wrap'. That's the big difference, everyone might not want/need/like those photos. I think its just discovery, and selling to a target market. (put some keywords in traveling to Venice, or italy, things of that nature that people who desire to go there might find you and, who knows even hire you to photgraph them. but thats when you can sell to them. Try doing it with a couple in the square kissing, with birds flying around and hand them a card.

OffTopic

Fine art is a tough market, and you can't compare your online sales to that of a portrait/event photographer. SmugMug doesn't market your work, they only host your photos and provide print fulfillment. It's up to you to market your business. What are you doing to market your work and create demand?

QT Luong, a well-known and extensively published photographer with several exhibits under his belt, recently started a series of posts where he discusses his online photography sales and what it took to get his business to the level it is today. He points out that most people who come across your site stumbled there while searching for something else and never intended to buy a fine art print in the first place (how true that is - 90% of my inquiries are for information about places I've photographed and some days I think I'd make more money as a tour guide!) He's been quite frank in sharing numbers, and he notes that in 2009 it took 21,000 views for each 1 print sale, and 38,000 views for each one license. That was right before he received national attention due to being featured in Ken Burns' film "The National Parks - America's Best Idea". It's an interesting read that might help put things in perspective - http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/11/02/my-internet-based-photography-business/

fabthi

zoomer wrote: »

So I went to your website and looked at your photos.
If you want to sell pictures of Venice, then take pictures that say Venice.
Pictures of walls, pigeons, etc. are not going to take you very far............

Every opinion deserve respect and, of course, we like different things; and this is especially true in a subjective field like photography.
I don't know if you have ever been in Venice, but, at least from my point of view, pigeons, walls, details "are" Venice as much as "are" Venice some beatiful and celebrated views we all know such as St. Mark's square or Grand Canal or Rialto Bridge.
However what I am trying to focus about is not the technical or aesthetic quality of my pictures, certainly disputable and improvable accordingly to different point of views, but the problems of selling photos online as a whole.
As other members are witnessing, and you yourself too "180,000 views in the last month. Sold 1 print" (with a Landscape gallery of 357 images, almost tenfold my entire portfolio), the number of images offered, regardless of their quality (and your is excellent indeed), seems irrelevant in order to achieve significant sales.
So maybe, given that there are actually photographers making good sales online, we should rather analyze other aspects.

Sam

fabthi,

"Where am I wrong?"

You are wrong in expecting sales by simply displaying your images on the internet.

Sam

zoomer

fabthi wrote: »

Every opinion deserve respect and, of course, we like different things; and this is especially true in a subjective field like photography.
I don't know if you have ever been in Venice, but, at least from my point of view, pigeons, walls, details "are" Venice as much as "are" Venice some beatiful and celebrated views we all know such as St. Mark's square or Grand Canal or Rialto Bridge.
However what I am trying to focus about is not the technical or aesthetic quality of my pictures, certainly disputable and improvable accordingly to different point of views, but the problems of selling photos online as a whole.
As other members are witnessing, and you yourself too "180,000 views in the last month. Sold 1 print" (with a Landscape gallery of 357 images, almost tenfold my entire portfolio), the number of images offered, regardless of their quality (and your is excellent indeed), seems irrelevant in order to achieve significant sales.
So maybe, given that there are actually photographers making good sales online, we should rather analyze other aspects.

My point is the quality has to be there first. Without the quality...no amount of people being driven to your site is going to make a difference.
If you are going to market Venice the photos need to say Venice. Pigeons and walls can be shot anywhere in Italy.
I don't market my landscapes, maybe I would sell more if I did....maybe not .

fabthi

OffTopic wrote: »

Fine art is a tough market, and you can't compare your online sales to that of a portrait/event photographer. SmugMug doesn't market your work, they only host your photos and provide print fulfillment. It's up to you to market your business. What are you doing to market your work and create demand?

I'm sorry if I was misunderstood but it really wasn't my intention to blame SmugMug for the poor results I am having; in fact the real question is "where am I wrong?"
When I opened the thread, I started from the consideration that 27.000 views/1 sale looks like a disappointing ratio to me; I now see it's not, at least for what I can read from other members and according with what you are telling me about QT Luong experience about online sales.
It seems to me much clearer now that my marketing strategy (if I ever had one...) is, the least I can say, evanescent and that I have to work much harder and longer, in many different ways, to achieve some sort of acceptable results.
For this, the QT Luong blog link that you are suggesting me clap, is a precious resource and a good starting point to review my presence, activity and perspective online.

fabthi

Sam wrote: »

fabthi,

"Where am I wrong?"

You are wrong in expecting sales by simply displaying your images on the internet.

Sam

Hi Sam
Thanks for your contribution!
Yes, I know and it seems, from other posts too, we all agree on this truth.
But, I'd like to hear your opinion about how to achieve, or at least making a try, the results many of us would be glad to reach.
Fabio

jww

I love your images. Makes me wish I could fly over tomorrow.

However, I wonder if you branched out a bit and added more galleries of images that perk your interest? You could end up having even more keywords to draw from as well as much more selection rather than your current more vertical presence from only having one city. I can respect the fine art approach and only having a few selections, but I have to wonder if you are limiting yourself a bit.

For example.. maybe some countryside scenes of Italy, other cities, seascapes, boats, each in it's own gallery done as meticulous as your Venice collection. That would end up being even more keywords floating around the web, possibly drawing even more prospects to your site.

Good luck!

fabthi

jww wrote: »

However, I wonder if you branched out a bit and added more galleries of images that perk your interest? You could end up having even more keywords to draw from as well as much more selection rather than your current more vertical presence from only having one city.................

Hi Jww
good point! This add a very interesting consideration to the discussion. I often considered the option of widening the range of subjects I offer by adding images of different locations but I have always been held back from the idea that being specialized is an added value in a web saturated by very heterogeneous proposals.
Of course, I may be wrong. What do you think about it?

jww

I think specialized is good for in seeing what you do. ...but to me separate galleries is the ticket to help bring a much bigger draw as well as being able to keep adding to your portfolio.

Each gallery would be like it's own site in a way, but still all hopefully giving a draw to your entire site through it's own set of keywords. Sorta like "Wow cool, what else does he have?" ...and to be honest a nice deck of business cards to pass out on the streets to tourists while you are out shooting could help cement some deals for you.

fabthi

jww wrote: »

I think specialized is good for in seeing what you do. ...but to me separate galleries is the ticket to help bring a much bigger draw as well as being able to keep adding to your portfolio.

This is, besides other interesting considerations, an excellent SEO point of view. Different subjects, more keywords, wider audience

deb22

Fabio, i personally think you are correct with quality vs.quantity. Smug is good to send your clients to view your stuff without having to see you in person but cold sales is not great on this site. If you want to sell more put your stuff in more sites. Zazzle red bubble are free and you can set up a store and everything at no cost to you. I sell pretty good on those sites and I am in Canada and the majority of buyers are overseas. I keep my smugmug site for clients to look at that already know my work and they contact me personally if they want something. Spread your work around rather than increasing volume. This of course is just my opinion but to put all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea, I think very few people make a decent profit with only 1 site unless you go stock. Good luck to you.

fabthi

Hi deb22
thanks for helping!
You add another interesting point of view.
Only, I am wondering that spreading my presence between different sale channels before I have well established it through SmugMug, as many are suggesting, risks to become, rather than helping, a further burden of work.
I am not saying at all it's a bad idea, only that I may better need a step by step well achieved development rather than a "be everywhere quickly" strategy.
Besides that, how should I manage offering the same products on different websites? I mean, how can I differentiate my offer? Prices? Features? Subjects?

fabthi

I am going to make a recap of what has come out of the discussion till now.
- Stats: I started the thread from the consideration that 1 sale from 27.000 yearly visits sounds as a disappointing result to me. I then found out it's a rather standard average. QT Luong states in his blog he needs 21.000 visits to achieve a sale and he's work is way ahead (6.4 M visitors per year!!!!!!) of what I am doing at the moment. So maybe I shouldn't be so depressed by my figures and, instead, I should look at them as an encouraging starting point rather than as a disappointing result.
- Offering more images: I do believe, and I can repeat, that to rely on quantity is rarely a good choice. However, I have to agree with those members who have highlighted the issue about the extremely limited number of images I am offering at the moment. Perhaps I should say 24 photos is not the goal I had in mind when I started, I have been lazy along the way; my original idea was, and still is, to have some 80-100 images (to be renewed regularly).
- Subjects/places: some of you think I should offer a wider variety of subjects and locations rather than keeping focused on Venice only. The idea, as it seems to me, is that having a broader range of images, in terms of places photographed, could allow me to attract a larger audience to visit my website and therefore to increase chances that some of them would eventually make a purchase. This certainly makes sense from a statistic point of view and can't be denied. The downside of this approach could be, in my opinion, the risk of having, as a result, a weaker identity on the web market filled as it is with so many generalist offers so similar each other.
- Attractiveness of images: this is very subjective and I'm not going to applaud those who have enjoyed my pictures nor to criticize those who have judged them trivial. I would only like to say that I am trying, with my pictures, to assert a different way of depicting a city that is quite often photographed with that WOW approach which makes so many pictures amazing but quite repetitive.
- Limited sales channels + poor marketing: this is true under every point of view. As an average moron, I did the common mistake to think that having a pretty website was enough to start a profitable online business about photography :. To my excuse I can only add that I have been distracted from the burden of struggling for my traditional offline photography business which is, given the economic climate, rather difficult to carry on.

I am surely missing other important points, but this is already a lot to work about
I'd like you all have your say on this anyway!

Sam

fabthi wrote: »

Hi Sam
Thanks for your contribution!
Yes, I know and it seems, from other posts too, we all agree on this truth.
But, I'd like to hear your opinion about how to achieve, or at least making a try, the results many of us would be glad to reach.
Fabio

Fabthi,

I am directing my comments to primarily fine art prints.

With out going into a long drawn out explanation a website is more similar to a business card than a retail store. You / we need to have one to demonstrate credibility and to show our style and who we are, but don't expect any real volume of sales until you become famous.

Even the best known fine art photographers sell most of their work through galleries, face to face meetings and other real world outlets.

Photo hosting websites are best suited for event type sales where you have a captured audience looking for a relitively inexpencive photo of a specific event.

To sell fine art prints I think you need to place you and your work in front of prospective clients. You could try art and wine festivals, galleries, art walks. Anything in the real world.

As an example I have many people tell me my work is wonderful, amazing, etc. (I tell you this as an example, not to toot my own horn.) While I do appreciate that people like my photography, it does not translate into immediate sales.

Sam

zoomer

Sounds like you have the jest of it pretty well.
I will go against the grain and suggest you specialize...if you can become the GO TO guy for pictures of Venice that is a niche where you can excel....not that many people on the internet will be competing against you.
Finding a niche these days is much better that dabbling in a little bit of everything.

Good luck to you!

fabthi

zoomer wrote: »

I will go against the grain and suggest you specialize...

I do agree with this, definitely

zoomer wrote: »

...if you can become the GO TO guy for pictures of Venice that is a niche where you can excel....
Finding a niche these days is much better that dabbling in a little bit of everything.

Not least because the above are, besides other considerations, very good reasons for being specialized

fabthi

Sam wrote: »

.............Even the best known fine art photographers sell most of their work through galleries, face to face meetings and other real world outlets.

..................To sell fine art prints I think you need to place you and your work in front of prospective clients. You could try art and wine festivals, galleries, art walks. Anything in the real world.

There is something I feel the need to say about this option of using different channels to promote and sell my printed works, as Sam and other members are suggesting . While I do believe it is certainly a good advice which I have no problem to agree with (I was born as photographer back in film age, when "real" contacts with people were everyday routine), I have to say it's something very difficult if not impossible) to achieve in Italy. There are very few galleries specialized about photography and they are used to exhibit only "stars", meaning people as, just to say, Elliott Erwitt, James Natchwey, Sebastiao Salgado and so on. If you really want to exhibit your work, you have to arrange on your own for space and marketing with chances to sell close to 0. Art fairs: same as for galleries, there are no fairs where photographers are supposed to exhibit their work, nor an audience willing to look for them.
Art photography for sale is just a non-existing market in Italy.

W.W. Webster

fabthi wrote: »

Stats say I had about 27.000 views of my images since October 2010

So there's no problem getting visitors to your site - well done SmugMug!

However there are millions of photographers trying to sell images over the Internet. Yours must be very, very, very special to result in sales. Are they really that good - really?

fabthi

W.W. Webster wrote: »

So there's no problem getting visitors to your site - well done SmugMug!

I never said its' a problem originated by SmugMug, in fact I titled the thread "Where am I wrong?"

W.W. Webster wrote: »

However there are millions of photographers trying to sell images over the Internet. Yours must be very, very, very special to result in sales. Are they really that good - really?

I can't judge my own images; some think they are nice, some other average, some not WOW at all. The good thing of photography is that is very subjective
That said however, the intrinsic quality of pictures doesn't seem to be the biggest issue when it comes to selling; it's very interesting reading QT Luong blog, as suggested by OffTopic, where he highlights the fact that a huge amount of traffic is necessary to actually achieve a significant number of print sales. He has verified a sales/visits ratio of 1/21.000, I am at 1/27.000 so I should consider myself on the right path , unfortunately I have 27.000 visits as overall total at the moment!
But, again, besides that, if you have a look at Terragalleria website you will see he has, among few awesome images, a lot of well taken descriptive average images (obviously in a infinitely higher proportion of mine) and, moreover, that there are literally thousands images of the same topic available for sale on the web.
http://www.terragalleria.com/pacific/kauai/na-pali-coast/picture.hawa33374.html
http://www.terragalleria.com/pacific/australia/ayers-rock/picture.aust20293.html
http://www.terragalleria.com/europe/belgium/bruges/picture.belg10494.html
The above are surely amazing pictures but, honestly, are they really really unique - really?
Don't take me wrong, I am not diminishing at all QT Luong work, which is extraordinary under every point of view, but he doesn't have the reputation and popularity of famous professionals we all know; despite that, he actually makes good sales of his work thanks to an extremely effective web marketing.

dogwood

fabthi wrote: »

But I don't understand, what kind of images you are selling for 1K (1.000$?)?

I licensed a beauty photo of a model to Unilever in India last December for significantly more than $1K. Didn't give up my copyright but did agree not to license to anyone else.

Oh - and while I do have a SM website, these days it's used for archiving and delivering files to clients. I personally found SM wasn't quite up to the professional look I wanted to present to the public.

Anyway, the key to selling photos is not to try to get random strangers to buy them. Figure out who is using photos similar to what you shoot and then market to them.

Michael Katz (Blue Penguin) put it this way in a recent seminar. If you email your mother, chances are about 100-percent she'll open it no matter the subject. If you email a stranger, odds are they won't even open your email. So you need to network and find the people who will open your email.

Some prominent photography consultants (Leslie Burns - Burns Auto Parts) even go so far as to recommend you don't even worry about SEO. Use those efforts on marketing and networking instead. People like to do business with people they know.

chrisjohnson

Wonder why people don't advertise more? Last time I was in Venice I used venezia.net for some tourist info, shops, etc. No idea what it costs to have a link on their site to your smugmug shop - just a thought.

By the way, Venezia is a tag you should be using.