Photo Publishing Dilemma
jonrider
Registered Users Posts: 20 Big grins
I would like some advice on a publishing dilemma.
I photograph car shows. Most of my work that I publish on our website is HDR, however, onsite at the car shows we sell 4x6 prints from images that are straight out of the camera. I tried in the past to produce HDR images for onsite prints, however the lines get way too long and some people end up walking away, tired of the wait, so I no longer attempt this. Typically about 30% to 40% of the attendees purchase one or more onsite 4x6 prints, some framed, others prints only.
At the car shows, we have several HDR print examples on display showing various sizes, paper types, even metal. Due to the number of cars in a typical car show and the lengthy processing time to produce them all in HDR, we tell attendees that we should have all of the images published on the website within two weeks.
We do sell some larger HDR prints from the website, but these are typically to folks who take the time to ask when we will have their car published, in which case I prioritize the processing of their image so they can make a purchase. In general, less than 10% of the attendees order prints online. Many of the larger prints that are ordered online are ordered by someone who also bought a 4x6 print onsite.
I often wonder if we could sell more larger prints online if we published the images more quickly. I have considered publishing single exposure images to get them on the website faster though I wonder if this may cause some people to be disappointed in their image when they compare it to other HDR images they see on our website or compared to our samples they saw at the car show. :dunno
So, should I publish the single exposure of all cars and only work on the HDR images for those that request it? Should I consider a large format printer for onsite printing to give attendees instant gratification by giving them the choice of purchasing larger prints onsite?
Any advice or criticism is welcome. :bow
I photograph car shows. Most of my work that I publish on our website is HDR, however, onsite at the car shows we sell 4x6 prints from images that are straight out of the camera. I tried in the past to produce HDR images for onsite prints, however the lines get way too long and some people end up walking away, tired of the wait, so I no longer attempt this. Typically about 30% to 40% of the attendees purchase one or more onsite 4x6 prints, some framed, others prints only.
At the car shows, we have several HDR print examples on display showing various sizes, paper types, even metal. Due to the number of cars in a typical car show and the lengthy processing time to produce them all in HDR, we tell attendees that we should have all of the images published on the website within two weeks.
We do sell some larger HDR prints from the website, but these are typically to folks who take the time to ask when we will have their car published, in which case I prioritize the processing of their image so they can make a purchase. In general, less than 10% of the attendees order prints online. Many of the larger prints that are ordered online are ordered by someone who also bought a 4x6 print onsite.
I often wonder if we could sell more larger prints online if we published the images more quickly. I have considered publishing single exposure images to get them on the website faster though I wonder if this may cause some people to be disappointed in their image when they compare it to other HDR images they see on our website or compared to our samples they saw at the car show. :dunno
So, should I publish the single exposure of all cars and only work on the HDR images for those that request it? Should I consider a large format printer for onsite printing to give attendees instant gratification by giving them the choice of purchasing larger prints onsite?
Any advice or criticism is welcome. :bow
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Comments
in this age of instant gratification, 2 weeks is an eternity for some people to wait....
This is event photography straight out and there are rules that apply that I have found to be universal even when applied to different markets.
The first thing is you have to separate the difference between sales and delivery.
The ESSENTIAL thing is to seel the pics first then deliver. Once sol the delivery is irrelevant. You may think it's important as I did as well, but it's not.
I was pre printing a couple of weeks ago and literally doing thousands of prints a week. I decided to only show the image on a laptop with a monitor attached to save the hours of time it was taking me to print even with 6 printers.
I track sales very clsely so had a concrete baseline to go off. The end result of the biggest number of clients ever was that I was very marginly Ahead on sales, both in number and value, over the pre printing. take into account the materials not to mention probably 2 days worth of time and it was a big winner.
The first day which was the largest I had 2 sales people and one Printer jockey. We had 350 clients to present to and they walked it in. I wasn't there, I was prepping for a Charity event of over 700 people we had that night. Walked that one in too.
The next day it was just me and the printer jockey with 250 people and we made that easy. The next week I did 153 presentations on my own.
This got real interesting and I learned something I had almost forgotten.
Because this did put some pressure on and I was doing every thing myself, I did get slightly backed up. Instead of the prints being ready by the time I took their CC payment and shot the breeze a bit, I started telling people they would be 5 Min. I told them they could wait or I would leave them at the venue for collection next week. This is a 10 week class situation so they come back anyway.
40%+ were happy for me to leave the prints for them to collect rather than wait the 5 min.
That told me a lot and provd that the delivery is secondary to the sale by, well all the margin there is really. IF you don't sell it, deliver is irrelevant.
Now in your case with the HDR, I'm not sure what program you are using but my son has done this for me at an event and he had a proggy that was pretty much one click. I'm not saying it mat be as perfect as you get with manual editing but that is not important. My suggestion would be to have your samples and run the quick software to give the clients and indication of what their pic will look like. Tell them this is a rough guide, quicky point out the parts you will -hand/ custom finish- for them and make the sale telling them they will receive their print in whatever time you need.
Now you are probably thinking it wont work, I need to show the finish product to make sales, .... etc. Trust me, if that's what you are thinking, you are wrong.
Like I said, I thought that as well and I proved myself wrong. I also improved my business model at the same time. Significantly.
The other possibility with this is you may find the software does an adequate job. You are probably like most shooters here and put perfection over business but have a look and see if you can come up with a saleable product that you can produce quickly and is of a reasonable standard if not perfect.
This would also give you the opportunity to offer Custom, hand retouched prints at a higher price.
It is all in the way you market yourself. You don't need to look dodgy, you simply market it as here is our standard high quality work and here is the super duper stuff. Just like the camera makers have 2 or more standards of lens. There is the good and the best.
I have a huge hang up with shooters offering 6x4 prints. For the life of me I don't understand why a pro shooter would do that?
They are too pissy to see any detail, you get so much less for them than larger sizes, they make a direct relationship to the client to something they got from walcostgreens and they make the mona lisa look like any other kindergarten kids finger painting because they are too small to see any detail or appreciate.
I have not done many car shows but in all my event work like that, I offer one size, 8x12 and that's it. If they ask/ insist I will do 2 5x7's or 6x8's on a page if they are into scrapbooking etc. For a car, I really can't see why you would offer anything less than an 8x12. If people are lining up for 6x4 postage stamps, then they are going to be round the block when you start selling stuff that is impressive and they can see.
Have you ever seen a car poster that was 6x4? They are all poster size for a reason.
You can buy an A4 printer for $100 that will deliver awesome quality prints. Despite what the purists will say that either don't sell their work or make any money from it, you don't need the 24 colour printer. Set the 4/5 colour Jobbie up right and you'll blow them away every time. Better still, I'd be getting the A4 and A3 printers and offer bigger still.
What I have also done is have posters made with different size prints all on the one display as a comparison. I just have the same image in A4, A3, and 20x30. The A4 looks like a postage stamp in comparison and people are always asking about the A3 and 20x30. The way I would sell is when people ask prices, quote the A3.
They will either say fine or will ask if that is the only size available. Then and only then, you give them the price for the A4. I price my A4 close to the A3 because there is stuff all difference in my cost so I make the A3 look a lot better vale and make the extra margin on it.
Now bear in mind that you have the 2 options here, to SELL on site or to PRINT onsite. I prefer the print onsite model myself because it eliminates the significant time in posting stuff out however if I had people lining up, I'd be concentrating on getting their money on the day and delivery afterwards.
I would and do also put staff on to get through the sales and stop the walk aways. You don't need many walk aways to loose more than what it would cost to pay someone to prevent them. Here I'm paying the help $20 an hour. That's less than one sale for me every hour.
If you have people lining up you have the income and potential income to invest in better/ bigger gear that will make you more money still. You also have the money to invest in better signage, samples, help and everything else to grow the business and make it more profitable.
You should be working on rather than in the business as much as possible. I take it you shoot the cars then sit and sell and print them. If that's the case, sorry but you are nuts and selling yourself way short. You should be doing one thing only. I would be shooting and then having someone else do the sales and maybe someone again do the printing. You are then free to jump in where needed to speed up any backlog or put out any fires.
When I was doing a lot of event work, after the shooting was over I used to stand around, let the crew do the work and just basically socialise with the people while they were waiting or looking at the images. The more people I talked to, the more we sold. It was building rapport. Of course when the excrement did impact the rotary air moving device, there was the extra person to jump in and sort it while the rest of the process chugged along.
The other thing I would urge you to do as strongly as possible is get rid of the online. It's dead, buried and a huge black hole in the overall sales/ profits you will make. If you do onsite, do onsite.
Yeah I know, people will bellyache they don't have time to look now, they want to see/ steal/ view them eternally/ never buy online but you need to recognise that is an excuse not to buy today and in a huge amount of case's, never buy at all, ever.
There is no perfect sales model but onsite simply brings you more profit and losses FAR less sales than onsite. End of story, case closed.
It's that simple.
Even those that will still argue that online is the ducks guts, will also tell you that 2 weeks to have the pics up is about 13 days too long. If you can't change that, then don't bother with it at all. I know if you do away with online, your onsite sales will go up. A LOT.
If you aren't comfortable or believe it yourself, Try it for just one show then come back and tell me if I'm wrong.
What you NEED to do is get your lines and waiting time down.
Put on people to help. Help is cheap trust me.
Concentrate on sales not delivery. I prefer onsite printing myself BUT, it is not always the best solution. If you have people waiting mre than 5 min then it's definately the wrong model for that market.
If you can put on a printer jockey, by all means do so. If not, Sell your work as a priority then worry about delivering it.
YOU think it's essential they get it today, I USED to think the same, the clients DON'T, we are wrong.
In any case, I really urge you to get rid of the 6x4's. That is just a terrible handbrake for your business, reputation and growth.
Look for the quick and easy software, ( sorry, can't remember what I used but there are several anyway) SELL on the day and then look at how you are going to deliver from there.
Good luck with it.
My experience is nothing like GLORT'S except for one thing.
Online
When I was working as Nurse and working toward getting my photography-biz off the ground, I'd do some imagery and put them Online in galleries. I often was getting 17k hits per Month on my Website. Tons of fellow Nurses would comment to me about my work...all generally with the same platitudes. Some days/nights I could literally walk down the isles of different Nursing stations and see folks looking at my Website photos. And they looked and looked day after day.
And if memory serves I got about oh, 3 jobs from those folks. Three Jobs. From 17k hits. And of those three jobs two of them I knew personally and they asked. One was a referral. Wow.
So, You are fortunate to have your eager clients right there within your space. Do the deed right then and there! Online can be a great advertising tool and occasionally to garner some sales. Advertising in as much as Hey, here I am and here's my work and I'll be at such and such this weekend to shoot...etc.
I have already ordered custom imprinted 4x6 picture frames for my next big show, so I will certainly need to still offer my 4x6 onsite prints to go along with them.
Following your advice, I will also offer larger prints onsite as well, assuming I can make up my mind about what printer to purchase
You have certainly got me thinking about the "make the sale" and worry about delivery after the sale. We already have samples we display in 8x12, 11x16, 12x18 and 12x36. So we just need to decide which size(s) we wish to print onsite and promote those appropriately.
I imagine I could give each car owner a card with their picture number on it. Instead of them awaiting for me to finish shooting, usually three to four hours (I usually shoot each car as they enter the show site and this is complete typically three to four hours before car show awards are presented and the show ends), they can order/pay for their prints with my wife. She can take their picture number, name, email, cell number, and put them in a tray in the order in which the sale was made. Once I return from shooting, we can begin printing in the oldest orders first, and we can call the owner on their cell as their prints are completed.
Let me know if you have any suggestions regarding the "order taking" work flow.
Deep South Focus Photography
Mobile, AL
http://DeepSouthFocus.com
So take them off the price list and offer them as a: " Free Bonus custom framed Miniature for the office or garage this weekend Only with every 12x36 Purchased. " Till all the horrid things are gone!
That now makes the smallest print on the price list a decent 8x12 which gives you XX times more margin so you more than make up on any losses from the incentive " Miniature" 6x4, .10C Walcost reminders on those and the extra sales from the 12x36.
This is the sort of marketing strategies most shooters miss.
Going back to your earlier post, Thinking about it, if you have a line up of people, chances are your prices are too cheap. You haven't said what they are but given how busy you seem to be in a market like that, I would bet that you are undervaluing yourself. That's not to say your work isn't good, it should be to get people interested at any price with this type of work, it's another factor why I suspect you aren't charging enough.
You really should be controlling your client demand by your pricing. If you are getting run off your feet, Put your prices up. You'll burn off a few clients and make the money more than back up on the ones that pay the higher price. Thing is you'll have more time to do a better job for the people that are paying more.
Get the sales sorted before the delivery.
I'm a bit in 2 minds as to what size printer might be best and not knowing your market well enough I'm hesitant to reccomend but I will say this... To the best of my limited knowledge, A3 printers are a lot slower, ( disproportionately ) than an A4. That -may- be something to consider. You don't want to slow your onsite workflow down too much. Also have a look at the cost of A3 to A4 paper as far as DIY printing and lab cost. Here A3 isn't easy to get and therefore isn't cheap. A3 to a4 ISN"T double price at the lab.
That said a while ago a supermarket chain here was offloading it's non moving sales of premium Koderk Gloss stock so I went and bought all of it about 6 supermarkets closest to me had and cut it in half for A4. Worked out very cheap!
I was supposed to buy an A3 myself weeks back and still haven't got round to it. I want one for signage printing.
Whatever printer you get, I would STRONGLY recommender getting a Quality Bulk ink system for it.
I have had these for about 4 years now and they have saved me a huge fortune. I just bought 3 new Canon IP4950's and a bulk ink system for each. They are about 4 weeks old now and have already done over 1500 prints each. Total ink cost has been half a litre from the 4 Litre bottles I bought for $80 ea so $160 all up. A set of cartridges are $120 here.
The bulk ink systems cost me $95 ea but being the tightarse ( and creative) type I am, I worked out how to set up one tank to do 2 printers which not only saves money but space on the printer boxes I have built as well.
As long as you get a quality ink system and ink, You will not have any problems despite the hype and gloom and doom and utter crap the manufacturers purport.
as for the colour and quality of the prints, I think it's far more true to life and less over contrasty than the OEM inks give. I have my Monitors and printers now profiled and I'm extremely happy with the results.
That sounds like a better but not perfect strategy. Best would be you shoot, have your good wife take the orders and get the 15 yo kid down the road who wants a part time job and free sausage sizzle doing the printer jockey work.
That would get the prints into the crowd faster and may get some extra sales. It works for me pretty well at a variety of events.
How many cars are at the events you usually shoot?
How many actual sales/ orders do you get?
I would think that if you had the extra person you should be pretty much keeping up all the way through. You would need however many minutes ( seconds) to shoot the cars, whatever percentage of people will come to see and order and then the printer jockey would be pumping them out and not being backed up at all.
I have called clients when prints are ready and you'd be surprised how long that can take if you have to do 20 or more. Couple of non answers and you have to ring back etc. It adds up and distracts the selling person or whomever is doing it. I'd be just telling them to come back at 2 PM for the ones you shoot at 10 am and then 3pm for the hour of 11-12 etc. If they come early or late don't matter if you have them already done.
Other thing I did was use raffle tickets and then got the announcers to say tickets 1-10 ( IE) were ready for collection and so on through the day. Gives you a good reason to have them remind people Pics are available if they haven't been to order yet.
A former sports shooter
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I originally worked my first car show as a way to help raise money for the car club's charitable beneficiary. I bought a small portable Epson 4x6 printer which worked great for this purpose. For future shows I simply continued to use the printer as it is all I had for onsite prints, and it was generating some gross profit for us.
That being said, I do want to sell larger prints to make even more profit. That is why I asked for feedback in this forum.
Currently, onsite framed 4x6 prints I sell for $18.00. If they want the print only, I sell it for $5.00.
I like this idea
Typical average is around 200 cars.
Onsite, I typically have about 70 orders, some of these are prepaid orders for larger prints, the rest are 4x6 prints or framed 4x6 prints. I will have around 20 more orders within a few weeks of the show for larger prints.
I like these suggestions, thanks. I am looking forward to becoming more profitable by adopting the suggestions you folks have shared.
I worked on some pricing for larger onsite prints, and would like your thoughts:
8x12 - $25.00
11x16 - $40.00
16x24 - $85.00
Deep South Focus Photography
Mobile, AL
http://DeepSouthFocus.com
OUch!
I now understand why you did the first few shows at least with the 6x4's but from everything you have said and your success with these shows, It's well and truly time to get serious with this.
Reaffirms my comments in buying the bigger printer and getting more help.
My goal with events is to do a grand every time I go out. You are making chicken feed compared to what you SHOULD be doing! It's no more work to edit an 8x12 than a 6x4 and the printing time is in reality not that much different either.
I'm amazed!
Even if you were just producing 50 6x4 orders on site, that seems like a minor miracle to me.
That is a lot of editing and print handling on site.
No wonder you have people lining up!! You have a lot of margin to play with in improving your profitability even when you drop your orders to maybe 50 all up but i'm not all that sure in this case that your pricing is going to drop the number of orders all that much. Doesn't matter though. once you come home with more money and the whole day was so much less stressful and more enjoyable, You'll enjoy doing the events even more and your Mrs will be happier to do them as well.
I think you are much closer to the mark that's for sure!
For my event work I was charging $30 for a straight print in 8x12. If we put borders on it, $35.
Mag covers edited with the kids name was $40. Mag covers may be something for you to look at as well.
The canon printer software also has a built in calendar layout which you just drop the picture into and I get $30 for these in 8x12 and they are quite popular.
If someone really wanted smaller images, we did 2x 5x7's or 6x8's on an 8x12 sheet for the 30 or $35 depending how generous my wife was feeling.
As you are editing these images and creating something different, I'd suggest you go at LEAST $30 and I'd think $35 would be more appropriate for the 8x12.
11x16 I think should be around $50-60 and I'd sit the 16-24 around $100.
I was doing 20x30's for $100 on top of the lab price which from memory was about $125.
You really have a great market here. I think once you do change your product and pricing you are going to see a very big increase in what you make out of it.
I'm sure you have Bill thinking about a slight change in his automotive work .
Even with the low turnout for the show, we exceeded your sales goal Glort.
For this event, we sold the framed 4 x 6 prints for $20, 8 x 10 prints for $20, 11 x 16 prints for $40, and 16 x 24 prints for $80. We also offered packages to move the 4 x 6 custom frames, 11 x 16 w/4 x 6 framed for $50 and 16 x 24 w/4 x 6 framed for $80.
Thanks for all of the suggestions so far. We look forward to continued refinements as we attend other shows with our new printer.
Deep South Focus Photography
Mobile, AL
http://DeepSouthFocus.com
If anything I said was of help, perhaps you could return the favour and tell me How in the hell you manage to make 31 sales to 47 participants! That's so extraordinary I wouldn't make a lie and claim those sort of numbers!
The car shows I have done got more like about 5% sales rate.... on good day!
I'd love to know how you do it because I might just start shooting car shows myself if I can replicate that. I think Bill might give the race track stuff away as well.
Congrats mate. That's awesome. Especially from that few participants. Wait till you get 100 cars at a show. I think you might be buying the Mrs something extra nice for Chrissy this year!
No doubt the new printer will repay itself in no time.
What sort of a rough breakup did you do size wise? What were the best sellers?
I still think you are on the low side and could easily bump your prices some more. You could go at very least $25 for the 8x10 and given the work you are doing with the HDR, I think 35-40 would be more appropriate.
No Probs.
Now I just want a step by step guide to how you are getting such a high hit rate from this market. I have never heard of anyone doing what you have achieved and I'm keen to learn to see how I could apply it to things I do and things I might in future.
If you can package your system up and sell it you will make Bill Gates look like a pauper.
Sam
What really amazed us was that the show was expected to be much larger, with cars displayed throughout the resort. The organizer set us up in the middle of the resort, on the grand lawn, in front of the main condominium complex. They directed each car so that they would pass by us so we could capture an image of each in front of the building.
They then had the cars proceed about 250 yards past us to the south to the village square. When this area filled up, the next area to be filled was the grand lawn right were we were, and then the next in an amphitheater about 100 yards north of us. We were going to be right in the middle of the whole thing.
As it turned out, with so few cars this year, the square didn't fill up, so the show was 250 yards from our location. We couldn't easily move our setup so we hoped for the best. The organizers must have done a great job encouraging folks to visit us to buy prints, because these folks all walked the 250 yards, away from the show area and their cars to buy from us.
I believe it is due to the great reputation we have built for ourselves in our region. The people love us. How often do you have clients hugging you at the end of the show, thanking you for being there? It happens to us often.
This same club had a car show at the beach about three weeks ago that had well over 200 cars. Too bad my "benefits" job had me out of town that weekend. Of course, we didn't have the new printer then either. We can't wait for next year.
7 - 4 x 6 prints
19 - 4 x 6 framed prints
2 - 8 x 10 prints
3 - 11 x 16 prints w/4 x 6 framed print packages
3 - 16 x 24 prints w/4 x 6 framed print packages
1 - special order 12 x 18 aluminum print
We were pushing the framed 4 x 6 prints to move the custom event frames that we had produced specifically for this event.
Also, we did not do HDR onsite. All of these sales were for a single exposure image.
We will continue to experiment with our pricing and test the waters with gradual price increases.
I think the key is to get a shot of the cars with a great background as they enter the venue. This makes it more of a memorable image. I do wonder if following the advice given in this thread of not doing the 4 x 6 any longer will have a negative impact, as the custom event frames seem to be a hit. The problem is selling all of them and not getting stuck with them. Since they are event specific, they are worthless after the show.
Deep South Focus Photography
Mobile, AL
http://DeepSouthFocus.com