High School Sports Photos

photodad1

I'll be taking action photos of our local High School Sports event and wanted to get some ideas for selling photos. I am a sponsor and my link/logo will be on the school's website and name, weblink and phone number on the board as you drive into the school. I know taking photos and posting on a gallery on my website hoping parents to buy is not the way to go. I thought about printing some 8x10 photos from the previous weeks game have them for sale at the following home game. Has anyone tried this with any success?

jmphotocraft

I wish you had gotten a better deal for yourself with the school which would have guaranteed you some kind of minimum fee. But I understand academic types do not live in the real world of capitalism. I imagine it is too late to set up a pre-pay policy and system for individuals? In lieu of either of those and in lieu of printing and/or selling on-site, I think what you propose is the next best thing. I haven't done it myself but I want to - pesky day job keeps getting in the way. Do let us know how it goes. The vast majority of my sales are 4x6". I think if people could only see what these photos look like at sizes that do them justice, they would see the value. So printing them out at 8x10 or 8x12 and shoving them in their face seems like a good way to achieve that. Maybe put the school crest/seal/logo in the corner along with the year to add value and authenticity.

Glort

photodad1 wrote: »

I thought about printing some 8x10 photos from the previous weeks game have them for sale at the following home game. Has anyone tried this with any success?

BEfore you tried to get this gig, what were your plans for the actual sales of the pics? Did something change that meant you couldn't go with your original plan?

I have pre- printed packages which included 8x12's and had those for sale and it was highly successful.

The thing I wonder when you say "Have for sale at the following game" is exactly how are you going to sell them? Do you have an assistant to do that while you are shooting that weeks game?
I ask because people notoriously try to do these things on their own without help and as far as I can see that's futile.

If you have an assistant who can man a table in a position preferably where people have to walk by to get in and out of the place, Great. If not and you are intending to do it all yourself, you may as well forget it and just put them online.

Is this something you are serious about getting what you can out of and putting in the effort to get maximum returns or just something more for fun basically that you hope to pick up a few bucks along the way from?

DonFischer

I do field trials for pointing dogs. Spent the first season giving away 4x6's. But, no one had to wait till next trial to see them. I take along a 6'x12' enclosed van and inside I have a laptop computer, 13" printer, lots of photo paper in 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 and 13x19. I also have in there frame's I make myself to fit all the sizes and material to close up the frames, install hanger's, wall bumper's and dust cover's. Only matts I take are pre cut and only in white. Any photo sold can be mounted in a frame on location between braces, about 30 min time frame. It started pretty slow, something nobody has ever done around here before. In the film days there was the odd person out shooting film and hoping to sell it later but that also assumes the right people come back for the next trial. Then if they want an enlargement, it was another week min. Digital changed all that. Understand I'm not gonna get rich doing this but only hope to pay gas and materials. I'm retired and a lousy business person. but I don't see why someone with some smart's and drive couldn't make a few bucks doing this. Let's face it, if you give people a photo at an event that they like, they will buy it. You can't do that unless you have some way to print the photo out on site. If you wait until next week, the moment is gone. At what your talking about, I think a helper is necessary. One to shoot and one to print and display.

photodad1

Yes I would have an assistant with the sales. I have not signed a contract with the school, I just signed up as a sponsor and have free access to all the games. My thoughts were to open a table and have one of my assistants run it.

Glort

Don,

I used to do a similar thing to you with Horse events.
I used View stations so people could see the pics then order them and we would print them or burn them to disk for them to take home.
The only size we offered was 8x12 and if asked ( nicely, ) we would on occasion print 2x5x7's on the one a4 sheet.

The guy that gave me a lot of help and insight and I now shoot for on his international gigs drummed it into me that the printing is the delivery and that is secondary to sales. In other words, it's more important to get the sale then deliver the image there and then.
Now that said, I proved him right on 2 occasions where we had technical stuff ups ( a professional term for I forgot to check the paper or ink) and could not deliver on site. It made no difference what so ever and to my surprise, even the regular customers didn't raise an eyelid over it.

The reason I mention this is if you find yourself short of time or getting slammed as we did in the last hour of every event after no one came near us earlier in the day, Forget about delivering there and then and just post the orders. You could put a nominal charge on it or just wear it but whichever way, it's cheaper to post than to have people walk off and not order at all because you are backed up.

The sale is the important part, NOT the delivery in that scenario.

That said, Yesterday I went and approached a venue about an idea to photograph their clients. The thing will be to shoot the clients at the start of their game and have the prints ready for them to view and purchase when they are finished. 90% a purely impulse buy.
With this market, doing Vstations and orders would be a complete waste of time so preprinting onsite for this one will be crucial.
Like everything a person needs to understand the market and what actually is driving the sales and then adjusting their approach for maximum returns.

I don't know the size of the events you cover or how busy you get but if you do get slammed at any time, it may be well worth your while just to ask people if they would mind if you posted them their order to free yourself up to make the sales rather than get tied up with the delivery.
Another thing we used to do was ask about posting the order and getting a mobile number so if we had the order ready we could just ring them and they could come back and get it. This worked real well also and we managed to get every order we did this with to the clients while they were still on the grounds.

It gave us breathing space though which was great.

Glort

photodad1 wrote: »

Yes I would have an assistant with the sales. I have not signed a contract with the school, I just signed up as a sponsor and have free access to all the games. My thoughts were to open a table and have one of my assistants run it.

Then I would say you have a shot at making something out of this.

I'm not sure about 8x12s for this market. By all means show some as samples ( and a lot bigger) but I'm wondering about straight out presentation.
What I did was put all the prints in those plastic protector sleeves and put them in trays, one for boys, one for girls just so it wasn't one massive pile. That worked fine for the market I was doing. They would come looking for their pics knowing every kid was photographed and sort through them.

For corporate and charity balls etc, I print to 6x8's and lay them out on 3-4 tables. Just having the pics visible brings people over to look at them. If you do 8x12's, you are going to need a LOT of table space unless you are only intending on printing 1-2 pics per player per game.

How are you planning on deciding which pics to print? are you going to do everything that looks decent or try to just do X amount of shots for every kid or only print the best pics or....?
What sort of money do you intend asking for the pics?


3 things with this strike me as potential problems......

1. The point Don raises.... are the same kids going to be coming back each week to see the pics?
If they don't see them they sure as heck won't buy them.

2. Who is going to buy the pics, the parents or the Kids?
If there are few parents attending these things, you may have a hard time getting the kids to pony up.

3. If the same kids are coming back every week and you are shooting the same kids, how many are they going to buy?
You may have the thing where they will be asking " are you here next week/ all season?" and then wanting to wait to see ALL the pics you take to buy 1-2 from there.

These days when I go for a gig, the second thing I concern myself with after the number of attendees is exactly how and specifically I will be able to sell the pics.
I knock back jobs now if I can't set up my sales tables in a good position because experience has proven if i'm not in a good spot, everything else is a moot point.

What about sales support?
Do you have banners and signage you can put up that has a call to action or incentive for people to come see the pics?
can you put up a large TV Running a slide show with the pics to attract attention? Large poster size prints, Sandwich boards, do you have Credit card facilities.....

I think before you fire a frame you need to ask yourself about the things I have raised (and beyond that as well) and work out how you will and if you can actually address them.

Getting gigs and shooting them is a no brainer, working out how to actually make worthwhile MONEY out of everything is the real trick.

Glort

Just one other thought....

What sort of money were you hoping to make out of this per game/day or whatever time you will be shooting these gigs?

photodad1

Great ideas Gort, thanks!