Experiment: Trying Etsy for digital sales

mercphoto

I'm giving Etsy a shot at an attempt to sell some photos of mine just sitting around in my archive doing literally nothing. Will be interesting to see what happens, and if anyone has any thoughts on this I'd love to hear it. Only have a few images up so far, but planning to add maybe a dozen more. The big issue is going to be in driving up page views first, plus making sure my images are tagged so that people searching for stuff just happen upon my pics.

I think the reason I went Etsy rather than Smugmug is that I have simply never tried Etsy. Odd reason I know.

Here we go: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Cygnus Studios

I saw this thread yesterday, went and looked at the images and it made me curious. Obviously you put in some thought, time and effort into creating those images. On top of that, you seem to believe that these images are worthy of hanging on the wall of someone's home.

So why are you selling them for not much more than the cost of the paper and on a site known for cheap homemade stuff?

I get the fact that these images are simply taking up space in your online storage, but that alone seems like a weird reason to me to just give them away.

I do not want this to sound harsh or mean for that is NOT my intention, but if you believe that you create "art", then sell it like it's art, not like they are some snap shots taken by someone who simply owns a camera.

mercphoto

Good input Steve. Part of me was wondering if there was any mass market appeal to a small selection of my images. I've tried stock sites in the past but kept getting knocked down for things like brand names and emblems in images, etc. (Odd, since those same sites had plenty of images just like mine with brand names and emblems...). So decided to go this route, using a site where I hoped people would find my images using search tags and generate some passive income.

Unfortunately the keyword for me is passive. I have little to no time to be proactive about this stuff. I would love to do private client work, generating art and albums of their cars and bikes (I've done this 3 times, plus once for myself) but I cannot make nor justify the time required to pull this off. But hitting car shows with a macro lens, take cool detail shots, and see if it sells is a different story.

Quite possible Etsy is the wrong venue for this. Or that my pricing is too low. Or I should be selling prints, not files. Etc. Feedback such as yours is very welcome!

Cygnus Studios

Your images of the vette are very clean and would certainly have an appeal to those of us who appreciate that car. I've had the vette habit for years now.

If it were me taking car images and I was taking photos of the mainstream classics that are widely coveted, I would spend my time marketing to those who suffer from the habit and the businesses that cater to those same people.

For the vette as an example, there are multiple clubs in each state. Then you have the online groups. Then you have about a dozen businesses that deal specifically with aftermarket and OEM parts. Those same companies sell prints, calendars and a host of other "collector" items to the faithful every single day of the week.

On top of that you have the major car show organizers who specialize in marketing to these same car guys/gals. Then you have the specialty dealers who only deal in these classic mainstream cars. Just the mailing lists alone would keep you busy for years.

The list goes on and on just on that end of the car image business. That's before you get into the licensing for commercial purposes.

Finally there is the art market and yes, car people love to have "art" pictures of their cars and those similar to them. I don't know of a vette person who doesn't love the classic examples of those early vettes.

Being that there are more than 3400 art galleries in the United States alone, my guess would be that it would be quite easy to find more than a few that would certainly appreciate quality auto images, especially those with mass appeal.

These things are just off the top of my head, if this were where my business interests were involved, I would spend a considerable amount of time researching every possible client base that involved classic cars or the mainstream popular models.

Like every inch of the photography business it isn't hard, it's just very demanding. Being successful is never about guessing, it's about time, effort and commitment.

Your approach of trying to spit in the ocean and being found is inherently difficult. Yes it takes far less time and effort, but the rewards are significantly less even if you are somewhat successful in that venture. Would you rather sell 100 prints at $5 or 2 prints at $700.