is there anybody........

navigator72

is there anybody that has really made it big on Smugmug? Who on their site sells a lot of photos?

jerryr

I would not say I have made it big in terms of $$ , but I will say this :
- I have used smugmug to store the photos I take for my sons football team and the other teams in our organization. I have used it as a fundraiser and the parents/family/players/etc love it! I have also done the same thing with my class reunion, etc - so yea, it has help my event photography business, slow but sure
- I use smugmug as the platform for photography sites I have designed/customized. All of the photographers I have worked with love their sites. In fact, I am working with a photographer right now who is paying a combination of $80 a month (WOW!) to host their client pictures - on two sites! And get this, only one size of pictures on-lineand the on-line pictures expire. So the photographer going from $80 a month to a $150 a year (and paying for a customized site) is already at a savings.

So, IMO - I have made in big in smugmug - great application and great community
- happy holidays !

-jr

xtnomad

What do you think is big? A photo that sold at $1.00 and sold 100,000 times or One photo that sold for $100,000.00 dollars.

dogwood

navigator72 wrote:

is there anybody that has really made it big on Smugmug? Who on their site sells a lot of photos?

SM has made me a millionaire several times over. Unfortunately, my penchant for L-glass and 1D bodies has brought me right back to the poor house.

All joking aside, my print and download sales are steadily increasing. But keep in mind, it's not like you just post your photos and suddenly everyone is going to beat a path to your website and start buying like crazy. There's an element of sales involved and marketing to people who are likely to buy your photos. In other words, people have to actually have money to buy photos-- and that's who you want to market to.

Yeah, yeah-- sounds like a no-brainer but I'll give you a good example. I shoot a lot of models and a lot of fashion shows. The models themselves might buy one or two photos, but usually not (many of them are teenagers without a lot of money). But you know who DOES buy the photos? The parents of the models.

So now when I shoot fashion shows, I make sure to shoot a couple of extra photos of the models who have parents who usually buy photos. And if someone pushes in next to me with a point-n-shoot cam during a show and they're clearly just interested in one model, 9 times out of 10 it's a parent and I make sure to hand them a business card. Maybe they won't buy photos, but they'll ALWAYS go to my website, and a lot of times they'll contact me about doing a paid portfolio shoot with their daugher or son after they see my work.

Here's another example for wedding shooters. Yeah, there are many, many more firehouse/VFW/American Legion weddings than country club weddings, but guess who is willing to pay more for photos?

So all that is a long way of saying even with a SM website, you'll still need to market yourself and you'll still need to decide who to market to.