Please post your Pro Websites that have made money in 2006

davespics

I have had a pro account since June and have logged about 1,500 visitors since then.

I have yet to make a sale, which doesn't really surprise me but I am curious too see some sites that are earning money. Thanks!

Andy

Hi Dave,

The biggest-selling pros are doing the following things: they take great photos, process well, present them well. They have easy to navigate sites, they price well, and then they promote heavily. They give out cards, flyers. They make calls. They make sure people know that photos are available. They keyword the heck out of their photos and galleries.

That said, we'd like to do more to make your photos findable, easier and better. We're talking about some things internally. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how you think folks can/would/should be directed to your photos

The total $ amount of what we pay out to pros in profits each month is huge

davespics

Thanks Andy...I have been doing some of the things you mentioned. This is really just a hobby for me, and the reason I put my pictures up for sale in the first place is because I needed something to finance my growingly expensive hobby!

That being said, I thought I would sell a picture or two to somebody by now. I know my pictures are not spectacular....

That is why I made this post....I am just curious what sites out there are generating some sales. Happy New year.

David

dogwood

Here's my site. I'm not flying around in a private jet with Kate Moss (yet), but I did turn a profit on print/download sales this year.

Keep in mind paid shoots are not reflected in print/download sales. In other words, it's possible to turn a profit using your smugmug site without ever selling a single photo through the site.

Oh yeah, and to add to Andy's tips-- depending on your desired customers-- I've found a myspace site is a great promotional tool to push people to my SM website.

yoyoboy

I've had an accoount since November, and only made about $30.
This comming yearr I plan to market myself much more throughly, and I should probably make about 20 times as much.

Edit: I also plan on buying a keyboarrd that doesn't repeate letters.

Iron Creek

I agree with Andy - promote,promote, and more promote. That said we make money so far not a great deal but it's money all the same. We have made more locally but it takes time. We pass out b cards every chance we get, we go to shows and we produce greeting cards that help promote our website. Keep at it and good luck.

BeachBill

davespics wrote:

I have yet to make a sale, which doesn't really surprise me but I am curious too see some sites that are earning money. Thanks!

My smugmug site is gallery.primarycolors.com. I started the site on July 30. I haven't done any marketing yet (still building the portfolio) but I have keyworded everything. I've had five sales to complete strangers since then via the site. I attribute the smugmug sales to the keywords used.

I have been successful with my niche products (i.e. the Woodies calendar) that I have marketed directly to the niche group, but those sales have been through non-smugmug resources.

Photography is just a hobby for me, so any sales are a nice bonus.

brandofamily

davespics wrote:

I have had a pro account since June and have logged about 1,500 visitors since then.

I have yet to make a sale, which doesn't really surprise me but I am curious too see some sites that are earning money. Thanks!

I signed up for SM account 1 year ago. Since going onlie I have sold 271 pictures thru SM. (Many others w/o SM printing them.)
Most of my sales are from word of mouth. I have sold many pics from my dance company galleries to the company parents, several others to the parents of the players on the sports teams I have shot, a few to folks who have attended events I've shot and a couple from my European Tour galleries to complete strangers(those were the best sales).
This site has also brought me other paying jobs as well as an ongoing freelance gig for a local yearbook company shooting sports candids.
As of this passed spring I actually applied for and recieved my business license for Brandolino Imaging Inc.
Oh ya, I also got to build another SM site for a friend...
If you want to visit my site... www.brandolinoimaging.com ... let me know what you think
By the way, word of mouth works pretty well so far as I'm getting a few thousand hits per week right now. My goal for the upcoming year is to promote the business better... esp to the sports teams...
Visit my site, let me know what you think...

Edit:I've also earned $160 in referals and it paid for this years subscription... way cool...

photogmomma

I am a portrait photographer and have sold a few non-portraits and 450-500 portraits for actual profit. (My sales number are higher, but a good number were sold at 1¢ above Smugmug for tracking purposes and I'm not counting those.)

This year, I hope to triple that number. And I hope to sell 3-4 times more in $$.... (I have never marketed so I'm hoping that helps me out!)

I have some things keyworded, but my goal pretty quickly is to really rethink all my keywords and really make serious use of that technology.

Oh, my non-portrait sales have been to friends only. I'm not concentrating on that side of my business so I don't expect that number to change much.

My site is: www.tippiepics.com.

Good luck to all!

jerryr

I use smugmug for several reasons and one of them is to sell
pictures for the Shebly Lions Football Club. We have four levels of both
football and cheer squads. Team members, Cheerleaders, parents, family members, friends and fans can come to the site, view pictures and of course, purchase. Proceeds go to the Shelby Lions Football Club.
Simple as that . I keep the costs low and I have sold over 400+ pictures this past fall. NIce and simple fundraiser for the club.
As a side note, one of the pictures I took was used in the Detroit Free
Press for an article appropriately titled 'These Lions are Winners!'


http://jrphotos.smugmug.com/gallery/1269979

wolfwoods

I did make money in 2006.
My site has been since up since October 2005. I started it in order to respond to requests from parents who wanted photos of their sons and daughters in the high school band or on a local dance team. My galleries are almost entirely of those two subjects, but I have picked up a few other events. Many of my shots are not very "artsy" but they do the job they are intended to do...capture kids doing something they enjoy doing. I didn't plan to make a living doing this.

The directors have given me "free run" at events as long as I don't get in the way or distract from the performances. The band and dance studio websites www.prideinmotionband.com and www.absolutelystars.com have links to my galleries and I pass out business cards at events. The rest of my advertising is by word of mouth and a sign on the bulletin boards around town. The photos are priced so I make enough to pay for the website, cover my taxes on my sales, and buy a goodie or two for my camera bag.

I get 10s-of-thousands of hits per month, and Smugmug has processed about 580 prints for me, that's an average of 40 per month. Frankly, that's better than I expected.

I have friends who post photos for sale on other host sites and they have commented that they also get a lot of lookers but very few buyers. I have better sales than either of them. If you visit my site, you'll see I use some of the features Smugmug offers, but not all of them. As long as the sales help me finance my habit, I'm good.

Dna

www.lsvphotos.com

Lifesaving Victoria Photos. (Australia)

made a couple of hundred, in about 4 months since switching the domain name over, with no advertising.
There are 47,00 photos on there though ...

Hoping to do a lot better this year with lots more flyers to hand out etc

Andrew

MichaelKirk

Here is mine
I set up a personal account in May/June 2006 and switched to a Pro account in mid October this fall (2.5 months of selling).
Doing some minimal word of mouth promoting and keeping my name in some yahoo group email list- but again its a hobbie for me. My intent was just to sell enough to pay for my SM account. Already passed thet 2 fold. My issue is that I have oher photographers shooting at the same events that are giving away their photos for free - I need to offer something different that is worth paying for. Trying to do just that.
Will try and push some more in 2007 and photograph different events whenever possible.

Watch stepping on others toes and out of your boundries as I have already been request to take photos down from my site. I shot my neices indoor hockey game and was advised to pull the photos off my site since I was selling them and did not have the venues permission.
Still learning.....




Michael

davespics wrote:

I have had a pro account since June and have logged about 1,500 visitors since then.

I have yet to make a sale, which doesn't really surprise me but I am curious too see some sites that are earning money. Thanks!

johng

I've had a pro account for about 9 months. I shoot local sporting events which may or may not be different than what you are looking at. Basically, no one is really going to buy many of these types of images unless they or their kids were involved in the event. So, keywords and google don't really help a whole lot. My goal is simply to cover equipment costs so I'm not doing serious marketing. I've made about $1400 off my sales to the parents - plus approximately $1000- in sales to local weekly paper.

I'd love to make more $$$ but I just don't have the time to do better marketing - which is what really drives sales for this type of thing. So, for now, I'm happy with making about $200-250 a month - saving up enough to buy a new 1 series body next fall.

site = www.jagsportsphotos.com

lynnesite

OK, I started getting serious about doing my print sales through smuggy in mid-2006. So last year was over $6K, respectable I guess, though much of my income comes from shoot fees and stock licensing rather than print sales. None of my stock images are sold via smugmug, I do use it to showcase them though. I think my control panel says 552 images sold to date. Photography as a full time gig is very challenging, and in 2007 I'm going to lapse back into being a Macintosh consultant part-time.

MichaelKirk

Info about local papers
How did you get started with the local papers? I would like to start trying with the local papers as well - just not sure how to go about approaching them.

Michael

johng wrote:

I've had a pro account for about 9 months. I shoot local sporting events which may or may not be different than what you are looking at. Basically, no one is really going to buy many of these types of images unless they or their kids were involved in the event. So, keywords and google don't really help a whole lot. My goal is simply to cover equipment costs so I'm not doing serious marketing. I've made about $1400 off my sales to the parents - plus approximately $1000- in sales to local weekly paper.

I'd love to make more $$$ but I just don't have the time to do better marketing - which is what really drives sales for this type of thing. So, for now, I'm happy with making about $200-250 a month - saving up enough to buy a new 1 series body next fall.

site = www.jagsportsphotos.com

JimM

I have sold about $1,200 through Smugmug in the last year and a half. These have either been portraits and weddings I have shot and pointed the clients to, or sports photos (mainly football). I have even started a website to link to the appropriate galleries in hopes that people might stumble on my football photos when searching the Internet (that one is located here: Brighton Michigan Football photos. My regular site is located here: Brighton Michigan Photographer.

I think the key is to know who your customers are and to let them know how to find your site. Also keyword everything!!!

blackholewon

Hits and more hits.
34,303 hits and counting - that's this year only - 6 days. Last year - 687,200 even. That's 85,900/month.

There is a lot of competition out there. Sales are relative to what and who your're selling to. Smugmug has put our photos out there to bring in lots of private shoots. Many customers just want the disc. So they get it and pay for it. Use local word of mouth for the privates - search engines for the hits.

Good luck -

zoomer

I have had a pro site for about 4 months.
I average 20,000 hits a month and have sold 0 photos.
I think you get out of it what you put in.

I learned the hard way that just sitting back and thinking if the photos are good they will sell themselves does not work.

I recently completely revamped my site (Thanks Barb Gates).
I am hoping a more clean and professional looking site will get the sales moving.

The trick is to get your site out on the net and coming up in search engines. I think the people that make the most money here are using the site to sell event photos. I doubt if there are many folks here making much money from people who are just out there randomly looking for photos to buy. Just does not seem to work that way.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing, that is the key to selling photos.
The guys with the best marketing sell more photos than the guy with the best photos and not so good marketing.
Good Luck! www.alloutdoor.smugmug.com

cdonovan

Not sure if this counts but I average about an order a week.

I have a target audience though, some of these people are just now hearing about me and are finding their photos from this summer...It's really fun to see orders still piling in from Shows back in August!!!

I have definitly paid for my yearly subscription from these orders...also I have paid off my Rebel I haven't found any place better than smug mug to host my photos..my clients love it!

So far this month my hits calculator says that 1482 large photos have been viewed and total for all galleries thumbs is 4940!!!

ops forgot to add my gallery!http://cdonovanphotos.smugmug.com/

blackholewon

Here's one method.
If you're looking to make more money with your photos then one way is to gain event excusivity. It doesn't matter what it is. You'll need to offer the event some money. Then it's all up hill from there. For instance, any school or league tournament is a great way to start. Any age will do. Offer the volleyball booster club a few hundred dollars and ask that you be the only pro-photog allowed to shoot. Show them how good you shoot - direct them to your website. Tell them you'll cover every player. You'll also get to shoot all the other teams in the tourny. Get listed on their website. Make a list. Check it twice. A helper, a teeneager, is very helpful. Give them a few bucks to keep the list checked off. In a weekend event you can shoot 20-30 games x 8-12 players. You can offer print packages or every shot of each player on disc. Price between $20-$50. The math adds up to success! You'll alos get referrals - lots of them if you can shoot. If you pick an actrivity you love - it will be a day in the park - and you'll get paid to boot!

Good Luck -

johng

MichaelKirk wrote:

How did you get started with the local papers? I would like to start trying with the local papers as well - just not sure how to go about approaching them.

Michael

Michael - I freelance for a weekly paper. I suggest starting there. Before you contact them, determine what type of photography you want to do for them and select 20 images (no more) that illustrate that type of photography. Be very self critical - if you like an image but it's slightly OOF - drop it. Crop the images to highlight them - don't worry about aspect ratio - it doesn't matter for newspaper - they do the same thing. Put them in a smugmug gallery with Large and Original size available. Then open up the weekly paper and find contact information for the photo editor if they have one. If they dont, then the editor. Call them on the phone and tell them you'd like to do freelance work. You have a gallery of work on-line you'd like them to take a look at.

Weekly papers are almost always willing to use freelance photogs - they don't have the budget for a lot of staff photographers.

Next step up the chain is small daily papers - again they'll use freelance photogs more than the major daily papers.

bham

Not sure my info will help you. For one of my smugmug sites we only shoot events hired to shoot, so the only visitors are people who are in the pics since about every gallery is password protected.

Hits:
Dec 334,502 not as many events this month.
Nov 834,707
Oct 1,231,940
Sept 807,673

We sold almost 6,000 images this year, uploaded over 100,000. So about 6 in 100 images sold. 3,500 sold since 9/1.

DTMPhotos

Sales and thoughts...
I'm also a part timer...I split about 2/3rds Irish Dance portraits and the rest are weddings. I committed to my wife that I wouldn't take on more than 10 events a year.

None of my sales have been from outside my customer set (but that's to be expected).

I started my pro sales in January 2005 so it's been about 2 years now. I've logged a little over 3100 items sold and a bit over $21k in sales/profit. Again, this is just part time and almost all have been from portraits (I provide the images for weddings so rarely see print sales from those).

D.

www.dtmphotos.com

jstratton

We signed up for smugmug as a pro account this summer. We planned to just use it just to host photos and album designs but decided to post our images for print orders too. Our print prices were set way too low for last year's shoots but we have done $350 so far in print sales. In 2006 we offered a DVD of all images with our main wedding packages but decided to make albums our main product and offer the images on disc as an a la carte item in 2007. So prints will have to be ordered in 2007 and our prices are higher - we'll see how we do. There is a lot of competition around here however we are quite pleased to have more bookings this year than we did at this point last year even with our package changes. We did 18 weddings last year and we have 9 booked so far this year with 3 (tentative/likely) and it's not even Valentine's day yet! I attribute this to our website! I don't see print sales as the only way to "make money" from our website - I say if you get bookings your website is a big huge reason for it so that $350 is "icing on the cake" for us.

My husband also works outside our business at a big camera store here in Springfield, in camera sales. He teaches a digital camera class every few weeks and is busy in photoshop, at our church board meetings, or shooting other events most evenings . . . that is why I'm the one who does the website stuff - he's too busy to be on here!

We have never advertised beyond the wedding and our network of people (family, friends, work, church, ect.), but when we put this website up people loved it. We put a statcounter on and I'm amazed at how much traffic we get every day. I hope I never feel like I need to go to a wedding show to get business! You get better business when it's by referral, I believe.

One great tip we learned from a "used-to-be" wedding photographer was to offer "free" engagement pictures with the wedding fee and then use one of the images as a kind of business card to hand out at the wedding reception. We started doing this last fall. We have 50 or so 4x6 engagement shots printed with our info on a black border around the image and put those on the tables at the reception or just hand them out. The bride's love it because it answers the questions: "how can we get prints?" and "when can we see your pictures?" on the day of the event. I think I attached an image as an example. . .
Blessings to you all, can't wait to show results in 2007, Aurelia S.

sirsloop

see sig for website - part time/weekend work on top of our normal 40/hr week jobs

~900 items sold for about $5500 profits since August '06. This year promises to be even better now that we've done a lot of networking, have ties into a lot of horse farms, and families at the events know about us. For us it was all about finding a market that was not saturated with photographers and is full of parents with lots of money. Lots of business cards get passed around and lots of flyers are sent to local farms.

Best of luck to all in '07!!