Has Anyone actually sold any "Photo Gifts"?

largelylivin

I happen to be in a niche where I could actually sell a fair number of t-Shirts and coffee mugs with photographs - its just one of those dumb things people will do.


However, SMs prices on this stuff is ridiculous unless you want to settle for a $1-$2 profit on a $20 T-shirt.

I've already spent some time incorporating retail prices "just in case", but I'm of a mind to just ignore that stuff from now on because its a waste of time.

I'm betting that nobody sells any reasonable amount of this stuff right?

Hey SM! With all of your professional members combined do you sell any of this stuff?

I raally think that by next year I need to find a new source that can be profitable and cut that business out for self-fullfilment.

William M Porter

largelylivin wrote:

I happen to be in a niche where I could actually sell a fair number of t-Shirts and coffee mugs with photographs - its just one of those dumb things people will do.

However, SMs prices on this stuff is ridiculous unless you want to settle for a $1-$2 profit on a $20 T-shirt.

I've sold a few t-shirts. I get a couple of dollars per shirt. That doesn't strike me as too bad. It's not paying my bills, but a 10% profit on an item like a shirt seems to me not too paltry, especially considering that I basically don't have to do anything at all. In my case, while I'm providing a service to the buyers (parents of kids that I've photographed) and therefore don't think its unfair to charge, at the same time, I'm not trying to gouge them.

You seem to be aware that you can increase your own profit on the shirts, etc., so I take it that your complaint is that SmugMug is making too MUCH off the shirts, and that this is keeping you from making enough. I'm not terribly familiar with this field of business, but I know that when I had shirts made for my company a year ago, they were a fair bit more expensive than SmugMug's t-shirts. They were embroidered, not printed, and that probably makes a difference to the price.

Will

largelylivin

William M Porter wrote:

I've sold a few t-shirts. I get a couple of dollars per shirt. That doesn't strike me as too bad. It's not paying my bills, but a 10% profit on an item like a shirt seems to me not too paltry, especially considering that I basically don't have to do anything at all. In my case, while I'm providing a service to the buyers (parents of kids that I've photographed) and therefore don't think its unfair to charge, at the same time, I'm not trying to gouge them.

You seem to be aware that you can increase your own profit on the shirts, etc., so I take it that your complaint is that SmugMug is making too MUCH off the shirts, and that this is keeping you from making enough. I'm not terribly familiar with this field of business, but I know that when I had shirts made for my company a year ago, they were a fair bit more expensive than SmugMug's t-shirts. They were embroidered, not printed, and that probably makes a difference to the price.

Will

If your business was buying T-Shirts at wholesale and reselling them at retail you would not accept less than 100% mark-up. Otherwise, you would not be in that business. If your business was buying ingredients at wholesale and selling pizzas at retail, you wouldn't accept less than a 200%-300% mark-up.

In this case, we add value to the T-shirt or coffee mug by (1) connecting them with a customer that actually wants to buy one and (2) give them something to decorate or personalize the item with. We add value.

There is no successful business man in the world who would sell something for 10% over wholesale, especially when there is value added (ie: labor and talent) to that product. In fact, SM is not charging us wholesale, they are charging retail.

Let's say that you can get a straight $20 per hour to just take pictures for someone else. Then in principle, you should refuse to waste your time with T-shirts because the very low margins bring down your "worth".

Andy

largelylivin wrote:

Hey SM! With all of your professional members combined do you sell any of this stuff?

lots of pros are selling these items

largelylivin

Okay. I am prepared to be proven wrong. Let's hear some numbers. Impress me.

bham

If you want to make money on doing t-shirts then I might advise using cafepress or zazzle. I haven't done any through cafepress but at zazzle I have done a number of shirts with images as a main focus, but also added a dissolving shadow around the image and text for the back of the shirt and put some text on the front pocket. I do all the "artwork" in photoshop then upload the images as .png (to allow for transparent) and then place on the shirts. You can make up to 17% of the sales price which ranges from around 15-20 depending on the type of shirt, color, design, number of sides imprinted, etc. Based on a $15.00 sales price your profit would be 2.55 and on a $20 your profit would be $3.40.