Sport Shooters Promote Yourself. My latest Project

xtnomad

Thought I would share my latest project with my fellow photogs trying to promote sales. It is all about promoting our selves, for my self it was putting together a business card and going to events and posting pictures on my site and waiting for the sales to come rolling in. Well sales came and not always as many as I would have thought. But my pictures did make sales and I now plan to make a full attack this next season as my day job will allow. I shoot motor sports only, and have found the same type of tracks that I use to race at years ago, that I am now on the side lines making my way around the track. The hardest thing now is getting around the track (not all tracks will let me ride my 4 wheeler or motorcycle around) so I bought a bicycle and it changed the way I get around some events so much easier that I started this project. I know that not all will have the resources for this much detail but my first thought was to have some vinyl graphics made up and put them on (most of us can get this done at a responsible price) and apply them to the frame. This next season I will have some shirts made up and riding this bike around the track and in the pits I am sure I will be attracting some attention. Hope this gives some of the sport shooters some ideas. I will post a picture of the finished project in a few weeks when the final assembly is done.

mike_k

Sounds like a cool idea. Just one thought - have you considered getting your own domain name and linking it to your site? It would be easier for me at least to remember sportshots.com rather than sportshots.smugmug.com. Of course I'm sure sportshots.com is taken, but if you're going to go through this effort to display your web address, it might be worth it to use an address that is catchy and can be easily remembered.

Guess it would also mean a new paint job for your bike...

largelylivin

I Have OVER 10 weeks of experience in this business
I know so much more now than when I began 10 weeks ago that I make my old self look like an expert! I'm kind of in the same line except that I am (primarily) shooting boats flying past on-spec. I intend to parlee that into paying gigs for shore related events like boats races, raft-ups, yacht/club parties, family outings, off-shore fishing, etc. And, I intend build a stock photo library in and around the shore in my spare time.

We're also similar in that you have invested in a ATV and I have invested in a boat. That's big because we can get the shots that the clients can't get for themselves and can't easily arrange to do with a friend.

Here's some lessons learned so far:
1. Visual on-the-spot recognition is extremely important. I have a 21 foot boat with my web address on it, about 14 feet long, in the loudest safety-orange letters I could get. (No, I do not have a photo of my own boat yet.)

2. Join a couple highly targeted websites where your clients hang-out and pay a sponsor's fee. I have only joined one so far. Its costs $100 a year for a rotating banner ad, my own forum, and permission to out advertising in my signature. In only three weeks I have got more high-value target exposure than $2000 worth of print ads seem to have gotten me.

3. Mike is 100% correct. Get your own domain and pick a simple, easy to remember name. The only problem with SMILE-123 is that people forget the dash and end up at some dentist office.

4. Promote yourself with a blog - that gives you the chance to post some pics - that you can tell stories or share information about - and they can link back to your sugmug site. I have 1 known sale of a $155 restored vintage photo from this so far, but I get a reasonable number of hits through the blog.

5. BIGGEST PROBLEM - and this will apply to you for sure. So you've get so great pics of people doing what they love. IF you can only get them to your site! They probably don't know that you have them and, if they saw you, they will probably forget to check them out or forget you domain name. **** I am getting ready to let people register their boat names so that I can notify them when I have a pic of them ***** I planning on some sort of incentive like a drawing or something but I haven't come up with the right idea yet.

6. Instant Gratification! Bummer. I shoot on Saturdays and Sundays. My greatest traffic naturally wants to fall on Sunday night but I can't get my pics up until Monday afternoon. I try to overcome the problem by posting status messages that say "..will be up by 5:00PM Monday", and that has moved my peak to Mondays. BUT, How many sales is that costing me? You know its significant.

Here's one of last weeks best photos. (And, I am getting model releases signed.)

OnTheMarQPhotos

One thing that we have found in sports related photography is you have to be seen. Not just for safety (which is a biggie), but for recognition.

We deal primarily with off-road racing. We decided to be seen and to appear professional that we should have "team shirts". Basically they are the uniform shirts (in our case Dickies) that we have gotten embroidered with "On The Marq", our names and we have even have gotten a couple of sponsors. You can get your website (which we didn't have yest when we got these shirts first done) and any other info you might want to have on them. It makes you a kind of walking billboard for YOU!

The great thing about this is that you can be recognized as a professional, and get your name out there. People in our particular sport now know what too look for to find us, and it makes a difference! The spectators for the sport also see us quite a bit because we are between them and the action. Which gets our sponsors seen as well as promoting us.

Shirts can be inexpensive. The cost comes in with embroidery (which lasts a long time and looks great) or by screen print (doesn't last as long and personally I don't think it looks as good).

Another cool thing is that since we started wearing our "uniforms", the other photographers have started looking a bit more professional. That makes all of us stand out (in a good way).