Maximizing sales from Little League photos

DrDavid

I'm looking for advice on how to maximize sales of Little League action photos. I was chosen as the official action photo photographer, and had intended to simply post all the photos on SM to sell. BUT, I'm worried that after countless hours of shooting, cropping, etc.. we'll sell like 10 prints. :huh

Maybe I'm worrying for nothing, but, we haven't sold a *single* photo from opening day.. People kept asking, "How do we purchase the photos?", but, still not a single sale. It's been up for a week.

The league is promoting me, handing out flyers, and has a link to my website on their site. I'm also advertising the fact that a portion of each sale benefits the little league.

In the past, the place that's taken the photos has printed *everything* and set up a booth to sell photos. I don't have the man-power to do that, nor do I want the further capital outlay to print everything ahead of time, etc..

So... Will selling online only result in little to no sales? Or, once the people see the photos, will they just go, "Cool", and never click the 'puchase' button?

Should I take the photos DOWN after so long? I'm currently offering a 10% discount if they buy within the first week. That hasn't spurred anyone to buy anything yet :cry ...

I guess what this all boils down to is this.. What is the best way to maximize profit from speculative action photo shooting when the league is promoting you as their official action photo supplier? They are willing to hand out flyers, they'll let me put up a booth if I want, I can hang signs, but... at the end of the day, I need people to part with their money and BUY THE PHOTOS! So, any good tips or tricks? Please? :bow

David

bobcool

Hi David,

Making enough money for your time spent is generally very difficult when shooting spec action photography. Some areas/leagues are more profitable than others.

One thing to consider is all of your opening day shots are not action shots - they are shots of people standing around, making announcements and the teams walking the diamond with their team banner. You might sell some of these, but don't count on many sales from this particular event.

However, once you start getting action shots from games, consider a booth, if only to put up some enlargements of some really good shots to show the parents how much better you can get a great action shot than their p&s cameras aimed through the backstop.

I'm in the same boat as you, shooting spec for an upcoming league in my town. I'm teaming up with another photographer friend and this is our plan we currently have in place:

• We will fork out some initial expense by enlarging some great action shots and posting them on the concession stand wall - thinking big here, like a 20x30 or something that catches the eye
• We'll hand out custom business cards with the direct URL to the action galleries, using Smugmug's vanity URLs to make it easy to remember and type
• We give out the business cards to each coach or team mom, enough for one biz card per player, and ask them to give the cards to the parents
• We're considering setting up a laptop w/external monitor for our wives to show on a slideshow of the pics from the previous game. We may buy some smaller 256mb or 512mb mem cards and run them over to the wives after each game - still working on the logistics of this theory

That's all we have in place right now, but the league doesn't start until April so we've got time to think about it more. Bottom line, on-site printing is the best money-maker possible. Action shots are an emotional buy, and if you can get their money for your pics while the memory is still fresh then you'll tend to make three or four times as much. But, on-site printing is a big investment in equipment and personnel, so many people don't do it.

One other thing to consider towards the end of the season is creating action collage posters that you see here on Dgrin. Do a search for "poster" and you'll see there are some really creative people that will share techniques and give you feedback on what type of poster sells/works and what doesn't. We're considering this too, as this town's league has never been offered this, so it may sell well.

Sorry for the long post - I hope this helps. I'm sure others will also give you their point of view from their local markets so you can make a well-rounded decision on what to do to boost your sales. Good luck!

Mulder32

Lot of work, little profit
I used to do sports action and then HOPED people would buy. Plenty of visitors to the site, but nobody would buy. Trained as a photojournalist, these were pretty good action shots--close, clear faces, emotion, etc. Prices were very reasonable (I think $2.00 for a 4 x 6). This is a tough market. Now I've switched to "pay up front, then I shoot". Unfortunately, you're the official league shooter, so you have to be there.

My advice is maybe to offer some coaches, parents free samples--maybe business card size (double sided with your info on the back). Like the previous poster wrote, your first gallery has no action shots. This may be because it's opening day, but from now on, get good and close and get faces. Dugout shots are fine as long as they show emotion (or evoke an emotion from the viewer).

All you can do is keep plugging away. The more your site and name is out there, the better. Good luck!
http://focalpointphoto.smugmug.com/

snaptie2002

Hey........I feel your pain:D

Our online sales are sporatic but at the end of the season things usually average out fairly nicely.

A couple things that will help with sales are, having a couple view stations to provide onsite viewing and sales. No printing, just let them place the order on the spot, while they are still excited, so you can fufill them later. Some folks see an 80% sales increase over online ordering.

Another thing we do is much more simple and doesn't cost anything.

Believe it or not some people still don't like to order online, or don't have a credit card to order with or for what ever reason will not order from your website.

Our sales went up about 30% when we added a line to our website telling folks to call or email us with thier orders. We then have them processed locally and deliver them ourself.

With that being said, if we were only getting income from action we probably would just get out of the business. Action has been a very valuable stepping stone to the Team and Individual side of the business.

You can knock down 1k or so in a couple hours shooting T&I

We still do action 3 or 4 times a week, mainly because we like it, but also to keep us in contact with the league officials, coaches, parents and the real decision makers...the team Moms.....so when it comes T&I time we are fresh on everyone's mind.

Marty

nipprdog

snaptie2002 wrote:

Believe it or not some people still don't like to order online, or don't have a credit card to order with or for what ever reason will not order from your website.

Our sales went up about 30% when we added a line to our website telling folks to call or email us with thier orders. We then have them processed locally and deliver them ourself.

Interesting. Do you charge extra for for that service?

Action has been a very valuable stepping stone to the Team and Individual side of the business.

You can knock down 1k or so in a couple hours shooting T&I

We still do action 3 or 4 times a week, mainly because we like it, but also to keep us in contact with the league officials, coaches, parents and the real decision makers...the team Moms.....so when it comes T&I time we are fresh on everyone's mind.

That's kind of what I'm leaning toward.

LUCKYSHOT

DrDavid wrote:

I'm looking for advice on how to maximize sales of Little League action photos. I was chosen as the official action photo photographer, and had intended to simply post all the photos on SM to sell. BUT, I'm worried that after countless hours of shooting, cropping, etc.. we'll sell like 10 prints.

Maybe I'm worrying for nothing, but, we haven't sold a *single* photo from opening day.. People kept asking, "How do we purchase the photos?", but, still not a single sale. It's been up for a week.

The league is promoting me, handing out flyers, and has a link to my website on their site. I'm also advertising the fact that a portion of each sale benefits the little league.

In the past, the place that's taken the photos has printed *everything* and set up a booth to sell photos. I don't have the man-power to do that, nor do I want the further capital outlay to print everything ahead of time, etc..

So... Will selling online only result in little to no sales? Or, once the people see the photos, will they just go, "Cool", and never click the 'puchase' button?

Should I take the photos DOWN after so long? I'm currently offering a 10% discount if they buy within the first week. That hasn't spurred anyone to buy anything yet :cry ...

I guess what this all boils down to is this.. What is the best way to maximize profit from speculative action photo shooting when the league is promoting you as their official action photo supplier? They are willing to hand out flyers, they'll let me put up a booth if I want, I can hang signs, but... at the end of the day, I need people to part with their money and BUY THE PHOTOS! So, any good tips or tricks? Please?

David

I can certainly feel your pain, two weeks ago I shot 38 hockey games for a Narch hockey tournement and so far only $500 has been sold. I have shot games and sold nothing and I have struck the mother lode on some.
As far as advice, If you shoot sports it had bettter be a jaw dropping shot, A shot of people standing around wont cut it, I loved your soccer shots, but the baseball had no Action, May I suggest that you can almost forget the actual baseball game itself and get everything you can in the warmups, that is how to get the shot of little johnny cathing the ball and no one is the wiser. Also work the crowd, If you get a shot of little Johnny hitting the ball, find the parent and show it to them. Make sure everyone has your card, also, if need be offer discounts to the coaches if they e mail your link to the team, I realize SM doesnt have discounts but tell them you will e mail them the digital image of any print they buy. That will do it.
Good Luck
Chris
www.longislandimage.smugmug.com

DrDavid

Thanks for all the advice and input! We're in the process of sorting and cropping about 7000k+ photos (with more on the way!).. BUT, I'll post some links soon so that you guys can rip me apart.. Lots of time to reshoot if needed, so, I'm not feeling really worried, but, of course, I think some of them are really good; I'll post when they're up with some links. Hang tight.

David

snaptie2002

Jim,

We do not charge extra to process orders for folks that do not want to order from our website.

Cutting out the middle man more than covers our cost.

Marty

JBHotShots

snaptie2002 wrote:

Believe it or not some people still don't like to order online, or don't have a credit card to order with or for what ever reason will not order from your website.

Our sales went up about 30% when we added a line to our website telling folks to call or email us with thier orders. We then have them processed locally and deliver them ourself.

I shoot dirt track racing mainly and have found a lot of people don't order for those same reasons. That is a great idea and I'm going to give it a shot.

AZTarHeel

My wife and I shot a local basketball league this winter, about four weekends worth of stuff with games going from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. Thousands of pics up on the Web site. Decent marketing of myself, though it could have been better. Lots of compliments and lots of hits on the site.

So far, we've had one order for about $110 directly from the Web.

BUT, we also marketed $30 poster/collages with 3-5 action shots, the player's name and a personal touch (11x14 size). We've done pretty well with those, though again sales could be a whole lot better.

We were the T&I photogs as well (about 200 kids, 26 teams), so really my action picture time was limited (plus I have a full-time job at a newspaper).

To sell action shots, you've really got to be a huge salesperson as well. My wife spent a lot of time with our laptop showing parents pictures, and that helped sell the collages more than anything. When parents came to me with requests -- "hey, if you get some good ones of my son, I'll buy them," -- I jumped on that as well.

I think this side of the biz is like a snowball. You've got to get it rolling with good marketing, relationships with folks (and of course good photos). Once you've pleased some customers with your work, word will get around and the pace will pick up.

For instance, last season with this same league, one girl's mom ordered an 11x14 "digital memory mate" ... this year, she ordered another one, and several of her teammates jumped in with her...

Bottom line: I don't think -- since a lot of leagues now have photographers -- that just shooting tons of photos and uploading them to a site, with the hope folks will buy, will reap dividends on its own. You've got to sell yourself as well, picking and choosing where to invest time and $$$