Selling online

hschlessphoto · March 24, 2008

So, I'm thinking of Sometime in the near future (probably the summer) creating a website on which i can sell my photos. I know basically nothign abotu it, so I would like some input from people on what they think. My main questions are

1. How much work will the site do for you?
2. How much work do I have to put in other than putting up prices, contact info and photos
3. How much is the cost?
4. How well will it actually work?

thanks a lot to those who answer. much appreciated.

SaltFork · March 24, 2008

Hello Hank -

I'm not sure I can offer any definitive answers to your questions, but I can tell you about my experiences and then you can draw your own conclusions.

I have had a Smugmug site (check the link below) for almost two years now and I have generated a little over $6,000 profit through print sales. Add to that another $2,000 from sitting fees, custom photoshop fees, and Blurb book profits and you have about the amount that I have spent on new equipment in the same time period. In other words, my hobby is paying for itself.

The website costs me $150 per year (Smugmug) plus another $10 or so to GoDaddy for the domain name. Now that I'm on top of the learning curve it doesn't take much time to keep it all going. I have about 36,000 photos on my site now.

Landscape photography is my passion..... and it has accounted for about $7.00 of my total profit in two years.

Sports is another big deal for me accounting for about $5000 of my total. The rest has come through portrait photography.

I see my greatest potential for profit in the Portrait area. I don't do weddings but I would expect that it would offer a similar upside. I shoot sports because I enjoy it and because my kids play. I can shoot 200-400 shots at a game (soccer, football, baseball, volleyball), cull them in about 30 minutes or so, and then upload them overnight to the website having taken about 10 minutes to establish the new gallery with its standard pricing and setup. As the word gets out, my payback on shooting a game gets better. Sometimes I don't sell anything and sometimes I might make $100-$200 off of a game. I wish I knew how to predict that outcome!

When I shoot portraits I might generate 50-100 shots and then spend 3-5 hours culling them and doing photoshop work. The client can then order the prints they want from the gallery I establish for them. I try to come out of that with at least 10 good poses that I will post in color, B&W, sepia, or all of the above.

I do not get the kind of response on my portrait galleries that I would like. I hear about people in my community spending $500 to $2000 for Senior Portrait packages that are not any better than what I produce.... and yet my largest sale has only been about $300. Granted, my prices are too low. If someone spent $1000 on Senior Portrait prints through me they would have enough paper to wallpaper most of their house. (I should definitely raise my prices.) I don't do any kind of aggressive marketing - it's all word-of-mouth. And, I don't do any aggressive selling once the photos are processed and posted. People have told me that if I printed a bunch of portraits and then sat down with my clients to review them that I would generate many more orders. There's something about threatening to shred a photo of someone's little princess that somehow forces them to purchase prints they didn't want.....

What else would you like to know? I'd be glad to answer any specific questions and I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's input.

- James

glhphotos · March 24, 2008

I expect a lot depends on your expectations. This is not a case of "if you build it they will come." What type of photos are you going to try to sell? As James noted landscapes are a hard sell. Sports are iffy unless you are really good and have images that others are unlikely to get and have a contract with the venue. Using the web to show portrait sessions may work but from everything I have read and those I have talked to, which include some photographers who are very successful having the client view portrait or wedding photos on a large projected image will greatly increase the sales and profitability. The site will need to be routinely and continuously updated with new images. Do you have enough stock to do so or are you active enough and have enough time to devote to such an undertaking? You might consider simply using Smugmug and see if there is any interest in your work. It is fairly inexpensive, easy to use and runs pretty smoothly. If people like what they see and you photo business begins to take off you can look into developing your own site.

Angelo · March 25, 2008

hschlessphoto wrote:

So, I'm thinking of Sometime in the near future (probably the summer) creating a website on which i can sell my photos. I know basically nothign abotu it, so I would like some input from people on what they think. My main questions are

1. How much work will the site do for you?
2. How much work do I have to put in other than putting up prices, contact info and photos
3. How much is the cost?
4. How well will it actually work?

thanks a lot to those who answer. much appreciated.

Many of us here have SMUGMUG accounts and for my money you can't find an easier, better site to host your images and manage you sales for you!

If you decide to subscribe here's a discount code you may use: WYaQX1K7RGp3I

Good luck!

chuckinsocal · March 25, 2008

I'm gonna take a stab at answering each question individually. I'd welcome any comments.

Q: How much work will the site do for you?
A: Next to none. The site will host your photos and make them available to the world to see. There are lots of talented people here who will gladly answer questions or do just about anything to help you along. But, that's not the site, it's the community, and I've never been part of a better one. That brings us to #2.

Q: How much work do I have to put in other than putting up prices, contact info and photos.
A: A lot. If you want to sell your photos on SmugMug, you need a Pro account. Although it's not totally necessary, you'll probably want to customize your site to make it your own and to suit your product line. Customization can be hugely time consuming depending on the amount and kind of customization you want. Browse some galleries here. You'll find that each one is different being the product of each individual's imagination, design skills, time, effort, etc.

Then, you'll want to organize your site into categories and galleries and it can take some time and effort to maintain all that.

Now that we have the easy part taken care of, you're gonna have to market your site. You're gonna have to do things to make people visit you site. That might consist of passing out lots of business cards and/or flyers, attending events related to your subject matter, print ads, search engine optimization, the list can go on and on and I'm sure others will add to it.

Q: How much will it cost?
A: That question has already been answered. A SmugMug Pro account is $150 per year (cheap given all you get) and if you choose to get your own domain name, that's about $10 per year through GoDaddy. Other services may be more or less. After that, you may incur some marketing costs for business cards, flyers, sample prints, etc but that's all up to you. Then there's travel expense at $3.50 per gallon of gas going to and coming from your shoot locations. There may be more I haven't thought of at the moment.

Q: How well will it actually work?
A: That, my friend, is all up to you. If you have a productive niche and a quality product, and you put sufficient time and effort into it, and you present yourself and your product well enough, it may work ok. It's like everything else in life, what you get out of it is gonna be in direct proportion to what you put into it. But, it ain't gonna be fast and easy.

And, therein lie the short answers to your questions. I hope they help. I'm sure others will have more wisdom for you.

Chuck Cannova
www.customrideportraits.com
http://chuckinsocal.SmugMug.com

johng · March 25, 2008

chuckinsocal wrote:

It's like everything else in life, what you get out of it is gonna be in direct proportion to what you put into it. But, it ain't gonna be fast and easy.

I'd like to comment on this part. Effort is not, in and of itself, a guarantee of success. Selling photos is like selling anything else.

First, there has to be a market for your product. You have to actually provide something someone wants to buy.

Second, that market needs to be aware of your product.

No matter how good your site is or how good your photos are, you have to find the market that wants to buy them and market to them effectively.

Assuming both of the above happens, you are now on to the next business problem - pricing and competition.

Can your market find a better product elsewhere? Can they find a reasonable alternative elsewhere for less money?

And, you also need to understand the buying habits of your market. Some people dont like buying over the internet. Are your potential customers like that?

And, what types of products do they like? For instance I do sports photography. Smugmug is a good fit for action shots but not Team & Individual - smugmug has no trading cards, doesn't produce memory mates or several other products that are staples in T&I. My point is - if I want to be successful in T&I (which is much more profitable than action print sales) I need to provide products the buyer wants - which dont exist at smugmug or any other sight similar to smugmug.

You'll get more useful answers if you let us know what type of photography you're in to and what exactly it is you want to sell.

hschlessphoto · March 25, 2008

wow, all of this is amazingly helpful. thanks to all who answered so profoundly and intelligently

. These questions to my questions andanswers also made me thing a lot about when i should actually do this more than anything. I am thinking some time over the summer, when i have more money (caddying) and time (no school). Thanks again to all who have answered here. If you get a chance...check out my current website

http://gallery.mac.com/hankschlessphoto.

thanks!

Selling online

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