Selling photos at the track

LRussoPhoto · June 21, 2011

I have started to take photos at local motocross races. I've been selling them on Smugmug and been doing fairly well. I see that there are some photog's at the track with a printer to sell the photos right there. I have had other photog's tell me that thats the way to make real money because people want there photos right away. Any suggestions on what type of printer I would need and how much they cost? Do you agree with this method of selling photos?

mercphoto · June 21, 2011

QuadRacer041 wrote: »

I have started to take photos at local motocross races. I've been selling them on Smugmug and been doing fairly well. I see that there are some photog's at the track with a printer to sell the photos right there. I have had other photog's tell me that thats the way to make real money because people want there photos right away. Any suggestions on what type of printer I would need and how much they cost? Do you agree with this method of selling photos?

Its really hard to beat instant gratification and being able to sell to that impulse buy. That being said, you can also just do order taking (and more importantly, taking payment) at the track, and print and mail later. With smart phones these days its getting pretty easy to take credit cards at remote locations. All you need then are the viewing stations, and not viewing stations plus printers.

digidrone · June 21, 2011

Good question Lou!
I am dealing with this myself after my first go alot of ppl say that is what I need to do...
I'm sure the "instant gratification" factor is in play here... I would have to purchase a generator as well as printer.
Will be interesting to hear what the others have to say....

LRussoPhoto · June 21, 2011

Good idea Bill, I already have a genorator and I could probably use an old laptop just for viewing only problem I would run into is I think I would need another person to stay at the trailer and deal with people while I'm out shooting.
Any advice on printers?

JBHotShots · June 22, 2011

QuadRacer041 wrote: »

Good idea Bill, I already have a genorator and I could probably use an old laptop just for viewing only problem I would run into is I think I would need another person to stay at the trailer and deal with people while I'm out shooting.
Any advice on printers?

That's the huge draw back for me to print on site. Sure my wife says she would help me but getting her to be well versed in the way I operate and in photography in general would be pretty difficult. Trying to find someone NOT related to me and then you add a trust issue.

Snowgirl · June 22, 2011

LouDoggsRuca wrote: »

That's the huge draw back for me to print on site. Sure my wife says she would help me but getting her to be well versed in the way I operate and in photography in general would be pretty difficult. Trying to find someone NOT related to me and then you add a trust issue.

And added cost.

LRussoPhoto · June 22, 2011

Yes, i agree with you both.

Glort · June 26, 2011

The bottom line is which business model will make you the most money at the end of the day? If you have to pay someone, will they be able to make you enough to cover thier costs and still have excess profit over what you would have had doing online?

As for training your wife to be like you and not as savvy with photography, so what? Give her the basics, show her some sites about basic sales and let her develop her own style. Personally I would rather have a woman selling for me at events like that than do it myself because the clients are going to be predominantly male and would rather talk to a woman about pics than another guy.
A good mate of mine had a business and used to get his wife doing the sales. made her wear a low cut top and stood back and watched the money roll in that he could have never come near.

Shooters seem to have this terrible mindset that they and only they can do something they way they want which is the right way. Piffle!
I can sell snow to eskimios and sand to arabs but at the end of the day, I know a lot of people would rather be served by a woman than a bloke and that alone will lead to better $$ in my pocket and thats all it's about.
As for knowing about photography, what's to know? If you think you have to edit and retouch and frig aroud with every shot, forget it. If you do your job abd shoot clean, all she will need to do is the occasional crop and thats it.

I agree that onsite viewing is the way to go but is you go that road, don't think you will get away with one laptop. You have to commit to do it properly and put on a professional presentation. You need to set up Viewstations be they small desktop machines with screens or laptops.
I'm buying some used laptops at the moment to add to my desktop stations and the lappy are going to run about $50 ea. You don't need anything powerful to use as vstations.

At a bare minimum I would get a table and put 3 stations on it. If you use laptops you could get 6 on a table, 3 each side. But a 3x6M pop up gazebo to put them under and have a used desktop running as a server ( to start with) to feed teh images to the Vstations.
Network your workstation to the server and your there.
If it sounds like too much hassel and complication, then I woud say stick to your online sales.

There are a couple of guys competeing with me now that have 1 machine to show people the pics and all im hearing is people bagging them out because they dont want to line up to see the pics. this is the basic rule of Vstations, if there isn't one free, most people will walk off and I have see that time and time again myself.

IF you do vstations right, you will wipe the floor with online sales. You don't need to spend a lot of money, cheap, basic machines will get you out of trouble easily.

I print on site and the couple of times I haven't ( due to my own brain fades) the sales were no different even from clients who were used to getting their pics there and then. I found sending the prints out to be a terrible pain in the butt though. Packaging and postage is a hassel and there is always someone that says their order was never recieved or damaged.

I use canon printers that cost me a bit over $100 ea with a bulk ink system that cuts ink costs to nothing and print from the software that came with the printers because it is fast and easy to use. If we do editing like mag covers or borders, that gets done in PS and then we save and print from the bundled software for consistancy.
People go on about addd complexity of onsite printing but if you set it up right to start with, it is fast, easy and no hassel at all.

All this depends on your level of commitment. If you are going to stick with it, do it right. The one thing that has been the biggest benifit to me is staving off the competition. Because I'm the biggest and seen to be the most professional, I regularly have organisers contact me to do their shows now because they know I offer a level of service the other guys can't.
If you don't have much competition now, I'd say it is definately the time to dig in so the next guy that comes along with some Vstations and printers dosen't put you out.

JBHotShots · June 27, 2011

Glort wrote: »

As for training your wife to be like you and not as savvy with photography, so what? Give her the basics, show her some sites about basic sales and let her develop her own style. Personally I would rather have a woman selling for me at events like that than do it myself because the clients are going to be predominantly male and would rather talk to a woman about pics than another guy.
A good mate of mine had a business and used to get his wife doing the sales. made her wear a low cut top and stood back and watched the money roll in that he could have never come near.

Shooters seem to have this terrible mindset that they and only they can do something they way they want which is the right way. Piffle!
I can sell snow to eskimios and sand to arabs but at the end of the day, I know a lot of people would rather be served by a woman than a bloke and that alone will lead to better $$ in my pocket and thats all it's about.
As for knowing about photography, what's to know? If you think you have to edit and retouch and frig aroud with every shot, forget it. If you do your job abd shoot clean, all she will need to do is the occasional crop and thats it.

HAHA...you really have to understand my wife. Have you ever tried to teach someone that has absolutely zero interest in what you are trying to teach them? That's my wife for you...

It's not about editing every shot but culling through every shot. Granted I don't take 1,000's of shots at any event, but I like to take my time and TRY to weed out the mistakes.

mercphoto · June 27, 2011

LouDoggsRuca wrote: »

HAHA...you really have to understand my wife. Have you ever tried to teach someone that has absolutely zero interest in what you are trying to teach them? That's my wife for you...

It's not about editing every shot but culling through every shot. Granted I don't take 1,000's of shots at any event, but I like to take my time and TRY to weed out the mistakes.

One lesson I learned early on when I was shooting MX and karts was the be very deliberate about when I hit the shutter button, making for fewer bad shots to cull in the first place. It makes life a bit easier on you.

JBHotShots · June 27, 2011

mercphoto wrote: »

One lesson I learned early on when I was shooting MX and karts was the be very deliberate about when I hit the shutter button, making for fewer bad shots to cull in the first place. It makes life a bit easier on you.

On a race night, I will only take about 300 pictures or so and those are all very deliberate.

codrus · June 27, 2011

Glort wrote: »

At a bare minimum I would get a table and put 3 stations on it. If you use laptops you could get 6 on a table, 3 each side. But a 3x6M pop up gazebo to put them under and have a used desktop running as a server ( to start with) to feed teh images to the Vstations.

You definitely need the tent/shade/whatever -- racetracks tend to be bright places, and that makes monitors hard to see.

The photographer at a number of the track events I've been to (I'm a participant) brings a trailer with everything set up inside it.

--Ian

LRussoPhoto · June 28, 2011

Glort, where are you getting printers that cost $100 each?????? Are they real photo printers. What model Canon?

Glort · June 28, 2011

Many office/ electronics places had them for $112 to be precise.
Canon IP4700.

The ones I bought before were high end all in ones, Mp 630's.
I bought 4 all up and paid in order of purchase, $157, 130, 100, 120.

As for real photo printers, no sure what you mean by that but the prints are fantastic. They are not a 9000 series printer with 10 inks but to me that would be complete over kill for the work I do anyway.

Customers are always rapt with the quality of the prints.

Glort · June 28, 2011

codrus wrote: »

The photographer at a number of the track events I've been to (I'm a participant) brings a trailer with everything set up inside it.

--Ian

I have wanted to do that but the price of suitable size trailers here is prohibitive. You would be looking at $15-20K here for a trailer you could have people come into and then there are a whole load of other issues i'm not sure I would be happy with anyway.
The other thing is, registration and insurance on trailer that size can be more than cars and then there is locating the thing on the sites I go to. I just would not get it in to many of them where I want to be near the office, toilets and cantten. Instead I'd be out int he carpark and having to run my own generator.

For me the tent works great. Lightweight, can put it up and down with the sides and all in 10 Min, dosen't leak, Can sleep in it at over night events, ( did one in the middle of winter last year and because we had power we ran a fan heater all night and were toasty warm! ) and the thing was chaps as. I just bought one of the cheap chinese ones to test the idea and 18 months later it's as good as the day i got it.
Only thing I have changed is to buy some heavy tarps for the sides instead of the thin panels it came with which were useless in any wind.

dyranged · September 13, 2011

I have been doing onsite photography, sales, printing for about 8 years now. I have switched gears and decided to sell.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=203991

Selling photos at the track

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