OK What am I doing wrong? (no sales)

ballentphoto · September 13, 2006

I have not sold one single photograph from my site. Not a huge amount of traffic about 360 visitors to my site since Sept 1 and 1700 page views, but no one seems compelled to buy a print. Are my prices too high? Not high enough :wink Are the pictures not compelling? The design of the site poor? Not sure what is going on? Some wording change perhaps? If anyone can offer some tips I would be most grateful.

Andy · September 13, 2006

Hi,

Thanks for posting. These are great questions. My answer is, you have to work at it! Here are some great ways to increase traffic:

1) keywords - be sure all your photos have relavent keywords. Have a look at mine, http://www.moonriverphotography.com/keyword

2) captions, album descriptions - be sure to use plenty of descriptive words here, too

3) register with google.com search engine

4) set up a blog, and post to it frequently

5) get other sites to link to you

sserra · September 13, 2006

Andy wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for posting. These are great questions. My answer is, you have to work at it! Here are some great ways to increase traffic:

1) keywords - be sure all your photos have relavent keywords. Have a look at mine, http://www.moonriverphotography.com/keyword

2) captions, album descriptions - be sure to use plenty of descriptive words here, too

3) register with google.com search engine

4) set up a blog, and post to it frequently

5) get other sites to link to you

That is a great topic for me, a newbie pro, too!

I have a very silly question. I took a look at that page, which was very generous for you to share. How did those words get on that page/via the control panel?/is that a page that has to be added separately somehow? Please excuse the question if there is something I SHOULD know already!

Andy · September 13, 2006

sserra wrote:

That is a great topic for me, a newbie pro, too (with decades of images/all of a sudden-DOH, I should sell these!)

I have a very silly question. I took a look at that page, which was very generous for you to share. How did those words get on that page/via the control panel?/is that a page that has to be added separately somehow? Please excuse the question if there is something I SHOULD know already!

Hi

happy to help.

I add my keywords via Adobe Bridge, and then upload to SmugMug. But you can also add them via your SmugMug site! Here's how:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/keywords-tags

I hope this helps!

Mike Lane · September 13, 2006

My suggestion (based off of a little experience): Do exactly what Andy said but don't rely on google for sales. Hit the street and do some good old conventional promotion. Call up a graphic design firm (or 2 dozen of them) and make friends. Mention what kinds of work you generally do and how you'd love to be able to help them out. Let them know about the digital download service

Pay attention to what the big smugmug sellers have to say. And get busy on dgrin. Make your name known, that's been the biggest thing for me.

And maybe give people the option of signing up to get emails when your site is updated.

Andy · September 13, 2006

Mike Lane wrote:

Do exactly what Andy said but don't rely on google for sales.

Exactly. My post was about drawing traffic and being found.

The rest of the equation is exactly what you posted, Mike.

ballentphoto · September 14, 2006

Andy wrote:

Exactly. My post was about drawing traffic and being found.

The rest of the equation is exactly what you posted, Mike.

Mike and Andy thanks for your help... I know that I have just started doing this, but I would have thought that I would at least had sold at least one image by now based on the number of hits. Guess it's the wrong type of traffic.

Guess I just need to make it easier to find me

and get my name out there. Thanks for your help, and if anyone else wants to toss in their suggestions I am all

dogwood · September 14, 2006

sometimes...
You have to force the sales hand, too. For example, if you shoot an event, make the photos for sale only for a limited time and make that very clear on your site. There's a reason stores have sales ("this weekend only!"). Another method is to offer prints/downloads at your normal price, but say they're discounted 10-percent this week only. You get the idea. I've found sometimes my sales come if I remove a gallery-- people start e-mailing and I say something like, oh yeah, I needed the bandwidth for another project (yeah, SM offers pro accounts unlimited bandwidth, but why tell 'em that?). Then you tell the folks, "I can post the photos for sale again for two days only-- then I need to remove 'em."

Sometimes though, people won't buy no matter what you do-- even if you offer your prints/photos for bargain prices.

sirsloop · September 14, 2006

The big two:
Who are your customers?
How have you gone about getting them to your site?

Identify your target audience and get them to your site!!! This is the hardest thing to do and will really test your creativity and determination! I'm ALWAYS thinking about how to get more people to my site. Whatever I have is never enough... it was like 150,000 total hits last month, and over 30,000 uniques (the main number on the control panel) last month.

Photography is the fun and easy part! Keep a steady pace and get more and more material on the site. If you are doing things right, the business will expand exponentially as you get more jobs. Good luck!

SteveM · September 14, 2006

dogwood wrote:

Another method is to offer prints/downloads at your normal price, but say they're discounted 10-percent this week only.

Sometimes though, people won't buy no matter what you do-- even if you offer your prints/photos for bargain prices.

Great idea, Dogwood! I know my customers are confident that their photos are going to be around indefinitely and while that may be appealing for my site and business as a whole, it's not very encouraging for timely sales. I'll have to look at the new Pro Pricing and see if there's an easy way to -10%, etc.

Thanks,

Steve
http://www.downriverphotography.com

ballentphoto · September 14, 2006

dogwood wrote:

You have to force the sales hand, too. For example, if you shoot an event, make the photos for sale only for a limited time and make that very clear on your site. There's a reason stores have sales ("this weekend only!"). Another method is to offer prints/downloads at your normal price, but say they're discounted 10-percent this week only. You get the idea. I've found sometimes my sales come if I remove a gallery-- people start e-mailing and I say something like, oh yeah, I needed the bandwidth for another project (yeah, SM offers pro accounts unlimited bandwidth, but why tell 'em that?). Then you tell the folks, "I can post the photos for sale again for two days only-- then I need to remove 'em."

Sometimes though, people won't buy no matter what you do-- even if you offer your prints/photos for bargain prices.

That is an intriguing idea. By "remove them" do you mean that you make them private so that they are not visible? Or do you delete them from Smugmug and re-upload?

ballentphoto · September 14, 2006

SteveM wrote:

Great idea, Dogwood! I know my customers are confident that their photos are going to be around indefinitely and while that may be appealing for my site and business as a whole, it's not very encouraging for timely sales. I'll have to look at the new Pro Pricing and see if there's an easy way to -10%, etc.

Thanks,

Steve
http://www.downriverphotography.com

I believe that you can do bulk price updates, but I think that you are going to have to play with the math to re-set the prices back like -10% and +12% or something like that... I am not a math wizard my any stretch of the imagination

OK What am I doing wrong? (no sales)

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