Online Sales?

[IA40D]

I have been taking pictures for a while and have had some show interest in some of my photo's. So my question is what does it take to get started with online sales I see a lot of people here sell online. Who do you go through for your prints or do you print yourself and ship? How much is a person looking at for getting the website up and running if I can design it myself? As far as hosting fees and stuff of that nature. Thank you for all your input in advance as I am sill a little green to all of this selling of pictures.

[Mike414]

I have been taking pictures for a while and have had some show interest in some of my photo's. So my question is what does it take to get started with online sales I see a lot of people here sell online. Who do you go through for your prints or do you print yourself and ship? How much is a person looking at for getting the website up and running if I can design it myself? As far as hosting fees and stuff of that nature. Thank you for all your input in advance as I am sill a little green to all of this selling of pictures.


A lot of people use different services.....like Smugmug.
Look around the web and you might find a $75.00 off for the fist year annual Smugmug subscription.

You can get a Pro account with Smugmug, set-up your site, load your pictures, sit back and watch the money roll in :rolleyes:
........well, actually a big part will depend on how much advertising/marketing you are willing to do.

...check the following links:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=518497
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=634667
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=340920


Hope it helps,

Mike

[Frugal]

+1 for smugmug and marketing

[aroundlsu]

I use exposure manager. Inexpensive, easy, and can be completely invisible to your clients. Not the fanciest templates but they work on any computer and most cell phones. See my gallery to get an idea what it looks like.

[bwolford]

+1 for Exposure Manager (http://www.exposuremanager.com/aff/newtampaconcierge).

It's one of the most cost effective solutions and has some of the best customer service.

[tim]

From what i've read it seems you have to be absolutely amazing to sell art online. Selling event photos is easier, it's a set audience, but selling pretty pictures is hard given you can download stuff for free and print it yourself.

[flauri]

I use Zenfolio. Cost is about $80 per year for their best. I use them for the availability to host my images for people to purchase, however, I don't have their ordering system activated. I believe their rates are something like 15-18% for their processing fees. (others are comparable). I have it set up where customers call or e-mail with their orders and I have various labs I do business with for the printing. I've been doing it this way for the last 5 years and so far I haven't had any problems. Currently I have over 35,000 images posted with them and that alone is worth the $80 per year. It does what I need it to do for what I offer. When I'm shooting events, I will hand out business cards to the teams, parents and spectators and usually within 24 hours I have the pictures posted. I post the low res to speed up the load time and once they place an order I edit the original from my files and send them to the lab to be printed and send the invoice to the customer. It's probably not the most perfect system but it's been working for me.

Hope this helps....best of luck to you.

[black_z]

35,000?! Sheesh!! lol

[aroundlsu]

35,000?! Sheesh!! lol

Shoot a couple of large schools, then their proms and other social functions, and watch how fast you get to 35,000. :)

Back in the film days, I worked for a studio that shot every public school in our area and all the side jobs that go with that. The amount of film we went through was staggering. I estimate I alone shot 25,000 portraits every season.

We'd have to turn in all the checks we collected during the day already endorsed with a stamp. That alone took several hours after each gig just to complete. I still have nightmares about staying late endorsing checks. It really sucks when you are just a $300/week salary photographer having to turn in $30,000 worth of checks every day. :rolleyes:

[MJPhotos24]

Exposure Manager (http://www.exposuremanager.com/aff/mikejanesphotography) all the way for many reasons. #1 being you can fully customize it with your site (branding) and that's what you want. You wouldn't believe how many times I heard "it takes me to a new site" and parents wanted to order through me, not a different company not understanding how it works. #2 prints are better than most, packaging as well. There's some disadvantages but they are outweighed by the advantages. To really take advantage you could also use a place like Richmond Pro and self-fulfill everything through them which saves some $$ and shipping. I don't do that yet but thinking about it.

It really sucks when you are just a $300/week salary photographer having to turn in $30,000 worth of checks every day.
And that there is the reason I would rather do everything on my own and hire people instead of working for someone else! Why not work harder and do it on your own to get your own business instead of join a company of lemmings is my thought.