need a few tips from people that are in the youth sports business

I have been in business for about three years now, but this is the first year I have added youth sports. So far I have taken some really great shots not trying to brag, the pictures are sharp, and they cover everything from the quite stuff to the great action shots. I put the pictures out on my website under password protection, now here is the problem. The parents tell me they want pictures, they can’t wait to see them, but once I get the pictures on the web site and email all the parents with instructions, no one is looking at them. We went to one of the parties and brought an example of one of the posters we had come up with and sold some posters that way, my question is how do you guys real the parents in after the pictures are on the web site. I have about 100 hours of taking pictures, PP, and creating posters and I have made about 100 dollars for all my work. What am I doing wrong? I have worked with 4 baseball teams and one soccer team and each time it is the same.

The money in youth sports is in T&I photos not action. You would think parents would jump at the chance to get a great photo of their child in action but it just doesn't work out that way. I am working with a league now to set up and print on site at tournaments, I think sales will be ok in the heat of the moment but I still expect T&I to be the leader in sales.

Having said that I give the parents the option of picking an action shot for trader cards, magazine covers and things like that in their T&I package and that seems to work well for getting them to order larger packages.

Not that I have the answer, but I thought you'd feel better knowing there are others in the same boat. I've been having the exact same experience except that I'm actually getting thousands (yes, thousands) of individual photo hits...but no one really buying. Or someone will make a special request for a collage or composite picture, and after putting in even more work, they'll buy like a 3x5 print and a small fridge magnet. I set the pricing to be really aggressive, and I've been getting lots of compliments about the pictures. Just no one is buying.

I saw elsewhere in this forum that what some photographers do is when they send out information to the parents about the photos and how to view and purchase them, they put a time limit on it. For instance, they'll say the pictures will be available on the website for 2 weeks and then will be deleted. This forces people to decide right away if they want to keep any photos and buy them. I might try this in the future.

I do a lot of work with youth sports, the money is not in the action shots....they are a pretty big waste of time as far as making money goes (for the most part, I know there are some exceptions). The key is to get paid up front for the T&I shots.....the younger the kids, the better the sales.

Yep, your situation seems pretty typical but there are occasional exceptions. Once your images are on the web the parents or kids copy them and slap them on facebook, watermark or not. Watermark does not seem to drive sales, just shows more people where to "borrow" the images. Sales to school teams need to be up front or through a booster club in my experience.

While not an expert...I have done a bit of all three - Action shots on my Web site, action shots on view stations and T&I. As mentioned by others, T&I is where the money is...where else do you have parents standing in line to buy pictures. I have sold a few pictures through the Web site, but not really enough to make it interesting. We did shoot 3 baseball/softball tournaments last year with view stations and had fair to good results. The first tournament was a boys 8-12U that was spread over too many days, and our first time using the view stations. On a per hour the pay was bad, but the learning was huge! Our second tournament was a girls 8-12U that spanned 4 days in on location...much better all they way around...worth doing! The third was a 16U softball tournament..while the crowd/play was good...sales were not. Seems like the girls/parents were more interested in moving on than looking at pictures...not sure I would do that again.

Lots of interesting comments - Parents at the tournaments asking when the view station pictures would be on the Web - My reply was never. I tried that and sales sucked.

Good Luck!

I used to do ok in actions shots (hockey) - but I handled things slightly different...
I'd usually get an agreement in place with a handful of parents, low fee to shoot, and then pick it up with print orders. That was $500-$600 per Saturdays. I'd always always bring the prints to the next game, get other parents to see the results and then get another handful of parents to sign an agreement. Most of the time, I'd get an eager parent - he/she would do the selling to other parents, and then the cycle would repeat itself...
not every parent can afford a print of their kid playing hockey - and I'd even sometimes print off a 4x6 of a kid I wasn't supposed to shoot if something good happened, and give to them in the hopes they'd want either more, or a bigger version...

once a parent has a few pics, its tough to get them wanting more, and once I lost that eager parent to round up the others, I was going out less and less. I did post things online, handed out info on how they can view, but that lead to very few sales...
most of those outings were Saturday AMs - now that I've leaned more on the weddings side of things, I'm either going to a wedding on Saturdays, and if I'm not, I take advantage of staying in!

I work with a youth action sports business and the ones that seem to work the best are tournaments that span Saturday and Sunday. Ages 4-12 are usually the parents buying the most from baseball, softball basketball, volleyball and some soccer. Viewing stations, print on sites 8x10 and 16x24. Smaller sizes are shipped later. CDs are also available but we only shoot kids that parents sign up.