Category Archives: Sell Photos Online

Sell Photos Online

Photographer Online Photo Sales and In-Person Sales

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Many photographers are torn about whether or not to post their photos online or have in-person sales. Let’s start by taking a look at the pros and cons of online sales.

Pros of Online-Only Photography Sales

  • It’s the easiest way to get images in front of customers.
  • It’s a great marketing tool and allows clients to bring their friends and family to your site.
  • Your customers can view and order the images anytime and anywhere,
  • Your site will get more traffic, which can cut cost on search engines.
  • You can show off your images with different products.
  • Clients can customize products themselves.
  • The hassle of setting up a time for customers to view photos is eliminated.
  • Shooting big events, such as sports, is easier and more convenient.

Cons of Online-Only Photography Sales

  • You can sometimes sell more with in-person sales.
  • You can explain sizes and product choices better in-person.
  • Customers miss the added personal touch of meeting with you.
  • You can’t give your customers specific options to consider.

After putting this list together, the bottom line as I see it is this – the best choice is a combination of both sales options.

The perfect scenario is being able to meet with your clients so they can view the images and place their order. After the sale, you can post the images online purely for marketing reasons. You may still sell some prints after the fact, even though at this point it is not as important since you made the initial sale. 

If you don’t have a website, you need one. Adding a shopping cart feature to your site is very inexpensive, and worth doing! Following these tactics will surely increase your audience and ultimately your sales.

Back to Businss by Michael Connors & MorePhotos Staff, Sell Photos Online, Shopping Cart

Post images online to gain exposure

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There is no better way for a photographer to gain exposure then when they post images online for customers to view and buy!

It’s an amazing benefit that photographers have over almost every other type of company. The cost to purchase Ad Words to gain website traffic would be more than most photographers make in a year. Why don’t all photographers post images online then? I think there are a couple of factors involved:

1. Photographers are artists not marketers – the same reason a lot of people can’t shoot great photos. (Like Me)

2. Some of today’s great photographers, who have become speakers, tell other photographers not to post images online – (now we are back to listening to artists not marketers). Face to face sales are important, but not all events present a face-to-face opportunity, you have got to do both online and direct sales.

3. Photographers think just posting images on Facebook will be good enough, but it only works well for a day or two until the photos get the buried. Facebook posting does not even come close to having the same impact as posting on a professional looking cart. My suggestion is to use Facebook to make a post with a link to the images in your cart. Facebook is great for a lot of things, but not for a company using it for its only online connection.

Post images online, photographers photo cart4. A lot of photographers base the reason for not posting images online because they do in house presentations (remember, I’m a marketer and I would do the same for most jobs). I think the thing photographers are not grasping is that to stay in business you need to keep marketing 24/7… So after we had done the presentation, when walking my customer to the door, I would say, “By the way I will post your images on my website so you can share them with your family and friends.” What did I just do? Basically it’s like handing my customer a stack of my studio brochures. Even a corporate head shot customer could bring 5 to 10 people to your site that did not know who you were. A wedding could bring in hundreds of visitors – and the advantage is that a friend or family has already hired you – What better referral can you get?

The golden rule in marketing: The more people who know about your service, the better you will do!

If you are one of those people that do not post online – I want to hear the reasons why not.

Or if you are one of those speakers who advises against it – we all need to hear why you recommend this to others!

Raise the Bar, Sell Photos Online, Shopping Cart

Your Professional Photography Business: Increase your success

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Over the next 3 weeks I want to use my years of experience in the Professional Photography business to help you become even more successful than you already are. Each week I will give you 3 or 4 main ideas that you should be asking before you choose a website/shopping cart provider.

This week I want to focus on the first 3.
  1. Who controls the money? With credit card merchant accounts being much cheaper than before there is no reason not to take your own money!  Either way you are going to pay for it. If you have someone else collect the money it will not be cheaper. Plus cash flow is one of the biggest reasons companies fail, you need to get the money now!
  1. Think twice before signing up with a percentage plan! Professional Photography WebsiteThey may sound good at first, because you think you won’t have to pay any money during your slow times. The problem with this is that you could pay more money during your busiest month then the other service would cost for the whole year on a non-commission rate. Do the math. If you are paying, let’s say 15% commission, and you have a good month of sales at $2,000.00, you would have a commission to the host of $300 dollars just that month. Or lower the percent to 7%, it would still cost you $140 dollars for that 1 month.
  1. Do not be the mislead by companies telling you can have unlimited image hosting! We recommend to not post events for more than 2 to 6 weeks, and the six week range is only for weddings. Some professional photographers think that if they leave them up longer they will sell more! This could not be any further from the truth. During our extensive testing we actually found we received 20% more orders from events posted only 30 days verses 60 days. Let’s do a little math again, say you average only $500.00 a month when you leave events up for 60 days. Since our testing Photo shopping cart, sell photos onlineshows a 20% decrease that is a loss of $100 a month compared to 30 days. At $2,000 a month, posting still for the 60 days, you are losing $400.00 a month in income. We recommend most events post for two weeks or less and give a discount if an order is placed the first couple of days. When testing we raised the cost 20% and offered a 20% discount the first week as an example. We also received another 12% increase in sales. Try it yourself as a test, you may be pleasantly surprised.

I hope you have found these 3 suggestions helpful for your professional photography business. Next week we will go through 3 or 4 more ideas. Tell me what you think. Any suggestions are always appreciated and we look forward to hearing from you. And of course, for more info, go to MorePhotos.com. See you next week!