Author Topic: Advice on where/how to sell prints  (Read 1900 times)

This-is-damion

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Advice on where/how to sell prints
« on: October 10, 2011, 08:26:28 PM »
 I have some framed prints to sell...not too sure where to sell them, I guess etsy would have been the obvious answer a few years back but all i hear about it now is thats its diluted.   Is there a different website that people sell stuff?

I have mailed a local cafe, a hipster gallery and totally unsure if i should approach Urban Outfitters as I have seen local artists stuff in there before (still cant work out if UO are a bunch of ........., or not)

Any advice, success or horror stories would be most welcome!

charles binns

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2011, 01:27:13 PM »
Have you tried the Saatchi website - though that is vast and probably very diluted. 

I notice you have a print for sale on Citizen of Photography - have you had any luck there?  I also have an image for sale on CoP but to be honest I can't beleive they will make many sales with the pricing structure they have.

Etsy, as you say seems to be very diluted and I wonder if many people really do buy prints online anyway.  If they do, I'd love to know where they go to buy them.

astrobeck

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2011, 01:53:49 PM »
Hey Damion,
You might be better off to just make a webpage for them instead of relying on the funky price structures at other online places.

I've had a bit of luck selling on Etsy, (but no longer use it) and have bought prints using the Etsy site.  But as mentioned before, its' diluted.

My best sales have always been from people seeing my prints in person at shows or galleries, so if you could manage to get in a venue where the prints can be physically viewed, I think that's better.

Study the sites of photographers that sell and see what they are doing.  You can get a lot of ideas that way too.



This-is-damion

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2011, 02:02:25 PM »
Many Thanks Charles/Becky

Charles  - I hear your concerns over CoP - and agree.....just cant see stuff selling

Becky - I was hoping I could factor it in to my website - butgiven the free option I have on carbonmade im out of space - the upgrade is GBP144 p/a  - which is a lot considering i have an unbroken track record of never selling anything -so im loathed to splash out on that, or set up yet another webiste for me to maintain.    I have however spoken to a small brum gallery & a recently opened cafe - so hope to get something from there....will keep you posted!


Mojave

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2011, 04:46:50 PM »
Damion, Im in the same boat pretty much when it comes to selling prints. Etsy is diluted, to be sure, but then so is everything else, online and brick and mortar. What I have been finding with Etsy is that you have to advertise yourself. You need to keep your products up front. When you sign up to Etsy, they send you important emails that help you deal with the difficult aspects of owning a store. I think that's the hardest part for us creative types. The business side of things. I've had my resellers permit application filled out for a few months now but keep forgetting to mail it in.

Anyway, I have been watching several photographers on Etsy who sell a lot of prints and their work is always the work I see when I first log in to Etsy and look up photography. So its always up front, so to speak. What I am working on now for my store, before I start posting prints for sale, are suggestions on how buying smaller prints can work in peoples homes. I think a lot of people who arent art buyers are afraid to buy prints because they dont know how to mat or frame them. I also think people are afraid of buying large prints because of the prices so I think that offering smaller prints and then giving suggestions on how to make a print collage on any wall in the house can help sell prints too. I might be wrong about that but some of the most successful photogs I've seen on Etsy do this so that is what Im working on right now too. Im hoping to upload some stuff by the end of the week. And now that I know how to use my printer better, I can avoid making the prints first and just offer the digital image and make the print when it gets ordered.

Ok, thats a lot of info there. Let me know if you go the Etsy route. I'll add you to my circle. That is something else that I have seen that works. If you have lots of circles, people tend to add you to their lists, I cant think of what they're called right now, but these lists get promoted on Etsy all the time so more people see your work.
mojave

Mike (happyforest)

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2011, 11:03:02 PM »
I am not sure how useful setting up your own site would be to generate print sales.

Just out of interest I spent some time the other night looking to see how others sell their prints.

Search terms used were photo prints, photographic prints, gelatin prints, prefixed in some cases with landscapes, portraits, etc for sale.

I got some generic image sale sites, galleries where photographers were represented and individual photographers sites.

So if you have your own site what is going to drive the purchaser to your site instead of the others and what drives people to buy an original print.

I know that some people here do have web sites where you can buy images and it would be interesting to know how many prints they sell this way.

I would certainly be interested in how you get on.

Mike


Mojave

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2011, 12:14:54 AM »
I would certainly be interested in how you get on.

Me too. Even though I have had prints in shows and blogs and a few magazines, and my website is usually listed, I have never received any inquiries to buy prints and I've had my own website for a few years now. I would dearly love to know how to get buyers to visit my website.
mojave

charles binns

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #7 on: October 13, 2011, 08:51:09 AM »
I have had maybe two or three enquiries to buy prints in the last five years from my web site.  The trouble is that most people who will visit my site are not really looking to buy prints as such, they're just browsing the net looking at stuff that interests them.

I do offer my images for sale  (though I haven't had time to think through pricing etc., properly) but I don't generate nearly enough traffic to my site to make it a viable and steady source of sales.  If you want to generate sales from a website I suspect you will need to rank very high on google for certain phrases (like landscape photography for example).  And even then the proportion of visitors who are actually looking to purchase prints will be pretty low.

There used to be a website which offered your images for sale to offices and hotels etc., (these are major buyers of images) but it seems to have disappeared- does anybody know of a similar site?




Heather

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Re: Advice on where/how to sell prints
« Reply #8 on: October 13, 2011, 10:12:21 AM »
Update from the real world from last Saturday...
I was attempting to sell my work in Spitalfields at the Photofair last Saturday and I did not sell a single print and they were unframed. I sold a whopping grand told of 2 greeting cards and 3 postcards.
The lady in the stall next to mine was selling quite large unframed, unmounted prints for £5 each and even she didn't sell more than maybe 3 or 4 over the 8 hours we were there.

On the plus side, I tallied up 50 people took business cards from my stand. And lots of very excited comments on my work. So they recognise it is good quality work but I assume they just don't have the money right now (recession and everything y'know).

Based on the high number of b.card-takers, I have randomly set up a webshop for my prints & cards online. We'll see how it goes... I'm not expecting much as I can see from google analytics that I have not gotten more than 7 people visiting per day for the last month or so. I *thought* maybe in real life things would be better but maybe not. Mostly the photofair helped me develop an idea of who is attracted to my prints and what my demographic is so I can better target potential buyers but it's still early days as it's not even been a week since that happened. We'll see.

On the other hand, I'm looking into a stall/table at the local christmas/craft fair hopefully. I think my demographic is quite similar to the one in Barnet luckily rather than the hipsters in East London.

(I'm a bitter ex-Etsy user from a buyers perspective as I had a very weird transaction turn absolutely abusive and Etsy did nothing about it even after the seller bullied me into changing my feedback from neutral to postive-with-no-comments. Ebay has more strict handling of situations like that while Etsy feels like a wild wilderness.)
Heather
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