Hi
How do you set up a portfolio web sight and if some one want to buy a photograph, how do I choose a printer and set a price???
Peter
Peter, there are various sites to look at. I use Zazzle & Fine Art America. One is better for cards, calendars, etc. The other much better for prints, mats, & framing.
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I’m guessing with Zazzle customers come to you first, and you use Zazzle to fill the order. But do you do the same with Fine Art America, or let customers find photos on the site themselves?
Years back it was labor intensive building the products to order from scratch. Sites such as Zazzle and FAA once the work is done on line you never touch the product.
It does take work building the products on Zazzle, each card, calendar, etc. But again once that is done there is nothing additional. FAA is even easier as once the image is posted that is all that’s required. The customer can customize with mats & frames to their liking too. Very much turn key sales.
It’s much easier to than direct customers to those outlets.
Hi
Thank you Paul & Lanis for your comments. On Zazzle or FAA do you load your photo portfolio on their sight or is there a link that sends a person interested in one of your photographs to their sights? Has anyone used Squrespace.com?
Peter, all of the storage and product viewing and ordering is all on their sites. It is the image(s) that you supply for the given products.
There is no limit beyond the FAA single image size of 25 meg that I’m aware of.
SquareSpace, Zenfolio, Smugmug and others - search photo hosting, sales. None is “easy” to set up but the good ones will have a lot of help articles for individual problems. Smugmug actually a one hour phone support feature that I took advantage a couple of times while arranging pages.
Once you have the design set you have to fill out the legal documents, develop a pricing structure, upload images, make sure your exif fields match the ones on the pages you are making and more. If you get it done in a couple of weeks consider yourself lucky.
But, once you do all the upfront work it is just uploading and some image organizing. If you plan on actually making money - that takes a lot of social media work and even then don’t expect much return.
Good Luck Peter.
Hi Green
Thank you for the information.
Peter
Marketing is going to be a key, of course. Posting on “photography” sites doesn’t work, in my humble opinion, as they are almost totally photographers. How many photographers are going to buy other photos? For social media, perhaps Instagram and Twitter work better, due to the audience. I’m trying a Facebook page as well. The competition is SO heavy online, I think you have to reach out to non-photographers, focusing on specific groups.
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As life was at warp speed for me being on call 7/24 I was never one to attend seminars or workshops. But being in San Diego on a business trip I attended a Gerlach Photography photo seminar. During a coffee break one of the attendees asked John Gerlach about his photographic competitors and overall photo sales in general. His response was: “I’ve never worried about the better photographers, it’s the better marketing person I worry about”.
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I set up a web page on Smugmug, although I don’t try to sell photos using it. I didn’t like the canned templates, so created my own. It was a lot of work but they have excellent online help. You write them and tell them what you are trying to do and they write you back within minutes with the answer. If you are tech savvy with their help you can create your own template. You can see my site at :tonysicilianophotography@smugmug.com