Do what I say not what I do. lol

[snowbear]

Hope it goes well.

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

Do you and Jr. have a friendly bet for who's work does best? Good luck. You should make a killing on your snowy shots!

 

[webestang64]

Good luck!

I was at my local antique mall and saw a booth with nothing but a photographers work. I'm keeping an eye on that booth to see how well they do.

 

[zombiesniper]

Hope it goes well.

Thank you.

Do you and Jr. have a friendly bet for who's work does best? Good luck. You should make a killing on your snowy shots!

No bet but seeing how I'm the one selling........

Good luck!

I was at my local antique mall and saw a booth with nothing but a photographers work. I'm keeping an eye on that booth to see how well they do.

It really is depending on the time of year and the focus of the venue.

Most that visit this market are not really interested in buying anything. It's more a spend some time browsing crowd. So for every 100 people I saw 1-2 would walk through and with this being the Canadian Thanks Giving weekend (I know those south of the border have a different day and the rest of the world wonder what were all on about. lol) Many people have gone to visit family. So 5 of lookers for sale would be hard to guess.

For me this is a learning experience on how I want to run mine. I have learned a few things today from the market that I will take with me when it's my turn to organize one.

 

[DarkShadow]

Good Luck your work is excellent both of you and hope you make some sales from these fine fine prints.

 

[zombiesniper]

Thank you.

The end of two days during Thanks giving weekend went as well as I expected, and went better. Hear me out it will make sense.

Sales were none.

First day was very difficult to get anyone in the booth. I had maybe a 0.5% engagement rate. This is what I was expecting so it wasn't much of a surprise that only a few people came through.
Many factors are attributed to this.
Holiday weekend where families tend not to go out and shop at large markets.
Not many people know I'm there yet and many people were surprised to see a photographer in this booth. I even had a couple of repeat customers (looking to get refunds on faulty products) of the previous booth owner.

Day two was better. Even though the market had less than half of the foot traffic on Sunday, I did significantly better turning a person casually walking by into a potential customer that came into the booth. This day I was around a 7-8% engagement.
My direct photo sales were still zero but I have five potential clients for family portraits, one gentleman wants me to photograph him and his sailboat and a couple of gentlemen want me to photograph their cars.

At the end of the weekend I would say I'm about where I thought I would be in direct sales but I am ahead of where I thoughtI would be with future jobs.

Mrs. Zombie and I have decided we will give Nov&Dec a go. This was a really bad weekend to start on and the Christmas season can only help.

Oh and one other thing I did different on Sunday that I did not do on Saturday was to bring the conversation starter with me. lol

 

[Jeff G]

Good call on bringing the "conversation starter". Congrats on the future sessions. Glad you got what you needed from a trial run.

So how did those refunds go

 

[Bollygum]

May I ask, do you like doing family portraits, car photos or yacht photos?

It strikes me that you like wildlife (mainly bird) photography and investigating the potential for selling same was your objective. Family portraits are not going to pay for your 500mm f4 and, if you are like me, you will hate doing them. Selling wildlife photos is unlikely to pay for it either but you love doing it so any money earned is great - and it helps justify your hobby as people buying your photos tends to affirm that your photos are good.

 

[zombiesniper]

I have a studio in my house and do portraits.

My gear is paid for. You assume to much.

You seem to have a lot of hang ups. Live life. If you never try, you never succeed.

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

Congrats on getting the future jobs and may they lead to others!

 

[jcdeboever]

Hey, not bad. Good experience. Great idea about the gear. Next time dress up, make duck or Turkey calls when people walk by.

 

[Bollygum]

So you do like portraits - my mistake, I apologise.
Of course your gear is paid for, why would I think anything different.
As for my hangups - I guess we all have some, but mine have nothing to do with photography.
Just trying to help, but maybe I hit a nerve.

 

[zombiesniper]

Congrats on getting the future jobs and may they lead to others!

Thank you.

Hey, not bad. Good experience. Great idea about the gear. Next time dress up, make duck or Turkey calls when people walk by.

Thank you.........will ducks and turkeys buy photo's? A whole new market I was ignoring!

 

[zombiesniper]

So you do like portraits - my mistake, I apologise.
Of course your gear is paid for, why would I think anything different.
As for my hangups - I guess we all have some, but mine have nothing to do with photography.
Just trying to help, but maybe I hit a nerve.

You may be trying to help. I get that but do your homework. As a minimum look into who your giving advice to.
You assumed that I wouldn't like one form of photography since I mainly display another.
The following is why I would think you assumed my gear isn't paid for.

Family portraits are not going to pay for your 500mm f4 .

The only nerve you hit was the ever popular lazy advice the internet likes to dole out.

I do appreciate that you may have been trying to help, but you also have to appreciate unhelpful advice is still unhelpful.

 

[Bollygum]

The odd thing is that I did look at your website and guess what? There were no portraits so how was I meant to guess that you were an accomplished portrait photographer?