How do you start selling prints?

[willg133]

I have no idea if anyone would pay for my prints or not, but how do you get into the business of selling them? Should I just show them to the local papers and maybe people I know or what? Ideally I would like to sell some prints as art, but I don't know where to begin

 

[lopix]

I hear ya, something I would like to know more about. I have read a bit and tried a few things... not a ton of luck yet.

 

[SLOShooter]

The first thing I would do is find someway to print/distrubute them. Are you going to print them yourself? Are you going to sell them from the web? Basically what is your "store" going to be. Once you have a purchaseable product, just like any product, you have to advertise.

Try getting gallery spots. Local coffee shops, arts houses, whatever you can think of. Try the internet. Try word of mouth. Set up a both at farmer's market, the flea market. Try getting spots in ad's or magazines, if they pay you great if not free ink never hurts. Just becareful with licenses if you do that. Enter contests, yada yada yada.

Think like any other business with a product.

 

[mentos_007]

it is a looooong way,

1. walk through all the cafes, shops all over the city with your portfolio and show the managers your pics and ask them wheter they need or want to do up their work places. Maybe they will be attracted by your shots and may buy some of them (for exaple shots from Venice in a shoe shop "Venice")

2. walk through all furniture shops and ask if they want to make an agreement with you, sharing costs of course (they may sell it as a decoration, you'll get some cash of it)

3. walk through all the galleries and shops with pictures, paintings, frames... asking the same questions.

4. try Istock.com or canstock.com quite nice stock photography places.

5. talk with guys from printing services if they need some shots for calendrs, leaflets...

...

6. talk to ShutterBug - he is a pro here and knows all about the stuff

 

[lopix]

I am thinking of going at it a different way, trying to make a name in a few ways. One is to become a de-facto expert in one small area in my city, see where that goes. Also trying to flog my stuff for free to locals mags and rags. If any of that works, I have book ideas as well, who knows. Maybe, one day I will have a name, and thus have more behind me when I go out shilling...

 

[GerryDavid]

Careful with the free stuff to mags. Once they get you for free, they may not want to pay for it later.

 

[lopix]

Which is okay, just one or 2 for now, to get my name in print, to lead to other things. I am not starting at free, just depends on what they are like.

 

[mentos_007]

hmm yeah be carefull with being "free" because when you give one shot for free you cannot then sell it to another mag. dunno why but here's the law like this so check whether it is possible in your country.