How to get noticed?

[georgeoeser]

Hi everyone,

Last year my partner was offered a position at a university in the Netherlands and so we moved from Nashville, TN to Tilburg in the Netherlands. I quickly found out that acquiring a job isn't an easy task for a non-Dutch speaker here and so for the past few months I have really been focusing on my photography and trying to make a go at bringing in some income from it. I am going to try micro-stock but everything I have seen says any income from that will be minimal and so I started searching around for other ideas. The one I came up with was to put my images on t-shirts and see if I could get any buyers. I want to promote them as wearable fine art photography and I think my images are unique enough and strong enough to make it work, plus there were no start up costs for me which is a big bonus since we don't have a lot of disposable income at this point.

My question is, how do I get people to take a look at my shirts? I am not a web designer so I don't have a fancy site, I just slightly tweaked the basic format of the site that the company I am using to print the shirts and ship them out offers. I don't think I can do a lot of search engine optimization to direct people to my little store specifically, and so I am kind of at a loss as to getting more traffic. I did register a domain name and have it forwarding people to the site but that is about all I have done besides setting up a facebook page and posting on my instagram, twitter and tumblr feeds. Anyone have any ideas of how I can promote this thing?

I'm not posting a link to my site because I just joined this forum and don't really know if that is appropriate or not. If it is and you want to see what I am dealing with let me know in a reply to this message and then I will post it.

 

[KmH]

It is very, very uncommon for a business to get up and running with a shoe string budget.
And few retail business flourish that do not have a well researched and written business and marketing plan.

While social media can be used to add some support to a marketing and promotions plan, advertising is needed to drive significant numbers of eyes to a web site for the purpose of generating sales.

SEO is critical in getting your web site to appear on the first page of internet searches, and being in one of the top 5 places is usually what it takes to drive significant traffic to your web site.
It's a numbers game.
You will likely need several hundred unique visitors to your web site in order to sell a single t-shirt. So if you want to sell lots of t-shirts you will need 10's of thousands of unique web site visitors on a daily basis.

To be successful in the retail photography business you need to service a niche market that is not being served in your area.
That way you have no competition.

You'll need your own web site, get published, enter photography contests and competitions, use direct mail advertising, issue press releases to newspapers in your region (100 mile radius), be involved in your community so you can get out and meet people, leverage a variety social media with Flickr (or similar), videos on YouTube, Twitter, (learn how to use hashtags), and have a blog that you regularly add content to.

About 75% of your time needs to be devoted to doing business tasks.
Making and implementing promotion and marketing plans and keeping up to date on ever changing SEO best practices is important to maintaining and growing a online retail photography business.

Here are some resources that you may find helpful:
Going Pro: How to Make the Leap from Aspiring to Professional Photographer
Photography Business Secrets: The Savvy Photographer's Guide to Sales, Marketing, and More
The Photographer's MBA: Everything You Need to Know for Your Photography Business
Profitable Photography in Digital Age: Strategies for Success

 

[tirediron]

By all means, include a link to your website in the signature area of your profile.

With respect to your idea, I don't see it as a business in the proper sense of the word, however, I could see this making some decent pocket-money (assuming your images are of sufficient quality) by setting up a stall in the local market. I'm not familiar with Tilburg, but I assume there must be at least one open-air, tourist market in the area. That's where I would concentrate my efforts. If you have the resources to produce enough stock, you might also consider seeing if any of the local tourist stores will take them on consignment.

 

[Derrel]

You would probably have better luck selling the shirts IN-PERSON at some street booth, street fair, or from a sidewalk hawker, than from some web site. Web sales are sterile, non-personal, and vaguely directed at some anonymous "others". Not a good way to sell unique items. You want person-to-person contact. I suggest a gorgeous, college-age female street vendor as the employee to sell your shirts, person-to-person. Or...a handsome, shirtless, fit man. Or both.

 

[orljustin]

The one I came up with was to put my images on t-shirts and see if I could get any buyers. I want to promote them as wearable fine art photography and I think my images are unique enough and strong enough to make it work, plus there were no start up costs for me which is a big bonus since we don't have a lot of disposable income at this point.

It's unlikely anyone it just going to randomly buy a t-shirt with a picture on it from some guy in Europe because he has a website. But, You can try putting your work on a place like Zazzle, where they have all kinds of products you can put the images on.

 

[georgeoeser]

Thanks everyone, this is really about just generating some extra income, we don't have to rely on it to eat (thankfully!). And the shirts are up on a site like Zazzle called spreadshirt.com. I chose them because the quality of their printing seems a bit better. I have sold a few items so far but I have only been doing this for a few weeks so I appreciate all of your ideas. I may have a few shirts with images from the area I am in printed up and see if I can move them in person.

Thanks again.

 

[bribrius]

you have a excellent opportunity. Large clothing lines have been built on less. Your product choice advertises itself when worn. If you do your part, word will spread and in time sales will pick up.

 

[Steve5D]

Yeah, I'd have to agree with Tirediron. Setting up a booth at a local market is what I would do first. Make sure you have a nice selection of shirts, as opposed to just two or three. Make yourself a simple website or, simpler still, a Facebook page, to feature your work on, as well. You don't have to sell on the page initially, but you can post photos of new shirts as you create them. As your selection increases, you can then start inviting people to purchase them by contacting you.

Also, don't believe that you don't have start-up costs. You've got to buy the shirts and get the images put on them, pay for booth space, and buy an actual booth.

The key to getting noticed is to not be shy about it. Don't think that anything is too corny or obtuse or silly. After all, those are usually the things people remember...

 

[Braineack]

I would do this 100% through the internet.

 

[astroNikon]

I just worked with a business (I pulled out, there was strong evidence of financial, let's say "lapses") which was a t-shirt / clothing company.

The person who was selling the t-shirts, sweatshirts, et all was getting all his sales from street selling. He would go to outdoor festivals, football/baseball (soccer in europe) and other festivals. Find some art festivals and try to sell there. Also retail establishments that sell artsy items may resell your works.

But from your link, and saying you have "no startup costs" I'm going to assume that you just provided your art work to a reseller, who then prints your stuff based on online sales. If this is the case, then there's two things. First you need to increase your visibility online as that is what you want your sale to be, 2 - since you are using a online reseller you are also allowing other people to see images from a variety of other people.

Many times specific Slogans, images etc on clothing is alot of "emotional", "spur of the moment" purchase. Thus that is where the street vending comes into play.
But to do street vending you need to have the product .. (variety of sizes, colors) mutiplied by a variety of images. That is where you get a substantial amount of $$ in inventory.

But back to the online model that I think you are using - no startup costs. It is now up to you to create facebook pages, webpage etc that links directly to that site for that specific item. This will keep the customer focused on your item versus other items on that website. Then you have to keep the content fresh on those pages and work on the SEO items mentioned above. for example, on facebook .. every few days profile one of your images .. talk about it, etc and of course provide a link of where they can purchase it.

also as mentioned, work on a business plan .. or at least write down and think through how you want this to work, and identify potential costs in various areas.

Good luck, you can make some good pocket change (and more) .. it's all about good product and marketing.

 

[georgeoeser]

Well the start up costs, with the exception of the camera, was pretty much zero. I use a company call spreadshirt. You upload the image, pick the shirt, set the price and when an order is placed they print the shirt and ship it out so it is no cost to me in the beginning. Of course since it is no cost to me or anyone else vast numbers of people are do the same thing. I don't thin their images are as strong in general and I have a particular perspective that would make my images stand out among all of the others but only if they get seen. That's my problem, getting them seen.

 

[robbins.photo]

Ok, so I guess I'm going to have to be bubble bursting guy. I hate being bubble bursting guy. But, well, sorry but it has to be done. So you upload your images and they print and ship the T-shirts. That's great, no inventory worries, no risk involved - um, but here comes the bubble bursting part, practically no profit to be had here.

Ok, lets assume for a minute your making $2 a T-Shirt. I'm assuming this is probably exceedingly generous, since I'm guessing odds are good it's probably half that or less, but lets just say that your making $2 a shirt. So really to make the same as a minimum wage job your going to need to sell 4 of these every hour for an eight hour day, for a grand total of 32 T shirts sold every day.

Your not going to pull off 32 T-shirts a day just selling online, your going to need to advertise - which means either spending money (which will of course increase the number of shirts you need to sell to get back to making minimum wage) or going out there and hustling, talking to people, handing out fliers, trying to drive them to your website. Figure on average for every 50 people you talk to, you might get 1 to actually go to the website. Lets say just to be again exceedingly generous your stuff is so amazing that everyone that see it wants it, so you only need to talk to 50 people to get one sale.

So you need to speak to 200 people an hour on average, or 1,600 people a day to sell enough T-Shirts to make as much as you would make by getting a job at McDonalds. Some rough calculations of course, and naturally were just talking basic averages here and nothing rock solid scientific, but really to make this pay you anything more than what you'd make at Mcdonalds your looking at putting in insane hours and a tremendous amount of work to barely eek out a living, and in all honesty with stuff like this even if by some miricale it does become popular it only stays that way for 15 minutes, once your 15 minutes is up you either go back to obscurity or worse, you become unhip because you were once thought of by the "posers" as being hip. Unfortunately that's just the way these things go.

So as a source of extra income, sure - it will get you a couple of extra cans of soda or maybe a pack of cigarettes now and again. As a business? Nope. This one just doesn't have much potential I'm afraid.

 

[georgeoeser]

Very fair point, but without going into too much detail let's just say that I make a few times your estimate per shirt. Now I hold no illusions that this is going to make me rich, but I have already earned enough to purchase several packs of cigarettes today Then again this has been a better than typical day.

Oh yeah, and getting a job at McDonald's really isn't a possibility right now. Since I am now living in the Netherlands I can't work fast food, or the majority of other jobs, because my Dutch skills, while improving, still aren't up to par yet.

 

[robbins.photo]

Very fair point, but without going into too much detail let's just say that I make a few times your estimate per shirt. Now I hold no illusions that this is going to make me rich, but I have already earned enough to purchase several packs of cigarettes today Then again this has been a better than typical day.

Oh yeah, and getting a job at McDonald's really isn't a possibility right now. Since I am now living in the Netherlands I can't work fast food, or the majority of other jobs, because my Dutch skills, while improving, still aren't up to par yet.

Well I'll keep my fingers crossed for you and hope like the dickens I'm just completely wrong.

 

[imagemaker46]

Super hot woman with a picture airbrushed on her naked body selling the same picture on t-shirts, and your website. Not only will you get people looking to buy the shirts but they will be taking pictures and posting them all over the net, free advertising for the shirts.