I want to sell my photo project; how much should I charge?

[Melissa Royal]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking to sell a photo project and am not sure what to price it as.

The pictures are here: 4shared - project jess to jay - shared folder - free file sharing and storage
Each photo, aside from the definition, is 8"x10" and matted using 11"x14" matte board.

The photos were taken with a Minolta x700 using Arista 400 film. The prints were made on Ilford Multigrade RC IV paper.

I have thought about it and I think that to make each print (matte board included), I must have spent $10 to $12 ($5 to $6 for each matte board and roughly 80cents for the paper).
So selling each print at a price of around $12 does not sound unreasonable to me. However, I have to take into account the time and work I put into the project as well.
Being that there are 9 prints, would selling them for $15-$20 each be reasonable? I want to sell the project as a set. So that would make it $135-$180. Is asking for that much
too pricey?

I have never sold my work before and this is the first I'm going to try and sell. Again, I'm doing so as a set.
Aside from pricing, how do I make sure someone doesn't steal it and claim it as there own?
Should I sign the prints?

My last question is, how much do I take in account for shipping? I'll be trying to sell this on eBay. I'm just wondering how much to add on for shipping.
What's the range for that? Again, there are 9 matted prints. They won't be shipping with frames.

Thank you,
Rachael

 

[CCericola]

You will need to sign them, number them if they are part of a series and you should get certificates of authenticity put on the back of each piece. You may not be famous now but you might be in the future and the cert of auth helps buyers and sellers appraise the set.

 

[Melissa Royal]

You will need to sign them, number them if they are part of a series and you should get certificates of authenticity put on the back of each piece. You may not be famous now but you might be in the future and the cert of auth helps buyers and sellers appraise the set.

How do I get certificates of authenticity?

 

[bratkinson]

To sell something on ebay, one of the first things I do is 'get a feel' for what the going prices are. For example, when I decided to sell my EF-S 55-250 lens on ebay a few months ago, I checked the 'completed auctions' for 55-250s and determined what my starting price would be, reserve would be, and buy-it-now price would be (about 10% less than market value). For me, my motivation in selling something on ebay is to get rid of it, not necessarily get top dollar for it.

In your case, I'd do some browsing of ebay to see what similar pictures/prints are going for. Since your work is 'unknown', set your buy it now price perhaps 15% lower than what comparable pictures are selling for. For starting price, I'd probably start at $10, plus shipping. Note that free shipping is 'really big' on ebay these days. As I live in New England, I figure out what USPS shipping to Denver would be, and add that to my "what I'd like to get" price. Smaller items can go USPS flat rate, so check those prices out, too. Since you are selling pictures, packing them for shipping will require sheets of cardboard to ensure they don't get bent during shipment. The price of the shipping materials, tape, bubbles, labels, etc, must all be considered in your "what you'd like to get" price.

One more thing I've learned the hard way on ebay...the amount of work, time, shipping materials, etc, associated with selling a $5.00 item and a $500 item is close the the same. So if you're selling lower-price items, group them together in twos or threes to sell them. Tossing in a 'freebie' like a lens case I didn't like with my 55-250 certainly helped in getting the lens sold in 14 hours with a right-priced buy-it-now.