Question about own website

[RBL]

Hi all,

I am not sure where to post my question, hope this is a good place.

I am an amateur photographer. I like to photograph landscapes (amongst other things, but for the purpose of this thread let's just concentrate on the landscape photography). For some time I am thinking about selling some of my photographs, uploaded some of them to couple stock photography agencies, just to see if there is any interest in them. Well, I'm sure you all know and I know now as well, that landscape work does not sell well on stock market (seems like the only thing that sells is the 'happy office people' type of photography. I am not disappointed, because I was expecting that.

Anyway, my next step would be to create my own website and start selling pictures from there. Now, this costs money and I'm sure you would all agree, that nobody likes to throw money away.

For the people with own website already working for some time, is the website bringing you any profit? Is this something you would do again? Are you selling photographs on your website or is the www just there as an advertisement for your business?

I tried a free website BTW, but did not like the outcome, so I am thinking about hiring a web designer to make me a professional-looking webiste (I might have somebody who wouldn't charge me a stupid amount of money for that).

Any help would be appreciated

Thank you :thumbup:

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

Setting up a website doesn't need to be expensive. First you need a domain name, which can be had for around $20 per year (probably less). Then you need hosting. A basic hosting plan can be had for $6 per month. Then you need the site itself. Most hosting companies will have some free templates or basic web design tools to build it yourself. You could hire someone to build it for you, but a cheaper option would be to just buy a template...there are many sources and a wide price range.

That's the easy part. The hard part is actually selling the photos. You have already seen that it's hard to sell photos on a stock site...and the people visiting those sites are likely people who are already prepared to buy images/photos. If you are just on your own site, the average viewer is much more likely to be the type of person who just looks at pictures. Another way to put it, would be to think about how many visits you're likely to have, per person that actually buys something. For landscape photos, the conversion ratio might be 10,000 to 1. Heck, it might be 100,000 to 1. So you would need to have millions of visitors to make any money on this. That's not unheard of, plenty of sites get millions of hits a week or month....but that's not easy to do.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the science of getting your site to rank high on sites like Google. The higher you rank, the easier it is for people to find your site. But even that probably wouldn't be enough to sell photos. You would likely need to have a very active, 'fresh' site that keeps drawing people back to the site on a daily basis....and you aren't going to get that just selling photos.

From what I've seen, in order to really sell photos on your website, you have to sell people on yourself. In other words, they have to know (of) you. So a 'famous' photographer could do this, but Joe Shmow would have trouble. You could advertise like crazy...but that's likely a money pit that won't get you return on investment...at least not with landscape photos.

I'm certainly not famous, but I have sold some photos/prints based on my website. But even then, the clients found my site based on a recommendations from people they knew, who knew me or someone else who knew me etc.

I think that a more likely route to take, to make money on landscape photography is to sell prints/products in person. So maybe that's an art show or even craft show. I wouldn't resort to a flea market, but that's on option. A step up from that would be to get into an art gallery....but that's a pretty competitive field.

 

[Rephargotohp]

It's not expensive to have you own website with a cart system. The problem is If you want to have your own website and sell yor photos most likely it won't work because of one reason: Traffic to your site. Unless you are really an SEO genius and even at that what would drive people to go to your site especially qualified customers that are interested in buying Photographic art and not just stop by to look at pretty pictures. The chances really are slim to none. Sorry but that's the truth. 100 unique visitors a month will not do much

You could try things like Zenfolio or smugmug but you end up with the same problem of no traffic to your site

Probably your best bet is to use a service that already has a large amount of traffic with qualified customers, such as Art.com Fine art America or Essty. People that go there are looking to buy things. BUT even with those services the competition is fierce and you have to know how to play the game at each place to get your images up high in the search ranks. And on top if it you'll have to make yourself visible in every social media place you can find and plaster yourself everywhere to buld a following..If your stuff is even of note or different enough to make people notice. You may also have to look at commision scales, how happy will you be to make $4 on each print? ( it is possible to make more at some sites BUT)

Not trying to burst your bubble or telling you not to dream big. Go for what ever is your dream. I'm just saying some of the realities of it

 

[RBL]

Really appreciate you honesty, guys. This is exactly what I am after.

Please do not be affraid of 'bursting my bubble', because you won't find any 'bubble' here. I am perfectly aware that the competition is fierce. Not only that there is a number of great professionals who are much better than myself, but also the photography market is getting bigger and bigger each day (and please don't start me on micro stock photography).

I am not trying to make millions here, I know this is impossible. I was just thinking about creating a nice looking website, upload my photos and maybe I could sell one or two per year. Yes, I would love to be able to sell more, but I am a realistic person. So, bearing that in mind, would you still go for your own website? Invest few hundred pounds/dollars in hope that I can at least get that back at some point in future. I mean, when the website is there, there is really not much of a hussle to keep it - upload a new photo, pay for domian each year, etc.

 

[bazooka]

It seems to me that you need some sort of catch to get repeat viewers to your site (not unlike a photographer that is worth looking at again). Look at strobist. DH doesn't sell anything on his blog as viewers are the product for advertisers, so he has to get a whole bunch of viewers. This is the same thing you want although the end game is different. So you need to update the site with something that will hold people there. Can you write? Are you good at teaching? Getting viewers to follow your site requires regular updates. This is part of selling yourself, so people can connect your work with you. Otherwise it's just another pretty picture that gets a once-over.

 

[RBL]

I was thinking about a blog thingy as well, but... well, I'm rubbish at internet social trends. I like internet forums (like this one for example), but I don't follow any blogs, don't have a Twitter or Facebook account. Kind of internet social imbecile.

Might give a photography blog a go to see if I like it, but even if I would, not sure about the others.

 

[flashyinteractive]

I agree, it depends how well your site is SEO. If your site doesn't show up in the search engines, then no one will find it to buy your photos. Having a custom designed site that is designed by someones that knows a thing or two about SEO may help get better results than just buying a domain and a template.

The zenfolio might not be a bad idea or doing the local market idea. Going with the local market idea, that way you build a local client base and you don't have to compete with every other person trying to sell a photo.

I tried that once. I made my own site and no clue about how to get traffic and had only like 90 visitors out of the whole year.

 

[RBL]

Just a bit of an update.

I finally motivated myself and created my website... well, not 'created', but customised.

I bought my own domain (absolute nightmare to come up with the name (all the ones I like were taken already), ended up with some random name) and email address. Hosting and template is from Zenfolio, I'm still on trial, but I like what I see, so will pay for a full year soon.

There is still lots of work needed on the website. I keep tweaking the look, but still have lots of important decisions to make, like pricing, which products I want to offer, also (right pain in buttocks) needs to come up with my own rights for digital downloads, as I don't like the Zanfolio default ones. Need to create something like 'rights managed' on Alamy.

I would like to thank you all for your help

 

[adarlingshot]

love to see it when it is done

 

[RBL]

love to see it when it is done

I will post the link as soon as I will be happy with the results. At the moment I keep redesigning it every 5 min

 

[katerolla]

I do CSS and HTML wedsites and Hosting but I can't guarantee business

 

[RBL]

Here is the website

Dark Box Photography

now, bear in mind that the website is only 2 days old and it is still, very much, work in progress. I need to think about better pricing, remove some of the products, come up with digital downloads rights, work on background, re-write the welcome message and 'about us' tab, work more on the homepage menu etc.

But I would like to ask for some tips and comments. Please feel free to visit and comment either here, or on the website

 

[o hey tyler]

Well, the first thing that jumped out to me is that the two fonts at the top clash hard. I understand one is your logo, but together with the script font, they are not cohesive. The Nav bar is also kind of small, and should have a bit more emphasis drawn to it.

Other than that, it looks like a servicable website.

 

[RBL]

Well, the first thing that jumped out to me is that the two fonts at the top clash hard. I understand one is your logo, but together with the script font, they are not cohesive. The Nav bar is also kind of small, and should have a bit more emphasis drawn to it.

Other than that, it looks like a servicable website.

Doesn't sound optimistic

I just made the menu font bigger, I will also play a bit with its colours.

Logo + banner, where do I start on that Initially I had my logo on the website's background and the banner (ie name) bang in the middle above the menu, but I changed the background and decided to place the logo on the banner together with the name. I guess it doesn't work. And to be honest, I'm not very happy with the logo. Must design something better. I like simple logos, but as you say, both logo + banner doesn't work too good together. Might just remove the logo from the front page altogether, or I will design background already with the logo. There is still so much to do, but I am enjoying it so far.

Really appreciate your comment. Thank you

 

[o hey tyler]

I wasn't trying to discourage you. You've got a decent looking website so far. For what it is, it's serviceable. It's not going to win any awards, but what does that matter? I am sure you will continue to improve on it regularly. :thumbup: