Selling Prints

[ABOphotographer]

Photographers that sell prints of their work, how do you do this? What is the best way you find to advertise and sell your work?

 

[tirediron]

It depends grearly on your skill level, the type of work, and the area you're shooting in. Galleries are probably the best way to get your work 'out there', 'though displaying in coffee shops and at art/craft shows works.

 

[Ilovemycam]

Put them on ebay, do a craft fair, sell from website, sell through gallery.

 

[pixmedic]

I stand on a busy street corner holding a sign that says "will photograph for food" and sell portraits for beer and smokes.
admittedly, its not a perfect business model....but it gets me through the weekend.

 

[amolitor]

You're probably not going to sell any prints, or not very many, at all. The market is extremely saturated. Possibly it is the most saturated market that has ever been observed in any economy.

Be prepared to do some marketing, if you want to shift any product. If you just want to make prints available to friends, family, and the occasional FOAF or random buyer, there are any number of web sites that will let you set up a gallery, and which will do print-order fulfillment on the backend. As well as mugs, T-shirts, and so on, if you want to offer those for sale too. smugmug.com comes to mind, but there are several others, I think.

 

[KmH]

Photographers that regularly sell prints of their work have spent a lot of time and effort marketing their work, promoting their name, and learning salesmanship skills.

Retail photography prints are best sold in person to the people in the images.
Photography Business Secrets: The Savvy Photographer's Guide to Sales, Marketing, and More

Fine art images, landscapes, cityscapes and other images that don't have people in them requires different marketing, promotion, and sales technique strategies.
Marketing Fine Art Photography

From looking at your web site it is my opinion you offer to many types of images, which dilutes your brand.

It has been said that 85% of all the photos that sell have people in them, and are mostly bought by the people in the images.

 

[tirediron]

Having taken a moment to look through your website, let me offer some unsolicited general critique: Hone your skill before you worry to much about making sales. Advertising "glamour" photography using an image with crudely retouched red-eye and shot with on-camera flash is NOT going to catapult you to the top of the sales charts. As mentioned, this market is absolutely saturated and to make even a scratch on the surface, you have to be very, very good and market very, very aggerssively!

 

[manaheim]

^ pretending like I didn't see that, but...

I sell a few prints a year mostly through extremely lazy marketing. I'll remind people around the holidays on Facebook that I have prints for sale. I'll occasionally show my work at a hospital or coffee shop, and I'll occasionally ping someone that I know likes this or that subject. I also put my stuff up in local fairs. One coming up next week, actually. You can sell more if you try harder, I think, but I just haven't the time or the energy.

 

[vintagesnaps]

I've found that attending an event like a craft fair or art show can give you an idea what seems to sell at that particular show and what the quality of the participants' work is - then you can determine if your photos are at that level yet or not.