Would you buy a photo print ? ? ?

[BrettRivers]

No

 

[Gary A.]

Good luck to your project. I think it will be quite difficult to sell prints from a relatively unknown, uncredentialed photographer. While the odds of success to me seem remote ... go ahead because maybe you'll be the one who beats the odds (and your investment in the project is minimal so there isn't much risk). Not doing it guarantees no success in the project. Marketing is the key for success.

 

[KmH]

And Marketing is time intensive and can also require a significant investment of $$$$s.

 

[greybeard]

Would I buy a photo print? Definitely maybe. (why buy the cow)

 

[Gary A.]

So that's a definite maybe ...

 

[pixmedic]

i am 100% positive that there is a possibility I might purchase a print at some point in time.

you never know whats going to work or not work until you try it.
a few years ago my response to something like this would have been to discourage you from engaging in such a venture.
there are a lot of factors working against modern photographers trying to basically sell "stock" photography among the legions people uploading a constant stream of images to a dozen photo sharing sites 24/7.
nowadays however, my advice to you is this. Do it. just get out there and try. but do it with a sense of purpose. formulate a strategy. plan out what you want the end result to be, and how you think you can get there. then do your best to make it happen.
its easy to sit here and tell you how low your chances are, and how much competition there is, and how a million people are working against you to sell the same things...
theres no guarantee that you will succeed if you give this a shot. but you are guaranteed to fail if you never try.

so go get on it man.
get together with your friend, sit down and develop a real plan of attack, and then commit to putting in maximum effort to make it a success.
I would much rather be a failed professional photographer (which i kinda am anyway) than one that wanted to do it but was afraid to try.

 

[MSnowy]

Like others have said your not the first to come up with this idea. Some have succeeded most have failed,but don't let this stop you. What helps most is having photos that are real good and photos that people have an emotional attachment to. I have thousands of pictures I've tried to sell online and only 200 different ones have sold. I do have one photo that I've have sold over 500 copies of. So you can sell pictures online but it's not easy by any means.

 

[TCampbell]

Derrel basically made the point I would have made... getting someone to "like" an image is a lot easier to do because people don't have to pay each time they click a "like" button and you get an unlimited number of "likes" to give away. This makes getting "likes" not particularly genuine nor a good judge of quality (parents "like" their child's refrigerator art... but nobody else would likely pay to commission that work.)

When you switch gears and talk about "buying" art things change. Most people have a limited amount of dollars so they can't buy everything the way they could "like" everything.

Another economic problem is the cost of having the print made. For example, I am currently having some images produced by Aluminyze. I've had several images printed and shipped. They print on a sheet of aluminum and their gloss prints look stunning. But a 30" x 20" print (an ok size for a wall... but not huge) costs about $170 to have it done (not including any extras you might want). This begs the question... could you make a profit? A lot of buyers would balk at the $170 price (a price at which you would make nothing). To make it worth your while, you'd probably want to be able to sell it for at least $250 ... and that's just a 30 x 20. The 40 x 60 size (a very nice size print if the image quality is good enough to print at that size) is $620.