Selling own prints on own site

[pbryld]

I see so many members/photographers selling their prints on their own website, usually a few hundred bucks depending on the format.

I can't help but wonder, does this actually work? If it does, how frequently do you sell a print?

[vinny]

No.
http://www.largeformatphotography.in...vinnywalsh.com

[ypres.bass]

I try sell my prints too, but it's awfull!!!
People want not originals, they want bullsh*ts from IKEA!

In this moment, I need to sell at least one... Only one ...
I try it through my own website, through ebay, through aukro (Czech equivalent of ebay)

[Bill McMannis]

If you wish to sell prints, you need to be in a high traffic gallery. If you are in the gallery, then have your images on their website. They earn their fee by handling this for you. Frees you up to be a photographer.

Atleast in my experience, ready to hang prints sell much quicker than simply matted prints and In my case, I make money on the frame as well as the image.

[dsphotog]

I've sold prints at club group shows, gallery contests, and by showing at local businesses that I asked to hang prints in their lobbies. Haven't tried on line, it seems like the hard part is getting found.

[polyglot]

The only (not-famous) people I know who successfully sell prints do so from exhibitions in galleries. I've only sold prints by word of mouth and gave up on selling them on the web.

[David Higgs]

I sell around 4 prints a month through my site, but only from people who have seen the real thing in local art shows/galleries/coffee houses/restaurants/foyers or whereever else I can pimp them. The web presence is useful for people to make contact with me, and for customers to get a feel for what else I do. Of interest I have only ever sold framed prints (apart from images sent abroad).

Not enough sales to feed my family ;-)

[Brian Ellis]

I've never made a major effort to sell prints, it seems like a good way to turn a great hobby into a miserable business. But I've sold a few in diverse ways - once from a group show at a gallery, once through a juried contest sponsored by a university that wanted prints to hang in a new dorm, and few others in even more oddball ways (e.g. once to a lady who was in a frame shop at the same time I was, saw something I was having framed, liked it, bought it). I had gallery representation in Tampa for a few years but sold nothing through them (and when the gallery closed someone ran off with my prints). I made one sale from my web site in the five or so years I had it and that was just a coincidence (to a friend of my daughter).

But to try to answer your question -I doubt that you really see many people here selling prints through their web sites. I think you see many people here with web sites. I'd guess that most photographers who actually sell enough photographs to make it worthwhile are out there promoting, hustling, networking, marketing,etc., not posting messages on photography forums.

[welly]

Are many people getting traffic to their site? Without that, they might as well not be online. Getting visitors to your site is probably the biggest challenge before actually selling a print. I suspect there are better ways of selling prints than through your own personal website.

[Drew Bedo]

I sell my work through public exhibitions, gallery, business or juried shows. My best venue has been a trade show, Abilities Expo, in Houstopn every August.

My prints are available through my website at www.quietlightphoto.com or hrough an online gallery www.artsyhome.com

Only the public, in-person venues seem to work out with a sale or two. I know a few photographers who do an art fair or two each year. They do well—sometimes—but it is spotty. Seems to be a LOT of work setting up and shutting down.