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Thread: Selling Your Work Online

  1. #1

    Selling Your Work Online

    I'm wondering about hints for selling my work, online, ebay, whatever.

    I can handle the mechanics of such a web site, but want to know how to reach potential customers (and not just the web-at-large). Are there special sites for photography sales?

    Thanks,

  2. #2
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Selling Your Work Online

    Ebay is good only for selling at low prices. Nobody buys print at "fine art" prices there. The only example I know of someone selling fine art is a gentleman who sells matted, hand-printed B&W prints
    of size 11x14 (or maybe it was 16x20) in very short limited editions for around $50.
    There are a number of sites that are set up to sell art. Problem is that they charge you a steep (in my opinion) fee, and the chance of your work being seen is low since there are lots of photographers on the same site, and in general those sites do not attract much traffic. Better to try to reach the web-at-large on your own
    site (for an example of site that is effective at doing so, see my own terragalleria.com). The ratio of buyers/visitors will be incredibly low
    (0.01%-0.001%) but if your number of visitors is high enough, you still will be making sales.

  3. #3

    Selling Your Work Online

    In my opinion you need to have considerable marketing skills to sell photography as fine art. Selling photography on the web as fine art is even harder. I wish I could give you some suggestions based on success. Here’s my experience - I do not have any marketing skills. My image collection has been on the web since 1997. I have sold maybe 20 prints in the last 6 years and none since winter 2003. My web site averages 1000 visits a day, that’s discrete IP address visitors, not ‘hits’. Each visitor is viewing 3 to 5 photos on average. I am indexed regularly by Google and have pretty decent rankings. I used to sell quite a few images in a year as stock for publications but that’s dried up in the last year too. I’ll be watching this thread….:^)

    Good Luck,



    http://www.sphoto.com


  4. #4

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Posts
    137

    Selling Your Work Online

    Wow, you guys have some nice sites. Mine pales in comparison.

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Posts
    154

    Selling Your Work Online

    I think eBay is ok for selling lower priced original art - under $125.00 or so. I've been buying from a Platinum print photographer:

    http://stores.ebay.com/Ray-Bidegain-Fine-Art-Photography

    And buy higher priced images from Russell Levin - but purchase some beautiful images by unknowns from him for under $100.00:

    http://stores.ebay.com/Russell-Levin-Gallery

    Here's a few other eBay photographers I keep my eye on:

    http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Fine-Art-Photography-from-Ireland

    http://stores.ebay.com/George-Provost-Azo-Photography

    http://stores.ebay.com/Frank-Jensen-Fine-Art-Photography

    If I ever get my act together I will probably sell my work through eBay...we'll see!
    John V.
    ScanHi-End Moderator

  6. #6

    Selling Your Work Online

    Hi Jonathan

    I agree with Johnny. Ebay is a good way to sell your work and to get in contact with collectors.

    I sell and buy fine art photography on ebay. and I appreciate the work of Paradisi, Provost, Bidegain and some other platinum printer who sale their work on ebay.

    It is a good way to start selling your work. You will learn a little of fine art selling there. But after starting on ebay you should look for other way to sell your photography. Now I have a good list of collectors and I start to contact them directly and to met them. I also look for photo fest.

    If you need some more information you can log on the ebay "fine art photography group" lead by George Provost. you can get good advice here to make a good ebay listing. http://groups.ebay.com/forum.jspa?forumID=4482

    Good luck and work.

    Regards

    Christian

    http://stores.ebay.com/Nze-christian-Atelier

    http://www.c-nze.com

  7. #7

    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    9,487

    Selling Your Work Online

    If you want to make money, get other photographers to pay you to "sell their work online"in one of the countless scammy dot.bomb online art schemes. And then invest your profits into building a wonderful portfolio and hanging work at academic galleries and selected competitive shows. If you are any good, work hard, and come up with new images regularly, that will get you represented by a top-notch gallery. Which will help you sell YOUR work at top prices.

    Photographers are great suckers to pay somebody else to do their marketing for them. That's where the money is if you have the (lack of) ethics to do that.

  8. #8

    Selling Your Work Online

    Hey Frank,

    You don't have to worry about me scamming photographers. I'm not considering this because I need to "make money" per se, it's more to get my photography out there, and selling it is a satisfying way to do that. I have a music web site where I sell sheet music, and have a few of my own titles on there. It's very satisfying when I sell one of them, and I'd like to do the same with the photography. But, with these endeavors, the idea of "making money" is pretty ridiculous - a part time job at minimum wage would pay far more and that's not even considering the thousands invested in equipment.

  9. #9

    Selling Your Work Online

    Thanks everyone,

    After an intimidating look at terragalleria.com I made it to the Ebay stores, and there seems to be quite a variety of approaches, looks like a good way to get started.

    Again, thanks!

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    9,487

    Selling Your Work Online

    Well, if you're not concerned about making money first and foremost, wouldn't it be more satisfying to control your sales and engage with your customers on a personal level? By that, I mean building your own website, presenting good images at reasonable prices, and do the transaction through PayPal or mail order? It seems that eBay doesn't really present an artist's work very well - the eBay "shell" is crass and ugly. And tying into a larger online art sales website may be easy, but I don't think people would find your work any more readily because you were in one of those, amongst the thousands of other artists. Instead, I would very clearly identify what your work is - "8x10 Palladium Contact Prints of Northern California Landscapes" or whatever - and build a search engine friendly website. It might take a few months, but the people you did get would be well-qualified, dedicated customers.

    I don't mean to imply anyone or anysite here is wrong or scamming. All I know is from experience that there are a lot of scammers who do try to hook artists into various deals, and to be careful.

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