I was recently contacted by a photographer who wanted to have me create a website where she could sell her photographs. She wanted to start off listing 1,000 photographs on her site with another 1,500 to 2,000 photographs added every year. I could easily see this one project giving me enough money to retire several years earlier than I'd expected.
I estimated that it would take about 10 minutes to prepare each image and put it on a web page. Each image would need to have a thumbnail and a 4x5 inch image made from the original, optimize each image, create a popup window for the 4x5 and create a custom PayPal button for each image offered. At my rate of $60 per hour, this would be $6 per image. So it would cost $6,000 to set up the initial batch of photographs, and another $9,000 and $12,000 to add new images each year. This would be on top of the cost to create the website.
This was going to be a major, time consuming and expensive venture so I set out to find the best solution to meet her needs. The ideas I came up with will work for any person who wants to sell large quantities of items from a website. Remember, that no matter what you sell, you'll need a picture of each item, so you'll run into a similar situation.
I came up with three solutions:
- Make and run a big, expensive website
- Put your items on someone else's big, expensive website
- Do both of the above
Let's go over the pros and cons of all these ideas.
Make and Run a Big, Expensive Website
The most expensive thing you can do is to make a database driven website. Each item would be listed in the database, along with its price, description and other information you want listed about each item. A database site lets you easily add, remove or change items and can let each page be designed around the user's needs. So if you have a site selling photographs, and the client puts in a search for Dogs, then a page would be created with only dog pictures.
The down side is the cost and time to create the website. It could easily take several months to create the site, and the price tag could run well over $25,000. A similar sized non-database site would cost only about $2,000 to $3,000, but would lack the functionality of the database site.
I know of one company that had a site like this done for them. The website design company had two full-time and two part-time programmers working on the project, at $100 per hour per person. The project took over eight months at a cost exceeding $130,000. Now that's commitment.
This is not only a sizable financial investment, but if your products don't sell like you hope it could take years, or a lifetime, to recoup your costs.
Put Your Items on Someone Else's Big, Expensive Website
There are many sites where you can list your products. Specifically for photographers there are numerous stock photography agencies. You send in lots of photographs, they select the ones most likely to sell and they post them on their site. The up side is that they do all the marketing, website maintenance, track usage and all the other things needed to sell the photographs. The down side is that they keep about 40% of the sales price. But considering all they do, that's not bad.
To find links to stock photography agencies see my article " Where To Find Free Pictures, Artwork And Animation For Your Website" at http://www.creativecauldron.com/websitearticleFreeGraphics.shtml
For other items that you may want to sell there are many outlets.
- The obvious is eBay, to sell almost anything.
- Collectors of almost anything can find sites where people list these items for sale, including: books, toys, animation cells and almost anything else you can think of.
- There are newsgroups for almost any topic, and if the newsgroup doesn't exist, you can create it. Many of these newsgroups let you list your items or put links to your items that are listed on eBay or your own website.
Do Both Of The Above
This is what I suggested she do to keep costs to a minimum. I told her to send the bulk of her photographs to a stock photo agency, and keep a select few for her own site. I thought that about five to ten pages, with ten or so images per page, would be ample. She could put pictures on her site, keep the ones that sell on there and replace the ones that don't sell. Eventually she would have a nice collection of photographs that consistently sold well, with a page where new images could be posted.
This would keep the cost of designing a website to a minimum while letting her sell as many pictures as possible.
When deciding which of the three options to go with, it's important to keep in mind how you will maintain and update your site. If a website designer will be adding photographs, changing prices and doing other upkeep, do you have the money to afford this? If, on the other hand, you are going to do all of these things yourself, will you have the time and knowledge to do it properly? You always want to be sure your website looks professional so that people feel comfortable using it.
Also, consider if you have the time for the day-to-day business operations of your site. Some of these things include shipping, replacing items damaged during shipping, a disclaimer stating that the copyright stays with the photographer and not the buyer, what kind of print you will offer (photographic paper, inkjet printer, giclee, etc.), dealing with returns, the time it will take to e-mail people who have questions and so on.
Pricing
When your selling items online it's important to price them properly. You don't want to charge too much because people won't buy your products. But charging too little can cut your profit margin considerable. For photographs there are several ways to price your images. You can become a member of the PPA (Professional Photographers of America) at http://www.ppa.com Members can contact the PPA to find out current prices. You can also go to websites to see what other people charge.
Check out these websites for prices
- Photographers Index - http://photographersindex.com/stockprice.htm
- Lodge Photography - http://www.lodgephoto.com/pricing.php
- Bruce Butler Photography - http://brucebutlerphoto.com/butlerstockprices.html
Besides being a website designer I was a professional photographer in southern California for many years, so I know what it takes to run a website business as well as a photography business.
If you want to get some good information on photography you can read the transcript of a chat by me that was done on the Long Ridge Writers Group at http://www.longridgewritersgroup.com/rx/tr01/jeff_colburn_submitting_photos_with_your_prose_4_15_04.shtml
Now that you've read this article you have the information you need to make an informed decision about which of these options will best meet your needs and the needs of your business.
