Well I am just breaking into selling my work, gearing up for my first show at the end of October and of course trying to figure out what I think will sell best. Everyone I have ever talked to is usually surprised at which of their images sell best, so I figured it would be cool to see which ones have done the best for you guys. I guess a link would be fine.
Thanks for your time,
Paul
Posted by Dan Borzynski on September 21, 2008 at 10:44 PM
If I could figure this one out...
I've never sold any wildflower print of mine and those are some of my favorites. My earliest best seller, from 4 years ago, which I have sold 7 copies of, I haven't sold in two years. A print I had never sold previously I sold three copies of at a show two weeks ago.
I used to have a print of a spider in my show stock, mainly because I had entered it previously in a competition. In the absence of any other immediate use for the print, I threw it in my show stock for the weekend. It sold. Keep in mind that it wasn't a "pretty" spider shot. It was, to put in bluntly, actually kind of creepy. I've never figured that sale out.
Go with what others have thought was your best work, whether a spouse, customer or show judge, and then add your favorites.
Good luck!
Posted by Steve Foss on September 21, 2008 at 11:01 PM
I agree wholeheartedly with the second opinion philosophy. I can't tell you how many times I've been reviewing the day's images with my mate looking over my shoulder and she's given the so-so hand signal to images I am in love with, and as I'm passing by images I don't care for she slaps me upside the head and says: Hey dummy, print THAT one!
As for what sells and what doesn't, she's right about it 90 percent of the time. When we both agree that an image is good, then look out, because it's a sure thing. But if we disagree I take her advice. She's not a photographer but behaves like a typical print-buying consumer in that she loves a fine photograph and seems to reflect the majority of the buying public. Photographers just don't look at images the same way as non photographers.
And it's my wise policy never to look a gift wife in the mouth.
Paul, both Dan and Steve are correct. Seek out opinions from others and espeically non-photographer types. I learned a very long time ago when I was in a art store putting together a matte and frame along with a print I was selling. The lady at the store said I was color blind. She was joking of course, but her point was I had no idea what I was doing in matching things up to make a fine overall presentation. The finished product was put together as a final package between my wife and her. The customer who bought the photograph loved the finished product, but I would have never selected the same total package. So, collectively my wife, an art dealer, and a customer saw the entire thing differently then I did.
our best sellers are more the "Austrian" postcard kind of landscape images. they are meant for tourism purposes. (not so surprising to us, that they are good sellers, but they are not the images we are most proud of) I can't even make a link to one of them, because they are not on the web...
I agree with the comments above. the main point is: you are selling to many, very different markets (stock, magazines, advertising, book publishers, art galleries and many more) and you have to understand them and the people and their different needs working in those respective trades. If you do, it's not such a big deal.
good luck!
georg
Posted by Zack Schnepf on September 22, 2008 at 12:20 PM
Icons are definitely what sell best for me at shows, although many of my personal favorites do quite well. There are some images I'm most proud of that don't sell at all though. I find images people can relate to are what sell best, places they've been or are going to go. Each show is different, but that is generally what I've found.
Good luck with the shows.
Posted by Gary Minish on September 22, 2008 at 3:14 PM
Paul; I don't have much experience with national or international print sales and I am not trying to make a living off my photography at this point but I did have some interesting experiences with local print sales that proved very enlightening.
I had some friends pressure me to set up a booth to sell photos at a local home show. Having no experience at marketing my photos I asked a lot of people for advice and it was pretty much unanimous that I should pick a few of my best photos to display and have a lot of shrink wrapped copies ready to sell. Unfortunately I had seen some other local artists/photographers take that approach and knew that their sales fell far short of their investment in pre-printing and preparing. After some torturous thought I decided to try a different approach. I displayed about 30 photos that I considered my best and set up a slide show on a large monitor so that people could view another 800 or so photos. I just used windows picture and fax viewer for the slide show and let people stop it whenever they wanted and browse the photos at their liesure. In addition, instead of pre-printing, I simply took pre-payed orders for prints. I thought that could be a stopper but it turned out that people had no problem with paying up front and leaving a delivery address. in fact most people mentioned that they appreciated it because they didn't have to pack delicate photos around during the rest of their visit at the show. Another factor that affected the sales was that I was charging a very reasonable price for the prints because I didn't have any investement other than ink, paper and printing time (postage was prepaid). I didn't have to mount, shrink wrap or frame anything.
The result completely surprised me. The booth was only open for a day and a half and I sold 185 prints! The other surprise was that there were very few duplicate sales. Almost everyone wanted something different and it almost always was because they had been there or had a special experience at that location or their own boat was in the photo (I had a lot of harbor shots). I only sold 1 or 2 copies of each of my "best". The displayed prints got people's attention and brought them to the booth but almost all of the sales were from people browsing the larger selection on the computer. All my spare time for the next two weeks were spent printing and mailing but the good news was that every single photo I printed was pre-sold. There was no wasted effort or expense.
I repeated the same process the next year about a month before Christmas and did even better (lots of sales for gifts). Had I followed everyone's advice, both events would have been a total loss. Instead they payed for all the camera gear I have ever purchased plus a handsome profit that Uncle Sam insisted on sharing. Getting that many photos out into people's homes paid off also. I still get regular unsolicited requests for prints.
However you decide to display your work, I wish you the best of luck in your commercial endeavors!
Posted by Scott Linstead on September 23, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Another thing to consider is that certain images will serve other purposes other than sales. The best agency representation that I have was obtained by the wow factor that came from a certain group of images in my portfolio. The agencies liked those images and thought they could sell them so they accepted my entire portfolio. They haven't sold those images yet but I was still able to break into a few tough agencies.
Scott
Posted by John W. Wall on September 23, 2008 at 6:21 PM
Gary, what were you charging for prints? (I've wondered about that approach but didn't have a large enough monitor at the time I was doing a booth.)
Posted by Gary Minish on September 24, 2008 at 1:04 AM
John, I'll probably get in trouble for this because there seems to be an unspoken rule that 'thou shalt never disclose thy rates in a public forum' but I don't have anything to hide and if it helps you out, that's fine with me. I charged $15 for 8x10s, $30 for 11x14s and $40 for 12x18s. I also sold a lot of panoramas which I quoted after they told me how large they wanted it printed. They went everywhere from $50 to $120. On top of that I also charged a pre-paid mailing fee of $5 for 8x10s (per package rather than per print) and $7.50 for 11x14s & 12x18s (per pkg also) and $7.50 for each panorama (because I had to package them seperately in round mailing tubes. The per/pkg shipping was actually a good incentive for people to buy more than one. All the prints were printed with my Epson 2200 using Epson Ultrachrome archival ink on Red River Arctic Polar Satin & Ultra Pro Satin or Epson Premium Luster roll paper (panoramas). My sales were roughly 60% local and 40% out of town or tourists. A lot of them were images that I would never have posted in my online gallery because I didn't think they were good enough to show anyone. There's just no accounting for taste! The size of the monitor really didn't turn out to be that important because people sat down (in a chair I provided) right in front of the screen, grabbed the mouse and browsed the entire collection . Several people spent almost an hour browsing with others looking over their shoulder. I spent my time answering questions about photography, gabbing about cameras and telling stories about the photos. It was actually a lot of fun.
Posted by Dan Borzynski on September 24, 2008 at 8:28 PM
Probably the best way to determine print pricing for festivals is to spend time at several local shows to see what people are charging for which level of quality. It will give you some sort of idea of what the local market will bear for pricing.
Given that we are at the end of the season for that, spend some time on other photographer's websites. This will give you broad range prices, but there will also be a large range of quality, materials and subjects. Unfortunately, there is will also be a broad range of markets. Generally, you'll see photographers in larger markets (Chicago, LA, NYC, etc.) charging more than those in smaller markets. That make some sense, given the cost of living in some of those places. Even so, there will still be a large range of prices. I wound up pricing myself at about midrange.
Gary, the reason prices are not discussed publicly on the web is that at least in theory, you could be in violation of anti-trust laws. If the feds were to go after you, it gets pretty intense and pretty expensive fairly quickly. Yeah, I know, I had the same reaction... Realistically, that probably won't happen but Jim (the site owner) doesn't want to be the test case. I can't blame him on that.
Posted by Dan Borzynski on September 24, 2008 at 8:30 PM
Also, I have found that craft fairs won't support the same pricing as art festivals. I did some at the start and even had one person trying to talk me down to a price below my material costs. He was pretty upset that I wouldn't charge less than the glitter-coated birdhouses a few tables down.
Thanks for all the discussion guys. I will have a lot of bagged/matted prints, but I also have 2 portfolio books that will have most of my images in, so people will be able to flip through those as well.
I guess the thing I was hoping to see is what type of image sells best for you at these types of shows. I'm wondering if some of my simpler stuff will be the more successful, even though I prefer the more complicated compositions.
Thanks again,
Paul
Posted by Dan Borzynski on September 28, 2008 at 9:51 PM
I'd try both (complicated and simple). So much of what sells and what doesn't sell is determined by how your personal style appeals to the buyer and unfortunately, the color of the couch it will hang above. Don't laugh - I'm serious.
If you thumb through my website, I have sold 1-3 prints of everything there, with the following exceptions: None from the Museum of Science galleries, unless repeated elsewhere, few of the Maine images, except Otter Point (it is a long story, but they really won't enter my show stock until next year), and everything from the from the wildflower gallery.
There are three red-eyed tree frogs, of which 5 completes sets exist in Columbus, plus numerous stray singletons. The early best seller was this one:
Discussion
13 repliesThanks for your time,
Paul
I've never sold any wildflower print of mine and those are some of my favorites. My earliest best seller, from 4 years ago, which I have sold 7 copies of, I haven't sold in two years. A print I had never sold previously I sold three copies of at a show two weeks ago.
I used to have a print of a spider in my show stock, mainly because I had entered it previously in a competition. In the absence of any other immediate use for the print, I threw it in my show stock for the weekend. It sold. Keep in mind that it wasn't a "pretty" spider shot. It was, to put in bluntly, actually kind of creepy. I've never figured that sale out.
Go with what others have thought was your best work, whether a spouse, customer or show judge, and then add your favorites.
Good luck!
As for what sells and what doesn't, she's right about it 90 percent of the time. When we both agree that an image is good, then look out, because it's a sure thing. But if we disagree I take her advice. She's not a photographer but behaves like a typical print-buying consumer in that she loves a fine photograph and seems to reflect the majority of the buying public. Photographers just don't look at images the same way as non photographers.
And it's my wise policy never to look a gift wife in the mouth.
I agree with the comments above. the main point is: you are selling to many, very different markets (stock, magazines, advertising, book publishers, art galleries and many more) and you have to understand them and the people and their different needs working in those respective trades. If you do, it's not such a big deal.
good luck!
georg
Good luck with the shows.
I had some friends pressure me to set up a booth to sell photos at a local home show. Having no experience at marketing my photos I asked a lot of people for advice and it was pretty much unanimous that I should pick a few of my best photos to display and have a lot of shrink wrapped copies ready to sell. Unfortunately I had seen some other local artists/photographers take that approach and knew that their sales fell far short of their investment in pre-printing and preparing. After some torturous thought I decided to try a different approach. I displayed about 30 photos that I considered my best and set up a slide show on a large monitor so that people could view another 800 or so photos. I just used windows picture and fax viewer for the slide show and let people stop it whenever they wanted and browse the photos at their liesure. In addition, instead of pre-printing, I simply took pre-payed orders for prints. I thought that could be a stopper but it turned out that people had no problem with paying up front and leaving a delivery address. in fact most people mentioned that they appreciated it because they didn't have to pack delicate photos around during the rest of their visit at the show. Another factor that affected the sales was that I was charging a very reasonable price for the prints because I didn't have any investement other than ink, paper and printing time (postage was prepaid). I didn't have to mount, shrink wrap or frame anything.
The result completely surprised me. The booth was only open for a day and a half and I sold 185 prints! The other surprise was that there were very few duplicate sales. Almost everyone wanted something different and it almost always was because they had been there or had a special experience at that location or their own boat was in the photo (I had a lot of harbor shots). I only sold 1 or 2 copies of each of my "best". The displayed prints got people's attention and brought them to the booth but almost all of the sales were from people browsing the larger selection on the computer. All my spare time for the next two weeks were spent printing and mailing but the good news was that every single photo I printed was pre-sold. There was no wasted effort or expense.
I repeated the same process the next year about a month before Christmas and did even better (lots of sales for gifts). Had I followed everyone's advice, both events would have been a total loss. Instead they payed for all the camera gear I have ever purchased plus a handsome profit that Uncle Sam insisted on sharing. Getting that many photos out into people's homes paid off also. I still get regular unsolicited requests for prints.
However you decide to display your work, I wish you the best of luck in your commercial endeavors!
Scott
Given that we are at the end of the season for that, spend some time on other photographer's websites. This will give you broad range prices, but there will also be a large range of quality, materials and subjects. Unfortunately, there is will also be a broad range of markets. Generally, you'll see photographers in larger markets (Chicago, LA, NYC, etc.) charging more than those in smaller markets. That make some sense, given the cost of living in some of those places. Even so, there will still be a large range of prices. I wound up pricing myself at about midrange.
Gary, the reason prices are not discussed publicly on the web is that at least in theory, you could be in violation of anti-trust laws. If the feds were to go after you, it gets pretty intense and pretty expensive fairly quickly. Yeah, I know, I had the same reaction... Realistically, that probably won't happen but Jim (the site owner) doesn't want to be the test case. I can't blame him on that.
I guess the thing I was hoping to see is what type of image sells best for you at these types of shows. I'm wondering if some of my simpler stuff will be the more successful, even though I prefer the more complicated compositions.
Thanks again,
Paul
If you thumb through my website, I have sold 1-3 prints of everything there, with the following exceptions: None from the Museum of Science galleries, unless repeated elsewhere, few of the Maine images, except Otter Point (it is a long story, but they really won't enter my show stock until next year), and everything from the from the wildflower gallery.
There are three red-eyed tree frogs, of which 5 completes sets exist in Columbus, plus numerous stray singletons. The early best seller was this one:
http://www.danborzynskiimages.com/landscape%20images/large/Ohio/CreekPrint.htm
The recent show seller was this one:
http://www.danborzynskiimages.com/landscape%20images/large/UP/Lake%20of%20the%20CLouds%20Valley.htm
Definately get non-photographer input on your best images. Photographers won't be who are buying your work. It will be nonphotographers.