- This topic is empty.
Selling photos from your website
-
Hi
I have recently set up my own website and currently have photos for sale as prints. Have sold a couple but in the last 6 months but its very slow at taking off. I would like to know if anyone would recommend selling photos as files by email to customers. If so what size (resolution) would a photo have to be for a customer to print a good quality A4 size print. Also are you running the risk of having your photos stolen and used for commercial gain by someone else by doing this
thanks
JohnJohn, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you could do with a complete site redesign. If you really want to make money out of this, put money into it. You have way too many links on the left hand side, way too much information on the front page and the pages aren’t always consistent as you browse through the site.
I think a photography site should be very minimalistic. Let the photos do the talking, too much text will only take from them…and give potential customers a choice of what to look at.
You also have too many similar shots. For Example in “County Clare Photos 3”, on page 1 you have 4 almost identical shots of Dysart O’Dea. if I was you, I’d offer limited prints of all my shots. Display only 1 of those (and any others that are similar) and if you happen to sell out of your limited prints, replace it with one of the similar shots. Too many photos like that can overwhelm the viewer, and possibly even make you seem like a scheister (no offence intended). It’s almost as if you’re putting up all the photos you’ve ever taken in the hope to sell one, rather than offering quality shots, all of which would be desirable for any potential customer to buy.
I would also maybe suggest setting up a seperate section for your commercial selling. Seperate prints and image right sales completely so that someone buying a print will know that their image won’t be on every billboard in the country in 6 months time.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. I hope you get something out of it and can increase your sales.
Thanks very much for your advice Jody. Your points make sense. I think i will give it a serious overhaul
Hi John,
I just thought I would offer a few pointers to add to the good advice Jody gave above as
I was asking similar questions to yours not so long ago. Anyway here is my observations:The site has a lot of potential and the changes I suggest are very easy to do.
The boxed layout is good and easy on the eye – the colours are lovely and set the mood plus
navigation is solid.The homepage needs the most work and it has to do with colour balance and too much content.
Your site layout is fine when you are in any of the galleries but the gallery plug in is narrower
than the web page. Thats no big deal but it would look much better if they were of the same width.
Just tweak the HTML and maybe it will fix it.The plug in is nice and easy to use. However, it would look much better if you changed the colour
of the plug in to match with the main colour scheme. Cream would look nice.You use lime green and red as highlight text and this also looks off.
Why not just use the colour that you used for your email address for all your important points?If you use this colour across the whole site it would keep all your important info looking consistent and
more readable.There is far too much going on the home page.
If you imagine the home page without the welcome message and everything below it you can see
an improvement right away – no more scrolling for your visitors.
Id put these things in separate pages.On the navigation section I would put some vertical space between the end of the gallery links and the other links
for About, Sales, Contact etc. I would also reduce the number of galleries like Jody suggested.Now you would have the home page with only 4 boxes.
The box on the top left is good and is the first thing people will see. It would also be easy to generate a random image
from any of your galleries to fill it. This means that returning visitors would get something different to look at each time
they come back. It keeps a site fresh looking.I would change the text at the top right to read just “Beautiful Irish Landscapes” and drop the words “for sale”.
People want a visual experience first and will look at your works of art first and if they like them they will go looking for your about and then (hopefiully) the sales page.Think of something that defines you and your photography and get this into a paragraph or two and put this in the main box on the home page. The pic you have there is too large and does not serve any real purpose.
Finally, Id change the page background graphic, change the copyright year to 2008 and put the hit counter and recent visitors thingy out to stud.
Thanks very much for your detailed message. I really appreciate your advice. You have made a lot of good points that hadnt occured to me.
Thanks John, I am glad you found the comments useful.
I really like some of your photos and think that your web site will really show them off
to their full lf you make a few minor changes.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
