A few weeks ago, a very good friend of mine, an avid amateur photographer, asked me if there was an easy way for her to sell some of her pictures to help defray the cost of her hobby. Like me, she a techno-geek and has to have every new gadget that comes along. Unlike me, she can’t write them off her income tax as a business expense so she wanted to start selling her photos to help pay for them. There are many ways to make money with a camera but no matter which route you chooses to follow whether you succeed or fail depends on your marketing techniques.
The first step in developing a successful marketing plan is to select someplace to market them on or through. Everyone has heard of POD (Print on Demand) book publishing but did you know about Print on Demand Photo Printing Sites? There are quite a few sites providing this service but the best one that I have found is the one provided by Ritz Camera. The RitzPix Pro program offers you your own storefront site with your own domain name. They offer you to ways to get started with your own site, “The Starter Plan,” and “The Regular Plan.” Both plans are essentially the same except for setup cost and monthly fees. The Starter Plan has a higher setup cost, $79.95, and no monthly licensing fee, whereas the regular plan has a $30.00 set-up fee and a $30.00 per month licensing fee. After that, Ritz takes a small percentage of the net profits to cover their print on demand service. With this service, you are not only able to offer your clients wallet size photos to mural size photos but a wide range of personalized gifts as well. They drop ship the product for you and bill the customer for you. After processing the payment, they send you your profits on the transactions.
The second step in successfully marketing your photographs and personalized gifts is to price them competitively. If you are new to the business this may be one of the most difficult steps for you but there’s a very good pricing guide available as pdf file here http://display.lifepics.com/images/ritzpixprodemo/Pro%20Price%20Guide.pdf
You can price your product anyway you want but this is a very reliable guide, a guide that I often refer to when pricing a photo project. This is a helpful tool because it gives you three figures to work with-the production cost, the BE (break-even) selling price, and a 25 percent markup price. The 25 percent markup assures you a reasonable net profit since shipping & handing and processing fees are included in the BE price.
The third step is to promote the products that you are offering. There are many ways to bring your products to the buyer’s attention-newspaper ads, magazine ads, ads in specialty papers, fliers, posters, email campaigns, word of mouth, etc. networking with party planners, wedding planners are good ways to generate buyers for photo personalized gifts. Try placing samples in gift shops and offer the shop owner a commission on any sales they send your way. Buy mailing list and send out direct mail pieces. Use your imagination.
The fourth step is to maintain a database of all the people that buy your products and then maintain contact with them. This database must contain more than names and addresses and what they have purchased from you. Include such information as the names of children, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, etc. program your data base program to send you a reminder when one of your clients have a special occasion coming up and send them an appropriate card. If they have an anniversary coming up offer them an anniversary portrait free as a gift.
The fifth step, which actually should be considered the first step, produce high quality, professional work. Just good work isn’t good enough if you want to keep customers coming back to buy more of your products.
Here’s the link for RitzPix Pro if you would like to get all the detail on how to get started with your own photography store online http://ritzpixblog.ritztraining.net/rpp/ .
