Update on Fine Art Print Sales
As you know, I’ve been trying for the past 3 years to expand away from stock photography into the sale of my better photographs as prints via both Print on Demand sites and now with my own Etsy store. I’ve written about setting up this store in previous articles but on one of my trips to Austin looking for a new home I took the time to watch a webinar and a series of videos by the Craig Alexander academy. He is a master of the hard-sell to photographers (I’m sure you know the joke that the best way to make money as a photographer is to sell things to other photographers!), but he, and the members of that group, do seem to be successful on Etsy and other outlets. One of the key points he makes is that showing potential buyers clearly what the print would look like on their wall is important and so you will see that my Etsy store products have pricing and size information for paper prints, canvas, acrylic and metal and there are example rooms showing what these products might look like in comparison to furniture in the rooms. There are other “secrets”, but I don’t want to give away his ideas. Of course, I include my own secrets in my book about selling Fine Art Photography available here!
Are they working for me on Etsy – not yet! It is said that once you have 5 sales and 5 good reviews from buyers, that you can expect Etsy to list your site and products more prominently in search results. Not surprising really as Etsy will want to show sites that are going to be successful for them (ie likely to get a sale). I have the 5 sales now but need more reviews. If any reader wants to help by buying a small print and giving a good review, I’d be grateful!
My sales so far on Etsy have been from friends and neighbors, using discount codes that pretty much mean that the revenue and costs are almost the same. But on Pictorem, things have been very different this month. In August, I sold one print with a $127 profit. In September, I’ve sold 5 prints with a $1399 profit. I haven’t calculated my overall September earnings yet, but I can already see that this is going to be a bumper month. You can read about the images that sold in an article I wrote for people who follow me as a photographer and where I never talk about things like earnings and profits, but here I’m more open!
Here are the prints that sold and the margin they generated. I use a price of $29 per square foot of the print but I also have a permanent 15% discount sale in place which is displayed on each page. I haven’t checked (and I’m not sure where I would see it) if the buyers have made use of that. If anyone knows how to see the invoice for the buyer on Pictorem, please let me know in the comments. Interestingly, I have 14 products left in shopping carts in the past 30 days, with 6 added today. Not sure that I can do anything with that information, but it would be nice for some of those to turn into sales!
More to come on earnings from selling photography online early next month when I will add in my stock photo sales.
Congratulations on your sales. It’s always encouraging hearing fab out your success! I have made several small sales in fine art America recently but would like to make more large print sales!
I couldn’t believe how the sales just came in one after another this month – and pretty big impressive sales. I emailed the person who bought the triptych, but, or course, no response! I would like to know just how people find these images! Congrats on your own sales!
Thank you so much for this honest information. I started to fill my FAA store, but with 200 images, obviously no sales yet. My main focus is still stock, I am trying to regrow my income after a longer pause. Many say it is impossible, but at least Adobe is doing quite well, even if it will take at least until 2027 or 2028 to reach my overall goals. This year was mostly ai, next year will be more normal photography and especially video. Once I have 2000 files on FAA I will start looking for more platforms to join. But probably print sales is going to be more a project I get into in a few years. I still need to find a “theme” I want to center my print sales around. Something I love but of course something people will buy. I appreciate all your posts very much, thank you for sharing your insights.
Thanks so much for your comment. It does take time to establish yourself – I think mainly in the search engines through which I think people are finding my work. I think that writing articles that are also indexed and lead back to my portfolio also helps. You might think about uploading to both Pictorem and FAA. Pictorem is much easier to upload to than FAA. You can upload 20 or more at a time and there is no individual attention that needs to be paid to each image. It just reads the metadata and populates the image into the portfolio. If you do decide to do that, please use my referral code – it all helps! https://www.pictorem.com/artist.html?refer=JH10JED1EDI
In terms of a theme, I’m not sure how necessary that is. I doubt if many people look at your site as a body of work, or even spend time looking through different galleries. I could be wrong, of course, but I think most come to the site because they saw a specific picture that interested them. Then they buy, or they don’t, but they then will leave to continue their browsing. A bit of a depressing thought, but I think that might be close to the truth!
Steve
How do you setup a Sale on Pictorem?
I’m not sure I know what you mean? For an Etsy fulfillment or an order?
You did type “I use a price of $29 per square foot of the print but I also have a permanent 15% discount sale”. How do you setup the “15% discount sale”?