How Much (income does your website generate)????

Hi,

Many of us do have a website and there are a lot of photographers who are having some text about there work is for sale,
So I'm curious how much everybody here sell's through there personal website?? Is al the work involved building this webshopstyle part of your site paying itself back? Or is it something you have because everybody has it too.

ijsbeer

ijsbeer said:

Hi,

Many of us do have a website and there are a lot of photographers who are having some text about there work is for sale,
So I'm curious how much everybody here sell's through there personal website?? Is al the work involved building this webshopstyle part of your site paying itself back? Or is it something you have because everybody has it too.

ijsbeer

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A lot depends on how you define 'payback'. Do you mean covering site costs; or site-plus-creation costs (scanning, etc.); or a realistic hourly rate for all the hours of work you put in creating the pictures?

Under the last definition, I suspect that very few people earn minimum wage.

Cheers,

R.

If it's a help, the minimum wage just went up to $8.00 per hour here. Do the math.

Sorry.

Poor choice of questions . . . . .

What about the fact that I have 3 webshops, all fully functional but none in actual use at the moment.

Why ? To test out and learn the software and problems involved, one is for a musician who's website I've written, and will go live soon.

Ian

I have a simple site that I created a while ago, but I never intended to make a living (good thing eh?) off my photographic efforts - photography is my hobby and I like it that way. Having said that, what I do offer (selected prints only) is the best quality that I can produce and represents the best work that I have to offer...

- Randy

I have a variety of websites, including one for my photography but I've made no move to try and sell work online.

My website will be 13 years old this year and has, without a doubt, become the most important aspect of my business and creative life aside from my work.

Bill

13 years is impressive. I built my first sites in '95. People that were going online with sites in '94 were bleeding edge adopters.

jstraw said:

13 years is impressive. I built my first sites in '95. People that were going online with sites in '94 were bleeding edge adopters.

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A lot thought I was wasting my time learning all that code! Some would actually laugh at my optimism about the media. When I started the site a search for photographers would bring less than 100 results.

Bill

I’ve had a web presence for several years now. Whether it pays for itself or not has never been an issue for me. I sell my work through a few Galleries but mostly through Art Fairs. I have considered making my site into a webshop but I’m not sure that would pay off.

I buy a considerable amount of art, but I have never bought a piece of art that I have not personally seen. I know that there are people who do and I have sold things that way, but usually, with my work at least, they have seen examples and know the quality even though they haven’t seen the particular image.

I probably get 4 or 5 customers a year who call or e-mail me and basically say, “How do I buy this?” We work out the details and I ship it to them. All of these people have seen my work at a show or gallery at some point and now that they are ready to buy, they look me up on the web. Would I get more orders if they could just purchase on line? Probably, but I doubt if it would pay for the overhead of that feature.

One of the drawbacks of art fairs is that you are there for a few days and then you’re gone. I get a lot of calls from people several months after a show who want to purchase something they’ve seen but they would like to look at it again, just to be sure. My web site is perfect for that and that is why I set it up in the first place.

Jerome

http://www.jeromehawkins.com/

I see you have your own web site on which images are for sale. So what do you think? Was it worth it or not?

To make your web site sell images it needs to look professional and you need hits from the right people. Achieving that requires more work than knocking up a website and putting a paypal buy now button in it. And of course, your images need to be saleable. i.e. what people want at the price they are prepared to pay. The more expensive they are the more difficult it will be to sell on the web, especially to people who have never seen your work before.

To my knowledge, most peoples experience of trying to sell images on the web is that they only get a trickle of sales at best. However, those who have saleable images and put a highly professional looking web site up which is designed to be found on relevant search terms, do have sucess in selling images online. i.e. get it right and it can work but it requires far more work than most people realise. And it requires an extremely well optimised site.

A google search on "art prints" returns 44,000,000 possibles. That is what you are competing against and to be position one or even page one comes at a price and there are no guarantees on achieving that.

I have a site I built myself. It's pretty simple but is wonderfully expandable. It's been through several releases over the past three years. I consider it a way to get my photographs seen. Gallery shows are nice, but many more people will see some of my photographs on the web than in any gallery. That is my measure of success.

As for sales from my web site, when I make my next sale from the web site...
it will be my first.

Oh well, stop by and check it out. URL is shown below

i get work through my website, so i guess i sell photography that hasn't been made yet ..

Not yet, but I will.

Murray

MurrayMinchin said:

Not yet, but I will.

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That's the spirit...

I selected the making me rich option, but the truth is somewhere in the middle, as the website merely facilitates sales, many that are brought in from other promotions. It is a part of an overall strategy. I think just having a webshop and doing nothing else wouldn't amount to much.

I've had the domain names for a couple years now, but won't jump into the game until I know I'm ready. Maybe before this time next year...

Murray

How much does a website cost to setup and monthly support?

What is a Webshop? A cobweb from Photoshop?

If I wanted one what would it do for me?

I took computer courses in college, basic, c, Pascal, machine language, windows and the like and have the entire Adobe software package and have a book on the hook in Indesign and have a degree in Graphic Design and Photography as well as a host of medical degrees and diplomas.

Do I want to get into the hosting and computer work involved in a website or go out and enjoy the outdoors and photography away from all of the computer work and sitting and getting fat?

Just asking some questions because I have thought about it for sometime.

Hi Curt, you can spend as much as you want, but realistically

The main cost is the hosting package, which should be somewhere between $50 - $300 per year, depending on your needs and requirements. Then for a webshop you can pay for a commercial package or download an open source "free" option like OScommerce or Zencart, both are remarkably easy to set up and configure.

Having set up a webshop it will do whatever you require. Of course you have to have products to sell, a simple example of an OScommerce site is an APUG sponsor Dead Link Removed. Of course the store can be customised to suit and match the overal feel of the rest of your website.

Hope that helps

Ian

Curt said:

How much does a website cost to setup and monthly support?

What is a Webshop? A cobweb from Photoshop?

If I wanted one what would it do for me?/QUOTE]

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if you just want a web presence then there is plenty of free and very quick and simple to set up software available which provides your content management system.

for example, just about any blogging software allows this. Wordpress is one and has a plethora of photoblog/gallery plugins and you don't need any html/css/php knowledge to do it. However, you get what you get. If you do have a little php and html/css knowledge then the skies the limit as regards what you can do with it.

Putting paypal buy now buttons in a website is very easy.

But if you want totally bespoke design then it will cost. How much depends on your designer and what you ask for.

basically paying for a new content management system to be designed and built is like asking for the wheel to be reinvented. There are so many out there that that part of your website should not be costing you a lot of money.

On the other hand if you want a full on image asset management tool linked to your website then it will cost quite a lot for an off the shelf product and a huge amount to have one built for you.

If you are serious about selling online then look up "image asset management" in google and find the products which include web site generators in them.

just to get you started:

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the following 2 are high end image asset management companies

http://www.citdigital.com/

http://www.orangelogic.com/


last one is more a online gallery with sales options:

http://www.lightboxphoto.com/


all of the above would be a lot cheaper than having the equivalent built from scratch.

this last one is a managed option. They provide the hosting and webspace management. you just pay a yearly fee and pick and choose from a host of templates.

http://www.photium.com/


Unless you are really serious and have real money to spend then I would opt for one of the free options unless you are confident and have the time to spend on learning and developing your own site.

My website was not designed as a direct sales tool but as more of a marketing tool and a means to direct potential sales to the galleries that represent me. At some point I may decide to sell directly through the web site, but as I'm away a lot there's no one here to ship work.

I think for most people putting up photo web sites, unless they really are a dedicated business and not just running a side business, it's not profitable. For those that have web sites just as a means to make their work public, it could be well worth it to them.

I made my web myself. It makes none. But there is usefulness in it just because many guys own computer(s).
I deliver my business cards to potential customer at any chance and my web is there. Now from their home they can see samples of my work, rather than to carry my portfolio around. If they are interested I come to them with portfolio and real photographs.
www.Leica-R.com

Webshops

My daughter has a website; can purchase on it, but no takers. She set it up originally to show her paintings and photography and then for her dancer photos. We do much better showing the photos in person.

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She is getting a lot of interest via her flickr site which shows her dancer photos and some of her photos from Ireland. She'd like some comments on her work. We think her swan photos from Galway are really something!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cthrn_holt/sets

I'd like to answer your poll, but the options are not suited to my situation. So I'll explain in more length.

I own and run two galleries showing only my work (Scene by Hird). My web site acts as a catalogue and as a marketing tool for the whole business. It forms only one cog on the wheel: it is not the wheel itself. I don't expect to get rich from my site, nor even for the site to pay for itself through sales. However, without the site, my business would suffer much more than the cost of running the site.

Although people may purchase from my site, only around 1% of my sales are directly attributable to my site - by which I mean people have only seen the electronic version and not the physical prints before making a purchase. By far the greater number of sales come from one of my two real-world galleries.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you are fooling yourself if you think a web site featuring your photography can be your only outlet for your work and that it will make you rich.

Cheers,
Graeme

My wife tells me that hell will freeze over before I finish my site! "under construction" for a year now...
With so much competition for nature photography here in Colorado, the site seems to mostly add legitimacy to my business in the eyes of the public. I was selling my prints long before the web, and fought even getting my site done. But now the way it works is, they see my stuff at one of the shows, and even though the site's not working, they "follow up" and purchase later. So I guess it's adding some value for now to the business, and I should stop bidding for large format stuff on the bay and finish it!!!
DT