Hi folks,
Over the past couple of years, I've been sharing photos taken in the local area to my town's facebook page. This consists primarily of dry plate photos. I get tons of positive feedback, and have had several people ask if I sell prints and/or suggest that I set up a website to show off my work and to facilitate selling prints. Understanding that I'm not a professional photographer (and haven't really actively marketed my work), I've still been able to sell a handful of prints ad hoc when people reach out to ask and have a fistful of cash on them. I also have participated in a couple of local galleries and have sold a print or two that way.
So recently I posted a photo like I periodically do, and again had a couple of people ask about purchasing prints. This time, I figured I might take a closer look at setting up a website that I can advertise and/or direct people towards in order to facilitate them buying prints. It would also help standardize my pricing and all that.
Understanding that my day job consumes a very significant amount of my time, so that my hobby time is precious, my goal is to research the best / most painless way to set up a website with a simple, easy-to-maintain gallery, an "about me" page, contact page, and an online shop where they can "add to cart" a print, select a print size, checkout, and pay me to make and ship the print.
Another key aspect is that I really only want to sell prints that I make myself in the darkroom. Most photo ecommerce sites seem to team with a lab to make the prints digitally. I don't want to do that at this point.
I can design multi-million dollar optics for major programs, develop cutting-edge algorithms in Matlab, but website building and publishing is entirely outside my wheelhouse. I've searched the archives here, and just didn't quite find what I was looking for (or my Google Fu was weak). There are lots of examples of websites showing photo galleries, and lots of advice about marketing your work (and not just relying on magical website traffic to sell your prints). A google search overwhelms me with options, but I've looked closely at sites like zenfolio, clikpic, etc., which get close to what I want, but I'm just not sure what's right for me. I've also looked at wordpress with a theme, but I'm not sure how to proceed in setting up a website via that method and/or the time necessary to get up that learning curve. I also want to avoid "over-engineering" for my basic requirements.
So I post to tap into the collective knowledge of photrio ... what can you suggest I take a look at to meet my simple requirements for a gallery, a couple extra info pages, and a ecommerce page that people can order hand-made prints through, sending me payment and an email that says "get off your butt and make so-and-so print in such-and-such size and mail it to this address"?
Thank you!
Jason
Over the past couple of years, I've been sharing photos taken in the local area to my town's facebook page. This consists primarily of dry plate photos. I get tons of positive feedback, and have had several people ask if I sell prints and/or suggest that I set up a website to show off my work and to facilitate selling prints. Understanding that I'm not a professional photographer (and haven't really actively marketed my work), I've still been able to sell a handful of prints ad hoc when people reach out to ask and have a fistful of cash on them. I also have participated in a couple of local galleries and have sold a print or two that way.
So recently I posted a photo like I periodically do, and again had a couple of people ask about purchasing prints. This time, I figured I might take a closer look at setting up a website that I can advertise and/or direct people towards in order to facilitate them buying prints. It would also help standardize my pricing and all that.
Understanding that my day job consumes a very significant amount of my time, so that my hobby time is precious, my goal is to research the best / most painless way to set up a website with a simple, easy-to-maintain gallery, an "about me" page, contact page, and an online shop where they can "add to cart" a print, select a print size, checkout, and pay me to make and ship the print.
Another key aspect is that I really only want to sell prints that I make myself in the darkroom. Most photo ecommerce sites seem to team with a lab to make the prints digitally. I don't want to do that at this point.
I can design multi-million dollar optics for major programs, develop cutting-edge algorithms in Matlab, but website building and publishing is entirely outside my wheelhouse. I've searched the archives here, and just didn't quite find what I was looking for (or my Google Fu was weak). There are lots of examples of websites showing photo galleries, and lots of advice about marketing your work (and not just relying on magical website traffic to sell your prints). A google search overwhelms me with options, but I've looked closely at sites like zenfolio, clikpic, etc., which get close to what I want, but I'm just not sure what's right for me. I've also looked at wordpress with a theme, but I'm not sure how to proceed in setting up a website via that method and/or the time necessary to get up that learning curve. I also want to avoid "over-engineering" for my basic requirements.
So I post to tap into the collective knowledge of photrio ... what can you suggest I take a look at to meet my simple requirements for a gallery, a couple extra info pages, and a ecommerce page that people can order hand-made prints through, sending me payment and an email that says "get off your butt and make so-and-so print in such-and-such size and mail it to this address"?
Thank you!
Jason
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