Selling Photos

PopeBuckfastXVI

Hi All,

I'm curious as to how this works over the internet. Has anyone here done it? One of my friends was intrigued by a picture on a professional photography site, and enquired as to buying it. They don't actually sell prints, instead they said they would send him the full sized jpg, so that he could print it himself.

Is this normal, or do people usually print and post (I suppose that would protect your copyright better)?

Are there any hosted services that provide end-to-end for this kind of thing, i.e. host your photo, process the order and print and post?

I was very interested by the email route, as I would imagine the scope for profit is much bigger for the photographer, seeing as they don't have to take printing (expensive!) or postage into account, and it also takes far less time.

I don't think anyone would be interested in actually buying anything I've done, but I'm interested in Internet Commerce generally, and I was wondering if any of you have done it?

Monasette

I used to get occasional queries about buying prints and I didn't really have any way of handling it. So in the end, I opened an account with Smugmug (www.johnsmyth.net) - Smugmug handle the printing and money collection side of things for a cut in the proceeds (it's factored into the price that you set per picture. Seems to work ok so far - I haven't been running the account for long. (I think Photobox work in a similar way)

Only problem is getting paid in dollars (poor conversion rate right now).

elven

Most people wouldn't email a copy of a jpg for the customer to print, because this would:

a) remove any control over print quality
b) allow them to print and use as many copies as they want with no control except an element of trust

There are a number of online companies who will take care of the process for you, even handling the payment, printing and postage of the print directly to the customer.

There's Imagekind, smugmug as mentioned above, a few others as mentioned here but that's more US-centric. I think deviant-art also do some kind of printing service. If you want to literally print them at home yourself, you coulf put them on Etsy as finished items, it's like an ebay for crafts.

PopeBuckfastXVI

Thanks for the replys guys!

John... did I meet you out by the Corrib about 3 saturdays ago shooting IR?

Monasette

Aha!

Yes, you did (and nice to meet you again - virtually)

Funny, I was looking at your profile on Pix.ie and didn't make the connection.