You’re thinking about selling your photography work via a website, Etsy or changing your current site. You’ve got a presence and following on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest. Or you’re on all three plus a few more. Your work is special. Your work is personal. And your work connects with others.
As a photographer, you don’t want to spend any more time behind the computer than you have too. With today’s options, creating a website is easy. Plus, you’ll find that the many options of selling and promoting your work are much, much easier than learning how to post process your images.
We’ll share options and insights to help you decide what works for you in selling your photography work. This article includes:
- Insights to consider when choosing a platform – website, Etsy, other
- Selling resources – in addition to websites and Etsy, other methods for selling your photography work and how to use them
- Choosing and creating your website – what’s involved and examples of providers
- Putting your name on it – where to get your domain name
1) Insights – Selling Your Photography!
Looks like it’s time to take it to the next step. What are you waiting for? I know, you and I both would rather be in the field. Plus the ‘sales’ part doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. Or, does it? Read on and you decide.
I’ll share a quick personal story followed by resources (and lessons learned!) that’ll make it easier to sell your photography work, your way.
It wasn’t until another photographer shared her sales successes that I took selling my work more seriously. At that time, my website generated traffic and positive feedback. I sold prints and digital downloads here and there but nothing steady.
I decided to add Etsy in addition to keeping my website. Within a couple of months , I received my first sale.
Holy smokes. I was jazzed and nervous at the same time. What if my customer didn’t like the quality of my work? What if the work wasn’t what they expected? I flipped that mindset the day that customer shared that their mother-in-law loved the print and was very, very happy.
After doing the happy dance, it was game on in getting a bit more serious. Today, both my Etsy site and my website generate sales with Etsy representing the volume.
My strategy ebbs and flows. The key was finding what made sense for me and my potential audience.
Selection: What is the Right Selling Platform for You?
Today, options for selling your photography work and art exists on many platforms. Plus, it’s easy and inexpensive way to start showing and selling your work. That’s the good news.
The bad news? So many choices! It’s easy to get distracted and not make a decision.
Here’s a few questions/insights to think about when selling your work:
- What is your goal? Do you want to sell your work online or simply showcase your work?
- Time: How much time do you have to market your work?
- Effort: If you’re building your site for the first time how will you increase visibility of your site?
- Reach: What is your audience reach today? Are your followers admirers, buyers or unknown?
- The unknown audience: How will people that you know and don’t know find your work?
- Research: How will you find buyers?
- Fulfillment: How will you fulfill orders? Do you have a printing parter? DIY?
- Blogging and email communication: How do you plan to keep your audience engaged, even if it’s just a few times per year?
Consider the solutions below.
- For those that have a following of a couple of thousand people or more, are active on social media and have time to invest in marketing your work – a website with built-in printing and product partners may be the right starting point.
- For those that have a following and are fairly active, but don’t have the time to invest in marketing – a shopping destination (Etsy) may be a more efficient get-started action.
- You are established locally with a solid foundation of business and printing partners, a stronger online presence is needed to stay current, increase visibility. A website to showcase your work to clients and display concepts to prospective buyers compliments your business, your work.
- You’re a combination of a strong, local presence with some national/global reach. You also have a social media presence but want to increase awareness of your work. A combination of a website and Etsy shop concept potentially fits the bill.
2) Resources: Let’s Get Started Selling Your Photography
There’s so many resources available to help you sell your products without having to invest in inventory. Finding the resource that works for you takes some time, research, trial and error.
Fast forward to today – here’s what I wish I had known then about 1) Websites 2) Etsy and 3) Printing Partners and 4) Photography Products.
Websites
They showcase your work. Beautifully. Your clients have a one stop shop to see and buy your artwork and related products. Photo galleries, shopping, blogs, emails all exist in one site.
Visitors love to peruse through your galleries and experience your work. They may be shopping or just looking and admiring.
To market your website, you’ll need to push on social media, email and promote its’ existence to others.
Getting Started: To set up your website, you’d select your provider, then a theme/look, design template and start working on your site. The set up time depends on how much you’d like to further customize the theme.
Etsy
While your work is showcased within your shop, shoppers go to Etsy the majority of the time to shop for something specific. Your work is ‘found’ as a result of tagging your art.
Note: Amazon’s program, the Individual Plan is another platform that is similar to Etsy.
All shops have the same structure, you’re just adding your information. To ensure you’re competitive and to get ideas for setting up your shop, check out other artists shops.
To promote your Etsy shop, you’ll use the same platforms as you would with your website. However, Etsy is showing your work when customers perform searches for desired items. They also promote their artist community in their messages.
Getting Started: To set up your Etsy store you’ll need to have a shop name, fill in the various sections with your information, start uploading images with descriptions. This takes more time initially, but it gets faster once you’ve established your shop.
Examples of a Website Customer and an Etsy Customer:
- Website: A friend knows you have images of a recent event or location, let’s say it’s the Outer Banks. They go to your website and enjoy the experience. In the event they want a future print, they may come back to purchase from your site.
- Etsy: A shopper is looking for a photo print from the Outer Banks. They don’t know you. They go to Etsy and type in Outer Banks Pier photo. Your image pops up in their search along with others. They like your version and place the order. Or, they like someone else’s better and place the order.
With #1, your site is only about you and your work. However, with so many options to display and showcase your work, you’re in complete control of your site’s look and feel.
The difference with #2 is that shoppers, people with the intent to buy now or in the near future, go to Etsy. They search and find your listing versus your site. With #1, your website work would have to appear in a Google search to be discovered by an unknown shopper.
Printing Partners
- Website: Printing, shipping is seamless and is contained within the website. The customer orders on your website. You get paid, the rest happens in the background invisible to you and the client. Easy peasy!
- Etsy: With Etsy, you find and select your printing partner. When a customer places and order, you’ll upload the image to your partner and they’ll ship it directly to your customer (you’ll need to specify white label or private label) so that the printing company’s name is not on the box and there’s no invoice. Easy. But, you have to upload the image and input the ship to address.
Selling Your Photography on Products and Gifts
Specialty merchandise and printing companies offers products you can sell from their site or buy and sell locally. A couple of examples include Zazzle and Redbubble. With Zazzle and Redbubble you upload your artwork when ordering merchandise with your images. There’s also the option to set up your own store to sell specific products with your images. They manage all payment collection, printing and shipping.
Note: I use Zazzle for my 2-sided business cards, face masks, calendar gifts and an iPad cover. I’ve used Redbubble for gift calendars too.
3) Choosing & Creating Your Website
With today’s website companies, you can literally build and publish your website in a couple of hours. Over time, you’ll change your content by adding, deleting, expanding what you offer. That’s where the investment in time happens versus right at the beginning.
These platforms do just about all of the work for you. They manage the platform, the printing, photo gift suppliers, shipping. Your work is selecting your images, customizing website’s look and feel and determining your commission and price.
When your select your website provider, you’ll sign up for the plan that you want. Plans, options and services vary by provider. An example is blogging, some sites have built in blogging, others don’t. They also have the ability to link to external sites in the event you create a wordpress blog like Aperture and Light (this blog is a Wordpress site that is accessed from my website). From there you’ll choose from existing layout options and design theme.
The layout includes the image template, how you want your images to be presented within your website. From the Home page to display galleries, you’ll select the layout that best showcases your work.
The design theme includes colors, fonts, along with suggested displays that work with that theme.
The key is to find one you really like, that reflects you and your style and start uploading images. Over time you’ll more than likely make adjustments to keep your content and site current..
Which One Should You Choose? Website Service Providers
The biggest decision is which service provider to use. The major players and newcomers all offer professional sites to choose from. If you ask 5 photographers which provider to use, you just might get 5 different answers.
After researching feedback across the web, I narrowed it down to two. I found that it came down which user interface I felt more comfortable with.
The platform I used at the beginning is Zenfolio. Zenfolio provides you with a domain which looks like: https://www.zenfolio.com/thenameyouchoose (I acquired my own domain name- see next section). The other platform that ran a close second was SmugMug. These two had a similar feel but I found the interface from Zenfolio to be more intuitive for me. Other options considered were Squarespace, PhotoShelter, Wix, Format and others.
All of these have their strengths and weaknesses, it’s really a personal preference as to which works for you. Zenfolio, SmugMug, Format and Squarespace offer time-limited trials. Wix offers a free plan that’s basic, with options to upgrade for additional features.
Update as of 2023. I use Wordpress due to my business demands. The above are great options for getting started. However, with my changing business, wordpress today is a more viable solution.
4) Put Your Name On It! Domain Name
It’s your business – make it shine with your own domain name! When you sign up with a website provider, you’ll create your own name as an extension of that site’s provider. For example, my Zenfolio domain from them was www.zenfolio.com/sheensnaturephotography. Instead, I preferred my own name.
Why?
From a recognition, search and customer standpoint, your own domain name says, “you own it.”
First, acquire the domain name (see a list below) then then have it point in the background to the website’s name given to you by your website service provider.
- Domain Name Provider examples:
In my case, I acquired sheenwatkins.com and sheensnaturephotography.com Both names now point to the same wordpress site of SheenWatkins.art
Why two names? It was a personal choice. I started with nature photography and then expanded my horizons. Because so much of my early content was tagged with the ‘nature photography’ (i.e. my Facebook business page), I’ve kept both. I wish I would have just started with the domain name that I use most today which is the one with my name only.
Selling Your Photography via Websites, Etsy: From Go to Grow
If you have a collection of images, you have the foundation of your website or Etsy store. Start the work by: 1) Determining which route to go: website, Etsy, specialty product providers or a combination 2) Ensuring that your website and/or Etsy sites are current and accurate 3) Picking a great domain name (aka your name) for your website and 4) Pushing your website/Etsy site information out on social media, emails to create awareness AND sales!
