I was really interested in developing my photography prints business for a long time. What I pictured in my head is that I will start very soon to pack and send away at least one print every day.
Selling prints is one of the way to go along your photographery journey
That’s a very naive misconception. And I wanted to talk about it for a bit more.
Photography prints business is a separate type of business
If you say that you’re developing your photography business then I would have to ask you which. Since photography is art and business is business – developing as a commercial portrait photographer is a completely different business from developing as a fine art photographer selling prints. To actually develop a business you should define which one you want to do. Developing 2 or 3 businesses at the same time is a lot harder. To develop your photography business, you need to bring the most attention to it and to do so you need to focus on one thing. If you are fond of the idea of selling prints then this is the only thing you should focus on.
You should have a passion for becoming an artist-photographer selling prints
For example, I’m enjoying writing this blog quite a lot. I haven’t got a single euro from it. Although I started writing about 7 months ago and have been spending about 15-25h every week writing these articles. I realised that I like writing about photography more than developing the photography prints business. God knows how long it will take me to develop what I’m doing right now. But I like it! And probably this is the only right approach when you want to develop your business.
So try to present yourself as an artist and put your works everywhere you can. I know some people who kept doing it and were noticed. Developing your photography business is a business but passion is very important to not give up. Little by little you will grow your audience and people will start to buy your prints. Celebrate every follower and every milestone you achieve! One thing to remember in all this marketing game is that you love photography and want to improve at it too.
How does photography prints business work in real life?
Very simply, similarly to all of the other businesses. It’s like creating a whole brand and it isn’t a deal of a few weeks and most probably even months. Of course, you need a good presentation for your business and personal branding photography will help. Luckily if you’re a photographer yourself you can do it too. Just pick the mood and colours for your whole business to have a distinct style. and do a lifestyle + product + portrait photoshoot of yourself and publish it next to your works.
I tried many different platforms to sell prints but only one of them paid me commissions for selling the prints on their own. The vast majority of them don’t do any promotion of your content. To start making some noticeable money you’d have to actively change your content and promote it. By changing it I mean to remove everything that won’t sell and add new designs. To promote it you would need to find any sort of marketplace. Or find a way to tell the most people you can reach about what you’re doing. You will need to decide if you want to find cheap printing services or print everything yourself. Since it takes time to print out your works before selling it might occupy 20-30% of your time.
Set the price for your prints
It’s a harder choice of how to sell the prints. The problem is that the artwork’s price depends on the concept standing behind this artwork. Since this market is purely subjective you set the price depending on the demand. And the demand won’t rise until some people know about you.
For example one of Leonardo da Vinci’s works a few hundred years ago was sold for some 45£ in London. As a copy of one of his latest works (no one knew whose work was that). Then it was resold many times and, of course, the price kept rising. For some time the work in the USA discovered that this is original. To say shortly after the work was presented in a very famous art auction it was sold for 450.3 million dollars. So the same work was priced a million times higher now.
What I wanted to say is that of course, you need to take attention to the concept that stands behind your art. If it’s unknown, you can’t price it higher hoping that some people will value it for the price itself. You can put prices higher if there’s a gallery where you can sell them.
Try to start with lower prices
At the same time, it seems unfair to put lowers prices. Especially when you spend so much energy creating the art. Setting prices like 5-20€ for a print you will have to compete with pictures of puppies and quotes. And for some time, they will be winning you, because the concepts of the artworks are valued more than the quality of the art. But later still creating your own art, you can find your audience and start rising prices.
The main idea here is that people are changing the value of your pictures. They are ready to pay more just because more people know about you. Since this kind of value is completely subjective. If people find almost no value in your works when you’re starting out, you will have to sell your works almost for free. And all that is to show your work to more people until some of them value it better.
All of that works only in such a way that you will have to build the value of your works yourself. Most probably it will take years and a lot of work. You will have to organise exhibitions and participate in different events. It won’t work in a way that you will come to this market and start selling works for a lot of money playing the role of a great artist.
How to find clients for your photography prints business
Online
To promote it you will have to find different platforms or create your own website and publish info about your works with links to them, or related articles too. Then being active on social media you can bring more attention to your main platform. Basically, all you need is exposure and you can offer free prints for example for following you and sharing with friends. Not sure that making it as prize draws will work since, in the beginning, not many people will be interested in your prints at all. For me, all sorts of Facebook groups worked quite well since my posts there were shown to quite a big audience and at least some people were interested. Anyways in the beginning your aim will be not to sell but to show your art to others and then tell them that there are prints available.
I recently gave away my prints for promotion and follow and some people were interested. So if you’re keen to try it -find the cheapest way to make prints and then give them away with your signature and for some promotion (follow, comments, or reviews on some platforms). Most importantly – do it for a long continuous time
Offline
I have heard that people went to different restaurants and even offered to hang the prints there. Of course in reality even if they do hang it there – not many people will look at them and find and follow you on your social media or so on. But if you’re sure about the restaurant and ready to invest some money – print it on very big canvases. Add some plate next to it with your name and contact details. Then you might get noticed. The main Idea is to make a look like this work on a gallery-quality print was already purchased from you for a lot of money. That way you will appear as a real artist to the people going to this cafe or a restaurant. This work should be high-quality and something people will take pictures of.
Find your local markets
Another way is to go and find your local markets and sell your works for cheap there but always include your details on the back of the print. The more you sell the better. Even if you don’t make almost any profit. One problem is that people might buy prints not very willingly there and pay more attention to jewellery or clothes. I went to markets in Berlin about 10 times and my profit there was a lot lower than what I’m earning from photoshoots. But if I continue doing it almost for free every weekend that would pay off in the future.
Do you need your own equipment?
This is a hard question. Of course, print on demand is a lot more expensive in print shops. For your photography prints business, it seems reasonable to buy your own equipment. But buying a professional printer is quite a big investment that I made two years ago.
My struggles with printers
I bought a Canon Pixma IP 8750 for my photography prints business. Now, having that experience, I would say that the printer market is a scam. Printers are quite complicated. So you should maintain them well. The print head clogs and the ink dries everywhere and so on. You should use the printer a least once a week to have it unclogged and printing well. I went on a holiday for 2 weeks and then couldn’t clean it properly without manual cleaning.
Overpriced ink
Printer companies sell significantly overpriced ink. This is what is called the “Rasor and a blade” business model. They sell printers for very cheap ( sometimes they even lose money on that) to then sell you approx 20 or more times overpriced ink. They also block the chips on the cartridges to prevent you from refilling them to continue making their profit. Most of the printers also add colour ink in black and white pictures for the sole reason to spend more ink.
One solution is refillable cartridges. There are a lot of refillable cartridges available where the chip gets reset. I spent about 50€ for a set of cartridges and 100ml bottles of ink, which are 14 times cheaper than the original canon cartridges.
If you don’t have equipment for your photography prints business
What have I learned for myself, might be better to have only 4-5 designs only on 1-2 sizes and then you can order them from a print shop. Yes, in the long run, it seems to be more expensive but believe me, I’ve spent sometimes 5-6 hours trying to fix the printer and print new works.
I had also used fine art archival paper and it was such a shame to throw it away. Since I realised that with my lifestyle I can’t keep so much stuff. And I had to move to a different city so I had to get rid of fine art paper that was 27£ for 30 sheets.
Another problem with having a big choice of designs and sizes is that people can’t choose. Literally, people start to wonder what to choose and then don’t make any choice. People are usually happy to have only a few options to choose from. That way you will have a more stylised and minimalist approach.
How to develop your photography prints business: the right approach
- Make it a brand
- Find cheaper materials and print services (try to keep having good quality though!)
- Do not scatter your attention. Invest all of your energy into this business only.
- Check what works best in your case and do online and offline marketing
- Submit your works to exhibitions and magazines (there’s a platform to submit your fashion and fine artworks for example)
- Try to pick a topic for your prints. The best is when your buyers can correlate with the topic. Abstract works can be good too but at this stage, people want to see the concepts they are familiar with. Think of something that is important for the people like major social movements or certain groups of people or activities. On Shutterstock for example I’ve seen that often football photos are in very high demand. That doesn’t mean you need to take pictures of football players, but it’s just to give you an Idea.
- Work consistently to build your audience. It might take you from a few months to over a year to start earning money but that’s a long investment.
- Try to remember to constantly improve at photography and work on your visual library. That way you will improve your prints
That’s everything I wanted to say about this topic. I wish you good luck in your photography career and if you have any questions please feel free to let me know.
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