Selling your photo.net images online?

We get many requests from people about how to buy a print of the

images on photo.net. Today, we just send the people to the

photographers, hoping that their email addresses on the site are

correct and that they are contactable.

 

Would you be interested in the capability to sell images from your

photo.net portfolio on this site? How would you like it to work?

 

Consider such issues as: How does the ordering work? Who does the

fulfillment (that is printing and shipping the print)? The

photographer? Or photo.net -- presumably through a fulfillment house

that we select. If photo.net is to be responsible, how do we get a

digital file that will have the necessary quality? And, if photo.net

is responsible for making and shipping the print, what if the buyer

wants the photographers signature on the print?

 

What is a reasonable percentage for photo.net to get? Who collects

the money from the buyer? If photo.net collects the money, how does

the photographer get his share? If the photographer collects, how

does photo.net get its commission? How do we assure buyers that they

are going to get a good print? How do we deal with buyers that are

not satisified with the print they have purchased, and who want a

refund? (The colors, quality, etc aren't as they expected from what

they saw on their monitor?)

If I was to participate in such a scheme, as a consumer I'd want photo.net to do everything and send me the money, less some suitable commission. Basically that's what dotphoto.com do (or did) when I sold some images through them.

 

They had a scheme where they charged some fixed amount per print, and anything above that was mine. So if they charged $8 for an 8x10 print, I could sell it for $28 and I'd get the extra $20. I presume their charge was enough to cover their operating and printing costs, plus give them a reasonable profit on each sale. All I had to do was upload the image file to them (large enough for the largest print I offered for sale) and wait for them to send me my share of any sales (of which there were few...).

 

If photo.net had such a scheme, I would probably participate. If it required me to do much more than cash the checks, I probably wouldn't. I don't want to deal with customers, customer complaints, lost orders, bad payments, sales taxes, shipping and all the other issues that come up when running a retail business. That's why I don't run a retail business! I'd rather pay photo.net to deal with the headaches, send me my cut and - if I sell anything - issue me a statement (or 1099 if I'm really lucky!) at the end of the year so I know how much income tax to pay.

 

I don't do signed prints (I think it's somewhat pretentious), but if I did, I'd want photo.net (or their agent) to mail me the finished print and I'd sign it and mail it along to the customer.

 

BTW (off topic) - Brian, I still can't log in on the servers to upload new material for photo.net

I like the idea. and I think that if such an idea is implemented then I agree that it would be easiest for PN to handle most all of the transaction.

 

however to do this I think PN would need files available for each photo that is for sale. which brings up another point, I think the PNetters would have to have the choice of 'which' images are for sale. and once an image is marked as for sale then a printable image in some fixed profile in jpeg format..etc. should be provide for PN to hold on record. this image can then be used to fulfill orders. but then you might run into storage problems because the number of images on file will very likely outsupply demand. and then you would end up with a lot of 'extra' files.. like mine!. so maybe have a system to make sure the PNetter has the image available at the necessary size... and maybe have a max order size for any given image.

 

anyway PN could then sell these images and have them printed, shipped.. framed.. whatever. as far as price goes. Many galleries I have seen take a good percentage. I like the way 40% sounds but since PN is doing All the work (hosting, selling, getting printed, shipping, etc) maybe 60% would be fair. especially because aside from the existence of the basic image the rest would then become PN's responsibility in that if somebody doesn't like the results of the printing it is the printing co. that PN chose that made the problem (assuming the file was of good quality).

 

best idea to me though would be find a successful stock agency and see how they do it. model that and add some modifications.

 

my question would be would these images be advertised? and to who..

also what QA/QC would be implemented to make sure all images for sale are up to snuff as far as a 'printable' image is concerned?

and for extra fees could one run a small business through PN. and is PN ok with being a middle man should this occur? it sounds really complicated either way. maybe a separate member status could be created for such a service.

 

as far as handling money goes. PayPal might be a good choice. because then money can change hands quickly. but that is a whole different issue. and if You decide this is a good idea then you might consider highering an accountant.

 

anyway these are the few thoughts that come to mind.

I think the fixed price vs. percentage choice depends on the nature of the sales anticipated. Fine art galleries, selling framed fine art prints, typically take a percentage, but consumer sites, selling unmounted prints, typically take a fixed fee. Depends which way photo.net wants to go. A few high priced sales or lots of low priced sales.

 

If you have a seperate gallery section for images which are for sale there is the problem of quality control and image dilution. Do you allow everyone to sell anything they want, including out-of-focus pictures of their cat, or do you have some sort of standard? You can probably get something of a self-imposed standard by charging an upfront fee for each image offered for sale, or by limiting the number of images offered by each photographer. That way people won't try to sell any old crap on the basis of "you never know what someone might buy".

 

The best route might simply be to use photo.net as a front end for some external, well established, site that already does all the grunt work and simply take a commission on sales referals. Less revenue but a lot less work.

re: pricing. Perhaps a % with a minimum and maximum, though the maximum would probably vary a little with size.

 

This is a worthwhile idea, though given the realities of behaviors in the forum, I'd worry that it would put increasing emphasis on the varies higher-visibility venues.

<p>Brian, I think this is a fantastic idea! Given the reputation of

this site and the <i>potential</i> for business, I wonder if a reputable

digital printing company, such as White House Custom Color (<a

href="http://www.whcc.com/">http://www.whcc.com</a>), might be willing to work

with you to devise a scheme to achieve what you want to do with minimal effort

(relatively speaking) on your part. I've done some business with these folks

and they are first rate, IMO. I think it would be very reasonable for photo.net

to receive a 5-10% commission fee per sale up to some maximum dollar amount,

say maybe $50?</p>

I'd love to see this just in case anyone ever want to buy one of mine

which is rather unlikely.

<p>

It seems to me that if PN is doing most of the work and actually

taking the responsibility for disgruntled customers then PN should

buy the right to sell a single copy of an image from the photographer

to sell at whatever markup PN wants.

<p>

Perhaps a photographer can specify a price they are willing to sell

at on each image and PN can put whatever they fancy on top of that.

<p>

I'm not sure how practical it would be for every wannebe photographer

like myself to upload colour corrected tiff images of each shot so

perhaps you need to contact the photographer to request it and

perhaps keeping only those that have been requested before. If e-mail

addresses are not reliable, perhaps they can be backed up with a note

on the photographers "home" page.

<p>

If I have any other thoughts you can be sure I'll post them. I

really like this idea.

Good to see this old idea being the order of the day again. I think it's a very good idea.

 

"How does the ordering work? Who does the fulfillment (that is printing and shipping the print)? The photographer?"

 

I would say this: photo.net takes the order - and takes a deposit and a commission (a percentage of the sales price). The photographer does the printing and shipping. The photographer only gets paid once the buyer has received the print. Why this way ? Because that way, nobody gets cheated - buyer gets the picture and photographer gets the money - and photo.net serves as a garantee for the transaction, and earns something. Regards.

For info, and after reading Bob's post, I don't think it's right for photo.net to do the printing, for 2 reasons: 1) You may not print the way I would. 2) To print, you'd need the high-res files; I have been offered a couple of times to send to various sites some high resolution files, and I never accepted - although I might accept, if it was photo.net keeping the files, I'm not sure. The reason being that anyone keeping the high résolution files could do hundred prints and only send the photographer the payment for 1 or 2 prints. Or, a picture could be bought from the photographer with exclusive rights, and having the files out there would then be a major problem. Knowing that PN's management is most likely very honest, it may work for me; but wouldn't necessarily work for those who know very little about the management. In principle, the photographer should anyway be the only person to keep high resolution files of his images.

<p>There are numerous sites doing this very thing, where I think PN would excel and have a niche is in emphasis on quality of print.</p>

 

<p> Why not specify a minimum PPI (300?) for any given print size, then charge PNetters a per Mb annual price for uploading and storing their for-print files, which could be thumbnailed for viewing in a special for-print-only gallery (maybe giving members a discount, charge more for non members). Let members set their own price, then as prints are purchased, a 50/50 or thereabouts split of net profit (after actual print & mailing costs).</p>

 

 

<p>

Having an 'for-print-only' gallery with no rating ability would obviate much of the jostling for visibility previosly mentioned. Also no 'this print has been purchased x times' - no stats of any kind - let the prospective purchaser make up their mind purely on the potential of the image to enhance their lives, with no statistical preconceptions. There should of course be space for the photographer to record his or her own remarks on any image, as this adds to the value.

In addition, since you are already setting up for image sales of a sort, why not allow keyword entry and a searchable database of for-sale images, and let people also sell digital-only files, as a kind of high quality 'art' stock agency? This would add very little cost to the project, and may add substantial profit.</p>

 

<p> As Bob said, the devil's in the fulfilment and as PN is taking all the hassle it should definitely see a good profit potential before embarking on what is bound to be a large and probably onerous (given the grouch factor of the average PNetter!) project. </p>

 

<p>I do hope this works out though, could be good for both PN and PNetters. Details (such as model releases etc.) would have to be hammered out. But thanks for asking the membership, and Best of luck to you Brian!</p>

I would also strongly support the sell feature on photo.net. It is a capability that had made me look into other photosites more than I like to. From what I recall, ShutterPoint, DPChallenge, etc. let the photographers set their own prices, but I don't know the commission rate or if they use third party finishers.

 

From the site's position, I can see that it would be a more streamlined process to use third party/fulfillment house to do the job, but I can really see Marc G.'s position about full-res files storage. Indeed should all of a sudden an image is picked for an exclsive licensing by whoever, you would really want to make sure you're the only one with hi-res files so that you have full control of what's happening with that image.

 

All in all, I really like the idea Brian brought up!

There are several concerns with this, it is a good idea, however implementing it is a real concern. As at least one person stated if PN was doing printing or farming it out I would be concerned with file security, especially with a third party printer... it would be sooo easy for them to print off multiple copies and sell them leaving us and PN out in the cold.

Another concern is the fact that PN doesn't allow full file uploads, and is limited when it comes to photos reworked with PS. Additionally there is a growing number of sites selling photos, coming and going.

Another concern is how payments are made and when. One stock company I deal with still owes me payments from the last quarter... probably out that money, but someone got their photo.

Then, opening up PN to selling photos it seems the rating system will have to go as well, which I won't miss as it is severly abused anyway, even more now though with the "secret ratings".

 

Finally, PN would have to hire people to handle printing or orders and make sure orders are filled.... does Brian REALLY want this kind of headache? It seems he has enough just handling the site as it is now, and I think adding the sales and or printing would kill the site in the long run.

Something similar to smugmug.com will work.

Yes but I think in smugmug you save the file as it (lot of MB) is and not like here in PN as a "save for web" file (just some KB).

I think the photographer should be contacted by PN and the send the file to a specila print with a reference number, and then this place delivers the print to the customer.

Does anyone have any Real statistics to back up what the actual market might be for such a service? Frankly I can't see it as a profitable venture for neither PN nor majority of its participating members. An inquiry for purchase is only an inquiry - the required sequence of events translating into profitable sales is another matter altogether. I'm not particularly well informed in this market, but intuitively it seems to me a no-brainer business plan everyone follows but no one's making a buck on.

Having not sold my work, I suppose its a nice feature.

 

However, as an amateur who uses the site primarily as a learning place, I want to express a concern. That is, we have seen the lengths people will go to for vanity's sake to manipulate the pnet system to obtain high ratings and a perceived additional visibility. This has in turn led to changes in the site's posting and evaluation system, not all of which have favored the free exchange of views.

 

To include some potential monetary incentive for high visibility could lead to even more efforts at a manipulation that is negative in effect. I'm not sure how to guard against such things. Nor do I think that the idea is not worthwhile to pursue because of such a potential. But I ask you to consider this in your implementation, if you decide to proceed with the idea.

From the standpoint of a subsidy book publisher I am inclined to think it would be wise for PN to tread very carefully prior to getting into the fulfillment business. Of course, it would not be as cumbersome (physically) as the book business, but the financial and logistic processes might be even more burdensome, particularly if PN were expected to handle all financial arrangements. There would seem to be no realistic opportunity for quantity sales and individual sales, mailing, and collections, as well as payment to the contributors would become a nightmare. PN just may have the facilities for handling such an enterprise, and it would likely be a boon to the individual photographters, but it seems that those caveats have been considered or the proposal would not have been broached to the readership. I don't wish to be a wet blanket, but our own experience with parallel proposals has definitely evoked skepticism.

A nice idea. I'd certainly be interested in buying and maybe selling prints in the future. I think photo.net has two options: the photographer would either submit a ready-to-print file which photo.net could then have printed by a third party, or photo.net could submit the print request to the photographer and have them make the print and send it out to photo.net which would then send it to the buyer. The money would go from buyer to photo.net and from photo.net to the photographer.

 

I think photo.net could have a fixed minimum fee per package and then an additional percentage of the selling price. Several prints from several sources could be sent in one package to the buyer to reduce photo.net overhead. It is necessary for photo.net (or some company doing this for photo.net) to send the prints out to the customer and handle the printing because how else can they make sure that the print actually reaches the buyer.

 

I would insist on making the prints myself to be able to guarantee the quality of the print. However, other photographers would prefer to have photo.net send the file out for printing. I think it's necessary to provide both options.

 

Percentages: fixed fee of $15 per package plus 20% of the final price. I think this has the potential of making photo.net very rich. However, IMO it would be advantageous to allow photographers to link to higher quality versions of the images for sale. The cost of the extra storage would of course be covered by the profits from the sales.

I don't think photo.net should offer a print quality guarantee of images printed by the photographer (it is a question of the reputation of the photographer, not photo.net). That's precisely why I want to do my own prints - I don't want to deal with the printing house quality issues. I'd much rather do the work myself.

 

I find the top-rated gallery is quite problematic in this context. On the other hand sales would increase competition in the gallery immensely including less honest tactics. This is a major problem and a great deal of attention would need to be put into the rating system if the photos for sale were allowed to be exhibited in the gallery. Another issue is that a small web print does not have the ability to reflect the quality of the final print. The print quality issue could become a nightmare for photo.net, as I am quite sure that people would have unrealistic expectations based on the web displayed images.

 

One way to avoid this would be to have photographers deal with the print making in all cases, and the responsibility of photo.net on the quality of the prints would be zero. In this scenario photo.net would be a sales front end which allows the ordering of prints and the billing would be handled by some company which would then distribute the money to photo.net and the photographers. This would be the easiest to arrange as then photo.net would not have the responsibility on the quality of the end product (apart from shipping damage from photo.net to buyer).

I too hate to be a wet blanket on a topic that may help the site as well as the photographers participating, but something like this may indeed bring a whole new evil to rating. A sale may hinge upon what "others" think...so any schmo with some time to dedicate can help - or hinder - said sale.

 

I cannot see myself selling anything (want a shot of a praying mantis or my neighbor's dog? $0.45 and a stamp and it's yours!...), but those that do? I'd wager you should prepare for an onslaught of queries to abuse@photo.net, as I'll bet they'll want those 2s, 3s, 4s, and maybe even 5s off immediately.

 

Thinking proactively, setting up some published, strict standards on how such matters might be handled would be good - because if some guy or gal is selling a few, and a bogus account with some silly name like "Connie Lingus" (ahem) drops by with some harsh criticism and low numbers, the patron isn't gonna want to hear "...I see no evidence of abuse..." in reply to their complaint.

One way to avoid ratings abuse would be to prevent rating of photos on sale completely.

Brian in a whispering voice "If you build it they will come". I am all for it Brian Thanks for all the hard work now I have to take a picture worthy to sell. ,Grinder

1) Don't worry about the ratings and competition thing. To solve that problem, somebody already suggested this, which I believe to be the right thing.: "Having an 'for-print-only' gallery with no rating ability would obviate much of the jostling for visibility previosly mentioned."

 

2) Ilkka wrote: "It is necessary for photo.net (or some company doing this for photo.net) to send the prints out to the customer and handle the printing because how else can they make sure that the print actually reaches the buyer."

 

Disagreed. The buyer has to pay a deposit, then only the photographer sends the print to him (via photo.net or directly). If the print is sent directly to the buyer, all the buyer has to do is to say so when he receives the print.

And by the way, prints are to be sent by courrier, and the sender can check whether the parcel was received or not anyway...

I think it would be great for those who want to sell their photographs to be able to do so (not something I need to worry about). But, even given Marc's arguments above, I too believe it will ramp up the problems with abuse of the ratings system. So, to do it, I think it would have to be completely separate from current portfolios. Maybe it could be provided as a service at an additional, and maybe significant, annual fee.

 

One other thing, and I mean absolutely no disrespect, it seems that managing subscription money has been a challenge for PN in the past. At least it comes across that way reading this forum. Those headaches would increase a thousand-fold.