Selling to website

[john_wallace2]

<p>I am looking at selling limited addition fine art photographs via a website that offers this type of service. I am not interested in selling my work on a stock agencies website. I am not prepared to give my work away. Spacificly I looking to up load files that can be searched by name or key word. The web site owners would take care of the sales for a reasonable fee. If would also retain ownership of the files. Any suggestions. <br>

john</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>Suggestions about what? What website to choose? Whether this is a viable business plan? Whether your expectations are reasonable?<br>

If you have already identified a website, then I would inquire about their traffic statistics. Who visits, for how long, how many purchase, what is the average purchase price, are there repeat purchase customers, etc.<br>

If you haven't identified a website, you need to look at places like SmugMug, Flickr, etc, and see if their services meet your needs.<br>

As for uploading files and not having them stolen, either by screen capture, or behind the scenes hackers, you need to investigate the security measures taken. Are the screen display images watermarked, etc.<br>

Your questions seem a bit naive, as though this is the first place you've started doing any research. If so, you have lots to learn. Good luck<br>

<Chas><br /><br /></p>

[david_henderson]

<p>You might want to note these for reference</p>

 

<ul>

<li>There are zillions of people out there trying to sell "fine art prints" online, either through their own websites or someone else's. Most of them sell nothing. I don't know many people who have paid for photographs to display at home where there is no personal connection to the photograph or photographer. Do you?</li>

<li>You wouldn't choose a stock agency site to sell prints. They mainly sell to commercial enterprises or news media for commercial or editorial use. And if you want to start a serious business selling décor photographs to businesses , hotels etc then you'd set up your own website and get art consultants onside. I'd guess that you mean selling prints for home display.</li>

<li>In any case selling via a stock agency does not mean giving your work away. It means signing a contract with an organisation to sell your work in return for a share of the proceeds. You may have to agree to exclusivity, but you don't with reputable agencies lose your rights. Its not a bad way of selling (though not as lucrative as once it was) - its just inappropriate to your stated purpose.</li>

<li>In general it is much harder to find a customer than it is to take a good photograph. So whichever route you follow - website, galleries or whatever- you must accept that an organisation that finds customers, arranges the print production, mounting, framing where required, and gets the finished product to the customer will want to keep most of the money the end consumer spends. If all you're contributing is to provide a series of photographs for potential customers to choose from, the value of a sale to you won't be very large unless you are seriously good with a pre-established reputation and collector base.</li>

</ul>

[john_wallace2]

<p>Thanks for the valuable information. I'm certainly not new to the photograph business and have had some success selling prints. I have explored a number of sites that offer the type of service I am interested in and was just wondering if anyone knows of other sites that I may have missed during my search. I found the obvious sites and am still looking for other options. As an example one site I have reviewed is ETSY. As far as stock photography, I'm not willing to sell my work for .30 cents a download but that's another topic. </p>