Sunday, June 28, 2009

Sunset at Amicalola
"I am thinking about getting some of my prints blown up on canvas and selling them: what do I do next?"

If you are thinking about selling your work, then you actually need a business plan that tries to answer some important questions -- and this goes beyond just "is this a good enough pic" and "how much to print it?" and "how much to sell it?".

You might do a little research into:
- Where and to whom will you sell?
- How much are people spending in that market segment?
- What kind of pictures are they buying?
- Does a segment exist for your work, style, and pricing level?

If you have to create a segment to sell your work:
- What kind of marketing are you going to have to do?
- How much will that cost?
- Regardless, how are you going to perform 'fulfillment'?
- Acceptance of payment (PayPal? Cash only? Credit cards?)
- Do you expect enough volume to have your own gallery?
- Are you going to seek space at someone else's gallery?
- Temporarily or permanently?
- Will you have enough volume of sales to profit by having a business license?
- Who are your competitors?
- What are their venues, markets, customers, styles, volumes, fulfillment methods,
supply chains, etc.?

If you look into it a bit, it's not such a simple question, largely because for many years there have been quite a few excellent photographers augmenting their incomes by selling beautiful photos all over the place, online, in galleries, through stores and agents, etc.

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