One of the first things I wanted to do after getting back from my vacation was to finally put together an online place for people to buy a few prints of some of my better shots. I’m not entirely sure I’ll make a dime, but lots of people have asked me if I sold some of my city shots, so now I can finally say that I do.
If you want to check some of them out, you can check out photography.duanestorey.com. If you have a blog and want to help advertise, that would be awesome. I’ve put on some google adwords, so if anyone does a search for Vancouver specific photos, I should start coming up now.
Since today was the first day I received a paycheck for taking photos, and also the day I’ve launched a site dedicated to selling prints, it’s obviously a pretty pivotal moment. Thanks for everyone’s support!
Ps, if anyone wants to join smugmug, enter my coupon code of or8hpTynn0RGk — it should save you some cash
That’s great stuff, Duane…..very exciting time to be creative! I’m curious what made you choose smugmug.com to host your photos for sale? Also will you be more choosy about what ends up on Flickr?
Hey.. Well, while selling individual prints is kind of cool, I’m also thinking more along the lines of wedding photography, since I have a few weddings to shoot coming up. I’m doing them for practically nothing, so I might put some of the prints online and charge for them. It was really important to me to have a service that basically pulled me right out of the equation so I didn’t have to do anything once the photos were uploaded. I talked to a few photographers who do sort of the same things (one out in Ottawa when I was there), and that’s what they use. A person can order whatever they want from a wedding set, pay money, and they show up at your door a week later. Smugmug takes 12% and handles all the fees, but as a photographer I can set the prices I want for each photo.
We’ll see how it goes, but I like the nice simple interface and the customization possible now. In terms of Flickr, I’ve always kept the versions on flickr as primarily low res (< 1024 on a side), and I'll probably keep doing that since it's pretty tough to make a decent print out of that.
I’ve debated going the low res thing Flickr but like the idea of it being an online backup so haven’t wanted to compromise that aspect. I came across Luckyoliver.com while at SXSW and like their approach for stock photography sales for photographers. Unfortunately, I haven’t really made an effort to put any photos on their service for sale other than a handful. Hoping to do more soon and your adventures in pro photography have definitely been good food for thought.
Yeah, I played with a few different ones. Smugmug costs money, but they provide a lot of features and most importantly, the images that you print from them are apparently outstanding. So I think it’s a good service, but only time will tell. I’m pretty sure I’ll make my money back after one wedding, so I’m not too concerned about it. The adwords stuff might be a bust, but we’ll see. I’ll keep you in the loop on how this goes for me.