How do I sell my photography online?

Question

I want to attempt to sell prints of my photography online... but I'm a bit unsure of how to go about doing it.
I was thinking about putting them for sale on Etsy (at a pretty cheap price too since I'm really just an amateur).

Where would I get the quality prints from? There aren't a whole lot of places around where I live... I don't want to do Target or Walmart, since I'd feel bad charging people for those.

I've gotten some large prints done at Winkflash.com... but it took a long time to get to me, so it'd take even longer to get it to someone else afterwards.

Is it normal for people to sell their photography in prints from online places like Winkflash or Shutterfly? Or do people usually use a local place?

I'm such a n00b, sorry =[

Answer 1

There are online photo proofing sites like ShootProof that allow you to sell your photography online by giving you the ability to create online galleries, price sheets, and link a PayPal business account to receive your payments. Check it out here http://shootproof.com ... ShootProof has a free plan for up to 100 photos online at a time that lets you use all of their features. Paid plans allow for more photo space. Once you get an order from one of your clients you both receive an email with all of the order details and the order will show up in your ShootProof studio panel under 'Orders' where you can download the original files if you need them for printing. Also, ShootProof takes no commissions on your sales which is a plus.



There are some great professional photo printing labs that you can access online and upload the files for printing directly to their websites. Bay Photo and Black River Imaging are a couple of good ones:

http://bayphoto.com

http://www.blackriverimaging.com

Answer 2

The simple way to put photos up for sale is to set up an account at one of those sites that accepts any photos from anyone and upload some photos. You probably wont sell much. Your best shot at actually selling photos is to submit them to a site that has real buyers in large quantities looking at photos. They're not going to sites that accept anything from anybody because they don't want to look through a bunch of crap trying to find a good photo. They're going to a place like iStock that screens submissions for quality. You have to submit three images and have them reviewed before they will accept images from you for sale. The upside is, the people viewing your photos are actually looking to buy. If you have technically strong photos, it's your best bet. If your stuff is average, try the D place.

Answer 3

As far as Selling prints of your work, there is etsy, cafepress, zazzle, and deviantart. Etsy for me is too much of a hassle b/c I need to actually handle the shipping and printing and everything. Personally I use SMugmug.com as a printer and shipper of my work. they give you a whole gallery option and pricing plans. They have their bare minimum prices, and you keep anything over that amount. Say it costs them $2.30 to print out and ship an 8x10 print. if you price it for $12, you get 10 bucks.



Here is an example of my smugmug gallery.



http://obilex.smugmug.com/Art/Obilex-The-Artwork-of-Samuel



Also, you want to get all of your social media networks on par with one another, make it easy for people to be connected with you. on my homepage http://Obilex.com you can see that I have links to all of my different outlets (twitter, facebook, instagram ebay etc.)



Hope this helps, and keep up the hard work!

Answer 4

I did pretty good selling ACEOs (look it up) on Ebay. I do my own printing.