Top Tips for Pricing, Sizing and Selling Your Imagery
When it comes to selling your photography online, finding somewhere to achieve this is the easy part. Find a photo sharing website that offers you the best terms and conditions for your needs, a good percentage of the money from each of your sales and a wide audience and you are good to go. All you need to do is sign up, agree to any terms and conditions – having read them carefully – and then you can begin uploading your photographs.
Well, we all wish that was all we had to do but sadly the whole process is a little more complicated than that. You will need to work out the pricing and the sizing for your images and if you are new to selling photography then it is hard to know where to start. If you price your images too low, or too high, then you may not get the sales you are hoping for. As for deciding what size to offer, that is even more complicated.
Read on to discover our top tips for sizing and pricing your images ready for selling.
Consider how people will display your images
A top tip when considering the size of your images is to think about how people will display them. When you are selling prints the expectation is probably that someone is either looking for something to put in an existing frame or something they can pop out and get a frame for. Whilst a good mount will help them to achieve this, they will probably not want the cost of having a bespoke frame made. Standard sizes, particularly when you are starting out, are more likely to net you better sales.
What size is most popular?
A quick look around any shop that sells frames will indicate that they stock a lot of frames suitable for images that are 5” x 7”. This is generally the most popular size for most images, including objects, animals and buildings so this is certainly a good size to start off with.
If however you are specialising in landscapes, you should consider something a little bigger as these tend to translate better into bigger images that will be hung on a wall.
Look at similar items
When it comes to pricing, check out the market, a good look around a photo sharing platform will show you what other people are selling similar types of images for. If for example you specialise in flower photography then look for images of flowers by a number of other photographers and see what prices, and sizes, they are selling for. These prices will vary. Use this as a guide and don’t price yourself too high or too low.
Things to consider when pricing
Whilst looking at similar items will give you a starting point for your pricing there are some other things you should consider as well.
How much work did you put into your photograph? How many copies of the photo you want out there? The quality of the print? And if you have been selling for a while (even if this is elsewhere) what is demand for your work like?
Don’t sell yourself short, if the image was particularly tricky to capture then you should consider this an important factor that will add to the price.
Offering unusual sizes
Whilst we have already mentioned the best sizes to offer may well be standard ones. You may feel that certain images would lend themselves well to custom sizes, and if you want to offer these you should certainly price them accordingly. You may want to offer prices for the image in standard sizes and then larger sizes as well to give potential buyers the most choice.