is there anything more empowering than
seeing your photograph in physical form
the feel of the paper grain the awe of
the fact that
you created that it's a special thing
it's a sort of moment that propels you
into a lifetime of chasing that dopamine
hit you get from making the photo
i created this but there's a massive
difference between the euphoria you get
from seeing your work in print
and translating that emotion to someone
who might actually buy it
selling your photography is hard and
most of us
well we've been going about it
completely the wrong way
what's going on people you are looking
absolutely beautiful
handsome talented you're looking so
talented
and if it sounds like i'm buttering you
up it's because i kind of
am because what i'm gonna say today
might hurt feelings
and it might hurt feelings because i
might be saying some things that
you might not want to hear and i should
be clear
that what i'm gonna say about prints and
calendars
has nothing to do with your talent level
or skill level and everything to do with
the fact that selling prints
selling photography in general is hard
it's not your fault it's hard it's not
my fault it's hard it's just hard
okay let now that that's out of the way
what i want to do on today's episode
is talk about selling prints and
essentially
three mistakes that photographers make
in trying to sell prints
beyond the fact that they're trying to
sell prints in the first place
the thesis statement of this video isn't
don't sell
prints and calendars it's try to find
more efficient ways to sell your prints
and calendars
and so there's three mistakes i want to
focus on but because i'm a positive
person
i also want to talk about solutions for
every single one of them
but this is a discussion a conversation
i don't have all the answers so be sure
to use the comment section and let me
know
what your experience is or what some of
your ideas are because this is a
community
your comments will probably help
somebody else in the community so
let's get into it mistake number one is
that people try to build a product
before a market and i know it feels
really backwards because in most
in most industries you build a product
and then
you sell it to the market but in most
industries you also
go okay what market am i trying to
target and how does my product
benefit them or what do they get out of
it and in photography you have to think
that way as well you have to say
what is the market who's gonna buy my
photos
who's gonna buy one of my prints and put
it on their wall
and the reality is it is really
really hard especially in landscape and
travel photography
it's really hard to find people that are
willing to put it on their wall
it's really hard to find people that
have that emotional connection
to one of your photos and it's even
harder now because
people don't buy physical products from
other people
because it's a powerful thing printing
one of your photos
seeing one of your photos in print just
having it there is such an emotional
thing so how do you convey that emotion
to somebody else how do you convince
somebody else to have that same emotion
from one of
your images especially when they can
print it themselves
people are much more likely to post a
print that they've taken on their wall
or to make a photo book of their own
images than they are to buy
one from a stranger even if they're not
great photographers
they probably would rather have that
connection to that they have to their
own images
rather than you know a mediocre
connection to somebody else's
much superior work yes
landscape photography is nearly
impossible to make money from
it sucks and it drives me crazy to watch
youtube photographers go on and tell
people
how to make money from landscape
photography when the chances are
they never did it before they had an
audience they never actually made money
enough to survive from landscape
photography
before they had an audience it's an
absolute
lie that you can do it easily
selling prints selling calendars is hard
don't listen to any youtuber
including me if i've ever said it that
tells you that selling prints and
calendars is easy it's not it's hard
but i'm a positive person so let's focus
on the solutions here
if you're trying to sell prints and
calendars i think you have to focus
locally
i think find cafes that might want to
put your art up on the wall because
like here in my temporary home office
you have these big
empty walls and cafes and they're
looking to decorate find cafes and ask
them if you can hang your art on their
wall
have like a little slip with your name
the price and
your instagram handle so that people can
go and buy it directly from the shop
when people buy things like art they buy
it on a whim
or when they're decorating so if they're
decorating like we are here at our new
apartment
they go online and they search and they
try to find something specific
they're not looking for a specific
artist artist perhaps they're just
looking for a color pattern or a certain
animal or a certain location or
something like that
when people buy art just in general
it's because they see it in public or at
a gallery or something like that and
they go wow that's a really beautiful
thing
i want that in my house in my bedroom or
above my office
so if you're trying to sell prints go to
galleries
and ask them if they have space show
them your portfolio
and try to sell prints there rather than
online
go to cafes and try to hang the stuff on
the wall
offer them a commission on the sale of
course and go to art shows
i listened to a podcast from nick page
from like three or four years ago
and he is one of those landscape
photographers i think that was making
money from landscape photography before
youtube
and nick in his podcast was talking
about making money from art shows
i thought that's something i really want
to try at some point when i settle down
go do an art show and try to set up a
booth
and sell my photos but it is a risky
investment because you have to pay for
all your prints to be printed
you have to pay for the booth up front
and then hope that you sell stuff so you
need the capital upfront
it's hard but it does work now i have an
aunt who's an artist in canada and
before i even started youtube she said
to me hey brendan i'm going to this art
show do you mind if i print out some of
your images as prints
and maybe make some cards out of them
like greeting cards and christmas cards
and stuff like that
and try to sell them for you and i was
like yeah like go for it let's
let's see what happens and then after
the art show was over she messaged me
and she said brendan
i don't have great news we didn't really
make that much money
i think your cut of what your print sold
was about 500
in profit and i was like that's a lot of
money like
that's good money from selling art so if
there is money
at art shows i think give it a try
at some point i'm going to try it as
well and finally forget your friends and
family
if your audience is your friends and
family you're screwed because
i mean i don't think anybody has enough
friends and family to make
a business work it's just and friends
and family they always go oh man your
photos are amazing
i'd love you should definitely sell them
and then they'll never buy anything at
least my friends and family don't buy
anything
mistake number two is people try to sell
calendars and i don't
get it in fact no i do get it because
when i
started in photography i i sold a
calendar it seemed like an easy way to
make money it seemed like something that
you know people would want and i sold my
first calendar
when i was just starting on youtube i
had a small audience and i sold a
wildlife photography calendar because i
thought
everybody can relate to wildlife they
might not be able to relate to
destinations or travel
but to wildlife everybody can kind of
relate to it
and of that calendar i sold eight copies
and after like the costs of printing it
and shipping it
i think i made ten dollars in profit
from it
and it's it's just not worth it it's so
much work
and caler calendars have an expiry date
if you
don't sell whatever you order they're
done you've put in all that work and you
can't reuse it
at all ever you're done i think you have
to kind of think
who is going to buy your calendar if you
make it
what's your audience sure if you're
morton hilmer
and you're one of the world's best
wildlife photographers and you have a
massive audience already you're gonna
make good money on a calendar and you
should make a calendar but if you're not
morton hilmer and you don't have a big
audience and you do
even if you do amazing wildlife
photography who's going to buy those
calendars from you
calendars are already something that
very few people use because
they do everything digitally i've got my
phone open because i want to run through
some stats on my calendar in 20
what year are we 2020 how can you forget
what year it is
especially this year i want to run
through my 2020 calendar sales
like numbers from last year now i have a
hundred and fifty thousand subscribers
on youtube i think i had about a hundred
thousand when i sold this calendar
i have about a hundred and thirty
thousand subs uh followers on instagram
so i have a built-in audience
i did pre-sales of my calendars because
it's easier because you don't have to
like guess how many you might sell and i
made 150 calendar sales
at 25 euros a piece so that works out to
be
3750 euros but when you order
calendars in that size you have to buy
bulk orders and
i ended up buying 200 because i thought
maybe i'll be able to sell 50 more
between
you know delivery and the end of the
year i didn't sell any so i had
50 wasted calendars that i ended up
giving away to friends and family
those 200 calendars cost 1800 euros and
it seems like good profit it seems like
nearly
2 000 euros of profit but you have to
ship the calendars and the shipping and
packaging for the calendars
cost about eight euros a piece on
average because i'm shipping from the uk
to the uk but also europe and asia and
canada and the us
so it cost about eight euros per item
which ended up costing about 1200 euros
brings my profit down to 750 euros but i
also
hired a friend to come and help me
package up the calendars because it's
like a two-day job just packaging the
calendar
signing them and shipping them so that
was another 200 euros i paid them
so i made 550 euros profit from my
calendar in 2019
for 2020 and yes 550 euros is great
but think about all the time and effort
i put into it i spent a full day
curating the calendar i probably spent
an entire full day dealing with the
printers and trying to get that
organized
i actually drove from the south of the
uk
all the way to the north of the uk to
pick up the calendar so that's another
cost that i haven't even tabulated
then i spent a full day actually
packaging and shipping the stuff
so essentially i spent four full days
working on that
for 10 hour days working on that 40
hours for 550 euros
my solution is build a calendar every
single
year and i know i've just said don't
build a calendar
i think you should make a calendar every
single year because
it's a really good learning experience
making a calendar
you curate your images from the year
which is a really hard process
but it's also something that's a really
good learning experience
you learn how to curate your photos you
learn what you did wrong throughout the
year you get ideas for what to do
and then give those calendars away to
your friends and family
if they love those calendars enough
over time they're going to tell their
friends and family about it and it's
going to spread and eventually you might
have an
audience big enough to actually sell
your calendar but treat it like a
learning experience rather than a sales
experience
if you're gonna try to sell calendars my
advice
is try to find a way to do a reusable
calendar
calendars have an expiry date and it
sucks because if you buy 100 calendars
to sell and you only sell
20 of them 80 of them go into the
garbage
but if you can find a way to make a
calendar that's reusable
that you know you draw in the numbers
for every single month but have this
beautiful artwork on the top
i think that's something that would be a
great product that you could sell
for 10 20 years that's an idea
and then maybe try to focus on a
licensing deal try to find
companies that actually sell calendars
that distribute calendars
build like a calendar pitch for them and
chase those guys
chase whoever sells the calendars in
your local drugstore or supermarket
mistake number three i should check this
is still running
i always have like this crazy thought
that maybe the video has stopped
filming halfway through it hasn't i
think i'm overexposed though but oh well
mistake number three is trying to sell
low
cost products or low value products
they're trying to sell you're trying to
sell small little prints for five
dollars
or mugs for eight dollars selling small
products is something that artists
shouldn't focus on and something
distributors should focus on it's
something that
you know big companies like ikea should
focus on
you need to be focusing on selling art
in
art dollars or potentially selling to
distributors
and websites like etsy and vista print
and all these guys are
so over saturated it's not even funny
i did a test just for fun this past
month where i put my favorite 20 images
on both etsy
and vistaprint i keyworded them i seo'd
them i did a crazy good job at setting
them up
i didn't sell a single one i didn't get
i don't even think i got hits hardly on
any of them
they're so over saturated and the
solution to this is you really really
need to build an
audience instead of selling small little
things focus on art try to sell a 300
original print rather than a three
dollar
you know quick sale i'd much rather sell
one
three hundred dollar print than a
hundred three dollar prints
again like calendars focus on licensing
deals our bedroom has a bunch of photos
up on the wall
that we actually got from ikea whoever
the photographer is that sold that to
ikea
made a ton of money but those images on
the wall we bought for like
i think we got a pack of 10 for like 30
dollars
and that's kind of what i'm getting at
stop trying to sell the thirty dollar
pack of images sell the three thousand
or twenty thousand dollar pack
to ikea to distribute it to other people
and finally
focus on community instead of you know
using social media to just shout at
people and try to get them to buy stuff
build a facebook community or a twitter
community that's
a community that has a discussion and
that people
can engage with that allows people to
have
a much more emotional attachment to what
you do and the things that you produce
so that's my advice in today's video
that's gotten a little bit long i think
and i hope it doesn't discourage you
because i don't think you should stop
printing i don't think you should stop
making calendars
i just think you need to try to find
more efficient ways to do that so you
can actually be profitable
and hopefully you can do that without a
youtube audience despite the fact that
every single youtuber in the world
pretends that
it's super easy to make money selling
calendars and prints
it's not and speaking of youtube i do
have a seminar later today
at 7pm uh uk time
which is like yeah soon that's talking
about how i built my youtube channel and
mostly about how i failed to make my
youtube channel big
and how i got around that anyway so if
you want to come join us for that
seminar
there's a link in the description to
this video and that's it we'll be out in
the field shooting some photography on
the next one i'll see you there
peace