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#9038
IHF
Participant

JC,

I’m about ready to highjack this thread.  I’m so sorry, but JCFindley got me wanting to talk.

So here’s my story

I’m shooting and having fun learning, and then it came time to stop being a wuss and start sharing.  I noticed that a lot of my facebook friends weren’t commenting on my posts anymore, which was a little out of character.  OPPS!  They are hiding me, because I’m posting too much photography!  lol  OK so I start a page, and invite everyone.  I was right, and only about a quarter of my friends actually clicked that like button, and now I get a lot more interaction on my personal facebook account, like it used to be before I bored people to death with my pictures.  So , there I am sharing my pictures, and getting “Oooh nice!” and “Oh so pretty!”  It was time to get a little braver and start sharing my work with other photographers, but I looked for somewhere “nice” and landed at red bubble.  I put a price tag on my work, and on my facebook port as well.  Well… surprisingly I’ve actually sold 42 of my 90ish images, some multiple times in varying formats from greeting cards to 30×20 mounted (mostly fulfilled by myself, and a few regular sales and greeting cards from redbubble).  oops!  I wasn’t expecting this.  I don’t know exactly what to do with it.  So I’ve just been sitting, doing nothing.  I dont know if I really want to become more serious about selling or not.  I know I LOVE it when one of my images sells.  Just the thought that someone likes my photograph enough to buy it, and decorate their home with it thrills me, but at the same time… its a little scary to take things further than what they currently are.  It means investing more, it means a proper website, better marketing, more finishing and printing, possibly business cards and such, business license? and of course investing more means my prices would have to go up.  What if my stuff is only selling because it’s priced on the low end (I only make approx $20 off self fulfilled orders, and pennies off of redbubble sales).  I dont look at my work and think “high end collectors would LOVE this!”  my photographs are very simplistic, colorful, kind of immature, happy little things.  I’ve played with my mark up a little, and so far no change and I still have a steady trickle.  Should I keep marking up slowly to see if I find a cap?  Just wanting to pick your brain a little JC.  Everyone around me is kind of pushing, and I’m not sure if I want it or not, even though it does sound very very appealing to maybe have my hobby pay for itself someday.