[JCFindley]

I am with Jim C on this. I understand that bills need to be paid but it is an annoying way to do it.

To go one step further, it would be nice if the popups were at least a little more selective. eg they do not contain “work from home” scam ads.

[JCFindley]

http://www.google.com/#output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=4h&oq=4h&gs_l=hp.3..0l4.2106.3405.0.5174.2.2.0.0.0.0.84.137.2.2.0…0.0.0..1c.1.12.psy-ab.BqaI5lwPxaQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47008514,d.dmg&fp=88ca4fef5188be1b&biw=1366&bih=667

[JCFindley]

Must be nice to arbitrarily assign legal fine amounts in her world.

[JCFindley]

5K, HA!

[JCFindley]

Yall do know that most of this post is from Oct of last year until it was necroed, right?

[JCFindley]

I use a print on demand service for my sales. (PoD)

Zen is a PoD of sorts but I won’t use them. The reason being is you get no walk in traffic. What I mean by that is many of the PoD sites will draw customers to the site for you and you will get sales from people that you do not bring to the site. Think of these as a shopping mall where you rent space. People will come to the mall looking for a gift and even though they weren’t there to go to your store they find it there and buy from you. Zen is like a stand alone store you rent. They will do all the services of other PoDs but YOU have to bring people to your store to buy as no one just wanders about Zen shopping.

I do not limit myself to a single PoD but I am very particular about which ones I will use.  Some, you cannot set your price and are limited to the royalty THEY decide to give the artist. Art.com is this way and the percentage you earn is not much. I think Cafe Press is also this way but not sure. Other PoDs allow the artist to choose BUT use a percentage based markup. This sounds fine, but if you set a markup to make your 8x10s ~30 bucks then your large prints are thousands of dollars. IF you set your large prints at market prices then your 8x10s are 7 bucks and you make a dollar. Some are a mix, like society6. You can set a dollar amount for each size print there but on canvases you have to accept 10% royalty which means you will make 15 bucks on a 36 inch canvas.

So, I will only use PoDs that allow me to set a price for each size I offer. That way I can set he price for each and every size I offer individually. I am on three but the only one that makes me any money is Fine Art America. (Where you also get your own artist website URL where you can send your clients to see only your work.) The JCFindley.com simply redirects my customers to that site.

I also do live shows but it has been a while.

[JCFindley]

Thanks Pic

Keep in mind, marketing is not necessarily advertising. Much marketing can be done for free with social media or relatively cheaply with business cards and hanging work in local venues to get your name out there.

Personally, I market very little but tend to shoot things that are not overly shot. Into Manhattan is a good example of art that is hard to sell. It is not that it isn’t a decent shot, but that bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge next to it are shot by every photographer that has ever been to NYC. That means there are a LOT of similar images for sale out there that are just as good. I can literally buy a 36 inch “canvas” wrap of the Brooklyn Bridge at Walmart for $28.77. Mine sell for ~$400.  That makes it hard to sell. This image does extremely well with views and people find it pretty easily on the net, people like it BUT so far it has sold on a handful of greeting cards and made very little money. http://jc-findley.artistwebsites.com/featured/obligatory-jc-findley.html

As I said on the other thread, bees on flowers are pretty and sure they sell, but any individual artist’s chance of selling their version is relatively slim. What has worked well for me is finding undeserved markets, be they places or subjects, and shoot them. By doing that I was able to build up a sales record and some name recognition and then was able to sell in more saturated arenas as well. Here are a few bridges that are NOT world famous but people that are in the area know them well. All but the last one make me good money, and the last one will it is just pretty new to the portfolio.  http://jc-findley.artistwebsites.com/featured/chesapeake-splendor-jc-findley.html , http://jc-findley.artistwebsites.com/featured/chesapeake-city-jc-findley.html , http://jc-findley.artistwebsites.com/featured/the-triboro-bridge-jc-findley.html , http://jc-findley.artistwebsites.com/featured/marine-parkway-bridge-jc-findley.html

Those are just bridge examples but it can apply to any subject. The key for me here is if I visit NYC,San Fran or Paris I will NOT be shooting the Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower respectively. For me it is all about finding interesting subjects that I do not see 900 other togs shooting when I get there.

Regarding making a living doing it: I am not yet making a “comfortable” living but I am working on it. When I started my goal was to make enough money to buy some gear and keep my wife off my back about spending money. I got laid off of my day job and decided I would put in 40 hours shooting and editing while I looked for a job. Putting in that kind of time allowed me to increase my portfolio rather prolifically and I started getting enough sales where I started to believe I could make a living doing this. I probably put in 60 to 80 hours a week now with the goal of adding two marketable prints a day on average. Yesterday, that meant waking up at 0330, driving to Jersey City and making my way to a deserted railroad line then hiking the line looking for shots. By 0800 I had already driven 20 miles, hiked another five, and was on my way back for hours of edit. Will any of them sell? Maybe, but at the very least it is an adventure. http://jc-findley.artistwebsites.com/featured/below-the-skyway-jc-findley.html .

[JCFindley]

Mine is easy enough to find.  Www.jcfindley.com

[JCFindley]

Alrighty, looked at them on a regular computer and still like em.

What I see is genuine unique. You have a great range of subjects and while I don’t know portraits from a hole in the ground even your people shots have a nice artsy feel and many could sell to random strangers. Same thing with a lot of your other images.

Keep in mind, just because something is good and is marketable it still takes effort to be found and actually sell but your work has good potential.

JC

[JCFindley]

Caveat,  I am in traffic and on a droid so can’t see large versions and see how crisp they are.

I actually enjoyed your images enough to go through every one of them. Sure some are stronger than others but they are genuinely good and a lot are marketable in the art world.

 

 

[JCFindley]

Hmmm, I started to type out a detailed critique but the no shit sherlock statement pretty much put an end to that.

In your defense, while peacocks and leaves don’t hire togs, I do make a living selling images without people that nobody pays me to shoot but people buy after the fact.  Just because no one is paying you to do it does not mean there is not money to be made.

That said, to do that you really need to find subjects or places that are not overly shot. There is nothing wrong with leaves with water droplets or a bee on a flower and they sell every day. The problem is that there are millions of them on the net and even if you shoot the very best bee on a flower ever done you still have to compete with tens of thousands of other similar images. 1. That makes it hard to stand out and be seen and you must be seen to sell. 2. If you can get seen they still have to pick yours among a sea of similar images.  3. If they have a DSLR they will simply produce a similar image themselves. The concept applies to a LOT of over shot subject matter. Bald Eagles for instance. It takes some skill and patience to get a good eagle shot but there are a lot of people that do it leading to market saturation. Flowers, sunsets, butterflies, The Brooklyn or Golden Gate Bridges, etc etc etc ALL fall into this overly saturated market.

If you want to actually make money selling “fine art” photography, whatever that is, you will either need to market your butt off or find subjects or places that simply are not overly shot. What the folks above are saying is that your choice of subjects are basically what everyone starts with. Nothing wrong with that at all but if you do want to sell well you have to find a way to shoot something different.

[JCFindley]

Depends on what you are shooting with it.

As said above, at 216mm it is a tight view but then, the 200mm prime is number 2 on my to get list as I can and do like and use that focal length a lot. (specifically for barns set off the road a ways.)

I have shot the 135 you bought quite a bit and probably the sharpest glass I have shot with aside from my 100 macro. Personally, I do not like IS as I shoot on a tripod with a cable release and mirror lockup 90% of the time so it is money wasted for me, but I don’t shoot people either.

[JCFindley]

Camera doesn’t matter as much as vision and lighting IMO.

I sell art photography and my top two sellers were shot with a point and shoot.

[JCFindley]

“I think I’ve been doing pretty well the last couple of days (but of course, that’s just me comparing me to myself!)”

TBH, I am the only person I ever compare myself to as the only thing that matters is I do a little better today than I did yesterday.

I liked all three.

[JCFindley]

Can yall send me some money, I need a Canon 5DMKIII please. I will donate any overages to charity after I get glass to go with the new body o course.

Thanks.

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