How to sell your photo prints online (Full Tutorial)
Let’s start with a sad fact. Modern-day photography work centers around marketing and social media, not around creating memorable long-lasting visuals.
It’s easier to make money through brand deals and advertising or digital products than by creating something tangible, physical, and artistic.
Selling physical prints seems like so much more work in comparison.
Yet thinking that my work could provide real-life value for friends and subscribers made me add the print business to my otherwise digital work.
In the beginning, I thought taking care of the whole production chain seemed romantic. Yet after some research, there was too much financial risk attached to dipping my feet into a new market.
Living in the countryside in a small cabin in Norway would not have made logistics all too easy. Here we do not have local producers, and being two hours away from the next bigger city doesn’t make shipping easier.
To my surprise, 30 minutes on google gave up several online solutions.
It has been over a year since going for the most visually appealing *opinion* option and setting up my own print store using Pic-Time.
I’ve been quite happy with the service but it can be complicated to get everything right. That’s why you will find a full tutorial on how you can do the same (with Pic-Time, I don’t know too much about alternatives) and make your photography business a bit more real-life and a bit less digital.
As a sneak peek, that is the product page of my shop, just imagine your photos instead.
As always, if you prefer watching this as a video, it’s linked at the bottom of the page.
Making your own online print store (as a creator)
You saw it coming! Pic-Time is a subscription-based online gallery that offers you a web presence together with the necessary store infrastructure.
You can compare it with the Squarespace model. By being a customer, you receive your own domain as well as different customizable galleries and store templates to choose from.
If you (like me) only want to offer your work to followers and subscribers, an art gallery is the way to go.
Pic-Time also offers client galleries, but they are directed to existing interactions with customers from photo shoots like weddings.
Imagine art galleries as their own online store. You can basically offer everything from calendars to huge metal prints. The advantage here is that everything, from the order confirmation to the production and shipment, is taken over by Pic-Time or their suppliers. Hassle-free.
Pricing
We have to start with the uncomfortable stuff. You give some, you get some.
Obviously, Pic-Time time is not a free service. I have to say that I’m kind of glad that we are living in a world where quality products are supposed to cost money. People that are hiring photographers tend to forget that at times.
Setting up an Art gallery, or a store like the one I’d linked to earlier will throw you back by either 10 or 17 USD a month (15% commission or no commission).
*whisper* I’ve been working with the guys for a bit and have an affiliate code if you’re on a tight budget (it’ll be on the end of the article).
Pic-Time has special offers quite regularly, so if you wait a little bit you might be able to get a dollar or two off on both subscription models.
There is also a 30-day free trial for you to see if this is something you can generate income with or not.
You might need some hours to set everything up tho! Time is money too, so see it as an investment.
The print store/gallery setup
Once you decide to go for the trial, this outlay is what you got. On the left side, you have the navigation panel, in the middle is the analytics part and the workflow is on the right.
Head to the art galleries part and then use the new gallery icon to get going.
Name and Cover
There are a few things that we have to go through. To start, name your first gallery and upload a cover photo that will be the thumbnail displayed in the overall art gallery later.
You can choose the focal point option to decide on the visual center of your picture. That ensures that it will be displayed well on the main page.
Photo (Print) upload
It’s great if you, at this point, have already prepared the photos you’re planning to use in that gallery so that you can bulk upload and edit them. It will save you a lot of time.
The upload itself can take some minutes, so keep in mind that you do not have to wait till the end of all the high-res photo uploads to continue setting up your gallery.
Gallery Setup
Here you have a few things that will take a bit more time to get done.
First, you can decide if you like to have your photos watermarked or not (I personally never saw the point in it).
Then there’s the SEO description that can help to rank your store in search engines. It could be something as simple as:
hi, this is the official print store of till daling
The description is maximally simplified! But hey, SEO optimization is a bit much for this, you can get into it later.
The price lists and email packages are more complex.
But if you head over to the default price list, things are easier to understand.
Price List
In the default price list, you can see all the products that can be displayed in the shop. Products with a checkmark are available for purchase.
By default that is everything. It is most likely not what you want.
After some back and forth, I stuck to only wood-framed and metal prints.
If you choose individual products, you get more options to adjust.
The default for the metal prints is, for example, high gloss, mid-gloss, and satin. Again, everything is checked by default. It is your turn to identify the specifications you would like to sell and select a print laboratory for fulfillment.
Now you also have to decide on the actual store price. The production cost is on the left, and the profit is on the right.
Depending on where you are in your career and what profit margins you need, you can either increase or decrease the sales price.
Email packages
Now that you’ve updated your default price list, you can set the email packages to default and change them in the settings of the navigation panel.
Pic-Time made it pretty simple for art galleries to mark everything relevant with a red dot. As long as you check these boxes, you should be good to go.
Adding the products
To finally get your products into the store, head over to the art gallery tab and click “add products”. My personal recommendation is to plan upfront and always go for the batch-adding process.
- Choose photos
This should be self-explaining.
2. Product variants
You can now choose which of the products you set up in the price list should be available from the photos you selected.
3. Descriptions
The name and item description should be self-explaining.
4. Product Variant Review
In this last step, you can change the product variant name (I left it to default), the way you want to display it (product image or actual photo) extra description, and the individual product price.
The latter can be helpful if you’d like the price to differ from the default catalog.
If you click “done” you will automatically add all product variants to the store.
Store outlay
In the store, you can make visual adjustments by hovering over “style”. Choosing a different grid will affect the arrangement of the individual products. If you would like to put more emphasis on a certain picture, hover over it and then drag the handlebars to adjust the size. The size adjustment only works in the “special” grid.
To rearrange the photographs within the grid drag and drop them to the place where you prefer them to be.
You can also add a cover photo or cover video by editing the title area. Everything you write in the text box will appear as a description right below the title and next to your cover photo or cover video.
Set the gallery as online
Make sure to set the status of the individual gallery from offline to online, and you should be good to go.
Finished store
When you have set up a few different art galleries, your main store page will look somewhat like this.
Embed into your own website
Through the share button on the main art page, you can also integrate the store into your personal website. Click integrate and choose your option. For WordPress, you can copy the code and paste it into a plain text module.
You're done! Up and running, now the marketing efforts begin :D
Good luck with that one!
PS: If you want to sign up at Pic-Time and sell your own prints, we both get one month off if you use the code: TILLDALING
You know the game ;)