Selling photos online: verschil tussen versies

Versie van 8 okt 2022 08:13

How about selling photos online as a business? This article focuses on Etsy.

Brainstorm

Proposition: Stunning nature photos, for home printing or desktop wallpaper
Communication of the proposition: It's remarkable, how well you can communicate your proposition: Just show a picture! This can even be done by including images in banners for advertisement through Google Display
It's really easy if you only provide a file with a download link to own storage: Than you can manage the downloads yourself
Easy to combine with an own webshop, especially since the downloads can be combined (?) and for marketing purposes: Lure customers from Etsy to your own store + use example images for marketing
Use Facebook and similar platforms for marketing.

Examples

Classifications

Sellers

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElegantFineArt - 153 sales - 95 items - Prices around 42zł
https://www.etsy.com/shop/FineArtPrintBoutique - 8.018 sales
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MetallyFlower - Nature photos from Ukraine - 3.192 sales, 222 items, prices around 140zł
https://www.etsy.com/shop/PracticCo - 1.318 sales, 32 items, around 40zł
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheRandomImage - 898 sales - Prices around 50zł4
https://www.etsy.com/shop/UkraineInYourHeart - 602 sales, 96 items, prices around 50zł
https://www.etsy.com/shop/lensofmike - 342 sales, 317 products, prices around 30zł

Products

Propositions & selling points

Custom pictures created within 48h
Pictures where a deceased person is included from a separate photo: [1]
Custom minimalist portrait [2]
For homemaking
Desktop wall paper example
Beautiful pictures
Amazing & unique gifts

Markets

Home making » Wall decor » Photography
Art & Collectibiles » Photography
Unique presents.

Market size

No idea, but it's surely a real market, and not something imaginary
Supposingly, this market became much more difficult over the last two decades, due to the advent of smartphones.

Classification

Where on Etsy do you find downloaded photos?

Menus

Jewelry & Accessories: -
Clothing & Shoes: -
Home & Living
- Home
  - Bathroom
  - Bedding
  - Food & Drink
  - Furniture
  - Home Decor
    - Wall Decor
      - Photography
        Photography prints nature
        
        Photography prints nature digital
  - Kitching & Dining
  - Lighting
  - Office
  - Outdoor & Gardening
  - Rugs
  - Spirituality & Religion
  - Storage & Organization
- Bath & Beauty
- Pet Supplies
Wedding & Party
- Invitations & Paper
- Party Supplies
- Wedding Accessories
- Wedding Clothing
- Wedding Decorations
- Wedding Gifts
- Wedding Jewelry
Toys & Entertainment: -
Art & Collectibles
- Photography
  - Color; Black & White; Sepia
  - Shop by interest
    - Photography
    - Travelling
    - New York
    - Chicago
    - History
    - Music
  - Find something you love: Individual photos
- Collectibles
- Dolls & Miniatures
- Drawing & Illustration
- Fiber Arts
- Glass Art
- Mixed Media & Collage
- Painting
- Prints
- Sculpture
Craft Supplies & Tools: -
Vintage: -

Styles

Styles offered at this filters:

Contemporary
Art deco
Bohemian & eclectic

Coastal & tropical
Country & farmhouse
Gothic

Lodge
Mid-century
Minimalist

Rustic & primitive
Victorian

File formats on offer

In what format do sellers provide files? Some examples:

ElegantFineArt - Brown Bear Wall Art:

5 JPG files at 300 DPI in different ratios, suitable for different formats
Ratios: 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, Din A, 11:14
Alternative file sizes upon request no problem

FineArtPrintBoutique - Printable Moroccan ornament photo:

1 PDF file, 1 RTF file. Maybe the RTF file contains the license? Strange choice. Also strange to offer the file in PDF, rather than JPG or PNG
DPI not specified
Provided in 5 ratios: 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, Din A, 11:14
Alternative file sizes upon request no problem.

MetallyFlower - Ukrainian seller Summer botanical photography:

The download is only a .txt file, which contains a link to cloud storage (e.g., Dropbox), from where the actual photos can be downloaded as a zip file
This zip file contains 10 jpg images, all 300DPI RGB:
6 images in portrait orientation, 9:16, 2916x5184 pixels
4 images in landscape orientation, 16:9, 5184x2916 pixels.
Remarkable that they aren't available in more ratios

SKUs

I suspect that the most obvious SKU is just the timestamp of the photo. This should include seconds, as sometimes more than one good picture will be made per minute. So SKUs would be like

2022.11.07-21.34.56

or

20221107-213456

I think I prefer the first option: Despite the additional 5 dots, it's more pleasant to my eye
Avoid : for separators, as this wouldn't work on NTFS
Maybe its overkill to include seconds. Or maybe only do so when needed
Only use lower case characters
Only use ASCII characters. This also counts for tags. So a picture shot in Łódz would get lodz as tag.

File names

This file name structure is primarily for internal usage. For marketing (like on a webshop), maybe the tags come first. And maybe in downloads, other factors play a role.

SKU & resolution

File names should start with the SKU, but may create additional information, in a consistent pattern:

Resolution in pixels for the x- and y axis → I'm quite sure this is indispensable
Ratio?
DPI?
Tags.

Examples (without tags):

2022.10.07-21.38.23-1080x2220.jpg
2022.09.25-17.32.33-4032x2268.jpg

This is 33 characters. On most file systems, the limit is 255 characters. 4 more characters will be needed for the extension (probably .jpg) and maybe one more character just to be sure. This leaves 187 characters still available.

Ratio & DPI

Once the resolution is specified, the ratio and max. DPI can be deduced from there. It would be redundant to include those, but may be very practical
Besides redundancy, there is another reason for not including these additional aspects: Consistency in file names would be very helpful, so these fields should therefore be included for all images. That's a lot of work for something that is maybe not really needed
Another reason for not including this information: Less space for tags (if we choose to include tags in file names).

Classification system

How to efficiently classify pictures? This not only includes tagging, but also providing descriptions. Ergonomics of the interface would be important, for this is manual work. Except for website, I never make anything with 'real-time interfaces'. Some thoughts:

A WordPress site: - Would need some custom functionality for updating file names and invoking mogrify or something different, but a lot of functionality may be already there, including image presets and description field. Along the way, this could also be the site where we sell them ourselves - Would actually be really practical!
MySQL database + MySQL Workbench: A lot of control, but at the expense of ergonomics: Would be very unpleasant to work with.

@@ Regel 11: / Regel 11: @@
 == Examples ==
-Classifications:
+=== Classifications ===
 * https://www.etsy.com/listing/516345627/joshua-tree-sunset-print-framed-desert
@@ Regel 19: / Regel 19: @@
 * https://www.etsy.com/search?q=digital+photos
-Sellers:
+=== Sellers ===
 * https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElegantFineArt - 153 sales - 95 items - Prices around 42zł
@@ Regel 27: / Regel 27: @@
 * https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheRandomImage - 898 sales - Prices around 50zł4
 * https://www.etsy.com/shop/UkraineInYourHeart - 602 sales, 96 items, prices around 50zł
+* https://www.etsy.com/shop/lensofmike - 342 sales, 317 products, prices around 30zł
-Products:
+=== Products ===
 * https://www.etsy.com/listing/879654984/white-wildflower-field-photo-floral - Downloadable product