Selling photos online

How about selling photos online as a business? This article primarily focused on Etsy, until I found out on 2022.10.08, that Etsy charges $0.20 per item per 4 months. This makes Etsy quite incompatible with one my strongest points: market automation. Since then, focus in primarily on selling through an own webshop + through market places as extra.

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.
Why not include sales of physical products? That's surely a selling point, plus probably easy to do: Make a deal with a print shop to take care of this
Ask Rembrandt about his experiences with image sizes, ratios + PoD
How to sell through an own webshop? One idea: Post some images on Facebook + link to webshop.

Etsy - 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
Alternative file sizes upon request no problem

Ratios & max. dimensions:

2:3: 36" <=> 91.44cm → Largest dimension → 7,200x10,800 pixels
3:4: 24" <=> 60.96cm
4:5: 20" <=> 50.8cm
Din A up to A1: 27.56" <=> 70cm
11:14: 14" <=> 35.56cm

FineArtPrintBoutique - Printable Moroccan ornament photo

1 PDF file and 1 RTF file. These probably contain the link to cloud storage for the actual file download
DPI not specified
Provided in 5 ratios: 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, Din A, 11:14
Alternative file sizes upon request no problem.

Ratios & max. dimensions:

2:3: 36" <=> 91.44cm → Largest dimension → 7,200x10,800 pixels
3:4: 32" <=> 81.28cm
4:5: 30" <=> 76.2cm
Din A up to A1 (54.4x84.1cm): 33.11" <=> 84.1cm
11:14: 14" <=> 35.56cm

MetallyFlower - Summer botanical photography

The download contains a .txt file with 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 designated for 300DPI RGB:
6 images in portrait orientation, 9:16, 2916x5184 pixels
4 images in landscape orientation, 16:9, 5184x2916 pixels
Note that the other sellers evaluated so far, don't offer 9:16 at all
Remarkable that they aren't available in more ratios.

Resolution & max. size:

2916x5184 pixels <=> 9.72x17.28" <=> 24.69x43.89cm
The smallest dimension is the limiting factor: 9.72" <=> 24.69cm

LensOfMike - Forest River

Download directly from Etsy
For private and commercial use, except reselling
File formats the same as for ElegantFineArt - Brown Bear Wall Art.

Required photo resolution

What minimal resolutions are needed? What formats can be offered from pictures with given resolution?

DPI

DPI refers to the number of individual dots or pixels that are places in a line of 1 inch, or 2.54 cm
Matrix printers typically have 60 to 90 DPI
Inkjet printers achieve 300-720 DPI
Laser printers achieve 600-2,400 DPI

For selling photos, 300 DPI is standard, with 600 DPI as an option. 1,200 DPI is probably overkill.

Use 7,200x10x800 pixels

According to [4], these may be the most popular formats. This information isn't very reliable, but it's a good starting point:

Photo frames: 5x7"
Canvas print: 24x36" (2:3) <=> 60.94x91.44cm <=> 7,200x10,800 pixels. This is also the largest size offered by several sellers analysed above.

Conclusions:

Pictures should preferably be shot in 7,200x10,800 pixels
If you also want to offer pictures at 600 DPI: 14,400x21,600 pixels
If you also want to offer pictures at 1,200 DPI: 28,800x43,200 pixels.

Mobile phone Jeroen

Just to get a feeling for this stuff:

Resolution: 4032x2268 pixels (16:9)
At 300 DPI: 13,44"x7,56" <=> 34,14x19,20cm
Smallest dimension: 7,56" <=> 19,20cm

Retouched photo E.

1600x1062 ~ 16:9
At 300 DPI: 5.33x3.54" <=> 13.55x9cm.

This is quite small.

SKUs

I suspect that the most intuitive and ergonomical SKU system, is to just use the timestamp of the photo:

2022.11.07-09.34

or

20221107-0934

or

221107-0934

Include seconds or not? Sometimes more than one picture that eventually will be sold, will be shot within the same minute, but this will be rare. In such cases, just add the seconds - I don't think it's too important that the length of the SKU is fixed, as long as there is a fixed separator -
I think I prefer the first option: Despite the additional 3 dots, it seems more pleasant to the eye. Or maybe the second option? I don't like the third option
Avoid : for separators, as this wouldn't work on NTFS
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):

2022.10.07-21.38-1080x2220.jpg
2022.09.25-17.32-4032x2268.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:

WordPress site

Just use a WordPress site: It 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

Con:

Setup time for it needs customizaiton
Dependent on internet connection speed, which isn't great where we are now

Pro:

Integrates well with a webshop
Some functionalitey might already be there

MySQL Database + MySQL Workbench

Use a MySQL database + MySQL Workbench: A lot of control, but at the expense of ergonomics: Would be very unpleasant to work with.

File system + scripts

Just use your computer's file system. Descriptions would probably be text files. Maybe use some scripts to generate additional files or do other tricks? Importing into a webshop, wouldn't be much work (and isn't a priority right now).

Examples of scripts:

Generating download-pdf-file
Adding an access code to file names, so that customers can only download what they payed for
Generating additional file formats, including those for display on Etsy, and excluding those that have been done manually already (sometimes, cropping may best be done by a human)
Generate a file format description concerning the max. resolution that the image can be used for at 300DPI
Maybe generating templates for classification, to make this as efficient as possible
It would be very easy to include additional file formats, like PNG
Bulk upload to Etsy and/or webshop
Removing dead pixels - If this isn't done by the raw file processor