101 QUICK AND EASY SECRETS FOR USING YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS- P30 potx

Selling Your Photography on Craigslist Craigslist offers classified advertising hosting for free. Got that? FREE! The site consists of close to 500 regions—usually cities and surrounding areas—each of which has its own website for classified listings for mostly that region only. Perhaps the easiest, cheapest way to sell your photography is on Craigslist. There’s no fee for posting an ad. Posting an ad takes less than five minutes. Before you post to sell, you have to register at https://accounts.craigslist.org/login/signup. All you do is type in your email and a verification code, and an email is sent to you with a confirmation link. After you click on that link, you create your password and accept the terms of service. Although there are almost no existing ads for print photography on Craigslist, there are ads for framed prints (see Figure 8.6). For this reason, I suggest that you only try selling framed prints on Craigslist. There are many category choices under which you can choose to sell your items. Probably the best choice for framed photography would be For Sale > Arts+Crafts. To post your ad, navigate to the city or region in which you reside. Click on Post to Classifieds at the top left of the window on that region’s page. In the next window, there will be links below the question, Making Big Bucks Selling Your Photos (and Donating Them,Too) ■ 131 Figure 8.6 An ad for a framed photo on Craigslist. “What type of posting is this?” Click on For Sale > Arts/Crafts for Sale. This will take you to a window with a Create Posting form. Fill it out with a description of the photograph, including the size of the print. You’ll also have to choose whether you want people to respond by emailing you directly or by “anonymizing” your email. (When you “anonymize,” they send a response to a Craigslist email, which gets forwarded to your email.) Next, upload your image(s). Now click Continue, and you’ll see what your ad will look like. Click Continue again, and you’ll be led to a verification code page. Type in the code, and your ad will be posted. Selling Your Photos at an Art/Street Fair Selling your photography on the street or in a park can be great fun. To get to the point of selling your work at the big festivals, you have to build a body of work. You’ll have to spend lots of time tweaking, printing, and framing your images. See Chapter 1 for details about those processes. The first step in selling at an art show or street fair is to go to one and look at what’s selling (see Figure 8.7). 132 ■ Making Big Bucks Selling Your Photos (and Donating Them,Too) NOTE Include a picture (or pictures) of your framed photo. You’re allowed up to four. To avoid glare, don’t use flash; use a high ISO to take the photo. NOTE On the page where it asks for the type of posting you want, there’s a warning to posters not to cross-post, which means you’re not supposed to post the same ad in multiple cities or in multiple categories. NOTE If anyone is coming to your home to look at your work, be careful. Feel the person out in a phone conversation to make sure his or her purpose is to come and look at your artwork and nothing else. You’ll probably see that artists who show at fairs are very experienced with continuity in their body of work. (In other words, their photographs have a similar look.) Some artists sell flower photos, for example; others concentrate on regional landscapes. I’ve even seen one artist whose body of work consists of golf-course photographs. If you get on the big-show circuit, there’s prize money to be had. Most of these festivals are juried shows, which means a jury (panel) chooses the work that goes into the show. Some big art festivals in the United States are the Sausalito Art Festival (Labor Day weekend), Coconut Grove Arts Festival (President’s Day weekend), Cherry Creek Arts Festival (Denver, Independence Day weekend), and the Old Town Art Fair (Chicago, mid-June). For a list of the biggest art festivals, go to artfaircalendar.com and click on Best Art Fairs in the page links on the left side of the window. Making Big Bucks Selling Your Photos (and Donating Them,Too) ■ 133 Figure 8.7 Photography in a San Francisco art show. Competition to get in the big art festivals is keen. There are more than 1,200 artists who apply for about 230 spaces at the Sausalito Arts Festival. At most art festivals, you have to submit five images that are representative of your work—four of individual works and one of your work in a booth. You have to apply early, too. The Sausalito Art Festival takes place on Labor Day weekend each year; applications are due no later than March 1. For the Old Town Art Fair in Chicago, which takes place in mid-June, you have to have your application in by mid-December the year before. Other regulations for the Sausalito Art Festival include: ❈ Artists must have an artist statement. ❈ Only limited, signed and numbered works. ❈ Artist has to buy a Sausalito business license. ❈ Artists have to pay California sales tax on their sales. Finally, you can’t forget the booth fees. Single-booth fees can range from $750 at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival to $1,150 at the Sausalito Art Festival. Street Fairs Many street fairs are open to artists (which includes photographers). Art has become a mainstay, from yearly festivals, such as the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair in San Francisco, to weekly farmers’ markets all over the country, which include local art into the mix of fresh produce and live performances. VillageFest in Palm Springs, California, takes place every Thursday night all year long. To get your digital photography included in that event, you have to write a letter of intent and include photos taken of the artist and showroom (including pictures of the process of making the digital photographs), photos of finished products (framed photography or matted photography), and a photo of your booth layout. If you’re not yet ready for the festival circuit, there are other things you can do to make money by selling your photography on the ground. Try smaller art shows sponsored by local organiza- tions. Other ideas to sell your photos on the ground are discussed the next section. Selling Your Framed Photos at a Café, Art Gallery, or Consignment Store If you’re not quite ready to dole out the bucks and time for one of the big art festivals, there are other alternatives for selling your photography on the ground. You can sell your photographs in cafés, consignment stores, art galleries, and even stores that sell home furnishings. 134 ■ Making Big Bucks Selling Your Photos (and Donating Them,Too) While you do, you can build up a unit of work so you can have additional items to sell when it comes time to apply for a spot in an art festival. To get started, browse the local stores and small art galleries and see what’s out there. If you want to sell your photograph locally, take pictures of local landscapes, monuments, and attractions. For example, I live in the Southwest. My motel signs from this region of the country sell well. I’ve seen photographers in Los Angeles do well selling photos of beach scenes and palm trees, not to mention the Hollywood sign. If you’re selling photos on consignment, you’ll usually get a form upon which the consigner will record what items you have given him, the selling price of those items, and the percentage he gets when they sell. Every month (more or less), you’ll check with the consigner to see whether your images have sold. If they have, you’ll get a check along with a form that lists the sold items, what price they’ve sold at, and the percent deducted for commission. You’ll also probably have to replace the sold items with new items (so the store’s walls are filled with your work). There are other deals you can work out where you get paid for your work up front. I had a deal with a home furnishing store where I got a fixed amount of money when the store accepted my photos for sale and the rest of the money when the photos sold. In that case, I invoiced each time I dropped off the photographs at the store. The invoice included the photos that I delivered along with the photos that sold with the money I was to be paid. To find out how many photos I had sold, I had to call the store for them to count them up before I invoiced. Although at first your business might not be all that lucrative, when you make that sale, it really puts a smile on your face. Making Big Bucks Selling Your Photos (and Donating Them,Too) ■ 135 PRICING YOUR PHOTOS One of the big questions often asked when selling your photographs is how much you should charge for them.That depends on how much money you put into making them and how much commission you are being charged. My photos were not aimed at high-end collectors; they were strictly sold as home accessories. Since that was the case, I didn’t go with costly framing and matting. I would purchase the most inexpensive acid-free mats I could find (usually $2 to $4 apiece). I would do my best to get frames wholesale from a dealer in LA (usually $15).When I considered these prices and added $3 per print for ink and paper, I found that I would spend about $20 for a framed image. I’d sell the framed images for $70 to $100. My profit without the commission would average $60. Usually the commission was 40 to 60 percent, making my final profit about $30 per framed photo. . “anonymizing” your email. (When you “anonymize,” they send a response to a Craigslist email, which gets forwarded to your email.) Next, upload your image(s). Now click Continue, and you’ll see what your. the local stores and small art galleries and see what’s out there. If you want to sell your photograph locally, take pictures of local landscapes, monuments, and attractions. For example, I live. create your password and accept the terms of service. Although there are almost no existing ads for print photography on Craigslist, there are ads for framed prints (see Figure 8.6). For this