Lots of Visitors but Low Sales
I get a lot of emails, over a thousand emails per day. The majority is spam, and I have an extremely effective anti-spam system that cuts out at least 99% of the spam. But from time to time, I receive emails asking for help. Here's a recent one from Kathy:
I have been taking soccer photos of my kids and their team mates for years and giving them away. This year, I put my photos on SmugMug and posted over 10,000 photos for this season. I've had plenty of visitors but sales are dismal. My prices are reasonable.
Any ideas for what I can do?
When sales are dismal, there are 2 main reasons:
- Nobody knows you exist. Either through bad or poor advertising, or you are targeting the wrong people.
- There is no real market for the product or the market is much smaller than you thought.
How many people asked for the free photos before you started selling? If you had many people asking for your photos, and don't want to pay, you will need to go upscale.
Suggestions
- Get the emails of the parents/kids and send them a notice that you have their photos.
- Announce that the photos will be on the SmugMug website for only 30 days. So they will have to act or the photos will disappear and/or price will significantly go up.
- Raise your prices to produce larger/higher quality prints.
- Offer packages, photobooks or slideshows…
- Use your kids to tell their team mates that the photos are ready and when they've been uploaded.
- Ask the coaches of the opposing teams if you can hand-out your cards/flyers to their teams parents.
- …