Selling your work like a pro: becoming part of the 20%
1 – Introduction
I am often asked for recommendations by students who want to sell their work and generate income from the sale of their photographs. Usually these questions come from photographers who have tried to sell their work and have been unsuccessful and are wondering what to do next.
2 – Recommendations
My first recommendations is to revise your price list. Most photographers get it all wrong, to put it bluntly, when it comes to pricing their work. My second recommendation is to learn salesmanship. There are 2 types of sales: the first one generates a few % of my income, the second one generates 95% to 99 % of my income. Most photographers only make the first type of sales which means they miss out, or lose if you prefer, 95 to 99% of their potential income.
My third recommendation is to work on your marketing plan. Many photographers start selling in restaurants, bars or other public places in addition to their website. Those are the starting points of most artists. Unfortunately they are not enough to generate regular or significant sales.
To achieve regular significant sales you need to have a professional marketing plan tailored for your work, a plan designed to meet your financial goals and fit in your schedule. This is something that has to be worked out in order to become successful. Without a marketing plan you are left hoping for the best which is how most artists do it. This does not work and this is why most artists make very little, if any, money from the sale of their work.
3 – Becoming part of the 20%
The goal is to become part of the 20%. In any business, be it photography or any other product or service, 20% of the businesses take home 80% of the income. The other 80% share the 20% of the income that is left. In other words they get the crumbs while the top 20% share the pie, so to speak.
To make real money you need to be part of these 20%. This is true whether you want to do this part-time or full-time, and whether you want to do this now or later.
You need to learn, study and practice marketing to become part of these 20%. If you try to reinvent the wheel (meaning try to learn how to market your work on your own), it is virtually impossible to join the 20% because you have no idea what successful businesses are doing marketing-wise. They play close to the chest and what you see from the outside is not representative of what takes place behind the scene. In fact what you see is often misleading because while you may see their marketing materials, you have no idea what their marketing plan is.
The purpose of studying marketing and salesmanship is to give you this knowledge, bridge the gap between you and the 20 percenters and let you see what is really going on behind the doors so to speak. The goal is to learn what the 20% are doing that you are not privy to so that you can become one of them.
4 – The 2016 Alain Briot Marketing Seminar
I will be teaching a Fine Art Photography Marketing Seminar in Spring 2016. This will be a 2 day event and it will take place in Peoria, Arizona. Peoria is 30 minutes north of the Phoenix airport.
I will be teaching marketing techniques not featured in my Marketing Books. These are techniques I started using after I wrote the book (the book was written in 2009 a long time ago by current marketing standards).
This event is by invitation and places will be limited. I did not teach a marketing seminar for several years so I expect this one to fill out immediately.
If you are interested send me an email at: alain@beautiful-landscape.com with Marketing Seminar in the subject line. A discounted special offer will be available for the first registration.
I will email you detailed information about this Seminar upon receipt of your email. This information will have a list of all the subjects I will cover during the Seminar.
Alain Briot
http://www.beautiful-landscape.com
alain@beautiful-landscape.com
928-252-2466