Guide Shows How To Sell Fine Art Photography Online

To learn how PhotoShelter’s website and back-end tools can be used to improve online sales of your fine art photography, check out their new guide “The Fine Art Photographer’s Tour of Photoshelter.”

PhotoShelterFineArtPhotographersGuideThe 16-page guide talks about how to build an audience, attract new clients, and make the online buying process totally seamless.

The first section shows how PhotoShelter can help your brand remain front and center throughout the entire ordering process. The authors note that “Your brand’s overall look and feel are especially important because you are asking potential clients to see premium value in your work—and pay a price in accordance with that value.”

The second section highlights PhotoShelter themes that let your images speak for themselves: “We hear from art buyers again and again that the number-one thing they want when viewing a photographer’s work online is an easy-to-navigate site with all of the contact and purchasing information readily accessible. Fine art photographers should think of their website like a gallery show—you want it to be clean and free of clutter, and to showcase your images in a well laid out and thoughtful way.”

In the section on building an audience, PhotoShelter emphasizes the fact that their websites are optimized for SEO (search engine optimization): “If you appear at the top of search results, then you’ll get more visitors to your website and thus more potential clients. This means no Flash-based sites (Google and other search engines can’t ‘crawl’ these site) and a focus on page factors that affect your SEO ranking (page title, image captions, meta descriptions, etc.)

The guide emphasizes that fine-art photographers should be keywording and captioning all of their images and galleries with relevant terms that buyers might be searching for: “Gallery owners and artist reps tell us that their clients are using search engines more and more—for example, to purchase photos that commemorate a trip or event.”

The final section of the guide talks about some of the options for having your images printed and delivered to your clients. For example, you can use one of PhotoShelter’s four integrated print vendors or browse the PhotoShelter Print Vendor Network. Through this network of 220+ print vendors worldwide, you can link up with any vendor that matches your specific needs—whether it’s a lab in your neighborhood or closer to client overseas.  You can reduce shipping costs by having a fine-art print created and shipped from a lab that is closer to your where your customer lives.

Although PhotoShelter can totally automate the process of accepting and processing orders for fine-art photo prints, you can choose to handle some parts of the process yourself. For example, if you want to sell signed, limited edition, or framed prints, you can make your own prints or work with the vendor you have been using for years.  Or, you can simply use the website as a “window into your business” and communicate with clients before they make a purchase. Even if you print and ship the order yourself, you can collect the payment online through PhotoShelter’s shopping cart.

LINKS

The Fine Art Photographer’s Tour of PhotoShelter

About PhotoShelter