Successfully Sell Your Work On Imagekind Part II – An Interview With Michael Longfellow

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Dec 3rd, 2007 | By admin | Category: Interviews

This is the second in a series of interviews with Imagekind photographers.

Michael Longfellow sells his photos of Cape May, a seaside resort in New Jersey, on Imagekind. To find out more visit his CapeMayX website, and take a look at his Imagekind Galleries.

How long have you been selling your photos on Imagekind?

Since this past Spring.

You’re listed amongst the bestsellers on Imagekind. How long did it take you to achieve this level of sales?

A couple of months.

What three pieces of advice would you give to a photographer who wants to successfully sell his or her work on Imagekind?

1. Post your best work. Photoediting is a part of your audience responsibility. There’s no advantage to volume unless of course it’s all great work. But even then, each image should tell its own unique and intriguing story.

2. Tell unique and intriguing stories. Certainly the photograph is the primary point of interest, but don’t discount the value of a creative title and descriptive text that furthers the narrative and gives people something to connect with.

3. Choose the best frame or canvas. ImageKind provides so many creative options but that open ended choice can intimidate and overwhelm some people. Especially if they’re not completely comfortable ordering things online to begin with, let alone having to select which size, frame, matte, or glazing option they should choose. The “purchase as the artist intended” button can help present the best display solution for each of your photos so use it.

For my work, I decided to focus primarily on the canvas prints (though I use frames too) because they look so great and really add an aesthetic magic to the types of shots I take. That canvas mystique has become part of my brand. Any time you can differentiate yourself you’ll have an advantage and will stand out from the crowd.

Tell us three effective things a photographer can do to promote and market his work at Imagekind?

1. Promote beyond the ImageKind site. Not everyone is going to find you through the ImageKind service. You want to find and build your audience in everything you do which requires multiple approaches to increase your visibility. Gallery events, mailings, building relationships with magazine editors in your niche, fundraisers. These types of activities can all help to get you additional exposure.

2. Understand your brand, and who your audience is. As a photographer, you’re in the communications business. The more you understand that it is your goal to create an audience and market to them, the better position you’ll be in to find those channels where your audience is most likely to be exposed to your work.

I know many photographers may cringe at the notion that they have to market or brand themselves, but let me say it’s going to happen whether you agree with me or not. So why not be proactive and smart about it to maximize your chances for success.

Brand is a somewhat elusive and bandied about term, but at the core this refers to a promise of value that is expected. All your work, in a total and ongoing way will create your brand, your promise of value that is expected. Are you high end? Bargain basement? Middle of the road? Is your work bold and unique, or soft and quiet? Do you believe in your work or are you just wondering and hoping something good will happen?

Take the reins for your own brand creation and development. You’ll get much more enjoyment out of the process and will be able to more effectively adjust to changing market conditions.

You have a very impressive website at capemayx.com. I’m assuming your business model works something like this: Visitors searching for information about Cape May find the site. They keep coming back to read the blog and for the latest news. From the website they are directed to your site at Imagekind where they can buy prints.

You also hold promotional events in the town itself. It seems to me you have a ready made audience in both the residents of the town and the visitors who would like a souvenir of their holidays. Have I analysed this correctly? Is there anything you can add to help us understand how you market your work at Imagekind?

Thank you. CapemayX.com explores Cape May stories through video interviews and ongoing articles as well as photography. My model is built on the premise that every piece of content I create needs to monetize itself for resale, so the photography is a natural fit. But also, people love stopping by and checking out the photos every day, and with regular traffic I can monetize via advertising sponsorship.

I had always intended to offer images for sale but struggled to find a simple comprehensive online print and frame solution that could handle eveything from order to delivery. I probably looked at 50 companies before discovering ImageKind by accident. With ImageKind, the entire backend process is handled with absolute attention to the details and quality and customer service which were all vitally important factors to me.

I will always put my customer’s interests and satisfaction first and with ImageKind I know they’re taken care of so I can now focus on the creative and marketing parts. This really frees me up to try new things and have fun.

You have a relatively small number of photos for sale on your Imagekind site. Do you think you would sell more if you had more photos on the site or do you think it’s best to market a relatively small number of good quality images?

I made a conscious decision not to merely dump all my shots into the ImageKind environment. In less than a year I’ve built a catalogue of close to 600 quality photographs I could offer for sale. But it’s more important that I find what my audience responds to, and how and why my audience buys online. Though I’m still experimenting with the tactics I’ve learned that the key is to test.

This is probably the best piece of advice I can give. You need a mindset that gets jacked to test, tweak and commit yourself to a relentless pursuit of finding out what works. Every situation is different and you won’t know what works until you find out what works. I know that sounds very Yogi Berra-ish but it’s so true. Most people think you do one thing and that’s it, and when it doesn’t work out they give up. Don’t do that.

Keep trying new things, watch what others are doing. Try limiting the size of your prints. Set up galleries with special pricing. Create a main website that helps channel customers to your ImageKind page. Go until you find that edge, until you discover what works. Piece by piece I’m discovering what works so that eventually I can fold all my work into the model that generates the best results.

How closely do you analyze the stats on your Imagekind site? Can you tell us how many views you get each week, and what percentage of these convert into sales? In other words, in order to generate decent revenue from Imagekind, how many visitors do we need to drive to a site?

I get a decent amount of views each week, and on the sales end it’s picking up momentum. But I don’t get too caught up in the stats. It’s relative after all. I’d rather have 50 people that were my prime target audience looking at my work because I know five might purchase, versus 20,000 views from a general audience in which only one will buy. So really, don’t get too caught up in the stats to the point that you miss the point.

They do provide a general gauge of interest for your work so in that sense they’re good to check in on every now and then. But it’s better to focus on doing things out there in the real and online world to create great work, increase visibility and build your audience. And of course, keep honing your craft. If you do those things, the numbers will increase automatically.

It’s takes a lot of commitment to discover what works and what doesn’t, but the potential payoff is enormous. Crack the code, and because of tools like ImageKind, you’re now plugged in to your own world wide audience for viewing and sales. Each time someone orders a photograph you are making their world happier as well as giving yourself the means to keep doing what you love. How cool is that?

Anything else you’d like to add?

These are good times. There has never in the history of the world been a better time for photographers and all creative types to create, distribute and get paid for their work. I am constantly finding inspiration from the works of so many other talented people and it is my hopes that they find their own success to keep fueling new creations.

We now all have a fantastic opportunity to make a living doing what we love. And that’s a great thing. I hope some of my input helped and I wish everyone the best of luck. I’ll see you online!

Links

CapeMayX Website

Michael’s Imagekind Galleries