In this post, I want to tell you about a principle that I think is more important than any sales, marketing or workflow technique. I treat this principle as a rule in my work:

Your product must be the base of the business you are
trying to build – and your product must be good.

I’ll explain…

As a photographer, your product is your photo. If your photos are poor, you can’t expect your business to succeed – it’s a no-brainer when you think about it.

To make a living from your photography, you need to sell your work - this constitutes a business. Customers drive your business, and to attract them, your photo must be good.

What makes a photo good? That’s a complex philosophical question that we’ll save for another post, but from a business perspective, you need to define your market and meet their needs. There are thousands of photographers seeking to sell their work – how are you going to differentiate your work? I see so many photographers who aren’t offering anything new. Your photos don’t have to be unique, but they should be good – high-quality and targeted to your customers’ demands.

Like I said, it’s really a no-brainer, but it’s not something that photographers readily consider – we’re usually thinking about the technical and artistic merit of our work, rather than its value as a marketable product.

Workflow + Presentation + Marketing = Sales?

You can streamline your workflow, present your photos online beautifully, and market your imagery like crazy. But, in the end, your time and effort will only translate into sales if the photo is worth buying – if it’s got value to your potential customer.

As an aside - have you ever counted up the amount of time and effort that goes into each photo or shoot? Do you ever recoup the cost of this time when you sell a picture or charge for your time? Is your product worth the time you spend on it? This is a topic I’m looking forward to discussing soon…

The idea of ‘photo as product’ is really pivotal for me. I believe this principle to be at the heart of any photographer’s efforts to sell photos and make a living doing what you enjoy, especially in the online world when your competition is so unrestricted.

I’ll be elaborating on some of the points raised here in later posts, but please feel free to comment on my thoughts. I’m sure not everyone would agree with me and I’m looking forward to discussing the matter further.

A final thought…

As the digital photography market grows, it seems like every man, woman, and their family pet are taking digital photos and posting them on Flickr, Facebook, MySpace and the other social/media networking sites. Digital photography makes it easy, and some of these new-breed photographers venture into the world of traditional photography, doing weddings, portraits, events etc, for their friends and family.

Now, I have nothing against this – I started out in a similar way – but my point is that The Internet is flooded with photos, and more people are starting to sell their photos online. How do you think this will affect photography as we’ve known it in the past? Are we already seeing some of these effects?

Welcome to the first post of the PhotoMerchant Blog.

PhotoMerchant’s first appearance online is not quite the beginning, for me - it’s… well, somewhere in the middle. I’ve been working on Project PhotoMerchant for a while now, and getting the blog online is an exciting step, but there’s more to come. Let me give you a brief profile of PhotoMerchant…

Who we are

I’m Derek and PhotoMerchant is my brain-child. I’m a software developer with a keen interest in photography. Through my own experiences and my involvement with the photographic community, I’ve recognised that photographers today also need to know a lot about computing and digital technology to be able to work efficiently and produce high-quality images. But no-one wants the technology getting in the way of what you can do - it needs to be transparent and easy, and it needs to add something that wasn’t available before.

My specialty is the development of web applications. After spending a lot of time participating in online forums, talking with other photographers, and working through my own challenges, I’m keen to contribute to the photographic community by helping other photographers to take advantage of the opportunities that web technologies offer.

PhotoMerchant is more than just me. I work with a very talented team and hopefully through this blog, you’ll get to meet some of the other developers and designers working on the project with me.

What’s the project?

PhotoMerchant’s first foray into the web is via this blog. This blog will be a discussion of the ways photography, the web, and software intersect. Some of the topics I’m planning to look at in the first few weeks include:

• Workflow challenges - the challenges are many, but there are ways technology can help photographers.
• Sales - generating income from your work - how do you get customers to purchase? How do you make buying and selling easy (for you and the customer)?
• Presentation - using the web to showcase and sell your images.
• Time management - improving the way you work with customers and suppliers (print houses, couriers, etc.)
• Web - you’ve probably heard the term Web 2.0? There are some interesting developments here that may be useful to photographers.

But, as I said, the blog is ’somewhere in the middle’. I’ve got a lot to say about these topics, but I’ve also been working on developing some solutions to these problems. I’m not going to say much about that now, but will be revealing more in the weeks ahead.

I’d also be interested to get your thoughts on a number of different topics. I’ve placed a poll to the right of the page. Don’t hesitate to answer it, it takes 2 seconds!

I’m planning to post about three times a week. I hope you’ll stick with me - I’m really excited about what I’ve got to offer in the way of advice and solutions and I hope you find it valuable. To make sure you don’t miss a post, subscribe via the RSS feed and your comments are welcome.