If you're wondering how to monetize your photography Instagram account then I think you'll find this post interesting. Instagram is great place to display your photography because it lends itself to visual images really well. Photographers and artists can have an absolute field day when it comes to monetizing their accounts because the product is already on their timelines, You'd be surprised how much money people would pay for your photography. If you're like most people that post photography to Instagram then you're probably interested in growing your account but you might also have selling your work in the back of your mind but you're not quite sure how to do it. The truth is, selling your photography can be expensive to do because you often need to get your work printed in batches by professional printers before you've even sold any. This means your expenses are already very high and it can then be stressful having to chase sales just to even make your money back. Luckily, the internet has many many ways for you to monetize your Instagram photography and depending on what kind of photography you do, you could make money selling your photography sooner then you think. Selling your photography on Instagram - how does your account look?If your photography Instagram account already has a lot of engaged followers then you can probably skip this bit but I still think it's worth taking note of what I'm going to say here. Before getting into how to sell your photography on Instagram, you need to make sure that your account is in check. You don't necessarily need to have a huge following but you will need engaged fans on your page. That's why I advise your photography account to appeal to a certain kind of person so you can niche down even further into the various categories of photography. For example, if you take photos or buildings or animals then you already have a certain kind of follower that's following you. If you're niched down into different kinds of photography subject matters (instead of taking photos or random things) then it will be easier to sell your work because the people that are following you are following you for a certain reason. You also need to make sure that your bio is filled out properly and looks interesting. Make sure your bio has an interesting and eye catching description. These are just the basics of having a solid looking Instagram account so people will take you seriously. Okay, let's assume that you've had your account for a while and you want to try and sell your niche photography to your engaged followers on your Instagram account. 1. The old fashioned way You could sell your photography the 'old fashioned way'. Again, you could go online and find a decent print website where you could get your photography printed onto high quality paper or canvas and delivered to you. This method is old fashioned because it used to be the only way you could sell your art. You'd have to pay upfront and usually in bulk. For example, if you want to order prints of your photography, you have to order in batched of 25, 50 or 100 units. You can see how this could get expensive, especially if you don't think you'll be selling too many to begin with. The physical stock has to be stored somewhere so it doesn't get damaged in any way. It also means you'll have to find space to store it until you make any sales. Something else to consider is the fact that you'll have to ship all the orders yourself which means multiple trips to the post office a day if you start selling a lot of units. You'll also have to factor in the shipping costs for every item you send in the mail. Whilst this method is expensive upfront, the benefit is you get to see what your product looks like before you send it off to customers. This allows you to quality control every unit you sell. Personally I think that this method could be good if you don't sell many units on your photography on Instagram yet but it's certainly not the best way if you start to sell a lot. Intead, you'll want to eventually automate your orders without having to do any shipping yourself. All you want to worry about is taking photos and making sales! 2. Sell your photography on Instagram using POD servicesAnother method to sell your photography on Instagram is to get your orders automated so you can focus on taking photos instead of fulfilling orders every day. To do this, you can take advantage of print on demand or POD websites where you can upload your photography and add your photos to various different items. Instead of limiting yourself to only selling your photography in the form of prints, you can sell your photography on items like mugs, t shirts and much, much more. This is really handy because some people might not be able to afford prints of your work which will usually be priced a lot higher than mugs or t shirts. By only selling prints you're leaving out a lot of potential customers who might of otherwise wanted to buy your work if they could afford it. Selling your photography on not only prints but on merch can be a real game changer! Introducing Teechip.comI've written extensively about Teechip.com in the past on this site because it's something that I stumbled across years ago when I was trying to monetize my art Instagram account and I really enjoyed the experience. Teechip.com is a POD website that allows you to upload your photography, art and designs to lots of different merchandise for free. It's got a really simple user interface which makes it really easy to get started, even if you don't have much technical ability. The reason why Teechip is so good for helping you sell your photography is the fact that you can upload your work once and have it applied to over 25 different products! Let's look at a few examples of how you can do this. To show you how easy it is, I'm going to show you how to upload your photography to a canvas print and then we'll look at adding photography to a mug. I'm going to use a stock image to give you an idea of what your photography would look like on these merch items. Example one: uploading photography to a canvas printIt's worth noting that I'm using a 14x11 horizontal canvas in this example but there are other canvas sizes not to mention posters, bed sheets and much more you can add your photography to! Once you've created a seller account on Teechip.com, simply navigate to 'launch campaign' and you'll be able to upload a design before selecting which items you'd like to apply it to. Here I grabbed an awesome photo of a beach from Pixabay.com, submitted by David Musk. Once you have selected your items you can edit them. Here, you can stretch your design to fit the canvas or you can leave a bit of white around the edges like I have done here. Next, you can preview your work on this same page which is really handy because you'll be able to see what it looks like in your Teechip store. It's also worth noting that you can change the canvas colour. Example two: upload your design to a mugIn this next example I'll show you what the photo looks like on a mug. Again, you can change the colour of the mug and drag and drop it to fit the item before previewing it to make sure you like the way it looks. Note that on this page you can keep adding more products to preview what your work will look like on them (more than 25 different ones) you could see what your photography looks like on t shirts or socks for example! Once you have decided on the different products you'd like to sell your photography on, you can skip to the pricing page. On this page you can view the base cost of each product. For example, the 14x11 canvas has a base cost of $14 so you'll need to add your margin on top which is what you'll make in profit. For example, you could sell your canvas for $25 and make $11 per sale which isn't bad considering you don't need to worry about packing and shipping the canvas' yourself. In the mug example, the base price is $4 so if you sold your mugs for $10, you'll make $6 per sale. Again, not bad, especially if you start selling quite a few units. Create a store for all of your photographyOnce you've played around with adding your photography to different merch items, you can add a storefront. The great thing is, you can have multiple storefronts! This is really handy because the items you design will all be displayed for sale in your storefront. You can set your own URL to your storefront which can be then used as the link in your bio to sell your photography on Instagram; Sell your photography on Instagram with campaignsWhilst you can sell your items on your Teechip storefront, you can also create limited campaigns. This way, you can create scarcity and limit the amount of units you sell between set days. I've found this to be a really effective way of generating sales in Instagram. The idea is to post images of your products on Instagram with the price tag + how many days are remaining on the current campaign. To maximise sales, Teechip also allows you to generate coupon codes to allow your followers to buy your items at a discounted rate. For example, you could set your campaign to run between 1st Jan to 30th Jan and post several images of your product during this time period, stating how long is left on the current campaign before you make it unavailable again. Like your storefront link, you can put your campaign URL in your bio instead. This works great for one-off pieces that you want to make exclusive. 3. How to sell photography on Instagram with a mailing list and freebiesAnother way to sell your photography on Instagram is to get people to sign up to you email list. However, people aren't going to sign up for your email list for no reason. You're going to need to get the to opt in with a freebie.
This way, you can build trust with them and they'll get something for free. You can do this by signing up mailing list providers like Mailerlite.com that will let you have a free account up to 1000 email subscribers. Once you've got yourself an account you'll be able to start an automation sequence. This is easier than it sounds. What you'll want to do is allow people to sign up to your email list and then recieve your freebie in their emails once they've signed up. What freebie could you offer them though you might be thinking? Perhaps you could send people to a link where they could download and print one or a handful of your photos for free. Once they have signed up and claimed your freebie photos you can set an email to go out to them automatically at any time or date you want. This is useful because it means that you can follow up with them and offer them items for sale. They've already shown that they are interested in your photography so they'll likely be interested in buying something from you. This is what many large companies do when you use your email address with them. It's why you get so many random emails trying to sell you things. That's why you shouldn't bombard your email subscribers with a constant amount of emails, instead you should only send them relevant emails when it makes sense to. For example, if you add a new item to your store, you might consider sending an email out to your subscribers to let them know. Or, if you have another freebie that you just made, you might want to send them all a link. The more of a natural relationship you keep with them, the more likely they will become loyal buyers. Of course, it helps if your photography is awesome! Mailerlite makes it easy to create landing pages where people can sign up. Once they've signed up, everything is automated so you don't need to do anything else. Of course, you'll get a URL to your sign up page so you might want to put that in your bio and steer people towards it. You can do this buy posting images consistently of your freebies on your Instagram with text on the images telling people that your photos are available for free download in your bio. Have you personally had success selling your photography on Instagram? I'd love to hear in the comments!
6 Comments
|