Some months ago I blogged about why I left ImageKind, a popular service that many photographers use to sell the prints of their work. That post still gets quite a few hits a day and an occasional comment or question. I then wrote about why I joined Zenfolio (you can see my Zenfolio account here), a similar yet a different service, and I get frequent emails asking for feedback about my experience there. Below is a review after I used Zenfolio for about 6 months now, with an update on sales progress.
In six months with Zenfolio, I made close to $600 in sales, about half of that in pure profit, which is mine to keep. Most of these sales came through people I knew outside of Zenfolio – some sales were to friends who wanted to buy my work, and others were to clients after a shoot, when they wanted to purchase prints for their walls. I use Zenfolio for two purposes – (1) public gallery that sells prints of the work that I shoot for sheer enjoyment, and, (2) private gallery that sells prints to my clients after a formal portrait shoot. In addition, two sales came to random strangers whose names I did not recognize, meaning, they either found me through Zenfolio marketing efforts, or through my web-site or Flickr. In addition to that, enough people used my referral code to open new Zenfolio account to pay for the first year of membership with Zenfolio. These numbers are of course not enough to make a living, but keep in mind that all I had to do to make these sales was to upload the images online. I did not have to worry about anything else, as Zenfolio takes care of printing, shipping and customer service. It’s also worth comparing these numbers to $50 I made from 6 months at Imagekind.
I love getting these emails from Zenfolio notifying me that I made a sale and immediately putting the request to transfer profits to to my Paypal account, which typically takes just a few hours to arrive.
I also like the flexibility in pricing my products. I offer discounts for my prints to clients that I bought a portrait session from me. I can offer discounts that last forever, or those that expire after a time. I also have multiple price lists, which helps when pricing certain private galleries.
I use their black fine art gallery template to present my fine art work, but they have other options available, which I also find to be elegant for certain types of photos. For instance, wedding photos look better with their wedding photos template.
In all the times that I used Zenfolio, I don’t remember a single time that the site was down, or was too slow.
I also love their admin panel. There I can see how many times my galleries were viewed, I can break it down by days and by images. I also use their sample license agreements to draft agreements when I’m licensing your work to third parties (which came in handy in the last few weeks when several buyers wanted to use some of my work in their magazines and advertising campaigns and I did not have to go to lawyer to draft the agreements). I can also see sales report breaking down each sale by sales price and profit minus the discount, and I can get a statements generated for various dates and categories, which helps tremendously for my accounting and tax records. Zenfolio knows I’m running a business and they built their engine from that viewpoint.
If you’re still looking for ways to sell your work, I recommend you seriously consider Zenfolio as an outlet to sell your work. If you want a $5 discount when opening a new account, please use the following referral code – “FAG-2KA-86E”.
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Wow that’s impressive that you’ve made that much money. I need to step up my game and improve my photography… that much money would help me get my dslr in no time! Lol.
Seriously though… out of curiousity’s sake… what kind of people tend to purchase your pics? Is it people that you’ve already set up a shoot with?
Ari –
Good question. The buyers that bought the most are (1) friends who like my work or do it as a favor to me (kind of like buying a book friend wrote that you know you won’t read otherwise), (2) clients from a formal shoot who feel it is a one way to thank me for pictures they enjoyed, since I typically deliver high res pictures as part of my shoot. Finally, (3) few people simply like the picture they saw on Flickr and they contact me asking how they can purchase a print, but most of sales come through the first two categories.
Hi Ivan,
Its cool you made few bucks out of it.
Yes I remmember I read your “imagekind” post. I am not sure if Zenfolio thing would work here in India.
Thanks for the review. I’ll need to pass it on to some friends that may consider using the service.
I’m curious what service plan you signed up for:
Basic, Unlimited or Premium? and why? I see basic only has 1 gb of storage….? thats less than 100 photos for me.
Navdeep
You’re likely correct. I think it’s primarily for US based customers, since they use US printing labs.
Andrew
I signed up for Premium account. That’s the only option that gives you a chance to earn profit on your sales. Unlimited storage is nice too. You can upload few Gb from a wedding shoot and not worry about it.
Thanks for the info, too bad you can’t make $$ from all account levels.
It really depends on what you’re looking for, if you’re looking for a site to upload your photos and not working about a storage limit then I think the medium and high end zenfolio accounts are excellent, and these work even if you are “overseas”. As for selling pictures then perhaps it’s not the greatest if you’re overseas as shipping etc will be done from the US. However you can compare the cost of shipping these overseas to the cost of doing it locally.
If you’re overseas you could also use this as a showcase and then just get your clients to order their choices from you; little bit more work involved but still not a bad solution.
The other site to check out is smugmug. They also have unlimited video storage options, which I think is a definite benefit for most people. It’s not really useful for me to have to store videos on Youtube and pictures on zenfolio, and I think that this is the major drawback of Zenfolio.
If you’d like a $5 discount at smugmug feel free to use this coupon code: MjmiE0xAHBhwQ that I found on the net. (This is not my code as I’m a zenfolio user).