Fine art photographers tour of photoshelter by Elie Angles

TABLE of CONTENTS 3 4 7

Introduction Your Brand—In One Single Online Experience Websites That Let Your Images Do The Talking

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Attract a Following & Build Your Audience Printing & Image Delivery that You (And Your Clients) Can Trust

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Introduction

ou’ve already shot the images. You’ve got compelling subject matter, strong composition, and great technique. You’re even making a few great sales, maybe through galleries or art fairs. But you still haven’t cracked the code to online sales—or maybe your online presence could just use a genuine update. Fine art photographers, like all photographers, need to make smart decisions about how to build an audience and market their work both online and off. Attracting new clients and customers—then making their experience with you totally seamless—is key to establishing and growing your fine art photography sales. That’s where PhotoShelter comes in. In the following pages, you’ll find an overview of how you can use our websites and online tools to help build a successful fine art photography business. From creating a website to delivering perfectly printed images, PhotoShelter has your back.

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Your Brand—In One Single Online Experience A

s a fine art photographer, your brand’s overall look and feel is especially important, because you’re asking potential clients to see premium value in your work—and pay a price in accordance with that value.

Forget website providers that force you to stay inside their box—PhotoShelter makes a point to showcase your brand, your images, and give your customers a better and more personal experience. Here’s how PhotoShelter helps your business’ brand remain front and center throughout the entire buying process.

Your Logo & Colors The benefit of having a unique identity is that it builds credibility with your audience and helps clients keep you in mind. If you haven’t already, consider investing in a designer to create a logo that speaks to your business and brand.

M. Scott Moon’s logo is clean and simple.

Each of our 10 template themes allows you to upload your own logo. And, with some simple customization, you can also change the background colors to match any color palette you’ve already established for your business. All this personalized branding is then applied to every page within your site, including any custom pages you build.

Phil Cooley Photography’s logo has a unique font and gradient

Patrick Laverdant tells the client what he offers right in the logo.

A Built-In Shopping Cart PhotoShelter’s fully integrated shopping cart ensures that your brand persists from the moment a customer lands on your website, all the way to the end point of sale where they submit their billing and shipping information. Read more about how a strong brand can set you apart and make you the obvious choice for clients in our free guide, 10 Branding Secrets for Photographers.

Your brand persists all the way through the checkout process.

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Seamlessly Integrate Your Blog Blogging is an important marketing tool for fine art photographers because it gives you a voice in the community, spreads the word about your business, and helps potential clients connect with your work (see our guide, The Photography Blog Handbook, for helpful hints and tools on this front). You can easily integrate your PhotoShelter website and a WordPress blog through our partnership with Graph Paper Press’ sleek, visually driven themes. The exciting part: it doesn’t take any web design experience. You’ll be able to match the look and feel of your PhotoShelter site and your blog with very little effort. And if you don’t have a WordPress blog, you can still easily link out to your blog in your PhotoShelter website’s main navigation.

Jay Goodrich is using the Modularity theme by Graph Paper Press to integrate his blog and portfolio website with PhotoShelter.

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Marry Your Own Website with Our Backend Tools Many PhotoShelter members manually customize their own websites with CSS/HTML to match their PhotoShelter pages to an existing portfolio website or blog. This instantly adds a fully branded shopping cart, image distribution and tracking system, social media tools, and much more—powered by PhotoShelter, at a fraction of the cost of doing it on your own. Award-winning photographer Jimmy Williams needed a website for his fine art photography archive that could provide him with the backend to run his business smoothly. Jimmy gets the best of both worlds with PhotoShelter: e-commerce and archive searching tools, while still getting the flexibility to customize his site so it matches the rest of his online presence.

Jimmy Williams uses PhotoShelter to host his fine art photography website so he can easily archive his work and sell prints to clients. Here’s how Jimmy has his galleries organized on the backend of his PhotoShelter account, and how it’s displayed on his website.

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Websites That Let Your Images Do The Talking

e hear from art buyers again and again that the #1 thing they want when viewing a photographer’s work online is an easy-tonavigate site with all 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.

Themes That Make Your Images Stand Out PhotoShelter Standard and Pro accounts come equipped with 10 readymade themes (our Basic account has one theme option, “Maui”), and each one can be uniquely customized to fit your needs. “Nolita” is a particularly popular theme among our fine art photographer members for its fresh looking and well organized design. See two examples of the Nolita theme to the right. All of our themes are designed to make your images the center of attention, with separate areas for your portfolio, searchable photo archive, private galleries, client proofing, and more. Check out our Examples Page to see what other members are creating for some inspiration as well.

Carlos Rubin’s PhotoShelter website, using the Nolita theme.

M. Scott Moon’s PhotoShelter website, using the Nolita theme.

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Multiple Ways to Showcase Your Work Even when you’re working with a theme, PhotoShelter’s customization options let you design a unique look and feel for your website. Your homepage can accommodate: • • • •

One large image up to 900 pixels wide A slideshow of one of your favorite galleries A list of all the galleries on your website A “photo wall” collage that showcases thumbnails from multiple galleries

To the right are some examples of PhotoShelter members who are using the various homepage customization options for their fine art photography. For instructions on how to set any of these up, see “Customizing Your Homepage” in PhotoShelter’s Support Center.

Catherine Armand showcases a gallery slideshow on her homepage.

Walter Arnold uses PhotoShelter’s photo wall feature to show off multiple galleries.

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Additional Pages to help reinforce your business It’s crucial that potential buyers are able to find all the information they need to either make a purchase on your site directly or contact you about a sale. Additional information, like an artist statement or description of some of your projects, may also help them establish a connection with your work—and be more likely to purchase it as a result. Remember, you may not know all potential buyers, so they should be able to get a sense for your work—as well as who you are from your site. Every PhotoShelter website comes equipped with two custom pages to help you do just that. These are blank webpages that can be named and designed however you like. The possibilities here are essentially endless.

Jeffrey Murray uses one of his custom pages to list his upcoming fine art fair shows.

Ken Kaminesky, a successful fine art photographer whose work has been shown in National Geographic, advises fine art photographers to create an FAQ page that is thorough and answers all questions a potential buyer might have. You might also consider including a list of upcoming shows, detailed information about your printing options, or even a promotional video that you’ve created to market your work. The main point to keep in mind is that art buyers often need to be reminded of the value in your work before they’re truly ready to buy.

Walter Arnold’s custom page has detailed information on his metal print options.

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Organization That Helps Clients Find The Perfect Image You might have hundreds, even thousands, of images that you want to organize into an online archive. Art buyers—from individual customers to institutions (corporate, galleries, or otherwise)—don’t want to be overwhelmed by your images online. They want to be able to find the right photo for them, in the easiest and most intuitive way possible.

Inside the Image Browser, you can create galleries (groups of images) and collections (groups of galleries) with varying levels of visibility and download access.

PhotoShelter lets you share specific images (or galleries of images) with individual clients, make them publicly accessible and available for sale, or keep them completely private—all with the click of a button. It’s all included in our exclusive Image Browser, which is the central destination for all images uploaded to your PhotoShelter account. We break down your image library into galleries that are listed on your website (i.e. publicly accessible) and unlisted on website (i.e. visible only to you and those you’ve granted permission). When organizing your images into galleries and collections, be sure to think about things from your clients’ perspective. Related images should be organized into individual galleries, and then nested into larger collections. Potential clients might land on your website without knowing exactly what they’re looking for, so it’s your job to help guide them through your images. Start by broadly defining your collections—for example, “Nature,” and then get more specific with “Mountain,” “Desert,” “Forest,” etc. Here’s another example: PhotoShelter member Paul Cooklin has a collection named “Featured: Black and White Photography” so that it’s clear what’s for sale, and then within that collection are individual galleries grouped by category.

Paul Cooklin has one collection that features several different galleries.

PhotoShelter websites also come equipped with an archive search feature, which you can display on your site or even an external website like you’re blog. Clients can do a keyword search for your images—increasing the likelihood that they’ll find something they want to buy.

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Attract a Following & Build Your Audience

raditionally, fine art photographers try to get their work featured in galleries or hit the road to attend various art fairs. Those who have taken this route know it’s a long, tiring, and expensive process fraught with up’s and down’s. Plus, you never quite know when you might recoup your investment in a gallery opening or booth at an art show. That’s why it’s time to turn your attention to building your audience online, and PhotoShelter’s Search Engine Optimization and social media tools can help.

The Best SEO in the Business When you want to find something, what’s the first thing you do? You probably head to Google or another search engine, type in a few keywords that describe what you’re looking for, and hope for relevant results. And what determines which websites show up in the search results? Search Engine Optimization—or, as it’s commonly known, SEO. So here’s the bottom line: you need a website that’s optimized for SEO. If you appear at the top of search results, then you’ll get more visitors to your website and thus more potential clients. That means no Flash-based sites (Google and other search engines can’t “crawl” these sites) and a focus on on-page factors that affect your SEO ranking (page title, image captions, meta descriptions, etc.).

PhotoShelter’s SEO Grader measures how well your website is optimized for SEO.

That last bit is where PhotoShelter sites really stand out. Our exclusive SEO Grader measures how well your PhotoShelter website is optimized for SEO on over 30 different metrics. The SEO Grader also gives advice on how you can improve your website to enhance its visibility to search engines. We also include green SEO icons throughout the backend of your PhotoShelter account so you know where you should be inputting your keywords.

We place green SEO icons throughout the backend of your PhotoShelter account so you know where to focus your efforts.

Not sure where to start? Check out our SEO for Photographers Bootcamp & Guide for the latest tips, strategies, and insights.

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Get Found Online By New Buyers Gallery owners and artist reps tell us that their clients are using search engines to find photos more and more—for example, to purchase photos that commemorate a trip or event. That means fine art photographers should be keywording and captioning all of their images and galleries with relevant terms that buyers might be searching for. If your images include landscape shots of Lake Superior, like Cynthia Fluery’s below, think “Lake Superior,” “Minnesota,” “seascape,” and “home decor.” All of this information lives in your images’ IPTC Metadata, which PhotoShelter automatically imports—or you can edit it within your PhotoShelter account. The point is, if you improve your SEO by keywording your images and website well, people are more likely to find your site the next time they search online. And PhotoShelter websites are designed to put those on-page factors in a prominent place so your site is more likely to rank highly in search results. We also automatically submit your sitemap to Google to help Google more rapidly “crawl” your content and rank you in its search results.

Cynthia Fluery keywords her captions so that her site is optimized for SEO.

Image metadata is the set of data within an image file that describes the image’s attributes. Metadata provides an essential role in describing, tracking, and identifying your images on the web.

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Social Media Buttons Help Connect with Your Audience If you’re not on social media—whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or some combination thereof—you’re already behind the ball. Social media is the way to connect with your audience. For fine art photographers in particular, the buying cycle can be long—it might be months between when your customers see your work and when they are ready to purchase. That’s why it’s so important to stay connected with them. PhotoShelter websites comes equipped with social media buttons for every gallery and individual image. People can share your galleries and images via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. They can also “like” and +1. When people share your work on social media, they’re essentially marketing your work on your behalf. You can also tweet a gallery or image, or export it to Facebook directly from your PhotoShelter account. No need to re-upload your photos to a specific social network—just use our Share Gallery button and socialize your work instantly. If you’re concerned about image theft, just enable image watermarking and everything will be displayed with text or custom watermark.

Your PhotoShelter website comes equipped with social sharing buttons so your clients can like, tweet, +1, and share your images online.

You can share your galleries and individual images on social media from within your PhotoShelter account using the Share Gallery button.

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Printing & Image Delivery that You (And Your Clients) Can Trust W

e know that print quality is of the utmost importance to fine art photographers. You also have unique needs and need a quality print lab that can meet your high standards. That’s why we’ve designed multiple printing and image delivery options to help you get the results you want.

Choose From Over 220+ Printers Worldwide Every photographer wants to focus on shooting, not haggling with print labs or checking up on delivery statuses. And as a fine art photographer, you expect the best. So in addition to our four fully integrated print vendors, we developed the PhotoShelter Print Vendor Network. The beauty of this open directory of print labs is that you can link up with any vendor that matches your specific needs. Want to sell Hahnemuhle prints out of a lab near your home in Texas? Search for a lab that fits this bill, agree on the pricing terms, send your order out to them via PhotoShelter, and get back to shooting. Once an image is priced for sale, you can add an “Add to Cart” button to your website, allowing customers to select and pay for images on the spot without any work on your end. You’ll be notified via email when you’ve made a sale— imagine waking up to that nice little surprise! Your customers might also be all over the world, so it makes sense to fulfill their orders with a printer near them. Diminish shipping costs on both ends by choosing a local printer and get the order out faster. Your clients will thank you for it.

Art buyers can easily purchase your images without any hassle on your end, just by adding images to your shopping cart and ordering prints.

Self-Fulfill Orders for The Ultimate Personalized Print While the buying process can be totally automated through PhotoShelter, photographers who like to handle things offline can still take advantage of our tools. Self-fulfilling prints and products (as opposed to using one of our integrated print labs or one from the Print Vendor Network) allows you to sell signed, limited edition, or framed prints—or just use your trusty vendor that’s been with you ten years.

You might also prefer to use your website as more of a window into your business, and communicate with clients before they make a purchase. Fine art photographer Jeffrey Murray prefers to handle his business this way, so that he can make sure buyers aware of all his printing options and give them a personalized experience with his brand. He finds that this actually helps increase sales. Once the client has selected an image, he communicates with his printer and sees the process all the way through. The best part is that you can print and ship the order yourself, and still collect payment online with PhotoShelter’s shopping cart.

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Private Galleries to Share Images Behind The Scenes Fine art photographer Landon Nordeman likes to use PhotoShelter’s private galleries to send images to gallerists and curators for consideration. It’s easy to select images that are already in your PhotoShelter account, and copy them into a new gallery that’s accessible only via password or client login. From there you can automatically send an email notification to your clients with a link to the gallery and their password or login information. That way, exclusive or otherwise private work remains behind the scenes—people who visit your site directly won’t see it, but designated clients and view all they like.

Create password-protected or invite-only galleries for your clients.

You Set the Price One of the best parts of running your own business? You make the rules. Especially in the fine art photography market, value and prices are constantly changing. It’s critical that you get to set your price tags and take away the biggest paycheck. PhotoShelter members are in total control of their pricing and sales. You set your own prices for any number of prints and product types, select which images you want to price for sale, and then simply add a “Buy” or “Add to cart” button to your website.

Clicking the “Buy” button displays all your pricing for the client.

Get Paid The Way You Want—Immediately When you sell through PhotoShelter, you receive payment at the point of sale—no waiting for checks or getting paid days (or months) later.

You only need to create an account with PayPal or Stripe, or already have a merchant account, to receive your funds. We also support 16 currencies, so you can sell to the world and even apply taxes by region.

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