I've now had enough experience with the marketing idea of practically giving away high resolution files of popular images in packs.
For other photographers who would like to try this, or for anyone that's interested in how G+ has worked out as a platform for selling files (as opposed to actual prints) here's what the results have been so far:
1. The best selling package was the first one where I did a mix of 30 different images, without any theme, some b&w and some color, based on what I thought would be popular, for $10. Yes, you are talking about 30 cents per file. I doubt if there's any stock agency that has ever matched that price.
And yes, I'm going to give you actual numbers, during the first 3 days, while I was "pushing" this package, I sold 137 packages @ 10 each or $1,370. After the first push, I posted it again but that didn't result in any sales at all. I then repriced the 30 image package to $30 and sold six or seven.
2. So the question was – how many of the 600K people were actually seeing the posts, which is why I did experiment #1. The answer couldn't be given exactly but roughly according to my lax way of doing the tabulation, i.e. adding people that hadn't actually commented with the "see" word, but figuring that maybe half of the people that commented, also saw the post but didn't want to participate. I can understand that. So I did a rough estimate and decided that between 600 and 1500 people saw an individual post. So you are talking about much less than 1% of the people that have circled you. Or circled me. Because I suspect that it's different for every poster.
It's sort of like politics. You might have some people that don't have so many followers but have a higher percentage of everyday followers; and you may have people with a tremendous number of followers who don't have any followers. There are, for example, people with a million followers who have never done a single post.
So it's pretty complex to figure out without having access to Google Analytics within G+. Oh how that would help.
3. From there I went to the idea of testing whether it was the price per item, or the overall price that made a difference. So I put up several packs where you had 11 photos for $10.
These were by far the worst ones.
For example, although the color images I put up in Color Pack 11A have been extremely popular on G+, it has sold exactly one copy so far.
The previous package, of 11 Black and White Parks for $10 sold about 15 copies.
That's where it stands right now. It seems to me that what worked best was the package with the most images for the least price, i.e. the 30 files for $10. But even that needs to be tested because it was the very first offer. The question is what would happen with a similar package offered again?
And the final question to be answered – is the a la carte offer. What if you went with the software app model, and offered individual images for $1.99?
Those last two items are going to be tested as well. And then I'll have (I think) enough information to know whether any of these methods are a good way to go as opposed to what I began with which was an a la carte method, where each image sold for $25. (Which at the time I considered an incredible buy… but now I wonder…)
If I decide to do an a la carte mechansim – I'm really going to have to switch from the SIMPLE PAYPAL CART I'm using now to the PAYPAL DIGITAL DELIVERY WORDPRESS CART. The whole idea behind this was that the files would be delivered automatically.
I have that working for the packages, but to do it for individual items, I'll need to switch carts and redo that for all my items… scary stuff…
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Black and white photography of New York City for Sale. Central Park, New York landmarks, Skylines, people. Iconic fine art photographs for interior designers, art buyers and your living room.
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