#photostorydlb
Photo courtesy of (shot by) James Maher (my prints in the Palace Restaurant, 34th street just east of Park Avenue, two floors)

What were my goals when I took my place on the web in 1999 to sell photographs? Very simple, to make a living at it without changing what I shot. In other words, I can remember saying to myself (I talk to myself a lot) that I wouldn't change what I was shooting to make sales.

And I can't say that I have. (Maybe I should have). But the idea was that I would continue to photograph whatever struck me at the time. There were assignments over the years but usually I only took them on because they interested me (a fairly large number of theater shoots).

My idea was to sell high quality art to the general public and bypass the gallery circuit. Now, what seems like a million years later, but what is only about 12 years, I look back and think about the mistakes that I made along the road.

There were so many of them. I'll give you an example: back in 2000 I decided that a good way to get my images out was with screensavers. I bought a screensaver maker, and included about 20 of my best shots and posted it on my site.

Well, it got about 5000 downloads in the first month and caused me to use a more expensive hosting plan. I also found sites that would offer your screensaver and before you knew it my screensaver was being downloaded all over the world at an incredible rate.

So, I say to myself (I told you I talk to myself a lot, sort of like this stream of consciousness) okay Dave – what would happen if you offered to make a screensaver for people. In other words, I put up a program I wrote that allowed people to choose 20 of my photographs and for a dollar they could have a personalized screensaver with their favorite images from my site.

And what happened? You guessed it. I didn't have a single sale! Well maybe I had one, but I had worked on the program to let people make their selections (and even arrange them) for about a month – and no one wanted it. Was the problem that it was asking them to do something – or was it the dollar?

I wanted to find out. So one day I offered the make your own screensaver for free!

Guess what. Before I could remove the offer, I was swamped with free orders and was stuck making about 40 personalized screensavers. Eek. Bad memories.

And that was my real introduction to the world of selling on the web.

I often made similar mistakes that didn't take into account the amount of labor associated with what I was charging.

That happened in a big way when I took a contract to make postcards for a firm and I'll never forget that… but will continue in next post which I've already called The Postcard Fiasco.

(The Palace Restaurant picture – you can make out The Secret Garden by Dave Beckerman as the first print on the left. Prints are also in the Hilton Millenium Hotel, downtown New York).

my photos on the wall of the Palace Restaurant. Good burgers. 34th east of Park Ave.

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