Q: Youth Sports - any success selling photos back to parents from online sites?

[snaphappi]

Hello,

Can people comment on their experience selling action photos of their kids back to parents from online sites? (Not talking about onsite sales at tourneys).

I'm asking because I am developing a high-volume remote photo-editing service for youth sports. The goal is to offer 2 day turnaround for 500-5000 photos (JPG only) and pricing would be something like $20-50 per 1000 photos.

Our first test yielded almost $20 per player in the league (baseball) in sales. However, I'm looking to do a few more tests to prove whether parents will buy more if they are shopping cropped/edited photos compared to unedited.

Please comment on your past experiences and message me if you want to try a test.

Best regards,

Michael.

For our editing service, we can:
pull outtakes
adjust for exposure/contrast/color
close crop photos
tag photos by team/jersey color
manage EXIF/IPTC tags
upload to a hosting server.Samples are available for review (Little League) if you message me for a user/password.

[johng]

I'm confused - are you just offering photo editing with the photographer as the client prior to providing images to parents?

If so, 2 day turnaround would not be acceptable. In general you want photos up and available for sale within 24 hours.

[Toshido]

Guess it would be kinda reasonable if you had a huge multi day tournament with multiple shooters and only one person that could PP all the shots after the event is finished....

I know for what I intend doing it will be MUCH smaller scale and will likely get photos hosted the night of the game.

Sounds like delays are a killer for sales.

[mercphoto]

Sounds like delays are a killer for sales.
My experience with karts and motocross is about two years old, but I would agree that a two-day turn-around is not acceptable. Gallery hits decline rapidly after 48 hours. I tried my hardest to get them up in under 24 hours. One big obstacle to that was the time it took to sort out the keepers. The next obstacle was the upload time.

To make it easier to sort the keepers became primarily a function of being very deliberate with the pictures I took. Don't just smash the shutter and burst away. Try to only take good pictures so there are fewer to toss. To make the uploads faster I resorted to proof-only uploads. I would upload 400x600 pixel unedited proofs to my Exposure Manager account and set the gallery to proof-only. Then as a print order or a digital file purchase came in I would then edit the image and upload the hi-res version.

You're not going to want to have your business do that though. You want to do bulk -- get a ton of images in, edit quickly, export a ton back. You probably would not want me sending you one from an order. Then 30 minutes later send three from another order. A few hours later send 4 from a third order. Etc. And I would not have wanted to pay for bulk editing of all pictures either, since most won't sell.

[hschlessphoto]

I've gone to coaches at my school and asked them if they would like me to take some photos. THey usually agree and then I show them the photos. IF they like them, I ask them for a parent's email list and send an email presenting my website. I usually get some interest and after each game, I send them all an email telling them new photos are up. In the last week or so, I'll give a 15% off sale or so and that usually works. Just my experience as a high-school student. Hope it helps!