b!X Photo Special Orders Now Available
As something of a follow-up to instituting a new sales model for prints of my photography, The One True b!X | Photos now includes an additional new component: special orders.
While only a couple hundred photos are made available directly via my sales site, there are thousands more in my Flickr photostream. Beginning today, prints of the vast majority of those can be had via special order.
At launch, special orders are available only to U.S. customers, and the only print size available is 8×12. These limitations will lossen up once I make sure any kinks in the process are worked out.
So, if you’ve ever seen anything in my Flickr photostream but were disappointed to find it wasn’t available on my sales site, just follow the special order instructions and make yourself happy at last.
b!X Photos Now Sell For Base Price
As of tonight, all of the prints for sale at The One True b!X | Photos are available at their rounded (to the nearest $0.25) base price. This is as close to free prints of my photography as you can get. In most typical cases, you now will pay more for shipping than for the print itself.
So how will I make any money off my photography? There is now an additional product for “sale”: the financial gift and donation, available atop each of the site’s seven galleries.
Going forward, when you purchase a print you also are invited to add a donation at whatever level works best for you, from a wide range of provided options. Due to the nature of the service I use, these donations technically are provided in the form of digital downloads, specifically of a “Proud Supporter of The One True b!X | Photos” graphic, which you can post online to show off your support, or simply delete. It’s up to you.
This is an experiment. I’ve had nearly a full year of selling prints of my photography under a more traditional model, and now it’s time to try something new. Those of you following me on Twitter might correctly be guessing that the experiment in no small part is inspired by Marian Call, who sells recordings and plays her music live via a similar model.
I have no earthly idea which print sales model will be more successful. I have no idea if the model works in this context at all. Certainly I don’t sell so many prints that I’m putting anything even close to a steady flow of income at risk. This simply is an experiment I can afford to conduct, and the premise intrigues me too much not to do so.
All photographs which have been for sale as prints on the site remain for sale, including some new ones you might have missed. Nothing has been removed. I’ve tried to make the new model as clear as possible in various parts of the site. If anything is confusing, or if some part of the new process isn’t working as intended, please let me know.
Addendum: See the comments below for some discussion of the old model versus the new model, based upon the first order under the latter.
Addendum: Under this “optional donation” model, buyers also could opt for barter or some other alternative form of donation, such as gift cards. Just use the email link on the sales site to make an offer.
Addendum: I can now take special orders of photos that aren’t on the sales site but exist in my Flickr photostream.
Buy A Birthday b!X Photo
After a heady comparison between SmugMug and Zenfolio, last week I moved my photography sales from a self-hosted solution to the latter service and a new domain. And so The One True b!X | Photos awaits your order.
While I lose the ability to check each and every order with my own eyes (the self-hosted solution used a local shop to produce the prints), prospective customers now have a much wider range of print sizes from which to choose. They also now have several framing options. In addition, orders to the UK and Europe now are supported as well, although for those customers fewer print sizes, and no framing options, are available.
This switch also means that photographs now are separated out into six categories: animals, buildings, landscapes, objects, people, and plant life. There are some surprises within each category, so be sure to explore, but hopefully this addresses a long-standing request to make it easier for customers to hone in on specific wants.
To celebrate the relaunch of my photography sales, as well as my upcoming birthday, the coupon code “bixphotosrelaunch” will save you $5 off any order until the end of the month.
Proper Types
Taken in April of 2008, during one of my only two photo excursions with members of a local Flickr group. The typewriter pictured was, and for all I know still is, part of the decor at Proper Eats in the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland.
Despite the fair number of decent photographs I’ve taken on those two photo walks, my general dislike of large group activities, and my tendency to view myself unfavorably when surrounded by more knowledgeable photograpers, has kept me from going out on another. In fact, it’s been quite a long time even since I last added any photos to the group (or any group’s) Flickr pool.
That said, Proper Types has proven to be one of my best-selling photographs, so in terms both creative and commercial that last excursion certainly was not a waste of anyone’s time. Unsurprisingly, sales of Proper Types have tended to skew towards people for whom, in some fashion, writing is an (a)vocation.
Second in an occasional series highlighting photographs available as prints for purchase. Buy a Proper Types print.
Broken Circle
Taken close to one year ago on a family trip to Cape Cod to give my father‘s ashes to the ocean. This particular excursion was an evening visit to the inland shore of the cape, west of Truro.
Broken Circle was taken about twenty minutes before sunset. At the moment of capture, it was meant simply as a photograph of one of the many birds which were passing, flying low to the water. The reflection which eventually gave the photograph its title I didn’t see until later, when reviewing the day’s take.
In many ways it is for me the emblematic photograph of the trip to disperse my father’s ashes back to the earth and waters which gave rise to them in the first place. Death is the part of the circle that breaks it.
First in an occasional series highlighting photographs available as prints for purchase. Buy a Broken Circle print.
← Back to Home
© The One True b!X.
Powered by WordPress using a modified DePo Skinny.