POD Sites in 2020?

[SA]

Hi!

I sell stock photos and have done on small scale for many years. However a lot of my photos tend to be Nature Photos, Travel Photos, Photoshop Art etc...

I was looking into POD (Print On Demand) sites a few years ago. I ended up giving FineArtAmerica a shot. Since then i had 4-5 sales with not so much marketing. I has involved in the community there for a while and had other members look at my stuff but that definitely didn't help. I think the few sales came from plain Searches on keywords etc.

So i want to give it another go now, but need to know what websites i should be giving my focus? Is there a better alternative to FineArtAmerica? Im interested to know what sites that have the most potential for sales, and if so, what does it take from me to get going on that site? Do i need outside marketing? Is there some site that can generate some sales with only good descriptions and keywording like stock photo sites?

Any new up-comers or big sites i ignored last time I should aim for? Just some pointers where the biggest potential lies in 2020

[PaulieWalnuts]

There are a ton but I'm not aware of any new ones that stand out. Redbubble, CafePress, Society6, Zazzle are probably most well known. What I've seen is different people get different results so the only way to know which ones work for you is to try them. Here's a list to get started. https://www.ecommerceceo.com/best-print-on-demand-sites/

Yes you need outside marketing on all of them to optimize sales. FAA openly positions itself as a platform for you to sell your work and you need to help bring in buyers.

Also, what will be your strategy for pricing in micro and POD? Micro is cheap and prints are normally way more expensive. If you have photos on micro that people can buy for a couple dollars and then print an 8x10 for a couple dollars at Walmart, why would they pay $30+ for the same thing on a POD? Same question for large prints like 40x60. Why would they spend hundreds of dollars at a POD if they could buy a micro download for a couple dollars and have it printed online cheap?

And yes, buyers do price shop. A lot. I learned this the hard way. A few years ago I separated my images into different subjects for micro and print so there's no overlap. Micro images are cheap and print images are at a much higher price point for both printing and licensing.

Good luck!

[Uncle Pete]

There are a ton but I'm not aware of any new ones that stand out. Redbubble, CafePress, Society6, Zazzle are probably most well known. What I've seen is different people get different results so the only way to know which ones work for you is to try them. Here's a list to get started. https://www.ecommerceceo.com/best-print-on-demand-sites/

Yes you need outside marketing on all of them to optimize sales. FAA openly positions itself as a platform for you to sell your work and you need to help bring in buyers.

Also, what will be your strategy for pricing in micro and POD? Micro is cheap and prints are normally way more expensive. If you have photos on micro that people can buy for a couple dollars and then print an 8x10 for a couple dollars at Walmart, why would they pay $30+ for the same thing on a POD? Same question for large prints like 40x60. Why would they spend hundreds of dollars at a POD if they could buy a micro download for a couple dollars and have it printed online cheap?

And yes, buyers do price shop. A lot. I learned this the hard way. A few years ago I separated my images into different subjects for micro and print so there's no overlap. Micro images are cheap and print images are at a much higher price point for both printing and licensing.

Good luck!

Interesting question and answers for 2020.

How do people bring in buyers?

I see the choices for FAA add your Facebook, your Twitter, your Youtube your Pinterest account. So do I have to spam all my friends and family with every new upload or is there some better way to target potential buyers instead of pissing off my friends with spam notices?

What other ways are there to market and bring in buyers? I don't think my own website gets the traffic or would ever interest people.

[wds]

They are the store, they should be bringing in buyers/.

[SA]

Im ok with some marketing for sales and plan for it. But after that I want the site to be strong enough to generate sales from searches done on the site itself, by people who are not there from my links or marketing. Is there any of these sites where that is more likely to happen? In microstock we know what sites are worth our time, just look at the polls to the right hand side and the truth is revealed, even though there are a ton more sites out there that looks great and promise a lot. Im after the same inside info for POD if possible, from people who have tested or heard about sales on most of the sites and know if something changed the last 2-3 years.

[PaulieWalnuts]

They are the store, they should be bringing in buyers/.

They all should. Some do. Some don't. But they all encourage contributors to help with marketing on social media, direct email, etc. Most stock sites take responsibility for bringing buyers. Most PODs don't have that level of commitment.

[PaulieWalnuts]

There are a ton but I'm not aware of any new ones that stand out. Redbubble, CafePress, Society6, Zazzle are probably most well known. What I've seen is different people get different results so the only way to know which ones work for you is to try them. Here's a list to get started. https://www.ecommerceceo.com/best-print-on-demand-sites/

Yes you need outside marketing on all of them to optimize sales. FAA openly positions itself as a platform for you to sell your work and you need to help bring in buyers.

Also, what will be your strategy for pricing in micro and POD? Micro is cheap and prints are normally way more expensive. If you have photos on micro that people can buy for a couple dollars and then print an 8x10 for a couple dollars at Walmart, why would they pay $30+ for the same thing on a POD? Same question for large prints like 40x60. Why would they spend hundreds of dollars at a POD if they could buy a micro download for a couple dollars and have it printed online cheap?

And yes, buyers do price shop. A lot. I learned this the hard way. A few years ago I separated my images into different subjects for micro and print so there's no overlap. Micro images are cheap and print images are at a much higher price point for both printing and licensing.

Good luck!

Interesting question and answers for 2020.

How do people bring in buyers?

I see the choices for FAA add your Facebook, your Twitter, your Youtube your Pinterest account. So do I have to spam all my friends and family with every new upload or is there some better way to target potential buyers instead of pissing off my friends with spam notices?

What other ways are there to market and bring in buyers? I don't think my own website gets the traffic or would ever interest people.

Build email subscription lists beyond friends and family. Grow social media followers. Optimize SEO. Partner with other complementary companies.

The problem with this is you're marketing to help grow another company instead of your own. And you're indirectly helping competitors. I focus on marketing my own website. When I use a stock site, POD, or other vendor if they dont bring sales without me doing marketing I drop them off the priority list.

[obj owl]

They are the store, they should be bringing in buyers/.

They do, their advertising is aimed at people who upload their own images to put on a t shirt or mug or anything else they can print on.
If you want to sell on their sites you need to promote it and some will pay you more to do that.

[Uncle Pete]

They are the store, they should be bringing in buyers/.

They all should. Some do. Some don't. But they all encourage contributors to help with marketing on social media, direct email, etc. Most stock sites take responsibility for bringing buyers. Most PODs don't have that level of commitment.

Yes to both.

Build email subscription lists beyond friends and family. Grow social media followers. Optimize SEO. Partner with other complementary companies.

The problem with this is you're marketing to help grow another company instead of your own. And you're indirectly helping competitors. I focus on marketing my own website. When I use a stock site, POD, or other vendor if they dont bring sales without me doing marketing I drop them off the priority list.

I could link from my own websites, which would do pretty much nothing. 

And yes, I'm really not going to push so I can help FAA be bigger and stronger and so I can help other people, make more sales.

FAA takes a good chunk of the money, and expects us to promote for their benefit. How about they return the favor and promote us a little bit more? The investment will eventually come back to them in more sales? Instead they let us do the work, produce the product and market ourselves. Not a bad plan if I was them.

Still I'm considering the paid version. Since they reduced the fees and added pixels.com, plus individual links for my own website. What would make that really interesting, would be selective galleries, where I could have one type of content on one of my sites and another on a different site. Or at least break up the content by subject.

People who buy bird photos or scenic landscapes, aren't going to be the same as those who buy automobile photos and none of this will be interested in images of famous people... there are others. What I mean is, I make more than one kind of work, they shouldn't all be lumped in one portfolio link from FAA.
 

[Jeffrey]

I just signed up at https://teespring.com/ , I have not much information about this site, it looks like has better Alexa ranking than Zazzle, there could be more visitors than the latter, I'm not sure. Basing on Alexa has helped me. I have earned about 300$ with Zazzle.

I may consider focusing on Teespring if I get sales. Zazzle has been deleting some of my non-provocative conservative designs lately.

[Jeffrey]

Oops, Teespring is worse. They automatically deleted my Make America Great Again face mask. I searched and there is no MAGA merchandise.

Zazzle still allows MAGA designs.

[ShadySue]

'Make America Great Again' is trademarked by Trump, so maybe disallowing MAGA is making a fence around the law, or as they say nowadays "an abundance of caution".  Just because Trump thinks says the whole world is a leftist conspiracy theory doesn't make it so.

[LizC]

I would suggest Zazzle, they are one of the biggest PODs sites with a lot of marketing exposure though I don't know how well photography does there.

[Uncle Pete]

'Make America Great Again' is trademarked by Trump, so maybe disallowing MAGA is making a fence around the law, or as they say nowadays "an abundance of caution".  Just because Trump thinks says the whole world is a leftist conspiracy theory doesn't make it so.

One of the first targets was CafePress. The company received a "cease and desist" letter from Trump's lawyers at the end of September.

Trump's legal team asserted that there would be a lawsuit against CafePress unless the site stopped selling "Make America Great Again" merchandise.

[Jeffrey]

Zazzle finally deleted all my MAGA designs this January. Even my election fraud humor. Oh well, it's their company, their rules.