Selling my photos

My church is in process of wrapping up a program called Seeds of Faith. The basic idea of which is members who wish to participate are given a small amount of cash (in our case, $10) to use as seed money to develop goods or services they can sell, with the money that comes in going to a need internal or external to the church.

In this case the money will be used to defray costs of refurbishing the church's youth rooms.

I decided to sell prints of some my own photos, offering a variety of sizes, getting the prints made after taking orders, and then delivering the prints.

The sales of goods and services took place last Sunday (August 16, 2009) at what was called the Seeds of Faith Harvest Fair. I decided in order to be sure to have any success, I was going to need to be present through the entire three hours of the Fair, in order to explain just what I was offering.

I had previously had 5x7-inch samples of each of the 8 photos made, and had placed them in a small album, which I had with me at the Fair, along with order forms I had prepared.

So, during the Fair I pretty quickly developed a routine of explaining to anyone who approached me just what I was offering. And I was really pleased that I ended up with having a total of ten prints ordered by eight people.

Prints were ordered of the following photos (for the site I am linking to below my member name is Landshark):

• Jacaranda blossoms (4 prints)
• Coral tree blossoms (2 prints)
• Sunflower and bee (2 prints)
• Dandelion (1 print)
• Lily of the Nile flowers (1 print)

(I also offered prints of: Mission Beach iced tea, "The Boulevard" sign, and Balboa Park walkway.

And, yes, I do seem to be unintentionally developing a specialization of being a plant photographer!)

Though I had more people walk away then order prints, I'm considering this at least relative success to be a good sign for selling my photos in future, so will be trying to develop a web-based presence for doing so.