jerryg Loc: NE Pa

Does anyone sell prints framed and unframed at street fairs/carnivals using a 10x10 Pop Up Tent. If yes is this a money making proposition or a waste of time. I'd like to be able to sell 4 or 5 big prints a day to earn $100 to $200. Of course it will depend on how well the promoter has worked to attract people for the day.

jmizera Loc: Austin Texas

I don't know how profitable they are, but each year at the Pecan Street Festival in Austin, there are several sellers of framed prints in popup tents. At least a couple are recognizable as having been there in previous years. Recently, I saw one of the same vendors at a Celtic festival.

ncshutterbug

I belong to a photo club, and we set up once a year at a local festival. I do a couple of other shows as well, and I can tell you from experience that even the best photographers do not sell a lot of photos at any one show. I do it because I want to get my name out and create a following. I also show at a local gallery. I have been selling 8x10's matted to 16x20 and have gotten excellent comments, won a couple of competitions, had photos in the paper, but still don't sell a lot. I charge $60 for the 16x20's and will not waste my time on anything smaller with the costs involved. I'm going to have photo canvases this year which will have to be in the $200 and up range.
It's something that gets me out doing something with all the many photos I have clogging up my computer, and I will probably continue it even if I never sell another one. I meet great folks who keep me pumped up by the comments and that keeps me at it.
Best of luck with your efforts. Go out, have a great time and come home satisfied with your choice of hobby!

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Aside from the cost of prints, what are the other costs involved? Like tent purchase or rental and fees for the venue?

Miriam

At those prices no wonder you don't sell many. Who could afford them?

ncshutterbug

Pop ups run about $150 and up. If you get one with sides to protect from wind and rain it's going to be $200 up. Matting for 16x20 for good materials is about $20 each from a frame shop. Photo canvas for 16x20 can run $80-$150 depending on who does it. Booth rental for the festival I do is $50 without electricity. The gallery charges 30%. I also have signage and business cards, display equipment, gas, food for the day and tables and chairs. Miriam, what would you suggest I charge?

SpeedyWilson Loc: Upstate South Carolina

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An old saying: Never judge the size of another person's wallet by looking at yours.

In other words -- Some wallets are full of money, even if yours is almost empty.

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It also helps if you have one of the smartphone card swipers, so you don't have to depend on cash sales.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Don't know if it helped Miriam, but it answered my question.

Thanks :thumbup:

wilsondl2 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska

I would have the big prints but also offer 4X6 (watch and you can get them printed for ten cents) at $1 to $2 or perhaps 5X7's. May be the differance in making it a profatable day. - Dave

Hypno Loc: Miami

Have you thought of doing a green screen photo shot booth and portable printer at the fair.

Photographer Jim Loc: Rio Vista, CA

I have been doing art festivals for the past two and a half years. (I'm in my motel room as we speak, headed to a weekend festival in Palm Springs). It can be profitable, but most people grossly under estimate the amount of time, effort, and expense it takes to do well.

Cost: you can get a cheap pop-up tent for a few hundred $, but if you intend to do more than a few shows, or are in an area where summer rains and winds are normal, a better tent is needed. I have seen more than one cheap tent collapse in bad weather. Few festivals rent tents. You generally must have your own.

You also need some form of display panels for hanging framed pieces.

Depending on the type of festival you want to do, show fees can be fairly cheap to quite expensive. Small, "local" street fairs can be inexpensive, but they are generally not "art" fairs, so it can be a very tough sell. It is not easy to sell art to crowds where the locals are basically there to walk around, see their neighbors, eat some popcorn, and watch the clown make balloon giraffes! But, if you are just planning to do this once, maybe twice, a year, small local shows can be an OK place to get your feet wet.

Most true art festivals are juried, allow no "buy and sell" merchandise, and will run $20-50 for the application and $400 typically for the booth space. The better the show, the higher the booth fees. For the best shows $800 would not be unusual. For shows run by service organizations, such as Rotary or Kiwanis, there is often a 10-15% commission charged in addition, as the festival is meant as a fund raiser. However, the recent trend is for private promotors to charge commissions, which goes into their pockets! Most juried shows require that you send in samples of your work and a booth picture when you apply.

One of the biggest mistakes people new to art festivals make is under pricing their work. Two reasons: true art festivals attract true artists. They do not sell their work at bargain prices. If you underprice your work, people wii perceive it as not of value, and you make fewer sales. Second, under-cutting the other artists hurts everybody's sales! The patrons get "confused" by the inconsistent pricing. Keep in mind, you may be out to just sell a few prints to make a few extra dollars, but many of the other artists are there to make their living. You may be able to afford to basically give your work away, but they can not. If you respect art, price to be in accord with current art prices.

My 11x14 matted prints sell for $45 each. Framed for $125. My 20x24 framed pieces sell for $395, with print only (no matting) is $120. My 22x28 framed pieces sell at $450. Larger pieces range from $500 and higher.

Swamp Gator Loc: Coastal South Carolina

Exactly. Plus materials like matting and framing, plus travel expenses, plus time involved etc.
It sounds like you could spend more then $200 to make $200.

TheDman Loc: USA

Ditto Jim's comments. I'm in my 4th year on the art show circuit, and prices are similar. The smallest item I sell are 8x10 loose prints for $15. Matted prints range from $35-$70, a framed 11x14 is $125... most expensive is a framed 20x30 with museum glass at $425. Canvases have done well at some shows and not so well at others. Certain shots sell well on canvas, while others do better on a print or metal. Still learning to pick the best medium for each shot.

Like selling the canvases. A 24x36 canvas from Canvas on Demand is around $80 or less, and sells for $225. Just getting into large metals, so this year will tell how well they do.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I had considered doing the many shows we have here in the San Diego area each year. With all the costs involved, e.g., gas, wear & tear, inventory, etc., I decided there had to be a better way. So I looked at all of the print-on-demand online stores and settled on Fine Art America. Zazzle will be my next print-on-demand online store.

After doing that, all I had to do was market myself to my target audience, which is Realtors and home owners. Realtors is a pretty good market, but home owners even more so.

Here's a secret to marketing to home owners once you have a print-on-demand store set up: Drive your neighborhood and look around. Drive rich neighborhoods and look around. Not saying that your neighborhood might not be a rich neighborhood, too!

While you're looking around, note what people like.

Do you specialize in car photos? If you see a Corvette sitting in the driveway, write down the address and send the occupant a postcard with a cool picture of a Corvette printed on it and a link to all of your wonderful pictures of Corvettes in your Corvette Gallery at Fine Art America.

Do you specialize in flora? If you see a house with a ton of ice plants, or nandinas, or agapanthus, or, or, or...... write down the address and send the occupant a postcard with a cool picture of an agapanthus printed on it and a link to all of your wonderful pictures of flowers in your Flower Gallery at Fine Art America.

Do you specialize in dogs and cats? If you see a house with evidence of a dog or cat, write down the address and send the occupant a postcard with a cool picture of a dog or cat printed on it and a link to all of your wonderful pictures of dogs and cats in your Dog and Cat Galleries at Fine Art America.

Do you specialize in events? When you go to an event, canvass the neighborhoods surrounding the event, writing down addresses, and send a postcard to all the homes with a cool picture of the event and a link to all of your wonderful pictures of events in your Events Gallery at Fine Art America.

Even though we think our homes are private, they can tell us a lot about the people who live there, especially the extraordinarily wealthy because they love their homes, and there's no other reason to have a 9,300-sf home other than love of material things.

I specialize in Southern California, mostly San Diego. I like to go wandering. Several months ago I got lost at the beach in La Jolla and found the La Jolla Beach Mansion, selling most recently in November 2009 for $18.15 million. I took 27 pictures of it. I went home and had Photoshop's Photomerge function create a panorama of the house. Then I turned it into Photographic Art, which is my speciality. Photographic Art allows me to modify pictures, sometimes substantially, like removing cars, utility wires, other houses, people, the bottom of ugly palm trees which look like telephone poles, etc. Then I use filters, actions, and plugins for Photoshop, Lightroom, PaintShop Pro, PhotoPaint, Photomatix, onOne, Nik, and a few others to make the picture look like it's not a picture but a painting or something else unique.

Then I uploaded it to Fine Art America. Then I sent a 5½x8½ postcard to the home. Four days later, someone stocked up on pictures of the house. They bought a 48x38 framed print for $334, the same size canvas print for $306, the same size acrylic print for $235, and the same size metal print for $195. They also bought 50 greeting cards for $78.95. Total: $1,149. My profit: $490. My investment: About $10 for gas, about $1 for printing and postage, and time to take the pictures and play around in the various digital editing programs I have.

Fine Art America does not charge you per item, nor do they take a percentage of your sale (technically). What they have is a base price that covers their costs. Then YOU decide what kind of profit you want on any specific item. Your markup is added to the base price to determine the final cost. You can easily set default prices for everything, and you can easily override default prices for any specific item.

Currently I'm in the process of getting as much stuff uploaded to Fine Art America as possible. Once I do that, then I can do some really serious marketing of events, homes, planes, trains, automobiles, landscapes, zoo animals, dogs and cats, flowers, trees, bushes, etc., etc., etc.

For Realtors, I will be advertising my work as close-of-escrow gifts (I do custom work for specific homes), anniversary gifts, birthdays, births, marriages, etc. The possibilities are endless, and by letting Fine Art America handle the inventory and sales problems, I can focus on what I do best: Photography and Photographic Art.

Fine Art America also sets you up with a web site that is directly linked to them. Mine is at http://1-russel-ray.artistwebsites.com/

Total cost for all the great benefits at Fine Art America? $30 annually. Not a typo. $30 annually. Photo Galleries, web site, sales, inventory, technical help (which is really responsive!), social networking links. On and on and on. $30 annually. Less than $3 a month.

juicesqueezer Loc: Okeechobee, Florida

Thanks Russell for that indepth response.