Anyone making a living with landscapes?

[Andrew Teakle]

Food for thought:

1. As opposed to competing with another nearby vendor on price, it might be more profitable to compete with quality or service, than cut margins and/or risk a price war.
2. Selling inexpensive [product] means high volume, which likely means high workload in manufacturing, selling and after-sales. You should always put value on your own time, and many small businesses underestimate the value of their time - especially since you have two jobs. Alain Briot in his latest book about marketing fine art photography goes to great lengths to explain why high volume doesn't make sense for individuals selling photography products, and I fully agree with him. There might be niches where it becomes profitable, though.

Thanks feppe and louoates,

Have taken your advice and put my prices closer to what I feel is appropriate (but still a mile short of my compatriot, Peter Lik, who incidentally has his last remaining Australian gallery close-ish) and it hasn't reduced my print sales, just increased my revenue.

Bill T, I'm also investigating displaying my work at community centers and corporate meeting venues. On what basis do you have your work in that type of establishment? Lease the space, offer a percentage of the sales etc?

Thanks again to everyone for your input.

Best regards,

Andrew

[feppe]

Thanks for the update, hope things continue working out for you!

[John MacLean]

Steve Jobs had the same philosophy!

Be careful of those notecards and small prints.  Yes, they sell easily.  But they usually give a rather poor return on time invested. I think most artists seriously underestimate the time they put in on those things.

And even worse, within the same venue they can both compete with and implicitly devalue high end framed versions of the same images.  Suppose you sell a framed piece for $500, and smaller matted prints for $50.  You need to sell 10 prints to equal one framed sale.  I think that usually at least one of those ten sales would be to somebody who might have bought the more expensive piece, but chose to buy the print to sort of defuse their acquisitive urgings.  You lose.  Or a potential high end client sees many cheap copies of an image floating about.  Lose again.

Just a theory, I but did notice that when I stopped selling cards and prints at art fairs, my sales of larger pieces went way up.  And getting view-blocking, space-sapping clumps of rummaging bodies out of one's booth has other advantages.  It's really just a bad idea to look too much like the Dollar Store.  Have also noticed that photographers who sell $20 matted 8x10's spend a lot of time with lowball clients that they should really be directing at potential high end buyers.

The balance would depend on venue, of course.  But IMHO the strange love affair between many artists and cheap cards and prints is counterproductive in most cases.  I think it often traces back to a basic lack of confidence.  Spend the time making a product with a better return on time.