Junior Football Photography

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NickWA

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Nick
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Hi All

A little help or advice please if possible.

I was approached by a local junior football team to provide a match day photography service for their 20+ football teams and in return i would also be able to provide the photography for there large annual football tournament.

They wanted me to photograph as many home games as possible and then offer the photos for sale to the parents. This is something i enjoy doing so i said yes....

I have been doing this now for the whole of this season and so far have only sold 5 photos although i am getting a lot of positive feedback from parents over social media and from talking to them, however my problem is they are just not buying.

I am currently advertising the images at:
6x4 £5.50 mounted
7x5 £8.50 mounted
12x10 £15.00 mounted
Digital Download £10

Am i charging to much? or any ideas on what i could do to sell more?

Any advice would be appreciated. Many Thanks
 
@NickWA ....IMHO...., you're not charging too much thats roughly a price of your time and printining. My view here is that parents / grandparents coming to watch their children all carry iPhones, which makes them a photographer and more better equipped than you are? Last year i did a children's open day where they played a morning full of matches. They wanted team photographs too. How many times did i stop in the middle of the photograph because children were (rightly) looking at their parents and their mobile rather than my lens?

I dont think its a battle you can win here? If you're getting paid to attend then IMO if it's more cost effective to earn a few pounds this way then great! but to expect a surge of parents wanting to buy pictures from you... will be very low indeed :(
 
Thanks Paul.

I agree with the issue of mobile phones.... I hate them.

The football ground does have a fairly strict NO PHOTOGRAPHY policy except for official photographers but I understand that mobile phones can be used discreetly.

I might just have to knock it on the head. I estimate it's costing me about £100 a week in time.

Thanks for your advice..
 
Your prices aren't overly expensive but, as a parent of a son who plays football every saturday, I wouldn't pay for a photo of him playing unless it was perhaps a special game of some sort (a cup final for example).

Most parents who take a snap with a phone will probably only ever use it to let family friends know what they are up to on social media. I doubt many print them out and mount them at home.
 
You're not overcharging, but you're shooting something that has limited value to your target market - the parents. Like Steve has said, no one is going to buy photos from you on a regular basis because over a few matches then it does become too expensive.

I'd also bet that your photos are being shared, or posted by parents without purchasing. Almost everyone of my friends who has done a race or sporting event has posted photos to facebook with massive watermarks all over them without giving a second thought about it being theft.
 
I don't offer mounted pics, just prints at various sizes and digital downloads - sized for the likes of facebook and larger for home computer. Seems to work OK for me, but I wouldn't want to try and make a living out of it. Does OK though.
 
Thanks for your replies everyone. I need to make the decision about continuing this. I show all of my images using zenfolio with watermark and downloading disabled.

I understand that people wont buy every time but with 20+ teams i would have thought id get a few sales. I'm not doing this for a living more of a holiday fund, but it does take up every Sunday.

Photodiva, what do you shoot and sell for, could you maybe PM me.
 
The only time I've seen people buy is at a tournament, and that is normally covered by a event togs with onsite printing.
 
Hi Nick, I have been pondering this for a couple of years now, because I have the same problem.

Much of my experience serves to confirm the advice you have been given above.

The parents love my pics etc but that love seemed to turn into very limited sales. So much so that I don't even bother putting them up for sale anymore.

One of the problems is that folks aren't too bothered about quality. As long as a pic has their little darling somewhere near a football they are happy. I set up anti-right click on my website but all they did was screenshot the pic and post it on their Facebook pages complete with the website background in frame. I therefore went for a moving box which randomly jumped around the image, covering different parts of it. So they would then take a screenshot when the box wasn't covering their little darling. So then I'd find on Facebook pictures of players complete with my moving box in the frame. I even had one person do this simply because her son was far in the background of an action shot!!!

And the problem is, they generally have no idea that they are actually nicking stuff. I actually have people proudly showing me their mobiles with my picture set as the wallpaper, almost expecting me to thank them for the honour!!

And so to the new plan I put into effect for this season, and which might be worth your trying:

I now photograph a match and offer both managers a disc for £25.00, suggesting that if all the parents chip in and take a copy they get all the images (or the entire story of the match, as I put it) for relatively small cost. There's still not a massive take up - it doesn't mean I can chuck in the day job - but I've already made more money than I did in the last two seasons combined.

And here's the bloody dopey thing - even though these people now have the images to hand, to take down Boots or Jessops or wherever, I am actually getting asked to provide prints!
 
Hi All

This is a very interesting post for me personally as I have been posting here regarding equipment for this exact type of thing.

Nick are you offering onsite printing?

I am thinking about just doing the tournaments and all I want is a team shot and then indivudual shots, before a ball is kicked. Then combine the 2 photos in a template and offer that in a 10 x 8 and then just the individual one in a 6 x 4 or similar, buying both for £20

I was at a tournament recently and they were going like hot cakes, the photo stand was very busy!

I have emailed a few organisers of tournaments in my area and they seem keen to support the idea.

On a side note can anyone recommend equipment for fast onsite printing and workflow ideas?

Regards
 
Where are you based,
I would first look at helping out an event tog and learning the setup first & work flow. It is not as easy as you would think

Action shots sell better, then what you are looking to offer, ideally an individual or team and action is good, but you would need to assign a tog just for team shoots which is not easy when trying to get them all together,

I'm booked up until Aug most weekends just helping out other togs which I have done since last year. By doing this I have learnt a lot of different workflows & what works best,

Dependent on teams you would need at least 2/3 togs plus a sale person, a van or large Gazeboo/ generator PC large screens for viewing I would say a DNP820 printer which offers different size prints /mounts of different sizes . Darkroom core as software. Insurance

Lots to think about
 
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Anyone saying that you can't make money from junior football by just selling online is talking complete and utter tosh...

I make plenty doing just that.. I work hard at it.. It's swings and roundabouts sometimes... I can make 20 quid one game and 200 quid the next.. But it averages out very well over the year.... cup finals are easy to sell.. academy or townn or county games will always sell.. girls games...

turning up at a game and hoping to make money online = no

working at it as a business and putting lots of effort in = yes



.
 
Hi digisatman

Thanks for the reply

Yeah lots to think about, it did look easy and slick at the tourno i was out, but he could have and probably has been doing it alot of years and learnt from his mistakes.

I just thought it was a great little idea, a good money earner for a little side number and I get to be in a environment of people enjoying sports.

Just to show my inexperience, a tog, i take it is some sort of assistant photographer?

cheers
 
KIPAX said:
Anyone saying that you can't make money from junior football by just selling online is talking complete and utter tosh...

I make plenty doing just that.. I work hard at it.. It's swings and roundabouts sometimes... I can make 20 quid one game and 200 quid the next.. But it averages out very well over the year.... cup finals are easy to sell.. academy or townn or county games will always sell.. girls games...

turning up at a game and hoping to make money online = no

working at it as a business and putting lots of effort in = yes



.
Click to expand...


Kipax

Do you only sell online?

I see posts like this and im thinking ive got a good idea and should run with it, sometimes i think people (Not on here) but other business forum are too negative. Its easier to pick faults than positives sometimes.

its good to hear you make good money, what sort of shots do you take? I was also thinking of rugby tournaments, swimming clubs (Gala's) etc.

What age range do you shoot, ive heard that the older the age group the less the parents buy regarding photos, do you find this?
 
paul hodgson said:
Kipax

Do you only sell online?
Click to expand...

yes and i sell a lot of pictures.. however.. selling onsite IS THE BEST WAY and you will make more money.. but its not for me.. so i do events and games where i am the only photogrpaher.. this way they ahve to come to me for pics..i make sure i am well advertised and everyone knows where the pics are and theres no competition ...


paul hodgson said:
I see posts like this and im thinking ive got a good idea and should run with it, sometimes i think people (Not on here) but other business forum are too negative. Its easier to pick faults than positives sometimes.
Click to expand...

if you put the effort in it works.. but a lot of people just want to take pics.. throw the memory card at someone and make money..

paul hodgson said:
its good to hear you make good money, what sort of shots do you take? I was also thinking of rugby tournaments, swimming clubs (Gala's) etc.

What age range do you shoot, ive heard that the older the age group the less the parents buy regarding photos, do you find this?
Click to expand...

see www kipax.com

its swings and roundabouts.. adults dont sell.. womens football doesnt sell , ice hockey doesnt.. cricket not much... (I do these for local paper but also put online for the odd sales) Anything junior sells :)
 
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purpleclouds said:
No it isn't, it's the measurement of thermal resistance for a unit area.
Click to expand...

Ahem - you buy your duvet based on that measurement! Nothing to do with photography!

Sod mounted pics. Just sell them either digital (for FB or computer) or prints for them to frame themselves.
 
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turning up at a game and hoping to make money online = no

working at it as a business and putting lots of effort in = yes

^^^^^ Exactly !

Can you make money by just selling on-line.. A bit, but TBH it's very hard work and unless you're established (chicken and egg...) it's even harder.

We cover a number of tournaments each year, but we're set up with a large trailer, an extremely efficient workflow (none of this 'A' boards with thumb nails), wireless image transfers etc.

The key here however is printing on site.

it's taken us many years to refine our business, and for the first 2 years we made bugger all.

Last weekend we had 4 photographers shooting, and myself in the trailer creating and selling... so that's a big outlay in terms of wages. We also had to deal with 25,000 (12.5k shot) images which is no mean feat.

But.. we made a very tidy profit and the sales are still coming in.. and will do for the rest of the week.

The meaning of this parable children is...

"it's not what you do, but the way that you do it."

Bananarama,
Chapter 13,
Verse 2
 
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Trailer 1.jpg Trailer 2.jpg
 
Jerm said:
Can you make money by just selling on-line.. A bit, but TBH it's very hard work and unless you're established (chicken and egg...)
Click to expand...

But as you agree it can be done.. just not easy as some would like it to be :)

Jerm said:
The key here however is printing on site.
Click to expand...

absoloutly i dont think anyone would disagree the best way is to print onsite.. however some of us cant ....but i do make a fair bit online.. i do a lot of jobs where I am the only photogrpaher.... so ..


PS Have done tournaments in the past and my next one is the end of july in huddersfield.. i recently took the decision that this is my last one... not doing any more all day tournaments..all day jobs.... getting too old and knackered and for 100 to 150 a day not worth it :(
 
Jerm yet to see the new van but looking good a least we have some where to sit for our 10 min dinner break :p
 
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