Print on demand sites or POD sites come in
a verity of styles from free to paid sites and non customizable stores /
galleries to fully customizable stores and galleries. In short they all do the
same thing which is that they let you display your images which people can buy;
they deal with the printing, shipping and payments (and refunds) and give you a
percentage of the sale.
Visit a few POD sites to get the feel of
them but keep in mind that the home page of the site can be very different to
the individual photographer’s stores / galleries. First find images that are
similar to yours, if there are a lot of images from lots of different
photographers this is a good thing, it means that other photographers like the
site and that people that buy images will be attracted to the site.
When you want to show people your images
you can give them a link to your store / gallery, subsection or even an
individual image and not the home page of the print on demand site. Because the
print on demand sites are all about selling they give you lots of info and
tools to help you market your images. Many of the print on demand sties have
buttons next to your image that allow you or anyone else to post your image too
social media sites like Facebook, twitter or Pinterest (this is a good thing). They
also give you the script / code that will enable you to post your image into
your blog or website which adds another level of security to your images. Most
of the images on this blog are created this way and if you click on an image it
will take you to the print on demand site that have additional levels of
security.
Print on demand sites also differ in the
products that they print upon, going from sites like Greeting Card Universe as
the name suggests only produce greeting cards (in one size) to sites like
Zazzle and Café press who produce a wide range of products. If your style of
images seam popular on phone cases and mugs then why not let your customers buy
your image in that format, after all not everyone has room in their home for a
50” x 40” framed print on the wall. It can also help improve your photography,
you take a great image and think that it would make a nice Birthday greeting
card but where would you put the Birthday massage on the image, so you take
another image of the vista but this time you frame it so that you leave space
for the massage. Now you have two images, one for a framed print and one for a
greeting card. Developing this habit of shooting the same image in landscape
and portrait as well as tight crop and with space to one side or all around
will also help you with stock libraries.
Below are some print on demand sites that I
will be taking a closer look at over the coming months, I hope that you find
one you like.
The above list is by no means complete and
many more can be found by searching for the phrase “print on demand”. Most of
the sites have forums where many of your questions will have been answered in
the past and can be found by a quick search of the forum, most forums on print
on demand sites do not like you talking down about their site and do not like
you talking about other print on demand sites one exception in Redbubble.
If you want to find out what people think
about a print on demand site away from its mediators to can go to Facebook
groups like Great gear or too forum sites like POD4you or warrior, all of which
have tons of information.
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