Experiment with selling JPEG files

[Ronny Nilsen]

Inspired by Ctein's experiment with subscription/donation based buying of his prints,
I started thinking about other ways of selling images at affordable prices to people that
normally don't buy fine art prints. So I'm doing an experiment with a few of my images
where I sell them as high resolution JPGES files that people can print them self to get a
better impression of how an image will look in print. This is of course done in the hope
that people then will buy my real prints.  

Have antibody else tried this before and have some insight to share?

I have put up the page with the details here .

As I said, it's an experiment, and I won't put up all my images for sale this way.  

Ronny

[Geoff Wittig]

Inspired by Ctein's experiment with subscription/donation based buying of his prints,
I started thinking about other ways of selling images at affordable prices to people that
normally don't buy fine art prints. So I'm doing an experiment with a few of my images
where I sell them as high resolution JPGES files that people can print them self to get a
better impression of how an image will look in print. This is of course done in the hope
that people then will buy my real prints.  

Have antibody else tried this before and have some insight to share?

I have put up the page with the details here .

As I said, it's an experiment, and I won't put up all my images for sale this way.  

Ronny

Interesting concept. If memory serves, Robert Glenn Ketchum at least for a while permitted visitors to his website to download a modest sized JPEG of one of his most popular photographs ("Sundance") so you could print it yourself. The 'edition' of large prints had sold out, so there was no downside for him.

The entire idea of allowing low cost JPEG downloads as trial samples presumes a level of sophistication regarding color management and printing that will sharply limit the size of your audience...basically to the same folks who probably want to sell their own photographs! Sort of like the art fair where all the various artists sell mostly to each other.

[Ronny Nilsen]

The entire idea of allowing low cost JPEG downloads as trial samples presumes a level of sophistication regarding color management and printing that will sharply limit the size of your audience...basically to the same folks who probably want to sell their own photographs! Sort of like the art fair where all the various artists sell mostly to each other.

That is definitely a concern, but the jpg I send out is in the sRGB color space and already sharpened for printing on glossy paper, so I hope the prints will come out ok for most casual users without them having to do anything special beyond just sending it to their printer. And I let them have the first image for free, so if they are unable to make a print they have not lost ant money.  

And if they are able to produce a print from the free sample they can be reasonably sure of the quality of the images they buy. That's the general idea any way.  

Ronny