How to increase sales average to make more money from your on-line gallery
Do you struggle to make sales from your on-line gallery?
Want to discover how to earn extra income from your photos?
Do people like your images but nobody buys them?
If you answered ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions, you really need to read this series.
How to make more money from your on-line picture gallery
In Part I of this series we looked at your numbers and how to increase your earnings from your online gallery without finding more customers by improving your gross margin. If you missed it, you can find the article here.
This time we’re going to look at another strategy, one with the potential to give you a significant boost to your on-line earnings…
Strategy 2: Increase the average sale value
Before we get into the detail we need to know some more figures. Specifically:
How many sales (transactions) did you make during the last week (or month or year)?
It’s very easy to work out. You can usually able to see this in the report section of the gallery. If you’re doing it manually it’ll most likely be the number of invoices you raised.
Once you know this you can work out your average sales for the period value thus:
Average sales value = Total revenue / No. sales made
Now, to increase your average sales value you have two options:
- Increase your prices
- Get the customer to buy more products (up-selling)
(If you can think of a third, I’d love to hear it. Leave a comment below and let me know)
Option 1: Raise your prices
Increasing your prices is a very viable option but only available if you can actually set your own prices. With a self-hosted gallery it’s very easy — you just specify your own prices. Many 3rd party galleries also offer this as a feature where you either set your own prices directly or indirectly with a mark-up. Unfortunately it’s not usually possible with stock libraries although a few will let you negotiate with the end buyer directly.
Don’t be frightened of putting your prices up. Likewise don’t be influenced by what others are charging for the same product. Chances are they’re underselling and if they want to chase after low value customers, let them. If you try to compete on price, you’ll soon find yourself in a race to the bottom of the barrel having destroyed your gross margin and removed all the value of your work. The only real winners in that scenario are the photo labs because they’re not going to budge on their prices! Any why should they?
Option 2: Up-sell to get them to spend more
A second option to increasing your average sale value is to up-sell another product. Coffee shops are masters of this. How many times have you bought a latte and heard the phrase “Anything else?” accompanied by a surreptitious wave at the pastry cabinet?
That’s a classic example of an up-sell. The customer is at the till, money in hand, already buying something so it’s very easy to tempt them with an accompanying product.
Online retailers do it too with their ‘frequently bought together’ or ‘other customers also bought this’ offerings.
Question: If you’re selling through an on-line gallery…
- What else could you tempt your customers with?
- What else could you charge for?
You could try these ideas:
- Postcards or greeting cards with the same picture
- Upgrade to a premium frame of larger size
- Desk frame
- Gift wrapping
- Picture hooks
- Charge for delivery
- Express service
These are just a few ideas, I’m sure you can think of a few more. If you do, please share them in a comment below.
Conclusion
Increasing your average sales value is very easy with a little thought. It’ll have a direct impact on the earnings from your online gallery and when combined with your average number of customers you’ll start to see a real increase in your earnings:
Sales revenue = average sales value * number of customers
Which leads us straight into our strategy for next time: How to get more customers so be sure to check that article out too.
In the meantime if you’ve found this article helpful please leave a comment and let me know or share it with your friends on your favourite social media network.
