With all the chaos from the stock agencies and dwindling royalty percentages, about a year ago I thought I would try self hosting.
I tried a couple of solutions and found they all have drawbacks but I eventually settled on a SmugMug pro account linked to my regular web site. I'm happy with the the look and capabilities of the resulting on-line store (although I recognize there are limitations). So far, however, I've sold only a smattering of images and prints.
I haven't really attempted to build any traffic to my site because I wanted to get things set up, establish my portfolio and become familiar with how sales worked before dealing with significant numbers of customers.
I'm ready to scale things up. In fact, I need to. At the current rate it will take years to reach a pay-out and I'm not making enough to cover the annual subscription costs. So, I'm at a point where I would like to begin marketing and finding ways to drive traffic to my site.
I did some marketing by shooting photos at local events and handing out slips of paper with links to where the photos would be. I did get a few sales that way (a couple of prints from the Phoenix Marathon and some downloads from a local parade I shot). I don't think this is going to pay for itself and nothing else has produced much of anything.
I was wondering if anyone has any good ideas or experience in this. How do you reach customers?