The Power of Print: How to Land More Clients and Increase Your Sales

Even though technology is advancing at an incredibly fast pace, multiple studies show that regardless of the time we spend on our screens, more than 81% of people (at least in the USA) prefer to read or view images on print rather than on a digital screen.

Print provides a more tactile response in the viewer which provides context, a better emotional connection, and feels more satisfyingly “real” to the viewer. This is why, even in the digital age, printed photographs are more important than ever.

Full disclosure: This sponsored story is brought to you by SAAL Digital.

Since most photography is done with digital cameras these days, the majority of the images never make it to the printed format. While this is fine for the many of the random “snaps” we take during our days, it is arguably a disservice and hindrance to leave some of these incredible images we’ve captured in the digital world, only to pop up on our phones or computers’ “memory” reminders.

Printed images give us something to hold on to that can spark emotion and wonder in the viewer. Especially if there is some sort of sentimental value to the images, like a family pet, a wedding, a birthday, a prom, or even a night out with good friends. As photographers we spend a LOT of time behind the camera taking photos of others, capturing these people and moments in time that truly matter and can be passed down for generations. Seeing as how technology changes so rapidly, printing these incredible images are the best way to have them presented.

Most digital files we share online with platforms like Instagram and Facebook are only truly visible for a few hours before the “algorithms” make them invisible on the social media feeds or archived on a hard drive somewhere in a closet. Printing these cherished moments can put them on a different path to be experienced multiple times a day!

This may not be a massive deal for the general masses, but for professional photographers, adding print services to the offerings you already have can open up a massive new income stream, (which some can even build an entire business around), making print sales a key role in every step of the photoshoot process.

Many photographers are not selling prints online because the process of finding the right print lab and setting everything up for them can be incredibly complicated. Some use several solutions to sell digital files and prints online making the process complicated and even a little tedious to navigate. They include separate websites for the gallery of images, another for ordering images that connects to the print lab, another site/service to handle the accounting and transactions, and then more for handling the print providers and shipping. The good news is Saal Digital has a solution for that called the Photo Portal which can help keep everything under one page.

Saal Digital is a manufacturer and online supplier of photo printing products such as photo books, wall art, and prints. They also offer an all-in-one solution for photographers to store, share and sell digital images and prints, making it incredibly easy for clients to pick the images and products they want on their own.

With this in mind, the process of getting more clients and actually increasing print sales can be easier than you think. SAAL Digital can take care of a lot of the logistic and administrative work for you, freeing photographers up to spend time with their clients and helping them find the print product solution that is best for them.

Leveraging the Photo Portal, the photographer simply needs to upload the images they want to sell into a new gallery, select which type of print products they want to offer, define a price list, and they will get an online shop, with an administration module, created automatically. In addition, they won’t have to prepare any of the print orders manually as Saal Digital is a photo lab. This means they can print on demand and ship directly to the photographer’s client address.

Why Are Prints So Important

Before we get into the process of setting up the Photo Portal with Saal Digital, we should discuss why prints are so very important. When speaking with your clients, the main focus should be to find out what kind of photos are the most important and valuable to them. Then, explain why prints of these images are even more important. If your clients don’t know you offer prints until after their session, they will be less likely to buy. From the very first exchange, they should be aware of print options. The conversation doesn’t need to be “sales-y” but make sure they are aware. Remind them that you want to be sure they have some amazing images to hang in their home when it’s all said and done.

In addition to enhancing the home with emotive and heartwarming imagery, prints help keep important moments in your clients’ lives at the top of their minds. A quality print will serve as a long-lasting reminder (even an heirloom) of something to be admired and cherished for years to come. Something that’s often lost in a social media feed.

Once you have established how important it is to preserve these memories with your clients, then they’ll want to know what options you have for printing.

Provide Incentives To Encourage Clients To Place An Order

Instead of charging a base fee for sitting/portraits with prints as an optional or separate add-on, increase your base rate and include a credit towards prints to get the clients thinking about wall art right away before they have even booked. If they already have $100 credit for prints they can be more encouraged to buy a 250$ canvas or larger. Consumers make decisions with emotion, so these “savings” can make the difference between a cheaper vs larger and more expensive print sale.

Setting Up Your Photo Portal For Streamlined Print Sales

Like most printing services, it can be a little overwhelming at first, but things fall into place rather quickly once you get started. First users need to sign up for a free account on the Saal Photo Portal where step-by-step instructions will guide you through the setup. From here you will find a “To-Do” list at the top of the page with the important things to fill in before you can start selling prints. This includes setting up your payout settings and banking information to send and receive payments, signing the data processing agreement, setting up your price list (this one can be a little overwhelming), and your user account information.

Users can set up multiple price lists for each of the services and offerings they wish to offer. Paper prints can be at an entirely different price scale/profit margin than Wall-Art and canvases and weddings or events can have special bundle/package pricing, and so much more. Once the items on the to-do list have been cleared, now you can start setting up galleries and selling your prints to your clients.

Saal Digital’s photo portal is surprisingly simple to navigate and it helps manage the entire display and selling process for you, keeping everything under one roof (as far as print sales go). Users can go to a password-protected gallery you have sent them for their images (like the wedding gallery seen below), or they can navigate your other public galleries of art you have readily available for purchasing just as easily.

From these galleries, users can select all the images they want to print in all the options you have set up for them. These include Wall prints (metal, acrylic, PCV, Canvas, GalleryPrint), Photo Mugs, Normal photo books and Professional Line Photo Books, as well as Posters and FineArt Prints. All of which can make fantastic gifts for friends and family.

Once ordered, the prints are processed, printed, and delivered with the utmost care and surprisingly fast. Given the shipping options, (I choose the cheapest since it wasn’t a rush for me) I was expecting the images to take upwards of two weeks to arrive once they were printed and packaged, but it actually took less than a week for the finished prints to arrive at my home, with each individually wrapped, sealed, and protected.

Honestly, opening each of these prints felt like opening up a pile of presents for which, even though I knew what was coming, each one felt like a surprise. I grew more and more excited to see the next image after opening the prior one.

From posters to metal and acrylic, Saal Digital is a one-stop shop for managing your client’s needs. The automation of the print ordering process for your clients frees the photographer up to spend more time with the client directly and capture the next set of incredible images. Enabling these services should help you boost your income without having to spend time or money advertising to new clients. Using these helpful tools will help make the task of designing and selling prints much more manageable and your clients will have a much more memorable experience.

For more information visit the Saal Digital Photo Portal Page here.

Full disclosure: This sponsored story is brought to you by SAAL Digital.